

On a quiet street in Helsinki, Sachie has opened a diner featuring rice balls. For a month she has no customers. Then, in short order, she has her first customer, meets Midori, a gangly Japanese tourist, and invites her to stay with her.




On a quiet street in Helsinki, Sachie has opened a diner featuring rice balls. For a month she has no customers. Then, in short order, she has her first customer, meets Midori, a gangly Japanese tourist, and invites her to stay with her.
2006-06-11
7.331
Have a meal and go on a walk.
7.4The master of a dorayaki pastry store hires a 76-year-old woman whose talents attract customers from all over. But she's hiding a troubling secret. Life's joys are found in the little details, and no matter what may be weighing you down, everyone loves a good pastry.
7.6A restaurant opens at midnight. Both the menu offerings and personality of the owner draw a series of flawed patrons including Tamako, whose boyfriend has passed away, live-in worker Michiru, and ruckus-raising Kenzo.
6.7A couple decide to relocate from Tokyo to the northern island of Hokkaido where they settle and establish a bakery and café called Mani. One cooks. The other bakes. Everyone walks out happy.
7.3A story centered around an Indian family who moves to France and opens a restaurant across the street from a Michelin-starred French restaurant.
7.8Ichiko bakes a cake for an end-of-year party with her friends. In the depths of winter, making mochi and curry keeps the people of Komori warm. Later, spring brings thoughts of her absent mother as well as rice planting and sakura, and she begins to think of leaving Komori behind again.
7.8Fleeing heartbreak in the big city, Ichiko returns to Komori, her rural hometown. She battles summer's rain and humidity, bakes her own bread, grows hothouse tomatoes and tills the fields. During autumn, the time for pickling and preserving fish and sweet potatoes, Ichiko begins reaping rice and recalls her departure five years before.
6.7In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.
6.9Hanako is looking for stability with her man. She gets dumped instead. She begins dating. Miki studied and worked hard to get to where she is and is holding down a job. They are introduced through an intermediary man.
6.6Kazu works at "Funiculi Funicula" cafe. There is a mysterious rumour that if a customer takes a specific seat at the cafe, that customer can travel back to a time of their choice.
7.2An overworked career woman leaves her life in the city for an island vacation only to encounter eccentric local inhabitants.
6.0Tamako graduated from a university in Tokyo, but she now lives with her father back in Kofu. Tamako doesn't help her father or tries to get a job. She spends her time just eating and sleeping throughout the four seasons of the year.
6.8Masato is a young ramen chef in Japan. When he finds his late mother's journal after the sudden death of his emotionally distant father, he takes it with him to her native country, Singapore, hoping to piece together the story of his family and his life.
7.2A young woman who rents out cats to lonely old folks finds her life turned upside down when a young man from her past shows back up in her life.
7.4After failing his university entrance exam, Yuki Hirano sets his eyes on the role of a forestry trainee. Setting off for training he doubts his decision many times, but eventually after passing the training course, he is sent to Kamusari Village for a year of work experience - where he becomes assimilated with the beauty of nature and the warm-hearted people of the village.
7.5A spell of time in the life of the five-piece Haruno family in rural Tochigi Prefecture. Yoshiko is not an ordinary housewife, instead working on an animated film project. Uncle Ayano, a successful music producer, is looking to get his head together after living in Tokyo. Meanwhile, Sachiko is concerned with why she seems to be followed by a giant version of herself. As the lazy days pass by, each member of the family is followed in a series of episodic vignettes.
6.9After a convivial holiday dinner party, things begin to unravel when a husband and wife address some prickly issues concerning their marriage.
7.1In 2012, Atsuya and his 2 childhood friends do something bad and run into an old general store. They decide to stay there until the morning. Late into the night, Atsuya sees a letter in the mailbox. The letter is addressed to the Namiya General Store and the letter was written by someone to consult about worries. Incredibly, the letter was written 32 years ago. The mailbox is somehow connected to the year 1980. Atsuya and his friends decide to write a reply and place their letter in the mailbox.
7.3When his only friend dies, a man born with dwarfism moves to rural New Jersey to live a life of solitude, only to meet a chatty hot dog vendor and a woman dealing with her own personal loss.
7.1When easy-going Aoyagi meets an old friend for a fishing trip, he ends up drugged, framed for the Prime Minister's assassination, and on the run from corrupt cops. It's only the beginning of what quickly becomes the worst, weirdest day of his life. But he'll get by with a little help from his friends, who include a famous pop diva, a rockabilly deliveryman, a crippled old gangster, and the world's most cheerful serial killer.
6.4A young woman lives a life filled with bad choices. At a young age she marries and has a child--with an abusive thief who quickly ends up in prison. Left alone, she takes up with the guy's mate, another thief, who seems to give her some happiness but who also ends up locked up. She then takes up with a series of seedy types who offer nothing but momentary pleasure--if that.
6.6A Midwestern housewife supports her large family by entering contests for ad slogans sponsored by consumer product companies, while dealing with abuse from her alcoholic husband. Based on a true story.
6.2A writer for a greeting card company learns the true meaning of loneliness when he comes home to find his girlfriend in bed with another man.
7.3Nagasaki at the end of the Edo period had the taste of a criminal paradise, where, despite the exotic, dangerous work was always in demand. Here, three wandering samurai who earn their living by killing get to know each other. Soon they learn that government officials will be transporting a large cargo of gold and decide to steal it.
7.6An epic journey of friendship and self-discovery set in the breathtaking Italian Alps, The Eight Mountains follows over four decades the profound, complex relationship between Pietro and Bruno.
7.3Lucy Lawless stars in this short which predated her rise to fame as Xena Princess Warrior. Sal is in a relationship going nowhere with Mog, a layabout who shows her no respect. A chance encounter with an easy-going female truck driver (Lawless) encourages Sal to take more chances in her life, symbolized by the purchase of a tasty but out-of-season peach.
6.3In the summer of 1942 two young boys are sent to stay with their stern grandmother Kurnitz and their childlike aunt Bella in Yonkers, New York.
6.9Shinji and Masaru spend most of their school days harassing fellow classmates and playing pranks. They drop out and Shinji becomes a small-time boxer, while Masaru joins up with a local yakuza gang. However, the world is a tough place.
7.5When the Bad Guys, a crew of criminal animals, are finally caught after years of heists and being the world’s most-wanted villains, Mr. Wolf brokers a deal to save them all from prison.
6.8Controversial director Angela Chan explores the "La Cage Aux Folles" demi-monde that thrives in today's Hong Kong, but which has never before been portrayed in a major movie. Alex To plays a handsome fashion designer trapped in a tangle of ambiguous relationships that becomes even more complex when he falls for a beautiful D.J. (Cecilia Yip) who, with the help of her best friend (Cherie Chung), is trying to get out of an arranged marriage. This film looks and sounds like a comedy, but has some serious comments about a veiled segment of Hong Kong.
7.0The Way of Drama unfolds in the world of kabuki in Osaka, but also addresses the politics of popular culture and the rivalry between theatrical styles like those used by amateur actors to dramatise contemporary events.
7.4Charley Varrick robs a bank in a small town with his friends, but instead of obtaining a small amount of money, they discover they stole a very large amount of money belonging to the mob. Charley must now come up with a plan to not only evade the police but the mob as well.
7.6Only three days before their high school festival, guitarist Kei, drummer Kyoko, and bassist Nozomi are forced to recruit a new lead vocalist for their band. They choose Korean exchange student Son, though her comprehension of Japanese is a bit rough! It's a race against time as the group struggles to learn three songs for the festival's rock concert—including a classic '80s song by the Japanese punk rock band The Blue Hearts called "Linda Linda".
4.3Bound together by a desire to play "Mazes and Monsters," Robbie and his four college classmates decide to move the board game into the local cavern. Robbie loses his mind, and the line between reality and fantasy fuse into a harrowing nightmare.
7.1A dark fable set in an early 1950s Czech village, a time of Soviet-style socialism which saw the implementation of collectivized agriculture and the mass closure of monasteries and convents.
10.0Life is not easy for a young woman with no parents--her mother died and her alcoholic father abandoned her. Nevertheless, she climbs her way out of the underclass, going from prostitute to wife of a count.
6.2When 21 year-old Leo, the oldest of four brothers, announces to his rural French family that he's HIV positive, his family quickly rallies around him. Leo travels to Paris with his youngst brother Marcel for treatment. When Leo tries to push his brother away to protect him, the love and loyalty of the two brothers is tested.
5.8Little Tsatsiki, son of a single mother in Sweden, has never met his father, a Greek fisherman. Tsatsiki befriends a nice but straight-laced motorcycle policeman renting one of their rooms and decices he is the right guy for his mother, an amateur rock singer in love with her band's bass player.
6.6In Edo Japan, a kabuki actor seeks revenge against the three men who drove his parents to their deaths years ago.
7.0An orphan named Innocence leaves her county home after her foster-father dies. She travels to the city and makes a living as a novelist. Subsequently, she has an affair with a painter named Amadis de Jocelyn, who later dumps her.