
The classic tale retold. This is one of Japan’s most popular stories in a brand new version starring the great Matsukata Hiroki following in the footsteps of Yorozuya Kinnosuke as Yagyu Tajima, the grandmaster swordsman whose plot to maintain the succession of Iemitsu as shogun encounters obstacles on all sides. Loaded with action and featuring many of Japan’s new up and coming sword stars this exciting movie brings back the feelings of the golden age of motion pictures. Stunning cinematography brings 17th Century Japan to life in this exciting tale of loyalty and betrayal, leading up to an ending that won’t be found in any history book.

The classic tale retold. This is one of Japan’s most popular stories in a brand new version starring the great Matsukata Hiroki following in the footsteps of Yorozuya Kinnosuke as Yagyu Tajima, the grandmaster swordsman whose plot to maintain the succession of Iemitsu as shogun encounters obstacles on all sides. Loaded with action and featuring many of Japan’s new up and coming sword stars this exciting movie brings back the feelings of the golden age of motion pictures. Stunning cinematography brings 17th Century Japan to life in this exciting tale of loyalty and betrayal, leading up to an ending that won’t be found in any history book.
2008-09-28
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7.1After years on the road establishing his reputation as Japan's greatest fencer, Takezo returns to Kyoto. Otsu waits for him, yet he has come not for her but to challenge the leader of the region's finest school of fencing. To prove his valor and skill, he walks deliberately into ambushes set up by the school's followers.
6.9Following the death of the second Tokugawa shogun, it is revealed that he was poisoned by retainers of his son Iemitsu in hopes of gaining him the shogunate despite the stammer and birthmark which undermine his respect. Iemitsu and his brother Tadanaga become bitter rivals for the shogunate, and the land is split into factions, eventually erupting into warfare. Iemitsu's mentor, his fencing instructor Yagyu, is fixated upon securing Iemitsu the shogunate and ends up betraying everyone, even his own family, in pursuit of the goal.
7.2Struggling to elevate himself from his low caste in 17th century Japan, Miyamoto trains to become a mighty samurai warrior.
6.4Older, wiser but still a wandering loner, the blind, peace-loving masseur Ichi seeks a peaceful life in a rural village. When he's caught in the middle of a power struggle between two rival Yakuza clans, his reputation as a deadly defender of the innocent is put to the ultimate test in a series of sword-slashing showdowns.
6.9Ichi is staying at an inn when a woman dies. Her dying wish is that Ichi take her son to his father, an artist living in a nearby town. After arriving in the town, Ichi finds out that the father has been forced by a local boss to create illegal pornography to pay off his gambling debts. Ichi makes it his mission to save the man and reunite the family, even though it brings him into conflict with a samurai he sort of befriended on his way to the town.
7.5A sadistic Daimyo (feudal lord) rapes a woman and murders both her and her husband, but even when one of his own vassals commits suicide to bring attention to the crime, the matter is quickly hushed up. Not only will there be no punishment, but because the Daimyo is the Shogun's younger brother, he will soon be appointed to a high political position from which he could wreak even more havoc. Convinced that the fate of the Shogunate hangs in the balance, a plot is hatched to assassinate the Daimyo. The two most brilliant strategic minds of their generation find themselves pitted against each other; one is tasked to defend a man he despises, and has a small army at his disposal. The other is given a suicide mission, and has 12 brave men. They are the 13 Assassins.
6.1In an alternate version of 1949 Japan in which World War II never happened, the Japanese capital of Teito is home to both an ultra rich upper class and the dirt poor masses. The city is thrown into a state of panic when a phantom thief called “The Kaijin (Fiend) with 20 Faces” (K-20 for short) begins to use his mysterious abilities to steal from the rich and give to the poor. One day a circus acrobat named Heikichi Endo (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is framed for K-20’s crimes and becomes determined to clear his name. He teams up with K-20’s next target, a wealthy duchess named Yoko Hashiba (Takako Matsu) and her detective fiancé (Toru Nakamura), to take K-20 down once and for all.
6.7A fugitive lord and his six retainers disguise themselves as monks to bluff their way through a hostile checkpoint.
7.2Ogami Itto is hired to kill a tattooed female assassin and battles Retsudo, head of the Yagyu clan, and his son Gunbei.
7.0Returning to the village where a year before he had killed Hirate, a much-admired opponent, Zatoichi encounters another swordsman and former rival in love.
6.9After arriving in the town of Shimonita, Ichi finds that a price has been put on his head by a local yakuza boss. He's drawn into a trap, but after hearing of the slaying of a former love, Ichi furiously fights his way through the entire clan to face the killer, a hired ronin.
7.2After their lord is tricked into committing ritual suicide, forty-seven samurai warriors await the chance to avenge their master and reclaim their honor.
8.0In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.
6.6Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering around a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano. The school's stern master can choose to intervene, or to let Kano decide his own path.
7.2Blind traveler Zatoichi is a master swordsman and a masseur with a fondness for gambling on dice games. When he arrives in a village torn apart by warring gangs, he sets out to protect the townspeople.
6.8Zatoichi treks to a village that has always been a favorite spot of his, only to discover that it’s become a living hell, plagued by feuding father and son yakuza as well as the younger crime boss’s bodyguard, scruffy, smart-mouthed, cash-hungry Yojimbo of legend.
7.1Zatoichi's trek through 88 temples to atone for his violent past is interrupted as he stumbles into a village terrorized by a violent yakuza boss.
7.4Official Shogunate executioner Ogami Itto has been framed for disloyalty to the Shogunate by the Yagyu clan, against whom he now is waging a one-man war, along with his infant son, Daigoro.
7.7Shishio sets sail in his ironclad ship to bring down the government. In order to stop him, Kenshin trains with his old master to learn his final technique.
9.0Action and adventure abound in this story of friendship between two rival firefighters, Kichigoro and Jirokichi in old Japan. When Mukai Sadayu, the vassal of Kaga Clan's accounting officer, Shinagawa Daihachi demands that Omon serve him tea in his mansion and she refuses, the clan's samurai abduct her setting in motion a series of events that will bring the two firefighters into a world of danger and excitement. Jirokichi, leader of the Edo firefighting team "Ha-gumi" must first rescue Omon from the clutches of the vile Kaga Clan's retainers.
6.0A poor peasant, after years of scraping, becomes a rich and powerful Osaka merchant. Mizoguchi Kenji's final project; he died before completing it and directing duties turned over to Yoshimura Kozaburo.
8.1Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.
7.9Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.
8.0Detective Onihei better known as "Heizo the Demon" heads a group of skilled officers, however, one of those special officers got himself into a web of betrayal and deceit, and become the very thing Heizo the Demon investigates daily.
7.2Blind traveler Zatoichi is a master swordsman and a masseur with a fondness for gambling on dice games. When he arrives in a village torn apart by warring gangs, he sets out to protect the townspeople.
10.0In Edo, an amnesic man with extraordinary sword skills searches for clues about his past and his identity.
0.0Revenge breeds revenge. Ikuta Denpachiro, the martial arts instructor of the Honda family in Koriyama, lost a fight to the young samurai Enjo Sozaemon in a martial arts tournament and as a result lost his position and was expelled from home. Wanting to avenge the mockery of himself, he treacherously kills Sozaemon and goes on the run. After long wanderings, Denpachiro, it would seem, finds a peaceful life and love in the face of a devoted and courageous Okatsu, but the brothers of the murdered man are already on his trail, wanting to avenge the death of Sozaemon. The film is based on a story by Itaro Yamagami.
6.3At the beginning of the 19th century, Japan was under a policy of national isolation. A group of Dutch scholars who wanted to open the country secretly completed a copy of a map of Japan under shogunate control. They sent a young Dutch scholar, Michi-an, as a secret envoy to deliver the copy of the map to the Dutch. Michi-an, hiding himself and making his way through the deserted winter mountains, but the mountain guardians, led by Takayama, had begun hunting in the mountains with a description of Michi-an's appearance arranged by the shogunate.