Mariko Okada

After the death of previous Boss, a gang war lasts for more than four years.

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Intrepid tax investigator Ryoko Itakura sets her sights on the mysterious and philandering Hideki Gondo, a suspected millionaire and proprietor of a thriving chain of seedy hourly hotels, who has for years succeeded at hiding the true extent of his assets from the Japanese authorities. Itakura and Gondo soon find themselves engaged in a complicated, satirical battle of wits.

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Yoko Shintani, an instructor at an aerobics school, secretly enjoys eavesdropping on the rooms next door. She eavesdrops on the frequent comings and goings of men by her neighbor, the model Reiko Saegusa. She relieves her frustrations as she is approaching marriageable age and her dissatisfaction with the school by eavesdropping. However, Yoko is also being watched by the photographer's assistant Naito through a telephoto lens. One night, Yoko hears Reiko's death throes. Thinking that Reiko has been murdered, Yoko calls the police, but...

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In this humorous paean to the joys of food, a pair of truck drivers happen onto a decrepit roadside shop selling ramen noodles. The widowed owner, Tampopo, begs them to help her turn her establishment into a paragon of the "art of noodle-soup making". Interspersed are satirical vignettes about the importance of food to different aspects of human life.

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This story is based on the novel "Jo no mai" by Tomiko Miyao which is based on the life of painter Shōen Uemura (1875–1949), the first woman to be awarded the Order of Culture. The title refers to the masterpiece bijinga ("picture of a beautiful woman") that Uemura painted at the age of 61. The main character, Tsuya Shimamura, is born in Kyoto as the second daughter of a tea trader who dies before her birth. Tsuya, who loves painting more than anything and is hopeless at housework, attends art school and at age 15 receives the name Shōsui (from the characters for "pine" and "green") from her teacher. The crown prince of England purchases one of her works, propelling her to fame overnight. The novel portrays the remainder of her stormy life, during which she is impregnated by her teacher and raises a fatherless child; through it all she devotes herself to her painting, undaunted.

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An extremely lovely tribute to Ozu, on the 20th anniversary of his death. It uses a combination of footage from vintage films and new material (both interviews and Ozu-related locations) shot by Ozu's long-time camera-man (who came out of retirement to work on this). Surprisingly (or perhaps not), it focuses less on Ozu's accomplishments as a film-maker than on his impact on the lives of the people he worked with..

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When the patriarch of Japan's most powerful yakuza family is shot, his wife is left to pick up the pieces and carry on the legacy.

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Obayashi's take on the famous Kosuke Kindaichi series, made popular partly thanks to the numerous movie-adaptions by Kon Ichikawa, the most known being The Inugami Family. Kosuke Kindaichi is the most famous detective in Japan. Kindaichi gets a new case to figure out who has beheaded a valuable statue and made off with its head.

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This is the story of "The Forty-Seven Ronin." Based on historical events in 1701-2, the movie tells the tale of the Asano clan's downfall and the revenge of its former samurai on the perpetrator of the catastrophe. Lord Asano was goaded, or tricked, into drawing his sword inside the Shogun's palace -- a crime which carried the death penalty. The newly installed Shogun was furious at Asano and ordered all his clan's assets seized, meaning some 20,000 samurai and commoners were unemployed and landless at a stroke. Forty-seven of these ronin (masterless samurai) banded together to take attempt revenge on Lord Kira, who had goaded Asano into drawing his sword.

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When an American is murdered in a Japanese inn, Tokyo police detective Munesue follows the trail of the killer to New York. There he is joined by a New York City detective named Shuftan and together they sort out the crime.

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When a mob boss retires under political pressure, his successor and yakuza family are tested to their limits as new alliances and enemies are formed.

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A young doctor starts working at a mental hospital in the Yokohama region and falls in love with one of the patients there.

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Nakadai is an English teacher at a local school. He’s put-upon like the patron figure of dozens of films and televisions shows. Viewers who are especially fans of Nakadai will appreciate how the actor comically rants about here. His home life is almost disastrous, with a ditzy (but attractive) wife, three young children, a loud school nearby that’s controlled by a corrupt businessman he loathes, and frequent visits from layabout friends. And the grey-furred, green-eyed cat!

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A ryokan maid is on trial for pushing a familiar guest off a cliff to his death. An eager attorney offers to take the case to gain notoriety.

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In this intricately layered Japanese film, the nature of actresses and what they gain from acting is explored. The lives of three actresses are laid bare, and scenes from their lives are woven in and out of interviews with each of them. Each of them has experienced a traumatic event which contributes to their particular enjoyment of becoming someone else in dramatic roles.

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Comedy of a phony doctor.

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Based on Shinichi Mori song

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Rikiya Shoda is an engineer working for the Atomic Agency in Japan. One day, his wife Nanako returns home with a lost teenager called Ayu. A man, pretending to be the father, comes to get her back; Ayu keeps telling him that Rikiya and Nanako are her parents. Through this disruption, Rikiya suddenly starts remembering his youth as a revolutionary.

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Two interwoven stories. The first is a biography of anarchist Sakae Osugi which follows his relationship with three women in the 1920s. The second centers around two 1960s students researching Osugi's theories.

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A spontaneous romance blooms between Kawamura, a professor touring Europe, and Naoko, a married woman living in Paris, scarred by the Nagasaki atomic bombings. The two protagonists travel around Europe trying to find themselves.

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"The Time of Reckoning" transforms a screwball-comedy plot into a sober study of a successful businessman with serious relationship problems involving three women: his wife of ten years who announces she is pregnant by another man; a mistress who wants to have a baby with him; and an ex-lover who claims he fathered her son.

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In an isolated mountain resort, a woman gets involved in a love triangle between herself, her volatile lover and her ex-boyfriend, for whom she had platonic feelings.

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Shingo and Ritsuko have a baby: Takashi. They happen to be a happy couple, but soon Ritsuko wants to know who is the true father of Takashi, born by artificial insemination.

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