Japanese films I've watched

A collection of tales based upon eight of director Akira Kurosawa's recurring dreams.

A widower takes an offer to screen girls at a special audition, arranged for him by a friend to find him a new wife. The one he fancies is not who she appears to be after all.

A schoolgirl and six of her classmates travel to her aunt's country home, which turns out to be haunted.

A frustrated detective deals with the case of several gruesome murders committed by people who have no recollection of what they've done.

A businessman accidentally kills The Metal Fetishist, who gets his revenge by slowly turning the man into a grotesque hybrid of flesh and rusty metal.

A bureaucrat tries to find meaning in his life after he discovers he has terminal cancer.

An old couple visit their children and grandchildren in the city, but receive little attention.

A tale of ambition, family, love, and war set in the midst of the Japanese Civil Wars of the sixteenth century.

Two boys begin a silence strike to press their parents into buying them a television set.

The rape of a bride and the murder of her samurai husband are recalled from the perspectives of a bandit, the bride, the samurai's ghost and a woodcutter.

After death, people have a week to choose only one memory to keep for eternity.

Upon receiving a shocking telegram from his cousin, a man recounts his early life, as a member of a broad family full of dark secrets that slowly reveal themselves through the clan ceremonies.

Toru recalls his life in the 1960s, when his friend Kizuki killed himself and he grew close to Naoko, Kizuki's girlfriend, and another woman, the outgoing, lively Midori.

Follows Mizoguchi, an aspiring Buddhist monk who became involved in the temple that was owned by his father. Through a series of flashbacks, framed as a police interrogation, Mizoguchi unravels the story of his obsession with the temple beginning with his childhood.

An entomologist on vacation is trapped by local villagers into living with a woman whose life task is shoveling sand for them.

A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality.

The daughter of a politically disgraced university professor struggles to find a place for herself in love and life, in the uncertain world of Japan leading into WWII.

Soon after buying an expensive cello, Daigo learns that his orchestra is disbanding. He moves back to his hometown with his wife, where he answers an ad for what Daigo thinks is a travel agency but is, in actuality, a mortuary.

Several yakuza from Tokyo are sent to Okinawa to help end a gang war. The war then escalates and the Tokyo drifters decide to lay low at the beach.

The lives of a young, hearing-impaired and gloomy couple are fulfilled after the boy holds interest in surfboarding.

A group of sinners involved in interconnected tales of murder, revenge, deceit and adultery all meet at the Gates of Hell.

After a botched assignment, a rice-fetishizing hitman finds himself in conflict with his organization, and one mysterious, dangerous fellow-hitman in particular.

Near the remains of an iron factory, an old painter faces the challenges of creation, as his longtime muse has not appeared in some time. A young girl lends her curiosity to discover what it is that holds the old painter back. Her mother tells her a bedtime story to which brings understanding of the relationship between the abandoned factory and the lonely artist nearby.

The Clone Returns Home is a compelling meditation on the paradox of life and death, and the meaning of love and family. Set in an imaginary - yet utterly imaginable - future, this quietly provocative film skillfully transposes complex emotional drama into the realm of science fiction by exploring the influence of technology on human memory and experience. Filled with stunning imagery and haunting stillness, The Clone Returns Home deftly combines subtly nuanced sci-fi with a uniquely Japanese perspective on the universal themes of family, life, love, and death.

When her niece is found dead along with three friends after viewing a supposedly cursed videotape, reporter Reiko sets out to investigate. She finds the tape, watches it and receives a phone call informing her that she'll die in a week.