Peter Falk and Fred Savage in The Princess Bride (1987)

It's a personal selection of some Japanese films that I recommend to watch over the hundreds I've seen, it's quite eclectic (wide choice of genres). Films are sorted by year of release and you'll find the original Japanese title in the description. The list will evolve, I still got plenty of Japanese films to watch.

I hope you'll enjoy watching them ;)

Bonne séance ! 映画を見てお楽しみください！

Gems of Japanese Cinema - 日本の映画の宝石

Sazen Tange and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo (1935)

With this list I hope to shine a light on lesser-known/under-viewed films I feel deserve a little more attention - All films on this list have received less than 10,000 votes.

Also, one film I had to remove because it's labeled "Adult": Yoshiwara enjô (1987) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0204750/)

If you have any comments/suggestions, feel free to leave them here: Letterboxd (https://letterboxd.com/mr_jim_wolf/list/mr-wolfs-big-list-of-forgotten-overlooked-1/detail/)

Mr. Wolf's BIG List of Forgotten, Overlooked and Underappreciated Films.

Lily Franky, Sakura Andô, Mayu Matsuoka, Miyu Sasaki, Jyo Kairi, and Mehdi Taleghani in Shoplifters (2018)

All my favorite films from this decade, all rated with 8 or higher

This is a list of my favorite films - including shorts, documentaries, TV movies and miniseries. The first 111 films are presented in order of preference; after that the list is more or less chronological.  Films after #916 added since March 27, 2023.

A comment:  I think lists have a little more "meaning" (if they can have any) if you have some context, and since so far I haven't written comments for any of these, here's a little something about me and my tastes.  Star Wars got me first excited about film at the age of 11 when it came out first-run; I saw it 7 times in the cinema over the next couple of years (in those days huge blockbusters could last forever on the silver screen), and many of my favorites - including films at #1 and 3 - have also been seen several times on the big screen.  Even in these days of greater and better home viewing - especially since the Covid pandemic began - seeing films in a big auditorium, with an audience, is the way I want to go when it's possible.

I suppose fantasy and science fiction were my first loves, and remain important to me, but "fantasy" now denotes something larger than dragons and elves and magic swords to me.  If I have a particular obsession in cinema it is a sort of "heightened" reality - something not-quite-everyday, and yet not divorced entirely from the real world.  Surrealism (the works of Lynch, Rivette and Ruiz for example), romanticism (Chazelle, Ophüls, Demy) and the world of film noir are all major elements in my personal makeup, and it's the conflict between fantasy and reality - which probably first impacted me consciously in Brazil - that I probably have the greatest affinity for.  I am also very drawn to films exploring time and memory.  Most of the films in my top 10 and a great percentage of the rest fall in some way into some of these categories or ideas.

This is not to say that I don't appreciate realism, or other genres (like the western) where the un-real elements are muted.  I like to believe that I'm open to anything, and apart from inspirational sports dramas I think you'll find that there are few significant categories in film that aren't represented somewhere on this list.

And it is a large list, but here's another thing you should know about me: I love film and I seek out films that I think I will like (for the most part).  If you're the kind of person who has seen thousands of films but only can bring yourself to call 1 or 7 or 20 of them "great", then you probably have a radically different attitude about film and art in general than I do.  To me there is greatness all around, and I continue to hunt for it.

Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone in La La Land (2016)

Títulos para ver en los ciclos del segundo cuatri del año según planificación previa. 

Domenico Fusco in Notte di tempesta (1946)

Crate-Digger Film Canon: All Films of the 40s

Alan Hale, Priscilla Lane, Thomas Mitchell, and Dennis Morgan in 3 Cheers for the Irish (1940)

Kirk Douglas, Linda Darnell, Jeanne Crain, Paul Douglas, Jeffrey Lynn, and Ann Sothern in A Letter to Three Wives (1949)

Lists Related to The Song Lantern

More to explore

Recently viewed