Carey Lowell, Talisa Soto, Timothy Dalton, and Robert Davi in Licence to Kill (1989)

In this list are the films I´ve seen with rate 10 and 9.  10= masterpiece  9= excellent

Favorite Japanese films

Favorite Japanese films reviews on La Saveur (in French) : https://lasaveurdesgoutsamers.wordpress.com/tag/limeko-japanese-films/

Toshirô Mifune and Machiko Kyô in Rashomon (1950)

Films with less than 400 checks on iCM.

Films avec moins de 400 checks sur iCM.

Obscure films reviewed on la Saveur (in French) : 

https://lasaveurdesgoutsamers.wordpress.com/tag/lobscurite-de-lim/

Top films.

8,5-10 films.

Top films Reviews (in French) on La Saveur : lasaveurdesgoutsamers.wordpress.com/tag/limguela-top-films/

Harrison Ford and Sean Young in Blade Runner (1982)

Some of the best films Japanese cinema has to offer. In chronological order.

 Number of films by decade:

1920s: 3 1930s: 12 1940s: 10 1950s: 33 1960s: 44 1970s: 25 1980s: 25 1990s: 30 2000s: 32 2010s: 22 2020s: 11

 Why are there only so few early films on this list? Over 90% of Japanese films made before World War II don't exist anymore. There are several reasons for this: The destruction of film archives due to the Great Kantō Earthquake in 1923 and the U.S. firebombing attacks during WWII. Furthermore the destruction of anti-ideological films by the Japanese military government during WWII and the destruction of overly propagandistic films by the U.S. authorities during the occupation of Japan. Also many classics were destroyed simply because of neglect and poor film preservation. The 1950s are considered the "Golden Age of Japanese Cinema" by many film scholars and in the 1960s the number of films produced in Japan reached its peak. That's why there are so many classics in these two decades. In the 1970s film production declined due to the competition of television. The 1980s are often described by film critics as the "Lost Decade of Japanese Cinema" because of the relatively low amount of great films. While this might be somewhat true for live-action films, the 80's were actually a great decade for Japanese animation. In the 1990s film production started increasing again.

 Directors with the most entries on this list: 1. Akira Kurosawa (15 films) 2. Yasujirô Ozu (14 films) 3. Hayao Miyazaki (12 films)  4. Kenji Mizoguchi (10 films) 5. Mikio Naruse (9 films) 6. Hirokazu Koreeda (8 films) 7. Shôhei Imamura (7 films) 8. Takeshi Kitano (6 films) 9. Masaki Kobayashi (6 films) 10. Nobuhiko Ôbayashi (6 films) 11. Satoshi Kon (5 films)

 Best director of each decade: 1920s: Teinosuke Kinugasa 1930s: Kenji Mizoguchi 1940s: Yasujirô Ozu 1950s: Akira Kurosawa 1960s: Masaki Kobayashi 1970s: Shûji Terayama 1980s: Hayao Miyazaki 1990s: Takeshi Kitano 2000s: Satoshi Kon 2010s: Hirokazu Koreeda 2020s: Ryûsuke Hamaguchi (so far)

 small glossary:

anime [アニメ] – Japanese animation

chambara/chanbara [チャンバラ] – samurai film (named after "chanchan barabara", the Japanese onomatopoeia of swords clashing and bodies falling to the ground, chambara are very action-oriented with lots of swordfighting, less action-oriented films about samurais generally fall under jidaigeki)

eiga [映画] – film; movie

jidaigeki [時代劇] – Japanese historical drama

kaidan [怪談] – ghost stories set in the Edo period

kaijū eiga [怪獣映画] – giant monster film

nūberu bāgu [ヌーベルバーグ] – Japanese New Wave

pinku eiga [ピンク映画] – pink film (a type of Japanese erotic film)

pinkī baiorensu [ピンキー・バイオレンス] – pinky violence (a subgenre of pink film about female delinquents, less sex & more action-oriented)

shōshimin-eiga [小市民 映画] – Japanese dramas that focus on working class people & lower middle class families with slice of life elements, also known in the West as shomin-geki (literally "common people drama")

yakuza eiga [ヤクザ映画] – Japanese gangster film

The Best Japanese Movies of All Time – A Guide to Japanese Cinema

Orson Welles, Dorothy Comingore, and Ruth Warrick in Citizen Kane (1941)

Anthony Perkins, John Gavin, Janet Leigh, and Heather Dawn May in Psycho (1960)

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