Akira Takarada

Ford Brody, a Navy bomb expert, has just reunited with his family in San Francisco when he is forced to go to Japan to help his estranged father, Joe. Soon, both men are swept up in an escalating crisis when an ancient alpha predator arises from the sea to combat malevolent adversaries that threaten the survival of humanity. The creatures leave colossal destruction in their wake, as they make their way toward their final battleground: San Francisco.

Jiminy Cricket is looking over the journal he used to document his first adventure with Sora when he discovers a mysterious message. He didn't write it—so how on earth did it get there? King Mickey is determined to find out, so he and his friends decide to digitize the journal and delve into its deepest secrets. Inside this datascape dwells a second Sora who is about to embark on a grand adventure of his very own.

Japan, 1954. A legend emerges from the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, devastated by atomic bombs in 1945. The creature's name is Godzilla. The film that tells its story is the first of kaiju eiga, the giant monster movies.

A look into the production of the nineteenth Godzilla film. Includes filmmaker and actor interviews with behind the scenes footage of the film's visual effects. Includes an interview with Akira Ifukube and a brief discussion of the late Ishiro Honda.

Suzuki Shizuka is an office lady at a conglomerate who is hypnotized at a local amusement park and left under the spell. Now she is compelled to sing and dance whenever she hears any melody whatsoever. She heads back to the hypnotist for relief, but he is nowhere to be found. So Shizuka sets off on a journey around Japan to find him and break the spell.

Lonely after the death of her husband, whom she nursed for years, Tae decides to find a new life partner. Her family and friends try to dissuade her.

Humanity finally rids themselves of Godzilla, imprisoning him in an icy tomb in the South Pole. All is peaceful until various monsters emerge to lay waste to Earth's cities. Overwhelmed, humanity is seemingly saved by a race of benevolent aliens known as Xiliens. But not all is what it seems with these bizarre visitors. If humanity wishes to survive, they must reluctantly resurrect their most hated enemy, Godzilla.

Takeshi Kitano plays a version of himself in which he's a struggling director cycling through a number of different genres in an effort to complete his latest project.

A four-part anthology in the spirit of The Twilight Zone, this film starts off with a group of commuters stranded at a train station in the rain, listening to stories told by one of the group. These include tales of a group stranded in the mountains and haunted by guilt over a death they inadvertantly caused, an emotionally broken chessmaster pressed into playing a real-life game for an eccentric millionaire, a wandering medieval samurai who finds a modern-day cell phone on the ground and a person on the other end asking questions about the past, and a young couple who agree to try a computer simulation of what their future as husband and wife would be like.

Mothra's dark counterpart, Battra, emerges to eliminate humanity on behalf of the Earth. Two tiny fairies called the Cosmos offer their help by calling Mothra to battle the creature. Unfortunately a meteorite has awoken a hibernating Godzilla as a three way battle for the Earth begins.

An upscale Japanese hotel hires Mahiru Inoue, a lawyer adept at dealing with the Yakuza, to help them rid their hotel of the local gangsters so they can get a contract for a meeting of important foreign officials.

Vain, middle-aged actress Biwako is placed in witness protection while authorities investigate the brutal murder she witnessed. Under the watch of two dedicated cops, Biwako struggles to maintain her career, her public image, and her personal life as she prepares for her new role on the witness stand.

Nayoko, a good-hearted geisha, brings luck to the men she sleeps with, even though most are scoundrels who don’t deserve it.

Reiko and Tetsuya continue to live together. Reiko, who was informed by Kyoko that she was engaged to Takada, pretended not to be interested in her marriage, but in her heart, she wanted to marry Tetsuya. Tetsuya, unable to see through Reiko's true feelings, replies, "We shouldn't think about marriage until we're both adults and can live on our own." Meanwhile, Reiko's father, Shotaro, is stricken with cancer and receives a call that he has six months to live. In order to fulfill her father's wish, "I wanted to see Reiko as a bride while I was still alive," Reiko asked Tetsuya to marry him, and Tetsuya hesitated but accepted. However, Shotaro's doctor informs him that the cancer was misdiagnosed. While Reiko is relieved, she does not want to cancel her marriage to Tetsuya, so she proceeds with her wedding preparations without informing the people around her.

taiwan film

Emiko Hayasaka (Seiko Matsuda), who lives in Hawaii, has arranged a marriage with Akira Kuniyoshi (Shinji Yamashita), the son of the president of a hotel chain. Although Emiko is not yet ready to get married, Akira and both of her parents are enthusiastic about the matchmaking. During a summer vacation in Japan, Emiko is attacked with a knife by a boy, but is saved by Shinji Terao (Kiichi Nakai), a young man who happens to be passing by. Shinji is passionate about windsurfing and trains hard every day for the world championships. Emiko is attracted to him because of his sincerity, though he is not very sociable. Upon returning to Hawaii, she overcame her parents' objections and got him to break off his proposal to Akira. Meanwhile, the world competition is approaching and Shinji comes to Hawaii from Japan.

Three young girls coming of age in a Catholic boarding school bond over the strict rules and vow to support each other. Kikuka dreams of becoming a manga artist, Makiko an actress. Shinobu just didn't want to relocate to Hokkaido with her parents.

A re-edited Italian-language dubbed version of the original Godzilla, using as a basis the U.S. version, "Godzilla, King of the Monsters!" (1956), plus WWII newsreel footage and clips from other science fiction films. The re-edited film was then colorized via a process called "Spectrorama 70" consisting of applying various colored gels to the black and white footage. The film's opening and ending also features new music composed by musicians Fabio Frizzi, Franco Bixio, and Vince Tempera (under the pseudonym Magnetic System).

Astronauts Glenn and Fuji investigate Planet X and encounter mysterious aliens known as the Xiliens, who ask Earth's people to help save their world from "Monster Zero". In exchange for borrowing Godzilla and Rodan, the Xiliens offer a cure for cancer. As Glenn investigates, he develops a romance with Miss Namikawa and uncovers the Xilien's true intentions.

Searching for his brother, Ryota stows away on a boat belonging to a criminal alongside two other teenagers. The group shipwrecks on Letchi island and discover the Infant Island natives have been enslaved by a terrorist organization controlling a crustacean monster. Finding a sleeping Godzilla, they decide to awaken him to defeat the terrorists and liberate the natives.

The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.

Journalists Ichiro Sakai and Junko cover the wreckage of a typhoon when an enormous egg is found and claimed by greedy entrepreneurs. Mothra's fairies arrive and are aided by the journalists in a plea for its return. As their requests are denied, Godzilla arises near Nagoya and the people of Infant Island must decide if they are willing to answer Japan's own pleas for help.

An adaptation of the Rankin/Bass cartoon, "The King Kong Show". King Kong is brought in by the evil Dr. Who to dig for Element X in a mine when the robot Mechani-Kong is unable to do the task. This leads to the machine and the real Kong engaging in a tremendous battle atop Tokyo Tower.

Lt. Koji Kitami is a navigator-bombardier in Japan's Naval Air Force. He participates in the Japanese raid on the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in 1941 and is welcomed with pride in his hometown on his return. As Japan racks up victory after victory in the Pacific War, Kitami is caught up in the emotion of the time and fights courageously for the standard of Japanese honor. But his assuredness of his government's righteousness is shaken after the Japanese navy is defeated in the debacle of Midway.

A silly yet skilled Interpol agent flies to Tokyo and gets mixed up in a war between two gangs intent on winning the favor of a notorious arms dealer.

A massive underwater volcano erupts and puts a group of investigative scientists in danger. They are rescued by an atomic super submarine named The Alpha under the command of Captain McKenzie. The group is quickly taken to a vast underwater city known as Latitude Zero, a fantastic, Atlantean type utopia, a world beneath the ocean with its own sun. It is soon discovered that Captain McKenzie is at war with the evil Dr. Malic, a cruel scientist who wishes to rule mankind all the while conducting genetic experiments on humans and animals. Malic sends his agents to kidnap Dr. Okada, a human scientist who has created a serum that can immunize exposure to radiation.

After their lord is tricked into committing ritual suicide, forty-seven samurai warriors await the chance to avenge their master and reclaim their honor.

A woman remembers her own marriage when dealing with the love life of her son.

Based on the life and career of novelist Fumiko Hayashi, she bitterly struggles for literary recognition in the first half of the 20th-century – her affairs with feckless men, the jobs she took to survive (peddler, waitress, bar maid), and her arduous, often humiliating attempts to get published in a male-dominated culture.

A Japanese family is torn apart by the tensions of an avoidable nuclear world war between the superpowers.

Wang Xinglian returns from her studies in Japan to visit her father in Hong Kong where she has an encounter with the young Japanese Hasegawa Toru. The two meet again and fall in love in Hokkaido when Wang and her best friend Sugimoto Kanako are going on a holiday. Urged by her friend Zhang Yingming to concentrate on her studies, Wang remains ambivalent about the relationship, and is even more upset to realise that Sugimoto is in love with her fellow countryman. Feigning an engagement with Zhang, Wang initiates a break-up with Hasegawa and finds work in Singapore after graduation. Hasegawa learns the real cause of the break-up from Sugimoto in Hong Kong. A frenzy search finally leads to a reunion and a proposal in Kuala Lumpur. However, their love is doomed by a twist of fate as Wang must leave to see her desperately ill father in Hong Kong while Hasegawa has to leave for America to pursue his career.

Sanae is left a widow after her prestigious husband dies, but holds the proceeds of a million yen insurance policy. Being childless, her former in-laws have no objection to her return to her own family.

A killer-for-hire gets mixed up with a cast of wacky characters involved in a gold smuggling route from Beirut to Tokyo.

Drama about the lives of the five daughters and daughter-in-law of a store owner.

A "hustler's hustler" (Takarada), works his way up the corporate ladder at a camera company. His biggest scheme involves winning the business of a foreign visitor by setting him up with a beautiful "model" (Tsukasa), actually a bar hostess, but the plan backfires when the would-be executive falls for the woman himself.

No synopsis available yet.

A group of criminals whose diamond heist goes wrong retreat to a WWII era bunker where tensions begin to rise.

Part one of The Masterless 47.

Story of romance and rivalry between two ad agencies vying for the same account with a pharmaceutical firm.

In the 9th year of Genroku, Mitsukuni Mito Komon of Hitachi Province set out on a pilgrimage to various countries with his reluctant vassals, Sukesaburo and Kakunosuke, under the name of Koemon, a retired peasant.

Musical about the "Blue Star," a struggling jazz band led by pianist Takarada and trumpet player Takashima and their love interests. Done very much in the style of a Fox musical of the same 1940s, complete with an elaborate "History of Jazz" finale.

A woman and her daughter are in love with the same man, a chef at the restaurant that the mother manages. He is slightly crippled from frostbite in his years in Siberian labor camps and considers himself 'already dead'.

Romantic melodrama set in contemporary Hong Kong, Japan and Laos. Hiroshi Tanaka (Takarada) is a Japanese journalist on assignment in Hong Kong who meets and falls in love with Wu Li Hung (Ming). He proposes to Wu Li but she rejects him because of her distaste for mixed marriages (her mother was Japanese but deserted her family and returned to Japan during WWII). Tanaka locates Wu Li’s mother and unsuccessfully tries to reunite them, but eventually Wu Li accepts his proposal. A joyous Tanaka flies off to Laos to finish an assignment but on the eve of his wedding he is killed there.

1961 Japanese movie

Japan is thrown into a panic after several ships are sunk near Odo Island. An expedition to the island led by Dr. Kyohei Yamane soon discover something far more devastating than imagined in the form of a 50 meter tall monster whom the natives call Gojira. Now the monster begins a rampage that threatens to destroy not only Japan, but the rest of the world as well.

During an assignment, foreign correspondent Steve Martin spends a layover in Tokyo and is caught amid the rampage of an unstoppable prehistoric monster the Japanese call 'Godzilla'. The only hope for both Japan and the world lies on a secret weapon, which may prove more destructive than the monster itself.

Obscure French version of the original Godzilla. The film combines elements of the original Toho version and the American King of the Monsters! in a unique assemblage exclusive to the Francophone market. Released by Les Films du Verseau.

An American scientist tells two colleagues about the finding of an abominable snowman living in the Japanese alps, where it is worshipped by a remote tribe as a god, and how it was discovered by modern man after it raided a skiers shelter following an avalanche, killing all inside. This is an adaptation of the Japanese film "Jūjin Yuki Otoko" (1955) with added American-made footage, narration, and music.

The legend of the birth of Shintoism. In Fourth Century Japan, the Emperor's son Ouso expects to succeed his father on the throne, but Otomo, the Emperor's vassal, prefers Ouso's stepbrother, and conspires to have Ouso die on a dangerous mission he has contrived. But Ouso prevails in the mission and returns to his father's castle under a new name, Prince Yamato Takeru. Otomo plots to have the Prince sent into even greater danger, but Otomo is unaware that the gods have favored the Prince and the outcome is far from what any of them expected.

Three competing parties all race against time to track down an elusive creature known only as the Snowman.

Ryuta and Mineo Komatsu are brothers, both yakuza (gangsters). Mineo, although complicit in crime, even murder, wants out of the gangster life, hoping to become a successful singer instead. Ryuta loves his brother, but Mineo's possible defection presents problems for the gang, and Ryuta realizes he must kill his brother if he wants to survive.

In order to get Kanako (Izumi Yukimura) married, her mother places a rental listing in the student medical school newsletter and attempts to find a suitable lodger who will catch the eye of her daughter.

A man who seemed to have found happiness with a wife and child loses his wife and his daughter gets married... A man's life, full of joy and sorrow, is vividly depicted to the tune of "Moonlit Desert" in this humanistic drama full of pathos, starring Hisaya Morishige.

May Kawaguchi is a famous Japanese fashion designer. Returning to Tokyo from her home in New York, she travels incognito with a tour group, in hopes of having a quiet vacation without being noticed. But she is spotted and the press has a field-day with the returning celebrity. Her hopes of rest shattered, she agrees to put on a large-scale fashion show.

An Ishiro Honda film. The second part of A Rainbow Plays in My Heart released the same day as the first film.

Masuo and Sazae are enjoying their newlywed life in their new house, even though they are in company housing. Masuo's colleague is invited to thank him for the newlyweds, but Masuo has been told by Managing Director Hanamura to go on a business trip to Kansai. Before long, Masuo contacted Sazae to come to Osaka.

Sankichi Matsutani, a poor young fisherman, falls in love with Kikue, the only daughter of fisher Shiimbei. As the star-crossed lovers come from different religious backgrounds, they soon meet fierce opposition from their communities.

Aiko, a bar hostess, falls for the son of a company president who also keeps a mistress, and whose family disapproves of his relationship with the bar hostess.

During a winter visit to her grandfather’s mountain home, a young saleswoman becomes entangled in love and jealousy among visiting skiers. After heartbreak and tragedy in the snow, she departs renewed, ready to begin again.

The story is about the social problems faced by Japan's indigenous Ainu, mostly centered on the reactions of the characters to their oppressed state.