
Detective Azuma is a Dirty-Harry style rogue cop who often uses violence and unethical methods to get results. While investigating a series of drug-related homicides, Azuma discovers that his friend and colleague, Iwaki, is supplying drugs from within the police force. After Iwaki is murdered and Azuma’s sister is kidnapped, he breaks all the rules to dish out his particular form of justice.
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Tag Archives: japanese
Crimson Bat, the Blind Swordswoman / Mekura no oichi monogatari: Makkana nagaradori (1969) Sadatsugu Matsuda, Yôko Matsuyama, Chizuko Arai, Jun Tatara, Action, Adventure, Drama

A young blind girl is abandoned by her mother. When her guardian is killed, she learns to wield a sword from a traveling “Ronin”. She travels to seek her mother and her revenge.
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Dororo (2007) Akihiko Shiota, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Ko Shibasaki, Kiichi Nakai, Action, Fantasy, Horror

In the year 3048, the wounded Lord Kagemitsu Daigo proposes a deal to rule the whole world to forty-eight demons in their sealed temple. In return, the demons ask forty-eight parts of the body of his unborn son. When the mutilated baby is born, his mother puts him in a basket in the river flow to save his life. The baby survives and becomes the demon slayer Hyakkimaru that slash demons to retrieve his body parts. During his journey, he meets the female thief Dororo, who was raised as a boy after the death of her parents by the evil Lord Daigo, in a small town and she befriends Hyakkimaru and joins him in his quest seeking revenge against the Daigo’s clan.
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Seishun no yume ima izuko / Where Are the Dreams of Youth (1932) Yasujirô Ozu, Ureo Egawa, Kinuyo Tanaka, Tatsuo Saitô, Comedy, Romance

When a young man inherits his father’s lucrative business, he cheats the system to set up three of his college friends with jobs.
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Yume / Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams (1990) Akira Kurosawa, Ishirô Honda, Akira Terao, Mitsuko Baishô, Toshie Negishi, Drama, Fantasy

Unfolding in a series of eight mythic vignettes, this late work by Akira Kurosawa was inspired by the beloved director’s own nighttime visions, along with stories from Japanese folklore. In a visually sumptuous journey through the master’s imagination, tales of childlike wonder give way to apocalyptic apparitions: a young boy stumbles on a fox wedding in a forest; a soldier confronts the ghosts of the war dead; a power plant meltdown smothers a seaside landscape in radioactive fumes. Interspersed with reflections on the redemptive power of creation, including a richly textured tribute to Vincent van Gogh (who is played by Martin Scorsese), Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams is both a showcase for its maker’s artistry at its most unbridled and a deeply personal lament for a world at the mercy of human ignorance.
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Tokugawa onna keizu / History of the Shogun’s Harem (1968) Teruo Ishii, Masako Arisawa, Kemi Ichiboshi, Mari Iwai, Drama, Exploitation, Erotic

The fifth shogun searches for a woman who would love him for the person he is, and not because of his title and rank. With over a hundred women to choose from,who will bare him a son and become number one? A tragic love story involving the fifth shogun of the tokugawa dynasty and a woman who became one of his concubines.
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Magokoro / Sincere Heart (1953) Masaki Kobayashi, Keiko Awaji, Motoji Fujiwara, Chieko Higashiyama, Drama, Romance

A young student falls into a hopeless romantic attraction to an invalid girl whom he can only see from afar.
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Orgies of Edo / Zankoku ijô gyakutai monogatari: Genroku onna keizu (1969) Teruo Ishii, Teruo Yoshida, Toyozô Yamamoto, Masumi Tachibana, Drama, Erotic

In the tradition of JOY OF TORTURE, this film presents three stores of sadism and perversion taking place in Edo during a time of civil war. The first story is about doomed lovers, the second is about a noblewoman who likes to do it with hairy midgets and imported black slaves because of a certain incident in her past and finally the third story is about the marvel of caesarean section.
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Inochi bô ni furô / Inn of Evil (1971) Masaki Kobayashi, Tatsuya Nakadai, Komaki Kurihara, Wakako Sakai, Crime, Drama

The story takes place in feudal Japan, when any commerce with the rest of the world was strictly prohibited. An idealist suddenly appears in an isolated inn (the one that the title refers to), the head-quarters of a group of smugglers, with stolen money intended to ransom his loved one who is forced to work in a brothel.
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Daichi no komoriuta / Lullaby of the Earth (1976) Yasuzô Masumura, Mieko Harada, Natsuko Kahara, Meiko Kaji, Drama

The story of an orphan girl, brought up in naive, rustic innocence by an elderly relative, who is suddenly exposed to the brutality, greed and deceptiveness of the outside world, when her grandmother dies. Notwithstanding her healthy distrust of all strangers, which her upbringing instilled in her, it is not long before a cunning racketeer finds her weak point, that temptation which she cannot resist, that weakness, different as it may be, that each of us has, and brings her into his power.
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