In a corrupt, greed-fueled world, a powerful alchemist leads a messianic character and seven materialistic figures to the Holy Mountain, where they hope to achieve enlightenment.
Clumsy Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati) finds himself perplexed by the intimidating complexity of a gadget-filled Paris. He attempts to meet with a business contact but soon becomes lost. His roundabout journey parallels that of an American tourist (Barbara Dennek), and as they weave through the inventive urban environment, they intermittently meet, developing an interest in one another. They eventually get together at a chaotic restaurant, along with several other quirky characters.
Set in feudal Japan, this film presents an intriguing tale of violent crime in the woods, told from the perspective of four different characters -- a bandit, a woman, her husband and a woodcutter. Only two things about the incident seem to be clear -- the woman was raped and her husband is now dead. However, the other elements radically differ as the four participants and/or witnesses relate their own stories (with the dead man, eerily enough, speaking through a medium). As each account is revealed, what seemed black-and-white turns to various hues of gray, leading to surprising -- and confounding -- revelations.
A cop who loses his partner in a shoot-out with gun smugglers goes on a mission to catch them. In order to get closer to the leaders of the ring he joins forces with an undercover cop who's working as a gangster hitman. They use all means of excessive force to find them.
Please Note: We plan to have the 35mm print of Hard Boiled on site in the New Year to check on its quality, and if we find it is unsuitable for screening, we will switch to the new 4K restoration courtesy of Arrow Films!
In this animated feature by noted Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, 10-year-old Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi) and her parents (Takashi Naitô, Yasuko Sawaguchi) stumble upon a seemingly abandoned amusement park. After her mother and father are turned into giant pigs, Chihiro meets the mysterious Haku (Miyu Irino), who explains that the park is a resort for supernatural beings who need a break from their time spent in the earthly realm, and that she must work there to free herself and her parents.
Mob assassin Jeffrey is no ordinary hired gun; the best in his business, he views his chosen profession as a calling rather than simply a job. So, when beautiful nightclub chanteuse Jennie is blinded in the crossfire of his most recent hit, Jeffrey chooses to retire after one last job to pay for his unintended victim's sight-restoring operation. But when Jeffrey is double-crossed, he reluctantly joins forces with a rogue policeman to make things right.
In 1962 Hong Kong, neighbors Su Li-zhen (Mrs. Chan) and Chow Mo-wan (Mr. Chow) discover their spouses are having an affair. As they spend time together, they develop feelings for each other, but their relationship remains chaste and unspoken, reflecting societal constraints and their own moral compass.
Two angels, Damiel (Bruno Ganz) and Cassiel (Otto Sander), glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion (Solveig Dommartin), the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds--with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk (playing himself) -- that it might be possible for him to take human form.
Paratrooper commander Colonel Mathieu, a former French Resistance fighter during World War II, is sent to Algeria to reinforce efforts to squelch the uprisings of the Algerian War. There he faces Ali la Pointe, a former petty criminal who, as the leader of the Algerian Front de Liberation Nationale, directs terror strategies against the colonial French government occupation. As each side resorts to ever-increasing brutality, no violent act is too unthinkable.
An angelically beautiful Catherine Deneuve was launched to stardom by this dazzling musical heart-tugger from Jacques Demy. She plays an umbrella-shop owner’s delicate daughter, glowing with first love for a handsome garage mechanic, played by Nino Castelnuovo. When the boy is shipped off to fight in Algeria, the two lovers must grow up quickly. Exquisitely designed in a kaleidoscope of colors, and told entirely through the lilting songs of the great composer Michel Legrand, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most revered and unorthodox movie musicals of all time.
In 1986, Park (Song Kang-ho) and Cho (Kim Roi-ha) are two simple-minded detectives assigned to a double murder investigation in a South Korean province. But when the murderer strikes several more times with the same pattern, the detectives realize that they are chasing the country's first documented serial killer. Relying on only their basic skills and tools, Park and Jo attempt to piece together the clues and solve the case in this thriller based on true events.
The extraordinary, internationally embraced Yi Yi (A One and a Two . . .), directed by the late Taiwanese master Edward Yang, follows a middle-class family in Taipei over the course of one year, beginning with a wedding and ending with a funeral. Whether chronicling middle-age father NJ’s tentative flirtations with an old flame or precocious young son Yang-Yang’s attempts at capturing reality with his beloved camera, the filmmaker deftly imbues every gorgeous frame with a compassionate clarity. Warm, sprawling, and dazzling, this intimate epic is one of the undisputed masterworks of the new century.
4K digital restoration carried out by Pony Canyon Inc., with analog and digital processes provided by Imagica Entertainment Media Services, Inc.
On the planet Ygam, the Draags, extremely technologically and spiritually advanced blue humanoids, consider the tiny Oms, human beings descendants of Terra's inhabitants, as ignorant animals. Those who live in slavery are treated as simple pets and used to entertain Draag children; those who live hidden in the hostile wilderness of the planet are periodically hunted and ruthlessly slaughtered as if they were vermin.
In the 14th century, the harmony that humans, animals and gods have enjoyed begins to crumble. The protagonist, young Ashitaka - infected by an animal attack, seeks a cure from the deer-like god Shishigami. In his travels, he sees humans ravaging the earth, bringing down the wrath of wolf god Moro and his human companion Princess Mononoke. His attempts to broker peace between her and the humans brings only conflict.
Robert Bresson plumbs great reservoirs of feeling with Mouchette, one of the most searing portraits of human desperation ever put on film. With a dying mother, an absent, alcoholic father, and a baby brother in need of care, the teenage Mouchette seeks solace and respite from her circumstances in the nature of the French countryside and daily routine. Bresson deploys his trademark minimalist style to heartbreaking effect in this essential work of French filmmaking, a hugely empathetic drama that elevates its trapped protagonist into one of the cinema's most memorable tragic figures.
First of a trilogy of films. During the Second World War, a Japanese conscientious objector named Kaji works as a supervisor in a Manchurian prison camp. He hopes to avoid duty as a soldier, but he also hopes to be helpful to the welfare of his prisoners. An escape attempt by Chinese prisoners results in Kaji's arrest for collusion. He faces the possibility of transferral to combat--or worse.
Satsuki and Mei's mother has taken ill. In order to be closer to her while she recovers in a rural convalescent hospital, their father moves the two sisters from their home in a city to the countryside. The house they move into is a ramshackle old place in the shadow of an ancient camphor tree, and Satsuki and Mei embark on adventures with the wondrous forest spirits who live nearby.
Presented in Both Subtitled and Dubbed Performances; see SUB or DUB tags next to film time for performance info.
English Dub Voice Cast: Dakota Fanning, Elle Fanning, Tim Daley, Pat Caroll, Lea Salonga, Frank Welker and Paul Butcher
Japanese Language Voice Cast: Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, Shigesato Itoi, Sumi Shimamoto, Tanie Kitabayashi, Hitoshi Takagi
The crowning triumph of a career cut tragically short, the final film from Larisa Shepitko won the Golden Bear at the 1977 Berlin Film Festival and went on to be hailed as one of the finest works of late Soviet cinema. In the darkest days of World War II, two partisans set out for supplies to sustain their beleaguered outfit, braving the blizzard-swept landscape of Nazi-occupied Belorussia. When they fall into the hands of German forces and come face-to-face with death, each must choose between martyrdom and betrayal, in a spiritual ordeal that lifts the film's earthy drama to the plane of religious allegory. With stark, visceral cinematography that pits blinding white snow against pitch-black despair, THE ASCENT finds poetry and transcendence in the harrowing trials of war.
A detective starts spiraling out of control when a wave of gruesome murders with seemingly similar bizarre circumstances are sweeping Tokyo.
Hatred breeds hatred...
24 hours in the lives of three young men in the French suburbs the day after a violent riot.
Delphine (Marie Rivière) is a beautiful young Parisian who is still smarting from a recent break-up. When a friend nixes their travel plans shortly before the trip, Delphine is left to decide how to spend her holiday. Soon she is dealing with various uncomfortable situations, including a beach getaway where she is the only single person. After attempting a trip to the overcrowded Alps, Delphine entertains more vacation options, but will the restless soul ever find what she's looking for?
A psychologist is sent to a station orbiting a distant planet in order to discover what has caused the crew to go insane.
In an unnamed country at an unspecified time, there is a fiercely protected post-apocalyptic wasteland known as The Zone. An illegal guide (Aleksandr Kajdanovsky), whose mutant child suggests unspeakable horrors within The Zone, leads a writer (Anatoliy Solonitsyn) and a scientist (Nikolay Grinko) into the heart of the devastation in search of a mythical place known only as The Room. Anyone who enters The Room will supposedly have any of his earthly desires immediately fulfilled.
"THE COLOUR OF ILLUSION IS PERFECT BLUE"
A young Japanese singer is encouraged by her agent to quit singing and pursue an acting career, beginning with a role in a murder mystery TV show.
Dae-Su is an obnoxious drunk bailed from the police station yet again by a friend. However, he's abducted from the street and wakes up in a cell, where he remains for the next 15 years, drugged unconscious when human contact is unavoidable, otherwise with only the television as company. And then, suddenly released, he is invited to track down his jailor with a denouement that is simply stunning.
A winner of awards across the world including Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, 5 BAFTA Awards including Best Actor, Original Screenplay and Score, the Grand Prize of the Jury at the Cannes Film Festival and many more.
Giuseppe Tornatore's loving homage to the cinema tells the story of Salvatore, a successful film director, returning home for the funeral of Alfredo, his old friend who was the projectionist at the local cinema throughout his childhood. Soon memories of his first love affair with the beautiful Elena and all the highs and lows that shaped his life come flooding back, as Salvatore reconnects with the community he left 30 years earlier.
This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves.
Foreign Legion officer Galoup recalls his once glorious life, training troops in the Gulf of Djibouti. His existence there was happy, strict and regimented, until the arrival of a promising young recruit, Sentain, plants the seeds of jealousy in Galoup's mind.
In 19th century Qing Dynasty China, a warrior (Chow Yun-Fat) gives his sword, Green Destiny, to his lover (Michelle Yeoh) to deliver to safe keeping, but it is stolen, and the chase is on to find it. The search leads to the House of Yu where the story takes on a whole different level.
Second part of a trilogy. Conscientious objector Kaji, now forced to serve in the Japanese army during the Second World War, helps a friend defect to the Russians and nearly goes with him. But despite his opposition to war, Kaji does his best to serve as help and guide to the men in his charge, most of whom are doomed to fall to the relentless attack of Russian armored divisions.
At the age of seventy, after years of consolidating his empire, the Great Lord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai) decides to abdicate and divide his domain amongst his three sons. Taro (Akira Terao), the eldest, will rule. Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), his second son, and Saburo (Daisuke Ryu) will take command of the Second and Third Castles but are expected to obey and support their elder brother. Saburo defies the pledge of obedience and is banished.
Every day, Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) buys a can of pineapple with an expiration date of May 1, symbolizing the day he'll get over his lost love. He's also got his eye on a mysterious woman in a blond wig (Brigitte Lin), oblivious of the fact she's a drug dealer. Cop 663 (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) is distraught with heartbreak over a breakup. But when his ex drops a spare set of his keys at a local cafe, a waitress (Faye Wong) lets herself into his apartment and spruces up his life.
An assassin goes through obstacles as he attempts to escape his violent lifestyle despite the opposition of his partner, who is secretly attracted to him.
A bedridden patient in a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles befriends a fellow patient, and shares a fantastic tale of heroes, myths, and villains on a desert island with the little girl.
After professional hitman Jef Costello is seen by witnesses his efforts to provide himself an alibi drive him further into a corner.
Famed stage actress Elisabeth Vogler (Liv Ullmann) suffers a moment of blankness during a performance and the next day lapses into total silence. Advised by her doctor to take time off to recover from what appears to be an emotional breakdown, Elisabeth goes to a beach house on the Baltic Sea with only Anna (Bibi Andersson), a nurse, as company. Over the next several weeks, as Anna struggles to reach her mute patient, the two women find themselves experiencing a strange emotional convergence.
23-year-old Amélie is lonely. After an isolating childhood, she moves to Paris and becomes a waitress at the Café des Deux Moulins, a bar restaurant filled with a colourful cast of diners and employees. One night, Amélie happens across a box of treasures hidden in her apartment, left by a little boy in the Fifties, that changes the course of her life. Henceforth, she dedicates herself to giving back to her community, tracking down the owner of these keepsakes, consoling a widowed neighbour and befriending a reclusive artist. When completing these good deeds, she crosses paths with Nino, a photobooth collagist who shares her oddball sensibilities. She quickly falls in love with him.
A naive young man witnesses an escalation of violence in his small hometown following the arrival of a mysterious circus attraction.
An intoxicating, time-bending experience bathed in the golden glow of oil lamps and wreathed in an opium haze, this gorgeous period reverie by Hou Hsiao-hsien traces the romantic intrigue, jealousies, and tensions swirling around four late-nineteenth-century Shanghai “flower houses,” where courtesans live confined to a gilded cage, ensconced in opulent splendor but forced to work to buy back their freedom. Among the regular clients is the taciturn Master Wang (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), whose relationship with his longtime mistress (Michiko Hada) is roiled by a perceived act of betrayal. Composed in a languorous procession of entrancing long takes, Flowers of Shanghai evokes a vanished world of decadence and cruelty, an insular universe where much of the dramatic action remains tantalizingly offscreen—even as its emotional fallout registers with quiet devastation.
Ip Man's peaceful life in Foshan changes after Gong Yutian seeks an heir for his family in Southern China. Ip Man then meets Gong Er who challenges him for the sake of regaining her family's honor. After the Second Sino-Japanese War, Ip Man moves to Hong Kong and struggles to provide for his family. In the mean time, Gong Er chooses the path of vengeance after her father was killed by Ma San.
Wong Kar-wai’s original 130-minute cut on the big screen in the UK for the first time, courtesy Janus Films
Set in the year 20XX, ALL YOU NEED IS KILL follows the story of Rita, a resourceful but isolated young woman volunteering to help rebuild Japan after the mysterious appearance of a massive alien flower known as “ Darol. ” When Darol unexpectedly erupts in a deadly event, unleashing monstrous creatures that decimate the population, Rita is caught in the destruction — and killed. But then she wakes up again. And again. Caught in an endless time loop, Rita must navigate the trauma and repetition of death until she crosses paths with Keiji, a shy young man trapped in the same cycle. Together, they fight to break free from the loop and find meaning in the chaos around them.
Part three of a trilogy. After the Japanese defeat to the Russians in the last episode, Kaji, the Japanese soldier and humanistic protagonist, leads the last remaining men through Manchuria. Intent on returning to his dear wife and his old life, Kaji faces great odds in a variety of different harrowing circumstances as he and his fellow men sneak behind enemy lines.
A young executive hunts down his father's killer in director Akira Kurosawa's scathing The Bad Sleep Well. Continuing his legendary collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa combines elements of Hamlet and American film noir to chilling effect in exposing the corrupt boardrooms of postwar corporate Japan.
Funeral Parade is proud to present Teorema (Theorem), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s bisexual arthouse classic of the Swinging Sixties.
An upper-class Milanese family is turned on its head by arrival of a beautiful, mysterious stranger known only as The Vistor (Terence Stamp). He takes up residence in the family’s vast estate and soon begins seducing them one by one: the tortured patriarch (Massimo Girotti) and his repressed wife (Silvana Mangano); their devoutly religious maid (Laura Betti); and their troubled teenage children (Anne Wiazemsky and Andrés José Cruz Soublette). What profound revelations will these affairs bring about for this typical bourgeoise family? At once sensual, scandalous, and spiritual, Teorema remains one of Pasolini’s essential films.
A daredevil driver is determined to compete in Redline, the most popular race in the galaxy. The race only occurs every five years, but in order to participate he must overcome the mafia, the government and even love.
A small group of cosmic explorers, including a woman, leaves Earth to start a new civilization. They do not realize that within themselves they carry the end of their own dream. They die one by one, while their children revert to a primitive native culture, creating new myths and a new god.
The tale of an eccentric band of culinary ronin who guide the widow of a noodle-shop owner on her quest for the perfect recipe, this rapturous “ramen western” by Japanese director Juzo Itami is an entertaining, genre-bending adventure underpinned by a deft satire of the way social conventions distort the most natural of human urges—our appetites. Interspersing the efforts of Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto) and friends to make her café a success with the erotic exploits of a gastronome gangster and glimpses of food culture both high and low, the sweet, sexy, and surreal Tampopo is a lavishly inclusive paean to the sensual joys of nourishment, and one of the most mouthwatering examples of food on film ever made.
In this Japanese animation, cyborg federal agent Maj. Motoko Kusanagi (Mimi Woods) trails "The Puppet Master" (Abe Lasser), who illegally hacks into the computerized minds of cyborg-human hybrids. Her pursuit of a man who can modify the identity of strangers leaves Motoko pondering her own makeup and what life might be like if she had more human traits. With her partner (Richard George), she corners the hacker, but her curiosity about her identity sends the case in an unforeseen direction.
Sergei Parajanov's celebrated masterpiece paints an astonishing portrait of the 18th century Armenian poet Sayat Nova, the 'King of Song'. Parajanov's aim was not a conventional biography but a cinematic expression of his work, resulting in an extraordinary visual poem. Key moments in his subject's life are illustrated through a series of exquisitely orchestrated tableaux filled with rich colour and stunning iconography, each scene a celluloid painting alive with stylised movement.
The first in Joachim Trier's masterful “Oslo Trilogy” is an electric and affecting dual portrait of two writer friends whose ambitions are challenged by the trials of life. Saturated with punk playfulness, Reprise explores the tantalizing promise—and peril—of fulfilling your creative aspirations.
Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival, Iranian auteur Abbas Kiarostami’s _Taste of Cherry_ is an emotionally complex meditation on life and death. Middle-aged Mr. Badii (Homayoun Ershadi) drives through the hilly outskirts of Tehran—searching for someone to rescue or bury him.
A reworking of Louis Malle's New Wave classic The Fire Within, Joachim Trier's Cannes hit about a young man's fade-out is a triumph of sensitive insight and observation, a smart, sharp portrait that even finds within its heavy subject matter the chance for warmth.
On the verge of turning thirty, Julie is faced with a series of choices that force her to pursue new perspectives on her life in contemporary Oslo. Over the course of four years, she navigates love affairs and existential uncertainty as she starts deciding who she wants to become.
Sisters Nora and Agnes reunite with their estranged father, the charismatic Gustav, a once-renowned director who offers stage actress Nora a role in what he hopes will be his comeback film. When Nora turns it down, she soon discovers he has given her part to an eager young Hollywood star.
Winner Cannes Film Festival 2025 Grand Prix
Uncomplainingly jobless in late-50s Paris, Michel starts stealing from strangers, for reasons unclear even to himself. He spouts vague theories about exceptional individuals being above the law – but is he lost in another world, as Jeanne, a young woman he halfheartedly befriends, tells him?
Intentionally not a thriller but certainly not without suspense, Robert Bresson’s film is profoundly ambivalent about Michel’s ethics, sexuality (he seems aroused by his thefts), his capacity for compassion and his courtship of suspicion in others. His isolation, however, is undeniable. A riveting morality tale reminiscent of both Hitchcock and Dostoevsky, it’s imbued with the director’s distinctive rigour.
Minoru, serving a life sentence, awaits a lonely death in his prison cell. The only real sign of life in the cell is a potted balsam flower - hosenka in Japanese. One night, Minoru begins sharing his life story with the flower that, improbably, talks back.
With the company of his unexpected confidant, Minoru reflects on his past as a low-ranking yakuza member, the decisions that led him to prison, and the meaning of life and love.
A tender, critically-acclaimed anime from the creators of hit series Odd Taxi.
Yuddy, a Hong Kong playboy known for breaking girls' hearts, tries to find solace and the truth after discovering the woman who raised him isn't his mother.
Japanese peasants Matashichi (Kamatari Fujiwara) and Tahei (Minoru Chiaki) try and fail to make a profit from a tribal war. They find a man and woman whom they believe are simple tribe members hiding in a fortress. Although the peasants don't know that Rokurota (Toshirô Mifune) is a general and Yuki (Misa Uehara) is a princess, the peasants agree to accompany the pair to safety in return for gold. Along the way, the general must prove his expertise in battle while also hiding his identity.
This disturbing Japanese thriller follows Aoyama (Ryo Ishibashi), a widower who decides to start dating again. Aided by a film-producer friend (Miyuki Matsuda), Aoyama uses auditions for a fake production to function as a dating service. When Aoyama becomes intrigued by the withdrawn, gorgeous Asami (Eihi Shiina), they begin a relationship. However, he begins to realise that Asami isn't as reserved as she appears to be, leading to gradually increased tension and a harrowing climax.
A cornerstone of the French New Wave, the first feature from Alain Resnais is one of the most influential films of all time. A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a brief, intense affair in postwar Hiroshima, their consuming mutual fascination impelling them to exorcise their own scarred memories of love and suffering. With an innovative flashback structure and an Academy Award–nominated screenplay by novelist Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima mon amour is a moody masterwork that delicately weaves past and present, personal pain and public anguish.
Iconic and game-changing, AKIRA is the definitive anime masterpiece! Katsuhiro Otomo's landmark cyberpunk classic obliterated the boundaries of Japanese animation and forced the world to look into the future. AKIRA's arrival shattered traditional thinking, creating space for future generations of ground-breaking movies.
July, 1988 - World War III breaks loose. Then, in 2019, in megalopolis Tokyo...As the leader of a group of young robust delinquents, Kaneda spent his nights tearing through the urban wastes, racing his motorbike against rival groups. One night while riding with his gang, his friend Tetsuo suddenly encounters a strange boy - the product of human experimentation and is injured in the ensuing crash. Shortly thereafter, a military squadron appears on the scene to take the boy and Tetsuo away to an army research facility. Determined to free Tetsuo from capture, Kaneda sneaks into the army research lab. However, a regimen of extreme experimental procedures has awakened a new power in his friend, and now he is consumed by madness..
When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death (Bengt Ekerot) to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof (Nils Poppe) and his wife, Mia (Bibi Andersson), and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.
Selfish pop singer Cléo (Corinne Marchand) has two hours to wait until the results of her biopsy come back. After an ominous tarot card reading, she visits her friends, all of whom fail to give her the emotional support she needs. Wandering around Paris, she finally finds comfort talking with a soldier in a park. On leave from the Algerian War, his troubles put hers in perspective. As they talk and walk, Cléo comes to terms with her selfishness, finding peace before the results come back.
When a machine that allows therapists to enter their patients' dreams is stolen, all hell breaks loose. Only a young female therapist, Paprika, can stop it.
Three back-to-back anime films by three different directors make up this sci-fi trilogy three years in the making. In the chilling "Magnetic Rose," engineers on a spacecraft board an abandoned space station and encounter disturbing paranormal forces. A young lab worker accidentally swallows a chemical weapon and becomes a walking killing machine in "Stink Bomb." In "Cannon Fodder," a young boy and his father fight for survival in a city functioning on paranoia.
A neon-drenched trip through nocturnal Taipei, Millennium Mambo stars Shu Qi as Vicky, a bar hostess losing interest in her dull, garrulous boyfriend, and attracted to the mysterious, sensual gangster Jack. Built as a flashback from the future, she finds herself afloat amidst a world of ecstatic nights out and an undertow of nagging emptiness, torn between the two men.
Like Edward Yang (A Brighter Summer Day, Yi Yi), director Hou Hsiao-Hsien emerged as one the major figures of the Taiwanese New Wave, and even collaborated with Yang as a screenwriter on Taipei Story (1985).
Misunderstood at the time by critics and audiences as a misstep in Hou’s otherwise excellent track record, it’s now reclaimed as a vital cog in his filmography. Hou’s meditative style is front-and-centre in Millennium Mambo, aided by the presence of the sublime cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bin, who at the time had just finished work on In the Mood for Love (2001).
An entomologist misses the last bus home and spends the night sharing a young widow’s desert shack, only to find the next morning that he’s unable to leave. He soon becomes psychologically and erotically entangled in her strange existence, which includes a daily ritual of shovelling away endlessly drifting sand.
Winner of a Special Jury Prize at Cannes in 1964 and nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film and Best Director, the film combines an extremely erotic drama with a terrifically gripping thriller. Adapted from Kobe Abe’s novel by acclaimed director Hiroshi Teshigahara, the film also features startling high-contrast black and white photography from Hiroshi Segawa and a superb minimalist score by Toru Takemitsu.
One of the most influential cyberpunk films of all time, Tetsuo The Iron Man chronicles a salaryman's (Tomorowo Taguchi) transformation from man to metal after himself and his girlfriend (Kei Fujiwara) accidentally run down a metal fetishist (Shin’ya Tsukamoto) with their car. Soundtracked by pulsating punk, Tetsuo The Iron Man remains one of the most explosive films.
Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual. The senior counselor for the Iyi clan questions the ronin's resolve and integrity, suspecting Hanshirō of seeking charity rather than an honorable end. What follows is a pair of interlocking stories which lay bare the difference between honor and respect, and promises to examine the legendary foundations of the Samurai code.
A mysteriously linked pair of young women find their daily lives pre-empted by a strange boudoir melodrama that plays itself out in a hallucinatory parallel reality. An undisputed classic of the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating is a delightful movie about the spiritual journey of a pair of young women, told with a playful approach to the cinematic form. A masterpiece of cinematic creativity, Rivette, the same mind behind 1969's L'amour fou, effortlessly draws the viewer into the whimsical world of the titular protagonists.
Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.
In the early 1900s, Miranda (Anne Lambert) attends a girls boarding school in Australia. One Valentine's Day, the school's typically strict headmistress (Rachel Roberts) treats the girls to a picnic field trip to an unusual but scenic volcanic formation called Hanging Rock. Despite rules against it, Miranda and several other girls venture off. It's not until the end of the day that the faculty realizes the girls and one of the teachers (Vivean Gray) have disappeared mysteriously.
During World War II era, a young woman, Wang Jiazhi, gets swept up in a dangerous game of emotional intrigue with a powerful political figure, Mr. Yee.
Story of youth during the German occupation of Poland in World War II who come to adulthood through love and adversity.
In Federico Fellini's lauded Italian film, restless reporter Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) drifts through life in Rome. While Marcello contends with the overdose taken by his girlfriend, Emma (Yvonne Furneaux), he also pursues heiress Maddalena (Anouk Aimée) and movie star Sylvia (Anita Ekberg), embracing a carefree approach to living. Despite his hedonistic attitude, Marcello does have moments of quiet reflection, resulting in an intriguing cinematic character study.
Looking for a job? When a happy family man is dismissed after twenty-five years of loyal service at a paper company, he finds the perfect solution to land his next role: truly eliminate the competition.
Two teenagers share a profound, magical connection upon discovering they are swapping bodies. Things manage to become even more complicated when the boy and girl decide to meet in person.
Troubled Italian filmmaker Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) struggles with creative stasis as he attempts to get a new movie off the ground. Overwhelmed by his work and personal life, the director retreats into his thoughts, which often focus on his loves, both past and present, and frequently wander into fantastical territory. As he tries to sort out his many entanglements, romantic and otherwise, Anselmi finds his production becoming more and more autobiographical.
This widely acclaimed film from Soviet director Elem Klimov is a stunning, senses-shattering plunge into the dehumanizing horrors of war. As Nazi forces encroach on his small village in present-day Belarus, teenage Flyora (Aleksei Kravchenko, in one of the screen’s most searing depictions of anguish since Renée Falconetti’s Joan of Arc) eagerly joins the Soviet resistance. Rather than the adventure and glory he envisioned, what he finds is a waking nightmare of unimaginable carnage and cruelty—rendered with a feverish, otherworldly intensity by Klimov’s subjective camerawork and expressionistic sound design. Nearly suppressed by Soviet censors who took eight years to approve its script, Come and See is perhaps the most visceral, impossible-to-forget antiwar film ever made.
In 1930s Korea, a swindler and a young woman pose as a Japanese count and a handmaiden to seduce a Japanese heiress and steal her fortune.
El Topo decides to confront warrior Masters on a trans-formative desert journey he begins with his 6 year old son, who must bury his childhood totems to become a man.
Godzilla is the roaring granddaddy of all monster movies. It’s also a remarkably humane and melancholy drama, made in Japan at a time when the country was reeling from nuclear attack and H-bomb testing in the Pacific. Its rampaging radioactive beast, the poignant embodiment of an entire population’s fears, became a beloved international icon of destruction, spawning almost thirty sequels.
A future society, where humans and robots co-exist. Amidst the chaos created by anti-robot factions, detective Shunsaku Ban and his sidekick Ken-ichi are searching for rebel scientist Dr. Laughton, to arrest him and seize his latest creation, a beautiful young girl named Tima. When they locate them, Shunsaku soon realizes that the eccentric scientist is protected by a powerful man and his fierce desire to reclaim a tragic figure from his past and therefore is beyond their reach.
In this acclaimed Japanese film, a group of people who have recently died find themselves in a limbo realm resembling a relatively mundane building. Counselors, including Takashi (Arata) and Shiori (Erika Oda), are on hand to help new arrivals pick one memory from their lives to bring with them into eternity. Once the memories are chosen, the staff makes a short film representing each one, and the films make up a collage of thoughtful cinematic moments.
After finishing up the school term in a remote outback town, teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) looks forward to spending his holiday with his girlfriend in Sydney. But John gets waylaid in a mining town where a gambling spree leaves him completely broke. He quickly falls in with the hard-drinking locals, who constantly ply him with alcohol and force him to participate in a gruesome kangaroo hunt. Disgusted, John tries to hitchhike out of town and, when that fails, begins to contemplate suicide.
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Farmers from a village exploited by bandits hire a veteran samurai for protection, who gathers six other samurai to join him.
In this jazzy gangster film, reformed killer Tetsu's attempt to go straight is thwarted when his former cohorts call him back to Tokyo to help battle a rival gang. Director Seijun Suzuki's onslaught of stylized violence and trippy colors is equal parts Russ Meyer, Samuel Fuller, and Nagisa Oshima—an anything-goes, in-your-face rampage. Tokyo Drifter is a delirious highlight of the brilliantly excessive Japanese cinema of the sixties.
Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in High and Low (Tengoku to jigoku), the highly influential domestic drama and police procedural from director Akira Kurosawa. Adapting Ed McBain's detective novel King's Ransom, Kurosawa moves effortlessly from compelling race-against-time thriller to exacting social commentary, creating a diabolical treatise on contemporary Japanese society.
Fifteen-year-old Pauline (Amanda Langlet) journeys to the Normandy coast for a summer vacation with her adult cousin Marion (Arielle Dombasle). Marion is waiting out her divorce and, along the shore, runs into her old flame Pierre (Pascal Greggory). Although he's anxious to rekindle their former romance, Marion wants nothing to do with him, and she sets him up with Pauline. The romantic web gets more tangled yet when Marion starts a liaison with Henri (Féodor Atkine), a middle-aged playboy.
During the last few days of the Warsaw Uprising following World War II, a modest group of Resistance members remains. The band must take refuge in the sewers under the orders of leader Zadra, but it's only a matter of time before they will have to emerge. However, when they try, they are met only with intense hostility from the Nazis. Despite their attempts stay resolute through immense mental strain, it becomes increasingly apparent that they may be doomed.
The year is 2071. Following a terrorist bombing, a deadly virus is released on the populace of Mars and the government has issued the largest bounty in history, for the capture of whoever is behind it. The bounty hunter crew of the spaceship Bebop; Spike, Faye, Jet and Ed, take the case with hopes of cashing in the bounty. However, the mystery surrounding the man responsible, Vincent, goes deeper than they ever imagined, and they aren't the only ones hunting him.
42 9th graders are sent to a deserted island. They are given a map, food, and various weapons. An explosive collar is fitted around their neck. If they break a rule, the collar explodes. Their mission: kill each other and be the last one standing. The last survivor is allowed to leave the island. If there is more than one survivor, the collars explode and kill them all.
Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) and Solange (Françoise Dorléac) are twin sisters who each want to find romance and leave their small seaside town of Rochefort, France. Soon they befriend a couple of visiting carnival workers who frequent their lonely mother's (George Chakiris) café and hire the girls to sing in the carnival. Wanting a career as a songwriter, Solange falls for an American musician, Andy (Jacques Perrin), while Delphine dumps her beau and searches Rochefort for her ideal man.
When the ever-hapless Monsieur Hulot (Jacques Tati) decides to vacation at a beautiful seaside resort, rest and relaxation don't last long, given the gangly gent's penchant for ridiculous antics. While simply out to enjoy himself, the well-meaning Hulot inevitably stumbles into numerous misadventures, including an utterly disastrous attempt at playing tennis, as he encounters fellow French vacationers from various social classes, as well as foreign tourists.
Dying of kidney disease, a man spends his last, somber days with family, including the ghost of his wife and a forest spirit who used to be his son, on a rural northern Thailand farm.
Sent to an exotic island by his government, a spy (Lee) competes in a deadly tournament by day and infiltrates a ruthless crime lord's illegal drug operation by night. With plot twists, exquisite cinematography and bone-crushing fight scenes choreographed by Lee himself, ENTER THE DRAGON remains cinema's most influential martial arts action film.
Edward Yang's second feature is a mournful anatomy of a city caught between the past and the present. Made in collaboration with Yang's fellow New Taiwan Cinema master Hou Hsiao-hsien, TAIPEI STORY chronicles the growing estrangement between a washed-up baseball player (Hou, in a rare on-screen performance) working in his family's textile business and his girlfriend (Tsai Chin), who clings to the upward mobility of her career in property development. As the couple's dreams of marriage and emigration begin to unravel, Yang's gaze illuminates the precariousness of domestic life and the desperation of Taiwan's globalised modernity.
Three childhood friends from the slums of Hong Kong flee to war-time Saigon after accidentally murdering a gang leader, but their troubles only escalate.
On a dark, wet night a historic and regal Chinese cinema sees its final film. Together with a small handful of souls they bid "Goodbye, Dragon Inn".
In 1970s Iran, Marjane 'Marji' Satrapi watches events through her young eyes and her idealistic family of a long dream being fulfilled of the hated Shah's defeat in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. However as Marji grows up, she witnesses first hand how the new Iran, now ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, has become a repressive tyranny on its own.
A young academy soldier, Maciek Chelmicki, is ordered to shoot the secretary of the KW PPR. A coincidence causes him to kill someone else. Meeting face to face with his victim, he gets a shock. He faces the necessity of repeating the assassination. He meets Krystyna, a girl working as a barmaid in the restaurant of the "Monopol" hotel. His affection for her makes him even more aware of the senselessness of killing at the end of the war. Loyalty to the oath he took, and thus the obligation to obey the order, tips the scales.
With Climax, Gaspar Noé, enfant terrible of French cinema and director of the highly controversial Irreversible, Enter the Void and Love, returns with perhaps his most critically-acclaimed work yet.
Following a successful and visually dazzling rehearsal, a dance troupe set about celebrating with a party. But when it becomes apparent that someone has spiked the sangria, the dancers soon begin to turn on each other in an orgiastic frenzy.
Starring Sofia Boutella (The Mummy, Atomic Blonde) and featuring a pulse-pounding score by the likes of Daft Punk, Aphex Twin and Gary Numan, Gaspar Noé's latest offering shows a director at the height of his hallucinatory filmmaking powers.
Petra von Kant is a successful fashion designer – arrogant, caustic, and self-satisfied. She mistreats Marlene (her secretary, maid, and co-designer). Enter Karin, a 23-year-old beauty who wants to be a model. Petra falls in love with Karin and invites her to move in.
By the time he made Ugetsu, Kenji Mizoguchi was already an elder statesman of Japanese cinema, fiercely revered by Akira Kurosawa and other directors of a younger generation. And with this exquisite ghost story, a fatalistic wartime tragedy derived from stories by Akinari Ueda and Guy de Maupassant, he created a touchstone of his art, his long takes and sweeping camera guiding the viewer through a delirious narrative about two villagers whose pursuit of fame and fortune leads them far astray from their loyal wives. Moving between the terrestrial and the otherworldly, Ugetsu reveals essential truths about the ravages of war, the plight of women, and the pride of men.
A reforming ex-gangster tries to reconcile with his estranged policeman brother, but the ties to his former gang are difficult to break.