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Japanese Movie Listing
I have loved the Japanese culture and Feudal Japan in particular since I was young. I have watched many Japanese movies over the years, and have put my own notes along with the notes of friends and family. Over the this list has grown and grown, thanks to the input of many web visitors!
Note that since each of these movies was seen by a normal human being, what you read here is just one person's opinion :) Your own opinion may of course be different! If you notice that a movie listing is missing or incorrect, please Contact Me (Really!! WRITE ME!!!) so I can update the list!
Check out Japanese Movies By Director if you want to see what movies a given director made. Otherwise, use this alphabetical listing to view your movie by title.
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 | Ugetsu Monogatari (1953) D: Kenji Mizoguchi. A work of unsurpassed lyricism and emotional power, Ugetsu is considered by many to be Mizoguchi's masterpiece, and is frequently cited as one of the greatest films ever made. During the feudal wars of the 16th century, an ambitious village potter abandons his devoted wife for the wealth of the city and the illicit pleasures of a ghost woman. Only too late does he realize that nothing he has gained is worth the love he has forsaken. Ugetsu is simultaneously realistic, allegorical, and supernatural, and has a structure based on classical Noh drama; its magnificent use of elaborate, panoramic, long-take sequence shots attests to Mizoguchi's status (with Renoir, Ophüls, and Murnau) as one of the cinema's most accomplished practitioners of mise-en-scène aesthetics. Although Mizoguchi's characteristic concern for the plight of women is also very much in evidence, the film represents something of a retreat from the radical feminism of his earlier works to a more resigned acceptance of the human lot -- a change occasioned, some suggest, by the director's conversion to Buddhism. "Stylistic perfection. . . One of the most beautiful films of all time" (Sadoul, Dictionary of Films). Japan 1953. Cast: Kinuyo Tanaka, Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyo. B&W, In Japanese with English subtitles. 96 mins. [Daniel Richard] |
Ulterior Motives (1992)
P.I. Jack Blaylock agrees to protect a pretty reporter from the "Yakuza". He finds himself caught up in deception and betrayal and uses all his considerable skills to accomplish the job. Thomas Ian Griffith, Mary Page Keller
Utamaro and his Five Women (Utamaro o meguru gonin no onna) (1946) 94m. D: Kenji Mizoguchi.
"The most erotic and autobiographical of Mizoguchi's films, Utamaro is considered by many critics the crowning achievement of his middle period. The film draws many parallels between Mizoguchi, who was also a painter, and the printmaker who is its subject. Amidst the frenzied world of 17th-century Edo, with its sprawl of brothels and bars, the woodblock print artist Utamaro patiently, painstakingly devotes himself to his art. (The `five women' of the title are the models who inspire him.) When Utamaro is arrested for outraging a local magistrate and forbidden to draw for fifty days, art becomes, as it no doubt was for Mizoguchi, a matter of life and death. [Utamaro has been] the subject of much recent analysis for its treatment of both artistic creation and sexuality" (James Quandt, Cinematheque Ontario). "Ranks with Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev as one of the few [movie biographies of artists] worth taking seriously" (New Yorker Films). " A remarkable film . . . In style it's much like Mizoguchi's later work, but less emotional, more formalised, more mysterious, and a great deal more daring aesthetically" (Tony Rayns). Cast: Minosuke Bando, Kinuyo Tanaka, Kotaro Bando, Hiroko Kawasaki. B&W, In Japanese with English subtitles. [Daniel Richard]
Unagi (The Eel) (1997) D: Shonei Imamura
Yamashita finds out that his wife is having an affair. Enraged, he kills her. Ten years later, he is released from the prison together with his pet eel that he has found once while fishing with other prisoners. With help from his long-time friend, he starts a small business. Yamashita saves the life of a young woman Keiko, and, as a sign of gratitude, she starts helping him in his barber's shop. [A. Blaine]
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