Hiroshi Koizumi
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.
For more than 50 years, Gojira, Mosura, Kingu Ghidorâ and other monsters at Tôhô Kabushiki Kaisha have been created with traditional, handmade special-effects techniques. Through interviews with actors, filmmakers, special-effects artists, and monster stuntmen from the golden age of Japanese sci-fi, this documentary goes behind the scenes of this unique and outlandish genre.
Forty-two years after her first visit in Tokyo, Mothra returns to warn mankind that they must return Mechagodzilla, along with Godzilla's bones, to the sea, for the dead must not be disturbed. If not, dire consequences will follow. However, Godzilla is once again on the rampage, and Mechagodzilla is Japan's only defense.
A Japanese salaryman, finds his body transforming into a weapon through sheer rage after his son is kidnapped by a gang of violent thugs.
Originally released in Japan as "The Return of Godzilla" in 1984, this is the heavily re-edited, re-titled "Godzilla 1985". Adding in new footage of Raymond Burr, this 16th Godzilla film ignores all previous sequels and serves as a direct follow-up to the 1956 "Godzilla King of the Monsters", which also featured scenes with Burr edited into 1954's "Godzilla". This film restores the darker tone of the original, as we witness the nuclear destruction of giant lizard terrorizing Japan.
After a fishing boat is attacked by a giant monster, the sole surviving crew member realizes the monster is a new Godzilla. A reporter's efforts to bring the story to light are thwarterd.
Set in the Kyushu area of the Edo period. This is a large-length bizarre story that incorporates elements such as mysteries and adventures surrounding hidden gold mines.
A prophecy is discovered on the statue of an Okinawan guardian stating a monster will emerge to destroy the Earth. Godzilla soon appears, seeming to fulfill the prophecy. But not all is what it seems when a second Godzilla emerges to challenge this notorious doppelgänger.
Professor Nishiyama, after studying and interpreting the prophecies of Nostradamus, realizes that the end of the world is at hand. Unfortunately, nobody listens to him until it is too late. As the effects of mankind's tampering of the earth - radioactive smog clouds, hideously mutated animals, destruction of the ozone layer - rage out of control, the world leaders hurtle blindly toward the final confrontation. The film sparked controversy in Japan and was subsequently pulled out of circulation, with no official video release of the uncut film.
Mickey, a smart student from England, is on his trip to Japan for vacation. He meets with a Chinese girl Lin Fang on the way. They each have the same model of camera. But they have their cameras exchanged without their knowing it prior to their departure.
Four sisters are all named after flowers. While the two youngest are married, the eldest two remain single, much to the annoyance of their long-suffering mother. The mother and her brother try various schemes to find husbands for them.
A typhoon washes ashore a giant egg. Before it can be studied, the local villagers claim the egg and sell it to greedy entrepreneurs. The Shobijin soon arrive to plead for the return of egg as it belongs to Mothra. At the same time Godzilla arises near Nagoya, washed ashore by the same typhoon. It is now up to Mothra defend its egg and Japan from Godzilla.
The Princess Mas Selina Salno is seemingly assassinated as a mysterious meteorite lands in Kurobe Valley. When a scientific expedition examines the meteorite, they discover the rock is growing, producing heat and has a strong magnetic pull. Soon a prophetess, with a striking resemblance to the princess, warns of great calamity in the return of Godzilla, Rodan, and the arrival of King Ghidorah.
Five vacationers and two crewmen become stranded on a tropical island near the equator. The island has little edible food for them to use as they try to live in a fungus covered hulk while repairing Kessei's yacht. Eventually they struggle over the food rations which were left behind by the former crew. Soon they discover something unfriendly there...
The story tells of a group of samurai who were left leaderless (becoming ronin) after their daimyo (feudal lord) was forced to commit seppuku (ritual suicide) for assaulting a court official named Kira Yoshinaka, whose title was Kōzuke no suke. The ronin avenged their master's honor after patiently waiting and planning for over a year to kill Kira. In turn, the ronin were themselves forced to commit seppuku for committing the crime of murder.
Shipwreck survivors are found on a presumably uninhabited and irradiated island called Infant Island. A joint expedition of Roliscan and Japanese scientists explore the island and discover the Shobijin, the twin priestesses of the island's deity, Mothra. When a greedy businessman kidnaps the fairies for profit, the divine Mothra sets out to rescue them.
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.
This film features a large extended family (and associates) even more extensive than the one portrayed by Ozu in "End of Summer". The central character is Setsuko Hara -- a poised middle-aged woman, whose wealthy (and prestigious) husband dies at the outset of the action, leaving her widowed but holding the proceeds of a million yen insurance policy. Being childless, her former in-laws have no objection to her return to her own family.
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 historical drama that depicts the touching beauty of world obsession and human love in the style of light comedy, in the center of which is a young man who has a master license menkyo kaiden in the art of swordsmanship, but weak against lies and women. A remake of Bungaku no Issue, shot by Sadao Yamanaka in 1933.
The altered American release of Godzilla Raids Again. Originally meant to be known as the The Volcano Monsters, the film was eventually released as "Gigantis."
An adaptation of the popular Sazae-San comic strip. The first entry in the series shot in TohoScope.
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.
Adaptation of the popular Sazae-San comic strip. The first entry in the series shot in color.
Yakuza boss Furuya leans more and more on his protege Takao Shoji, though Shoji has become romantically involved with Furuya's mistress, Natsue. Furuya himself has fallen in love, with a nurse after his recent hospital stay. As the gang grows more jealous of the favoritism Furuya shows Shoji, they decide to reveal Shoji's relationship with Natsue. But Furuya's affection for Shoji cannot be easily destroyed, even in the gang war that erupts.
In this movie, Sashichi tries to catch a serial killer who kills his victims with shurikens.
Two fishing scout pilots make a startling discovery when they find two giant monsters on a remote island. One is a new monster dubbed Anguirus, and the other is a second Godzilla. The two monsters make their way to Osaka as Japan braces for tragedy.
What is the life of a Geisha like once her beauty has faded and she has retired? Kin has saved her money, and has become a wealthy money-lender, spending her days cold-heartedly collecting debts. Even her best friends, Tomi, Nobu, and Tamae, who were her fellow Geisha, are now indebted to her. For all of them, the glamor of their young lives has passed; Tomi and Tamae have children, but their children have disappointed them. Kin has two former lovers who still pursue her; one she wants to see, and the other she doesn't. But even the one she remembers fondly, when he shows up, proves to be a disappointment.
A legendary gangster raises himself out of a small town and gathers followers on his rise to power.
Yukiko Nogami is rescued during a mountain blizzard by handsome forester Shinkichi, and the two subsequently fall in love. But when Shinkichi dies in an avalanche, Yukiko leaves the mountains in despair and takes a job in a bar where she becomes deeply involved in the personal lives of several of the patrons. One day she thinks she sees Shinkichi alive, but it turns out to be a gangster named Hayakawa, a man on the run who bears an astonishing resemblance to Yukiko's lost love. Against her better judgment, she is drawn to help Hayakawa, though clearly danger follows him.
Michiko Asakura was married to the eldest son of the Sakuma family, an unsealed family in Shinshu, but died from her husband and returned to her parents' house in Tokyo with her five-year-old daughter Yoshiko.
A family comprised of a man, woman and their only son is torn apart when the father, who is a doctor with his own clinic, is to go off to war. Soon the wife and the son are left without an update of his status and whether he is alive or not. With the clinic lying dormant the doctor's wife rents the premises to her husband's underling. This is a man who does not accept payment from the poor. The woman, in the meantime, works at a restaurant whose owner being ill has given her additional duties. Her younger sister is an unmarried finance writer who also lives with them. It is both sisters, however, who receive marriage proposals.
A wandering Jirocho stumbles upon his wife's possible murder and has other adventures while on the run.
A human billboard and a shoeshine girl met a kid of five who got separated from her mother at a street of Ginza. They try to find a mother in a crowded town...
Jirocho and his followers chase the Kurokomas into the Kai Province.
Following the Second World War, the lives of various people in a poverty-stricken area of Tokyo are entertwined. Pachinko parlor girls, shoeshine boys, a maker of costume jewelry, and a streetcorner artist all struggle to make their livings and to find happiness in difficult surroundings.
MAZAKI Shintaro is a teacher at a mission school, in a relationship with the English teacher Sumi HASHIMOTO. Young, single and handsome MAZAKI is popular among the women, One day, after reading somethiing unusual in the essay of a third...v
