
In May 2003, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (or JAXA) launched an unmanned spacecraft of their own development to retrieve samples from an asteroid. Seven long years later, Hayabusa achieved its goal and was the first of any kind of craft launched from Earth to safely return samples of this kind to home base. The story was one of such great national pride for Japan, and in the wake of the tsunami and resulting tragedies in Japan it’s strong nationalistic message became the subject of no less than three rival films. Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s high-profile effort, simply titled Hayabusa (2011) starred the incomparable Toshiyuki Nishida. Most recently, Welcome Home, Hayabusa (2012) was released to Japanese audiences. Slipping in between those two was Hayabusa: The Long Voyage Home, concentrating on the people on the ground who helped return the probe safely.
















In May 2003, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (or JAXA) launched an unmanned spacecraft of their own development to retrieve samples from an asteroid. Seven long years later, Hayabusa achieved its goal and was the first of any kind of craft launched from Earth to safely return samples of this kind to home base. The story was one of such great national pride for Japan, and in the wake of the tsunami and resulting tragedies in Japan it’s strong nationalistic message became the subject of no less than three rival films. Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s high-profile effort, simply titled Hayabusa (2011) starred the incomparable Toshiyuki Nishida. Most recently, Welcome Home, Hayabusa (2012) was released to Japanese audiences. Slipping in between those two was Hayabusa: The Long Voyage Home, concentrating on the people on the ground who helped return the probe safely.
2012-02-11
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6.5Former yakuza underling Kazuma Kiryū has recently been released from prison after a lengthy incarceration and is trying to piece his life together and distance himself from his yakuza past. Unfortunately, Kiryū's problems slowly escalate as he is pursued by a former associate, the baseball-bat-wielding psycho Gorō Majima, who has a grudge to settle with Kiryū.
7.0Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson is forced to remember the very similar disappearance of Clare Kemplay, who was found dead in 1974, and the subsequent imprisonment of local boy Michael Myshkin. Washed-up local solicitor John Piggott becomes convinced of Myshkin's innocence and begins to fight on his behalf, unwittingly providing a catalyst for Jobson to start to right some wrongs.
5.8Evangelist Carlton Pearson is ostracized by his church for preaching that there is no Hell.
6.4In Japan, scientifically advanced invaders from the war-destroyed planet Mysteroid cause an entire village to vanish, then send a giant robot out to storm the city by night, after which they request a small patch of land on Earth and the right to marry earthling women, claiming to be pacifists. Mankind must decide whether to capitulate or to resist.
6.2Eddie Kenner is given a special assignment by the Army to get the inside story on Sandy Dawson, a former GI who has formed a gang of fellow servicemen and Japanese locals.
7.3When a proud noble refuses to kiss the hand of the despotic King James in 1690, he is cruelly executed and his son surgically disfigured.
5.8A boozy lowlife tries to bury the truth about his crazy stepson's suspicious death, but a nosy newspaper columnist and the young man's mother complicate matters.
6.2While serving life in prison, a young man looks back at the people, the circumstances and the system that set him on the path toward his crime.
6.9Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.
7.4A woman is released from prison after serving a sentence for a violent crime and re-enters a society that refuses to forgive her past.
6.6Three years after the Hiroshima bombing, a teenager helps a group of orphans to survive and find their new life.
6.6Mr. Takazawa, an elderly invalid who is cared for at his home by Haruko, a young nursing student, is chosen by the Japanese Ministry of Public Welfare to test the Z-001, a computerized hospital bed with robotic features that allegedly displays more efficiency and skills than any human nurse, but Haruko mistrusts a machine unable to consider human feelings.
6.6A 21-year-old reformed gangster's devotion to his family and his future is put to the test when he is released from prison and returns to his old stomping grounds in Watts, Los Angeles.
7.1After years on the road establishing his reputation as Japan's greatest fencer, Takezo returns to Kyoto. Otsu waits for him, yet he has come not for her but to challenge the leader of the region's finest school of fencing. To prove his valor and skill, he walks deliberately into ambushes set up by the school's followers.
6.9Drama telling the story of Blue, a young man of Jamaican descent living in Brixton in 1980, as he hangs out with his friends, fronts a dub sound system, loses his job, struggles with family problems and has his friendships tested by racism.
6.9A jazz musician seeks refuge from a lynch mob on a remote island, where he meets a hostile game warden and the young object of his attentions.
6.5A harsh young man seduces a freeloading young woman and eventually takes advantage of her knack for hitchhiking to rob middle-class men.
6.0A young woman seeking self-improvement enlists the help of a renowned hypnotist but, after a handful of intense sessions, discovers unexpected and deadly consequences.
6.5The story follows the social intercourse between a cameraman, Masaya, with a visual impairment, and Misako who disconnects from the world.
7.1In spring, a girl leaves the island of Hokkaido to attend university in Tokyo. Once there, she is asked to reveal why she wanted to go there in the first place.
6.4After the entire flora goes extinct, ecologist Lowell maintains a greenhouse aboard a space station for the future with his android companions. However, he rebels after being ordered to destroy the greenhouse in favor of carrying cargo, a decision that puts him at odds with everyone but his mechanical companions.
7.1Nono is a clumsy waitress who dreams of becoming a space pilot. One day, she meets Lal'C Melk Mark, a member of the elite psychic pilot team "Topless." But when space monsters appear from out of nowhere to wreak havoc on Mars, Lal'C calls out her Buster Machine—codenamed "Dix-Neuf"—to subdue the threat. During a battle with a Space Monster, Lal'C gets the surprise of her life when she sees Nono use her super-strength to help Dix-Neuf destroy the alien. From that point, Nono hangs along with Lal'C in hopes of becoming a member of Topless.
6.3Texan Charles Farmer left the Air Force as a young man to save the family ranch when his dad died. Like most American ranchers, he owes his bank. Unlike most, he's an astrophysicist with a rocket in his barn - one he's built and wants to take into space. It's his dream. The FBI puts him under surveillance when he tries to buy rocket fuel, and the FAA stalls him when he files a flight plan – but Charles is undeterred.
6.0A chief mechanic at a factory, haunted by apocalyptic nightmares, becomes a hero when Earth is invaded by a mysterious army bent on destruction.
7.2Noriko Takaya's dream is to become a space pilot like her father, who died when she was young after an attack by alien forces in deep space. After entering Okinawa Girls Space Pilot High School, she must persuade everyone, especially herself, that she can fulfill her goal and become an accomplished pilot despite being just an ordinary girl.
5.9A troubled psychologist is sent to investigate the crew of an isolated research station orbiting a bizarre planet.
5.6When astronaut Spencer Armacost returns to Earth after a mission that nearly cost him his life, he decides to take a desk job in order to see his beautiful wife, Jillian, more often. Gradually, Jillian notices that Spencer's personality seems to have changed, but her concerns fade when she discovers that she's pregnant. As Jillian grows closer to becoming a mother, her suspicions about Spencer return. Why does it seem as if he's a different person?
7.5The true story of technical troubles that scuttle the Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970, risking the lives of astronaut Jim Lovell and his crew, with the failed journey turning into a thrilling saga of heroism. Drifting more than 200,000 miles from Earth, the astronauts work furiously with the ground crew to avert tragedy.
4.3A valuable medallion believed to prove that aliens from outer space visited Earth in prehistoric times is sought.
7.9Bonded in their youth and separated by tragedy, an astronaut and a free diver bend the laws of space and time in their efforts to be together again.
6.4After the death of his mother, a man tries to discover a meaning to his life, to the universe and to rebuild a relationship with the only family he has left: his gay brother.
7.7On a planet far away, a primeval creature gets banished by the chief of its tribe. Exiled and with the burden of a disgraced honour, it sets foot into the unknown land beyond its home, where it finds an intriguing alien concept to take vengeance.
6.2A lonely widower battles his family, ill health and time to win a competition for a golden ticket to space.
6.7The impressionistic story of a Texas family in the 1950s. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father. Jack finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.
4.8A photographer receives a tip that could finally shed some light on her childhood UFO sighting. But a deadly heat wave and unexpected guests threaten to derail her obsessive search for answers.
7.1USSR, June 1985. After contact with the Salyut 7 space station is lost, cosmonauts Vladimir Dzhanibekov and Viktor Savinykh dock with the empty, frozen craft, and bring her back to life. Based on actual events.
7.8Prequel to the TV anime series, revolving around the "origin of the dream."
7.2Dr Ryan Stone, an engineer on her first space mission, and Matt Kowalski, an astronaut on his final expedition, have to survive in space after they are hit by debris while spacewalking.
5.0The first pilot to leave Earth's atmosphere lands, then vanishes; but something with a craving for blood prowls the countryside...