
When a gal named Kasumi decides to become a traditional Japanese 'Rakugo' storyteller due to her uncle's invalidity, she is soon on her way to a career with college-level and amateur success. She becomes a student to one of the master's of the genre and is even asked to perform by a TV producer. The only snag is, the particular story has a curse dripping from its words.
2008-08-23
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8.0Lester Burnham, a depressed suburban father in a mid-life crisis, decides to turn his hectic life around after developing an infatuation with his daughter's attractive friend.
7.6County Durham, England, 1984. The miners' strike has started and the police have started coming up from Bethnal Green, starting a class war with the lower classes suffering. Caught in the middle of the conflict is 11-year old Billy Elliot, who, after leaving his boxing club for the day, stumbles upon a ballet class and finds out that he's naturally talented. He practices with his teacher Mrs. Wilkinson for an upcoming audition in Newcastle-upon Tyne for the royal Ballet school in London.
7.2In 1960s Tulsa, class divisions ignite a violent rivalry between the working-class Greasers and the privileged Socs. When a deadly encounter forces two Greasers, Ponyboy and Johnny, to flee, their struggle for survival and redemption exposes the fragile innocence and enduring bonds of youth on the wrong side of town.
8.0For young Parisian boy Antoine Doinel, life is one difficult situation after another. Surrounded by inconsiderate adults, including his neglectful parents, Antoine spends his days with his best friend, Rene, trying to plan for a better life. When one of their schemes goes awry, Antoine ends up in trouble with the law, leading to even more conflicts with unsympathetic authority figures.
7.0The streets of the Bronx are owned by '60s youth gangs where the joy and pain of adolescence is lived. Philip Kaufman tells his take on the novel by Richard Price about the history of the Italian-American gang ‘The Wanderers.’
7.8After learning that a boy their age has been accidentally killed near their rural homes, four boys decide to go see the body. Gordie, Vern, Chris, and Teddy encounter a mean junk man and a marsh full of leeches, but they also learn more about one another and their very different home lives. Just a lark at first, the boys' adventure evolves into a defining event in their lives.
7.6A deadpan young man obsessed with death meets an eccentric septuagenarian who teaches him to live life to the fullest.
8.3At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.
7.3Expecting the usual tedium that accompanies a summer in the Catskills with her family, 17-year-old Frances 'Baby' Houseman is surprised to find herself stepping into the shoes of a professional hoofer—and unexpectedly falling in love.
7.5After moving to a new town, troublemaking teen Jim Stark is supposed to have a clean slate, although being the new kid in town brings its own problems. While searching for some stability, Stark forms a bond with a disturbed classmate, Plato, and falls for local girl Judy. However, Judy is the girlfriend of neighborhood tough, Buzz. When Buzz violently confronts Jim and challenges him to a drag race, the new kid's real troubles begin.
5.9Felix is a friendless achiever in high school whose life changes after the arrival of the half-American Snyder brothers, entangling him in their dark ambitions.
10.0Álvaro Norte, a celebrated composer and cellist, invites his talented student Mauro to be his assistant. However, Mauro reveals he has other plans that would separate them. In response, Álvaro confines Mauro in a room, using his pain as inspiration for a new cello composition. Despite Mauro's resistance, he inadvertently ends up fulfilling Álvaro's artistic vision.
6.5A teenage skateboarder becomes suspected of being connected with a security guard who suffered a brutal death in a skate park called "Paranoid Park".
6.0The meeting of two high school students, Jovanka and Magnus, who come from very different worlds. The two of them meet in a light but meaningful conversation, which slowly reveals their inner wounds and hidden longings. Behind the warm gaze and simple words, the seeds of a relationship grow that change their outlook on life, family, and hope.
7.0Bruno, a misunderstood teenager, has developed an obsession with burning objects, recording them, and uploading videos to the internet to deal with his father’s death. When his lonely mother starts dating another man, Bruno escapes from home. He goes to another town to live with Daniela, a young pyromaniac he met online and with whom he has an epistolary relationship. During the painful separation from his mother and his best friend Ian, he begins to question his sexuality and capacity to overcome his father’s loss.
7.9In 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.
2.7'Alan Smithee' is a film about a boy growing up. It delves into the darker side of what 'growing up' sometimes means: growing into your flaws, inevitably being met with the errors of your parents, and the necessity to make room for the pain. While Alan is surrounded by what is thought to be the American ideal, all the material comforts that should equate happiness, he learns that sometimes all we are is lost in the woods.
6.8The film shows a strong bond between two brothers that live in a remote fjord with their parents. We look into their world through the eyes of the younger brother and follow him on a journey that marks a turning point in the lives of the brothers.
7.8After being expelled from Beecher Prep for his treatment of a classmate with a facial deformity, Julian has struggled to fit in at his new school. To transform his life, Julian's grandmother finally reveals her own story of courage of her youth in Nazi-occupied France, where a classmate shelters her from mortal danger.
0.0Karma, an international high school student from Sikkim struggles to fit in and hold onto his cultural identity when he is stuck at home with his host sibling, Alex.
7.5Fleeing a distressing family situation, Eiko, a very young girl, becomes an apprentice to Miyoharu, a veteran geisha. Both, determined to preserve their professional integrity, must face the selfishness and ambition of several petty people.
7.5Akira Tachibana is a soft-spoken high school student who used to be a part of the track and field club. Working part-time at a restaurant, she finds herself inexplicably falling in love with her manager, a divorced 45-year-old man.
6.9Following the death of the second Tokugawa shogun, it is revealed that he was poisoned by retainers of his son Iemitsu in hopes of gaining him the shogunate despite the stammer and birthmark which undermine his respect. Iemitsu and his brother Tadanaga become bitter rivals for the shogunate, and the land is split into factions, eventually erupting into warfare. Iemitsu's mentor, his fencing instructor Yagyu, is fixated upon securing Iemitsu the shogunate and ends up betraying everyone, even his own family, in pursuit of the goal.
6.8Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.
7.1A 21-year-old girl is released from prison, only to deal with the neighborhood gossip about her and family conflicts. She decides to save one million yen, move to where no one knows her and keep repeating the process.
6.3Summoned by his dying father, Miyagi returns to his homeland of Okinawa, with Daniel, after a 40-year exile. There he must confront Yukie, the love of his youth, and Sato, his former best friend turned vengeful rival. Sato is bent on a fight to the death, even if it means the destruction of their village. Daniel finds his own love in Yukia's niece, Kumiko, and his own enemy in Sato's nephew, the vicious Chozen. Now, far away from the tournaments, cheering crowds and safety of home, Daniel will face his greatest challenge ever when the cost of honor is life itself.
7.5A spell of time in the life of a family in rural Tochigi prefecture. Yoshiko is not an ordinary housewife, instead working on an animated film project. Uncle Ayano, a successful music producer, is looking to get his head together after living in Tokyo. Meanwhile, Sachiko is concerned with why she seems to be followed by a giant version of herself. As the lazy days pass by, each member of the family is followed in a series of episodic vignettes.
7.4Love is blooming at Sakuragaoka High School. Natsuki Enomoto has finally mustered the courage to confess to her childhood friend, Yuu Setoguchi. However, in the final moments of her confession, an embarrassed Natsuki passes it off as a "practice confession." Oblivious to her true feelings and struggling with his own, Yuu promises to support Natsuki in her quest for love. While Natsuki deals with her failed confession, fellow classmate Koyuki Ayase struggles with his own feelings for Natsuki. Despite his timidness, he is determined to win over her heart. This movie follows Natsuki as she dreams of one day ending her practices and genuinely confessing to Yuu. Meanwhile, close friends also find themselves entangled in their own webs of unrequited love and unspoken affections.
7.5The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.
7.0Inspired by her grandfather's stories, young Shinko embarks on wild flights of fancy about the history of the little town she lives in. But dreams can't fend off the realities of growing up.
7.9Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.
6.7In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.
6.5Set during Japan's Shogun era, this film looks at life in a samurai compound where young warriors are trained in swordfighting. A number of interpersonal conflicts are brewing in the training room, all centering around a handsome young samurai named Sozaburo Kano. The school's stern master can choose to intervene, or to let Kano decide his own path.
7.5Yokohama, 1963. Japan is picking itself up from the devastation of World War II and preparing to host the 1964 Olympics—and the mood is one of both optimism and conflict as the young generation struggles to throw off the shackles of a troubled past. Against this backdrop of hope and change, a friendship begins to blossom between high school students Umi and Shun—but a buried secret from their past emerges to cast a shadow on the future and pull them apart.
7.4Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
7.4After failing his university entrance exam, Yuki Hirano sets his eyes on the role of a forestry trainee. Setting off for training he doubts his decision many times, but eventually after passing the training course, he is sent to Kamusari Village for a year of work experience - where he becomes assimilated with the beauty of nature and the warm-hearted people of the village.
7.2Ryota is an unpopular writer although he won a literary award 15 years ago. Now, Ryota works as a private detective. He is divorced from his ex-wife Kyoko and he has an 11-year-old son Shingo. His mother Yoshiko lives alone at her apartment. One day, Ryota, his ex-wife Kyoko, and son Shingo gather at Yoshiko's apartment. A typhoon passes and the family must stay there all night long.
7.6Takao, who is training to become a shoemaker, skipped school and is sketching shoes in a Japanese-style garden. He meets a mysterious woman, Yukino, who is older than him. Then, without arranging the times, the two start to see each other again and again, but only on rainy days. They deepen their relationship and open up to each other. But the end of the rainy season soon approaches.
6.6In Tokyo, Japan, several grotesque murders take place on rainy days. Detective Sawamura, who is in charge of the case, soon discovers that his own family is connected to the crimes.
7.4In lyrical switches between the present and the past, Taeko contemplates the arc of her life, and wonders if she has been true to the dreams of her childhood self.