Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s polished if emotionally inert period film (his first!) is an anti-war espionage tale set in WWII Japan, featuring a standout lead performance by Yu Aoi.
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Wife of a Spy (2020)
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Tag / Japan
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To the Ends of the Earth (2019)
The banality of cultural tourism as variety show is poetically expressed in the hands of Kiyoshi Kurosawa as a Japanese crew travel to Uzbekistan for work—it also features an underrated performance by ex-AKB48 J-pop star Atsuko Maeda.
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Tokyo Sonata (2008)
An uncommunicative Japanese family whose patriarch has lost his job is placed under the microscope in this Cannes award-winning melodrama by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.
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Story from Chikamatsu, A (1954)
Mizoguchi’s superb late career form continues with this masterful period drama about strict social norms and gender roles, with themes of adultery and romantic passion giving it thematic complexity.
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Osaka Elegy (1936)
A young woman becomes her married boss’ mistress to help her debt-ridden father in this ‘30s classic from Mizoguchi that would pave way thematically for his later films about ‘fallen women’.
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Zatoichi and Chess Expert (1965)
There may not be much action, but this quite solid 12th instalment takes its time to give us well-developed characters in a narrative about strategic one-upmanship.
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Sansho the Bailiff (1954)
Ugetsu (1953)
Mizoguchi’s magnum opus is one of the all-time greatest films ever made – a haunting tale of greed, lust and morality that is steeped in Eastern sensuality and supernatural mythology.
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Life of Oharu, The (1952)
Mizoguchi’s chronicle of one woman’s descent from nobility to prostitution is emotionally intense and terribly bleak.
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My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999)
Studio Ghibli’s first full digital animation is a light-hearted and free-spirited take on urban family life told in humorous, sometimes fantastical, vignettes that are created in a minimalist watercolour style.
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Eternality Tan 