Favorite Japanese Movies

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For me, this one is fairly easy. I would personally rank Tokyo Story as the greatest Japanese film of all-time.

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"Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another" - Plato

High and Low, my favourite out of Kurosawa's films that I've seen so far.

Also adored his take on Macbeth with Throne of Blood:



I like this over the top horror called Versus, mostly the end sequences:



I'm in love with the film Kamikaze Girls:



Youth of the Beast



Hana-Bi


Kikujiro


Bright Future


Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl

A very interesting odd film, Electric Dragon 80,000 V:



All About Lily Chou Chou



Spirited Away, and anything else from Studio Ghibli - big fan.


Returner


Casshern


Dark Water


Ringu


Rainy Dog - I prefer this and Ley Lines over most Miike films.




The Bird People in China

Branded To Kill


Maboroshi


Ugetsu


Ghost In The Shell


Tampopo


Tokyo Sonata

Some favorites that haven't been mentioned yet (I've linked to my reviews in the Movie Tab where applicable):

A Taxing Woman
Himatsuri - Beautiful cinematography of southern Japan as rural islanders try to battle a massive development project to turn their island into a theme park. Very morally ambiguous.
Rikyu - Seemingly one of Teshigahara's more personal films, about the life and death of the 16th century master of the tea ceremony trying to influence the crass lord Hideyoshi.
Kaidan - The best Japanese horror film (unless you include Rashomon). Also perhaps the best Japanese anthology film ever made (unless you include Rashomon again).
Boy
Japanese Summer: Double Suicide
The Profound Desire of the Gods - One of Imamura's most lush and epic productions.
Minbo no Onna
The Funeral
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
The Eel
Ei ja nai ka
The Ballad of Narayama
The Face of Another ... and the other three Teshigahara films written by my favorite Japanese author of all time:
Woman in the Dunes
Pitfall
The Ruined Map

Inferno of First Love - Excellent and underseen new-wave tragic-romance.
Ninja Bugeicho
The Ceremony - One of Oshima's most-spiteful films about Japan's zaibatsu old guard and the completely ineffectual "rebellious" younger generation of the 1960s. This one has a sick sense of humor.
The Sun's Burial - Gorgeously photographed color melodrama about nihilistic Osaka gangs.
Taboo - Takeshi reunited with the director who gave him his feature-film breakthrough for this low-key and dark samurai film. Oshima directed it while recovering from a stroke.
Kyoto, My Mother's Place - A surprising tv documentary about Kyoto that is the closest thing to an unambiguously personal film that I've ever seen by Nagisa Oshima.
Akira
Memories
Funeral Parade of Roses - A thoroughly self-referential film about sexuality as performance and the underground gay/transvestite nightclub scene in 1960s Tokyo. I haven't seen anything else by this director but I know he has both "new wave" and art theater cred. There's some information about him and his heated debates with Oshima in some of the footnotes in Cinema, Censorship, and the State: The Writings of Nagisa Oshima.
Fist of the Northstar
Princess Mononoke - The ending is somewhat dissatisfying, but it's still my one of my favorite Miyazaki films.
Horus: Prince of the Sun - Great early film by Miyazaki and Takahata expressing both some of their radical politics and their love of mythic adventure stories.
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On - A fascinating, personality-driven documentary that shows many bizarre sides of post-war politics and history that you won't see in very many other Japanese films.

Some favorites that were already mentioned:

Tampopo
Rashomon
Ran
High and Low
The Seven Samurai
Throne of Blood
Vengeance is Mine
Sonatine
Pale Flower
Branded to Kill
Gate of Flesh
Tokyo Story
Ugetsu

Some favorite Japanese/international co-productions:

Mishima - Paul Schrader's excellent biopic of the famous author.
Zodiac Killers (Ann Hui, 1991) - A Chinese/Japanese director depicts chinese immigrants and low-ranking yakuza trying to survive in shinjuku.
Shadow of China - About a Hong Kong businessman trying to hide his Japanese/Mainland Chinese roots. Directed by Mitsuo Yanagimachi (of Fire Festival/Godspeed You Black Emperor fame.)
Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence - Nagisa Oshima's film about western prisoner's of war. Also "Beat" Takeshi's breakthrough as a dramatic actor.
Karayuki san - Shohei Imamura's documentary about comfort women. (Perhaps an inspiration for his later feature film on the same topic - Zegen/The Pimp.)
Last Life in the Universe - A Thai film about a Yakuza hiding out in rural Thailand.

Interesting list. I wouldn't call Rashomon a horror story. You mean Zodiac Killer with Andy Lau? I almost thought it was the Shinjuku Incident, the way you described it. When you say Kaidan , you mean Kwaidan?
The Sun's Burial sounds like my cup of tea and I have to check out Tokyo Story and Horus: Prince Of The Sun and Karayuki Son and The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On. The rest I have seen.

Thanks, I have all those in my collection with the exception of Kamikaze girls, a girly movie perhaps worth checking out if nothing else but for the word " Kamikaze " .

Tyler, I'm a little surprised. You seemed to know your Japanese movies, so I was expecting more from you.

A Class To Remember - a film by Yamada Yoji.

Tadashi Imai's Revenge

Cold Fish

Ps-s-s, Tetsuo (1989) is the best Japan movie! We all know that!

I've seen several japanese movies, but i like Audition, Akira and The Ring.

Hirokazu Kore-eda's one of my favourite directors, and Maborosi, After Life and Still Walking would easily be in my top 100 films list. I also love Nobody Knows and Distance.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure and Pulse are the best examples of contemporary horror masterpieces.

Millennium Actress best animated film ever.

A Page of Madness
Humanity and Paper balloons
The Naked Island
Boy
The Face of Another and Woman in the Dunes

And I have Double Suicide waiting for me to watch.

Crow Zero and Crow Zero 2 are kick ass movies!

Outrage

Some of my favorite japanese movies.
Kikujiro
Hana-Bi
Battle Royale
Seven Samurai

I like 'Ying xiong', aka 'The hero': http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299977/
It hasn't been mentioned, right?