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Japan movies

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Friday, May 9th, 2008
Genres: Action | Animation | Fantasy | Sci-Fi | Thriller
Countries: Japan | UK
Actors: Atsuko Tanaka | Akio Ôtsuka | Tamio Ôki | Iemasa Kayumi | Kôichi Yamadera | Tesshô Genda | Richard Barnes | Steven Jay Blum | Steve Bulen | Richard Cansino | Tom Carlton | George Celik | Shigeru Chiba | Stephen Davis | Richard Epcar
Directors: Mamoru Oshii
Download: DVD iPod 

The year is 2029. The world has become intensively information oriented and humans are well-connected to the network. Crime has developed into a sophisticated stage by hacking into the interactive network. To prevent this, Section 9 is formed. These are cyborgs with incredible strengths and abilities that can access any network on Earth.

The Grudge (2004)

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008
Genres: Horror | Mystery | Thriller
Countries: Germany | Japan | USA
Actors: Sarah Michelle Gellar | Jason Behr | William Mapother | Clea DuVall | KaDee Strickland | Grace Zabriskie | Bill Pullman | Rosa Blasi | Ted Raimi | Ryo Ishibashi | Yoko Maki | Yuya Ozeki | Takako Fuji | Takashi Matsuyama | Hiroshi Matsunaga
Directors: Takashi Shimizu
Download: DivX iPod 

Karen Davis is a woman residing in Japan with her boyfriend, who is studying there. Temporarily assigned to be caretaker for a woman with severe sleeping disorder, Karen goes to the patient’s house. What she finds is something she would never expect. The house is plagued by the presence of murderous ghosts, the result of a curse. The curse is born from someone dying in a powerful rage. Now, Karen finds herself being tormented by that curse, as it eventually starts claiming it’s victims.

Control (2007)

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
Genres: Biography | Drama | Music
Countries: Australia | Japan | UK | USA
Actors: Samantha Morton | Sam Riley | Alexandra Maria Lara | Joe Anderson | Toby Kebbell | Craig Parkinson | James Anthony Pearson | Harry Treadaway | Andrew Sheridan | Robert Shelly | Matthew McNulty | Ben Naylor | Herbert Grönemeyer | Nigel Harris | Tim Plester
Directors: Anton Corbijn
Download: DivX iPod 

Ian Curtis is a quiet and rather sad lad who works for an employment agency and sings in a band called Warsaw. He meets a girl named Debbie whom he promptly marries and his band, of which the name in the meantime has been changed to Joy Division, gets more and more successful. Even though Debbie and he become parents, their relationship is going downhill rapidly and Ian starts an affair with Belgium Annik whom he met after one of the gigs and he’s almost never at home. Ian also suffers from epilepsy and has no-good medication for it. He doesn’t know how to handle the feelings he has for Debbie and Annik and the pressure the popularity of Joy Division and the energy performing costs him.

Japan Sinks (Nihon chinbotsu) (2006)

Friday, March 21st, 2008
Genres: Adventure | Drama | Sci-Fi | Thriller
Countries: Japan
Actors: Tsuyoshi Kusanagi | Kou Shibasaki | Etsushi Toyokawa | Mao Daichi | Mitsuhiro Oikawa | Mayuko Fukuda | Hideko Yoshida | Akira Emoto | Jun Kunimura | Koji Ishizaka | Kenichi Endo | Takeshi Katô | Hideaki Anno | Harutoshi Fukui | Narushi Ikeda
Directors: Shinji Higuchi
Download: DivX iPod 

In the aftermath of a major earthquake under Suraga Bay, Misaki (a young girl) and Toshiro (a pilot of a deep sea submarine) are rescued from a ruined city street just as leaking gasoline ignites. Reiko Abe arrives just in time, lowered from a helicopter. Scientists predict that Japan will sink within 40 years, due to subduction of a tectonic plate to the west. However, Dr. Tadokoro, who leads an oceanic scientific team that includes Toshiro, calculates that this will happen far sooner, in only 338.54 days. He presents his findings to Prime Minister Yamamoto who decides to create a new department for impending disaster relief assigning Saoro Takamori to cover the new duties, since of all his ministers she will take it seriously but also bring “heart” to the process. As further earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions devastate Japan, the government pleads with other countries to take refugees. Yamamoto flies to China to negotiate relocations there, but his plane is destroyed by a volcanic eruption. Saoro fills the resulting vacuum in leadership and decides that Dr. Tadokoro’s plan to blow holes in the disintegrating tectonic tectonic plate is the best remaining hope to not only save the people, but what remains of the country itself. Ironically it was her career that hastened their divorce 20 years earlier. Misaki becomes orphaned following her mother’s death from earthquake injuries, and bonds with Reiko who was similarly rescued from, but orphaned by the Kobe quake. Toshiro is offered a job in England and wants Reiko and Misaki to come with him, but Reiko feels bound to help others and refuses to leave. Fellow submarine pilot Shinji Yuki also turns down Toshiro’s offer to work with him in England. Drillships place massive explosives deep in the crust, but the detonator is not placed properly and Yuki dies attempting to place it by submarine.

Timecop (1994)

Friday, February 22nd, 2008
Genres: Action | Sci-Fi | Thriller
Countries: Japan | USA
Actors: Jean-Claude Van Damme | Mia Sara | Ron Silver | Bruce McGill | Gloria Reuben | Scott Bellis | Jason Schombing | Scott Lawrence | Kenneth Welsh | Brent Woolsey | Brad Loree | Shane Kelly | Richard Faraci | Steven Lambert | Kevin McNulty
Directors: Peter Hyams
Download: DivX iPod 

In Washington DC in 1994, the Senate Oversight Committee (SOC) is being spoken to in the capitol building by George Spota, who explains that for the past 20 years, Doctor Hans Kleindast, the Nobel laureate who help the government with the space program back in the 1960s and 1970s, has been doing research, and his field of research has been time travel. The SOC believes that Hans is a quack — until George tells the SOC that Hans actually succeeded in his research and took a trip to the past then back to the present. You can’t travel into the future because the future hasn’t happened yet. George makes it clear that a covert agency is needed to police time travel, so the Time Enforcement Commission (TEC) is formed. Named as the director of the TEC is Commander Eugene Matuzak, formerly of the Washington DC police department. Senator Aaron McComb, who sees possibilities, agrees to chair the oversight on the new program. Sometime later, at a shopping center, TEC agent Max Walker and his wife Melissa are being watched by a pair of shady looking men. Later, at home. Max and Melissa spend some passionate time together. That night, Melissa is about to tell Max something extremely important when the phone rings. Max answers the phone and is told to go to TEC headquarters. Max gets dressed and as soon as Max opens the front door to go outside, he is attacked by the two men from the shopping center. As the two men are beating Max up. Max sees Aaron looking out the window of the bedroom that Melissa is still in, and Aaron is holding Melissa hostage, forcing Melissa to watch Max’s beating. The two men outside then shoot Max, who is wearing a bulletproof vest — and then an explosion engulfs the house, killing Melissa. On October 30, 1929, on Wall Street in New York City, a man named Lyle Atwood enters an office building and rides an elevator up to an office. There is a sudden ripple in the office, and Max enters from the future. It turns out that Lyle is Max’s partner, and Lyle is planning to stop the depression from happening. Max wants to know who Lyle is working for, and Lyie calls two security men into the office to deal with Max. Max beats up the two security men, and Lyle pulls out a gun and opens fire on Max. When Lyle runs out of bullets, Max forces Lyle to admit that he’s working for Aaron, and that Aaron has paid off a lot of other TEC agents as well. Lyle then jumps out the window. Max jumps out after Lyle, grabs him, and takes Lyle with him back to present time, which is now the year 2004, ten years after Melissa’s murder. TEC judge Marshall sentences Lyle to be immediately executed, so Lyle is sent back to 1929 and is dropped to his death from the point in midair where Max and Lyle disappeared to 2004. At TEC Headquarters in 2004, Aaron, Max, and Matuzak are showing Senator Malcolm Nelson around the TEC building. Aaron reminds everyone that people who go back in time risk coming into contact with a past version of themselves. The same matter cannot occupy the same space at the same time, because if that happens, and if it’s a person accidentally making physical contact with their past version, that person will die, and their body will disappear from the face of the Earth. Later, Max tells Matuzak that Aaron wants to shut down the TEC so no one can stop him from altering the past to his advantage, because Aaron is now running for President of the United States. Aaron’s fading campaign for president is dealt a blow when he is denied federal campaign matching funds. Just before Max wakes up, two men break into his home to kill him, but Max turns the tables and kills the two men who broke in. TEC internal affairs investigator Sarah Fielding questions Max. Max soon learns that Sarah may be on the wrong side in this. Max must travel back and forth in time to bring Aaron down…and when Max goes back to 1994 and finds out what Melissa wanted to tell him 10 years ago, it gives Max incentive to at least try to prevent Melissa’s murder.

Akira (1988)

Thursday, February 14th, 2008
Genres: Action | Adventure | Animation | Sci-Fi | Thriller
Countries: Japan
Actors: Mitsuo Iwata | Nozomu Sasaki | Mami Koyama | Tesshô Genda | Hiroshi Ôtake | Kôichi Kitamura | Michihiro Ikemizu | Yuriko Fuchizaki | Masaaki Ôkura | Tarô Arakawa | Takeshi Kusao | Kazumi Tanaka | Masayuki Katô | Yôsuke Akimoto | Masato Hirano
Directors: Katsuhiro Ôtomo
Download: DivX iPod 

Kaneda is a bike gang leader whose close friend Tetsuo gets involved in a government secret project known as Akira. On his way to save Tetsuo, Kaneda runs into a group of anti-government activists, greedy politicians, irresponsible scientists and a powerful military leader. The confrontation sparks off Tetsuo’s supernatural power leading to bloody death, a coup attempt and the final battle in Tokyo Olympiad where Akira’s secrets were buried 30 years ago.

Appleseed (2004)

Friday, January 18th, 2008
Genres: Action | Animation | Sci-Fi
Countries: Japan
Actors: Ai Kobayashi | Jûrôta Kosugi | Yuki Matsuoka | Asumi Miwa | Akimoto Tsubasa | Jack Aubree | William Bassett | Michael Forest | Yuzuru Fujimoto | William Knight | Takehito Koyasu | Steve Kramer | Michael McConnohie | Toshiyuki Morikawa | Ryûji Nakagi
Directors: Shinji Aramaki
Download: DivX iPod 

In a utopian society created at the end of the third world war, a female warrior who has been plucked from the badlands begins to see cracks in this new facade. And what does this community have planned for the rest of humankind?

Crying Freeman (1995)

Friday, January 18th, 2008
Genres: Action | Crime | Thriller
Countries: Canada | France | Japan | USA
Actors: Byron Mann | Mark Dacascos | Julie Condra | Rae Dawn Chong | Masaya Kato | Yoko Shimada
Directors: Christophe Gans
Download: DivX iPod 

A lethal assassin for a secret Chinese organisation, who sheds tears of regret each time he kills, is seen swiftly and mercilessly executing three Yakuza gangsters by a beautiful artist. She is captivated by the grace of his kill and later falls in love with him. An intense power struggle for the leadership of the Yakuza Clans ensues as they seek vengeance for the death of their leader. They soon realise the fatal mistake of underestimating the deadly skills of the Crying Freeman.

Tekken: The Motion Picture (1997)

Saturday, December 1st, 2007
Genres: Action | Animation
Countries: Japan
Actors: Kazuhiro Yamaji | Yumi Tôma | Akio Nakamura | Daisuke Gôri | Shinichirô Miki | Minami Takayama | Kaori Yamagata | Akio Ôtsuka | Narumi Hidaka | Tamio Ôki | Kyôsei Tsukui | Takashi Nagasako | Sendai Eri | Shihori Niwa | Takehiro Murozono
Directors: Kunihisa Sugishima
Download: DivX iPod 

Based On Video Game

Marie Antoinette (2006)

Friday, November 9th, 2007
Genres: Biography | Drama | History
Countries: France | Japan | USA
Actors: Kirsten Dunst | Jason Schwartzman | Judy Davis | Rip Torn | Rose Byrne | Asia Argento | Molly Shannon | Shirley Henderson | Danny Huston | Marianne Faithfull | Mary Nighy | Sebastian Armesto | Jamie Dornan | Aurore Clément | Guillaume Gallienne
Directors: Sofia Coppola
Download: DivX 

Based on Antonia Fraser’s book about the ill-fated Archduchess of Austria and later Queen of France, ‘Marie Antoinette’ tells the story of the most misunderstood and abused woman in history, from her birth in Imperial Austria to her later life in France.