Movies: Jūzō Itami

A successful Japanese movie director in his sixties becomes increasingly ill while working on his latest film. Though his family, friends, and doctor try to keep the secret of his terminal cancer from him, Buhei gradually comes to realize the truth o...

Vain, middle-aged actress Biwako is placed in witness protection while authorities investigate the brutal murder she witnessed. Under the watch of two dedicated cops, Biwako struggles to maintain her career, her public image, and her personal life as...

A Japanese racing driver for Nissan named Godai (Yujiro Ishihara) have a rivalry with a French driver named Pierre (Jean-Claude Drouot). Godai is enlisted to race in an annual endurance race, The East African Safari Rally. Peripheral to this is the ...

A documentary about the legendary Japanese filmmaker....

Mariko is living the life of a typical Japanese college student in the 70's, spending far more of her time balancing boyfriends and part-time jobs than on her schoolwork. She finds herself torn between a former boyfriend who's the tough, insensitive-...

Intellectual collegue professor Sasa becomes obsessed with beautiful Sugiko, a virgin. Eventually, luring her to a love hotel....

Famous detective Kosuke Kindaichi follows a dying man's words to an enigmatic island, where he meets beautiful twin sisters and tragic events unfold....

A man and a little girl meet in a bicycle parking in Tokyo. The little girl says she wants to watch the sea, and their travel begins. The man does not intend to be a kidnapper – he asks the girl to phone her mother and tell her she's with him. During...

Akira is haunted by a "bouncing ball" song that he remembers his mother singing when he was a small child, and now on the verge of a sexually active adulthood, he wants to find the origins of the song. The young man ostensibly wanders into a time-war...

A melodrama about the life of a mentally disabled young man and his devoted sister after their famous novelist father and housewife mother go to Australia on a business trip....

A behind-the-scenes look at the creative process behind Juzo Itami's "Minbo no Onna" a.k.a. "Minbo: the Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion"....

A behind-the-scenes look at the creative process behind Juzo Itami's "Daibyonin" a.k.a. "The Last Dance"....

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Nakadai is an English teacher at a local school. He’s put-upon like the patron figure of dozens of films and televisions shows. Viewers who are especially fans of Nakadai will appreciate how the actor comically rants about here. His home life is almo...

A youth drama set in a Japanese university which is home to a group of active, leftist students....

Kaze is a philandering TV producer. His wife and nine of his mistresses conspire to kill him. However each woman would rather keep him alive, as long as she was the only woman in his life....

The tragic tale of Kiyono, a young woman from the mountain who fell in love with Takuji, a fisherman's son, and her devotion to him during a time of war....

Dark, cynical Japanese epic brought to U.S. in a dubbed version by shlockmeister Harry Novak. Still, this gory, sexy epic is made with style and interesting for to compare to "Yojimbo" and other masterworks of the form....

In this drama at the end of World War II, the inhabitants of a small Japanese fishing village must come to terms with their nation's defeat and the sudden occupation of General MacArthur and his troops....