Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto and Sawako, a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter.
Nukui
Ryuzo and his 7 former henchmen are all retired yakuza, but they now live as regular old men. One day, Ryuzo becomes the victim of a phishing fraud. He calls his 7 men together to reform their society.
Kong, a deaf-mute, lives a life of quiet desperation working for Bangkok mobsters. Despite his disability, Kong's mentor Joe trains him to be a stone-cold assassin. After a brutal hit abroad, Kong returns to Bangkok and falls in love with young pharmacy clerk. But when Joe's girlfriend Aom is raped, the duo risk everything for revenge.
A hot-shot detective in Yokohama kills a witness during a drug investigation. He flees to the countryside and evades his past for several years, only to return to find the woman he loved married to his former partner. He searches for answers to his troubled past, knowing that his inevitable doomed fate is more or less sealed.
Naive office girl Yuko supports her blithe big city lifestyle with a part-time job at a neighborhood cafe. Attracted to her manager there, the shallow but charming Yutaka, she willingly succumbs to his lascivious advances only to discover afterward that he already has a girlfriend by the name of Midori. Even so, Yuko's feelings for Yutaka continue to grow regardless of his aloofness. Before long she finds herself reluctantly cajoled into working as a hostess in a small karaoke bar. Fatalistically accepting his dalliances with flames old and new, she perseveres not so much in hope of a more substantial relationship, but rather out of fear of losing him. There are other men out there waiting for her -- kinder, more considerate and eagerly available. But for Yuko, there is only the non-committal, yet torridly magnetic Yutaka. Why him? Not even Yuko seems to know the answer.
A rebellious youth, sentenced to a boy’s reformatory for robbing a bakery, rises through the ranks of the institution by impressing its Governor through his prowess as a long distance runner. He is encouraged to compete in an upcoming race, but faces ridicule from his peers.
Blind traveler Zatoichi is a master swordsman and a masseur with a fondness for gambling on dice games. When he arrives in a village torn apart by warring gangs, he sets out to protect the townspeople.
Oscar winning composer Ryuichi Sakamoto weaves man-made and natural sounds together in his works. His anti-nuclear activism grew after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, and his career only paused after a 2014 cancer diagnosis.
Hong Kong 1997, where young people dream of love and death, suicide and murder. Moon is a cynical young debt collector, smitten by Ping, a young woman dying of kidney disease. A suicide note from a student they don't know ends up intertwining their fates.
Undiagnosed, untreated and generally untethered schizophrenic Julien lives with his pregnant younger sister Pearl, anorexic would-be wrestler brother Chris, sympathetic grandmother, and severely depressed German father.
Four couples meet for Sunday brunch only to discover they are stuck in a house together as the world may be about to end.
Fisher, an ex-detective, decides to take one final case when a mysterious serial killer claims the lives of several young girls. Fisher, unable to find the culprit, turns to Osbourne, a writer who was once respected for his contributions to the field of criminology. Fisher begins to use Osbourne's technique, which involves empathizing with serial killers; however, as the detective becomes increasingly engrossed in this method, things take a disturbing turn.
Irreverent city engineer Behzad comes to a rural Kurdish village in Iran to keep vigil for a dying relative. In the meanwhile the film follows his efforts to fit in with the local community and how he changes his own attitudes as a result.
A deaf garbage collector happens upon a broken and discarded surfboard. The discovery plants in him dreams of becoming a surf champion. Encouraged by his also deaf girlfriend, he persists against all odds.
On September 1st, 1939, Nazi Germany invades Poland, unleashing World War II. On September 17th, the Soviet Red Army crosses the border. The Polish army, unable to fight on two fronts, is defeated. Thousands of Polish men, both military and government officials, are captured by the invaders. Their fate will only be known several years later.
Beleaguered police detective Nishi takes desperate measures to try and set things right in a world gone wrong. With his wife suffering from leukemia and his business partner paralyzed from a brutal gangster attack, Nishi borrows from a yakuza loan shark and then robs a bank to clear his debt.
Ko Chun, a renowned gambler, loses his memory in an accident and starts behaving like a child. Little Knife, an amateur gambler, offers him shelter and realizes that he has a penchant for gambling.
Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of his two daughters and senile mother. New prospects seem to open up when the beautiful Tomoe, a childhood friend, comes back into he and his daughters' life, but as the Japanese feudal system unravels, Seibei is still bound by the code of honor of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedence. How can he find a way to do what is best for those he loves?
Shinji and Masaru spend most of their school days harassing fellow classmates and playing pranks. They drop out and Shinji becomes a small-time boxer, while Masaru joins up with a local yakuza gang. However, the world is a tough place.
The 1978 kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, president of the most important political party in Italy at the time, Democrazia Cristiana, as seen from the perspective of one of his assailants -- a conflicted young woman in the ranks of the Red Brigade.
The story of Joy Division’s lead singer Ian Curtis, from his schoolboy days in 1973 to his suicide on the eve of the band's first American tour in 1980.
Every night while the city sleeps, Ahmad, a former Pakistani rock star turned immigrant, drags his heavy cart along the streets of New York. And every morning, he sells coffee and donuts to a city he cannot call his own. One day, however, the pattern of this harsh existence is broken by a glimmer of hope for a better life.
In this Depression-era tale, Calef is traveling from Michigan to California and stops in Spooner, Missouri, where Lute hires him for odd jobs. Calef gets involved with Lute's niece, Hannah. But she is married to Sidney, a wife-beating drunk who hopes to inherit his uncle-in-law's money. Sidney and an eccentric preacher plot against Calef, who finds it difficult to conceal his mysterious past and his growing affection for Sidney's wife.
An all-girl rock band moves to Hollywood in the hope of achieving success, only to fall into a whirlpool of wickedness and decadence.
After stealing a fortune in unclaimed jewelry, ex-detective Barney Rickert arrives at a run-down dude ranch in Arizona to hide out. When the owner, Dewey Hoople, refuses to sell the land to Rickert, he proceeds to win over the female inhabitants by seducing them one by one which leads to one refusing his advances and a dangerous game played out in which Rickert ruthlessly sets out to get what he wants.
Peter Weller stars as Baton Morris, a drifter suspected of murder, in this crime drama. A widow (Kathy Baker) living in West Virginia takes in the man (Weller) whom she believes murdered her husband. As she spends more time with him, she begins to fall for him, but continues to question whether or not she can trust him. Directed by David Saperstein and based on a novel by Robert Houston, A Killing Affair features twists and turns up until the end.
The deep conversation between a Japanese architect and a French actress forms the basis of this celebrated French film, considered one of the vanguard productions of the French New Wave. Set in Hiroshima after the end of World War II, the couple -- lovers turned friends -- recount, over many hours, previous romances and life experiences. The two intertwine their stories about the past with pondering the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb dropped on the city.
The year 1933: Successful actress Maria Rheine is in love with her Jewish colleague Mark Löwenthal. When the Nazis implement the racist Nuremberg Laws, their relationship is severely endangered. Defiant Maria decides to stay together with Mark and ends her promising career: She assumes a Jewish identity and continues to work under the name Manja Löwenthal. She and Mark perform at the Jewish Theatre in Berlin, until they become victims of an intrigue: Their colleague Judith, who has a crush on Mark, denounces them to the secret police.
A court fortune-teller loses his mind after a conspiracy leads to the death of his lover. Hope appears to be on the horizon after he becomes romantically involved with his dead lover's twin sister, but more complications arise thanks to a chance encounter with a clan of shape-shifters.
One day a mysterious box arrived and a curse began to spread all over. The source of the box is 'Jukai Village'. The village is hidden in Jukai Forest, a suicide spot that once you enter it, you can never come out.
Part 7 in a long running (8+1 films) action/comedy/melodrama series about a pair of short tempered, amoral, but not evil chinpira (Bunta Sugawara and Tamio Kawachi) thinking too big of themselves. Katsuji finds his long lost mother, who is a rich lady of a respectable family. Comedy and melodrama ensue. A thrilling spectacle with an overly violent ending, and a remarkable, Japan's only post-prison rape comedy, Masa is determined to have sex with the female guard, despite the fact that there is a bar between them. Michi Azuma (topless swordswoman from Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril) plays a tomboy who wants to join her brothers.
A man obsessed with conspiracy theories becomes a target after one of his theories turns out to be true. Unfortunately, in order to save himself, he has to figure out which theory it is.
Maria is a student at the university of Essen, Germany, living and working in a gray, unpleasant, and anonymous environment. While she has little problem finding someone for a one night stand, she rebuffs her lovers in such a rude way that they actually don't know what's going on. But what seems to be a negative attitude at first glance is in fact much worse: Maria is suffering from borderline syndrome, a serious psychotic disease that makes her fail to develop a continuous, reliable personality, from her own perspective as well as from the perspective of those she meets. Then one day, she bumps into Jan, a student who falls in love with her without delay. He's awaiting a hard time when he has to learn how hard it is to stay loyal and faithful to a person who, in her own words, "has a different world inside of her head" and who feels that "there is something inside of me that eats me up."
Summoned 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.
When she receives word that her longtime platonic pal Michael O'Neal is getting married to debutante Kimberly Wallace, food critic Julianne Potter realizes her true feelings for Michael -- and sets out to sabotage the wedding.
A romantic drama about a woman who enters into an affair after 30 years of marriage.
Having fathered an illegitimate child with his lover, Marie, feckless soldier Franz Woyzeck takes odd jobs around his small town to provide some extra money for them. One job is volunteering for experiments conducted by a local doctor, who puts Woyzeck on a diet of peas. This serves to drive him close to madness, and the discovery that Marie is involved in an affair with the local drum major exacerbates the situation. Pushed too far, Woyzeck resorts to violence.
A troubled Southern man talks to his suicidal sister's psychiatrist about their family history and falls in love with her (and New York City) in the process.
When a clergyman is accused for the murder of a social worker, the parish priest recruits a reporter (and his ex-girlfriend) to clear his name.
The bags belonging to a young man about to break up with his lover, two bumbling criminals planning a bomb blast, a man circulating counterfeit currency, and a couple paying ransom to save their daughter get mixed up leading to so much confusion.