A collection of magical tales based upon the actual dreams of director Akira Kurosawa.
Child I
Based on the life of Hyakken Uchida, a Japanese author and academic. The film opens with Uchida resigning his job as a German professor at the onset of WWII. The story is told mostly in vignettes as he is cared for by former students in his old age.
Doctor Sanada treats gangster Matsunaga after he is wounded in a gunfight, and discovers that he is suffering from tuberculosis. Sanada tries to convince Matsunaga to stay for treatment, which would drastically change his lifestyle. They form an uneasy friendship until Matsunaga's old boss Okada returns from prison.
Fiore, an Italian conman, arrives in post Communist Albania with Gino, his young apprentice, to set up a shoe factory that will never open. The con requires a native Albanian, so they designate Spiro, an impoverished and confused former political prisoner as chairman of the board. When Fiore returns to Italy to get government funds for the project, Spiro unexpectedly disappears and Gino sets out on a journey to find him. The search leads him to discover Spiro's tragic personal history and witness Albanian poverty firsthand.
What would it be like to step inside a great work of art, have it come alive around you, and even observe the artist as he sketches the very reality you are experiencing? From Lech Majewski, one of Poland's most acclaimed filmmakers, The Mill and the Cross is a cinematic re-staging of Pieter Bruegel's masterpiece "Procession to Calvary," presented alongside the story of its creation.
A perfect typical LA couple find their happily-ever-after life broken when Zach confronts his long-repressed attraction for other men.
In order to impress the father of a girl he is keen on, a young man goes to the city in search of work. In his letters home he writes of his various jobs which her imagination expands into much nobler ones than those that he is actually attempting.
Scheherazade narrates three more tales, supposedly selected from the 470th, 484th and 497th nights of her ordeal: “It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that a Judge will cry instead of giving out her sentence. A runaway murderer will wander through the land for over forty days and will teletransport himself to escape the Guard while dreaming of prostitutes and partridges. A wounded cow will reminisce about a thousand-year-old olive tree while saying what she must say, which will sound none less than sad!
Writer Sílvio Proença needs to travel to São Paulo in order to promote his new book. At the airport, he meets a group of old mates. With the boarding canceled due to a strong storm, the group goes to the apartment of Marialva, daughter of one of Proença's friends. Seduced by Marialva's music and charms, Proença spends the night there, where he wakes up the next day, completely naked. Still groggy from his hangover, he goes to pick up the bread left outside the apartment; that's when the wind closes the door and leaves him naked outside.
A poor boy and girl in rags gather wood in the snow. They pass by a tailor, a butcher and a baker, all of whom pity the children. Later, they arrive home. Their poor mother sets before them the only food she can: Stale bread. The children get ready for bed; In their dreams, visions of ice cream and donuts, candies and cakes fill their sleeping minds-- Will they awake to the same sorry situation?
After the Akizuku clan fall in defeat to rival clan Yamana, Princess Yuki and General Rokurota take cover in a hidden fortress, along with their clan and gold treasury. Fortuitously stumbling into the hideaways, brash young miner Takezo and his bumbling sidekick Shinhachi hatch a daring plan to help transport the gold out of enemy terrain – in exchange for a share of the stash, of course. With assassins hot in pursuit, Yuki disguises as a male and ventures into the real world with Rukurota and her peasant companions, getting her first taste of danger, toil, and budding romance with the strong-minded and willful Takezo.
Akira Kurosawa's lauded feudal epic presents the tale of a petty thief who is recruited to impersonate Shingen, an aging warlord, in order to avoid attacks by competing clans. When Shingen dies, his generals reluctantly agree to have the impostor take over as the powerful ruler. He soon begins to appreciate life as Shingen, but his commitment to the role is tested when he must lead his troops into battle against the forces of a rival warlord.
The Enos duo convince Cletus, aka The Bandit, to come out of hiding and help them promote their new restaurant. With a little coaxing, he agrees, producing an almost-creaky Trigger as his mode of transport. But his nemesis, Sheriff Buford T. Justice, is on the hunt, forcing Cletus and Trigger to hit the road. Can they steer clear of the vengeful sheriff?
It's early autumn and Dr. Headley eagerly demonstrates what seems to be a miraculous cure for tuberculosis. Not far from where he is working, the disease seems preparing to soon claim yet another life, a teenage girl named Winifred. Winifred's mother and little sister Trixie are devastated. When Trixie hears the family doctor say of Winifred that "when the last leaf falls, she will have passed away," she interprets the doctor's words literally. Thinking over what she has heard, she determines to do everything possible to save her sister.
Mum and Dad, and their 'adopted' children, Birdie & Elbie, work at the airport. The family live off whatever they scavenge from cargo holds, offices and hotels - including a steady stream of transient workers who populate the airport's soulless hub. When Lena, a young Polish office cleaner, is befriended by Birdie, she gets drawn into a nightmarish world of torture, murder and perversity.
The story centers on an elderly hibakusha, whose husband was one of 80,000 human beings killed in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, caring for her four grandchildren over the summer. She learns of a long-lost brother, Suzujiro, living in Hawaii who wants her to visit him before he dies.
A wealthy Iranian family struggles to contain a teenager's growing sexual rebellion and her brother's newfound conservatism.
Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.
Lisbon, 1938. Mr. Pereira is the editor of the culture section of an evening paper. Although fascism is on the rise in Europe, like in nearby civil war Spain or even inside Portugal itself in the form of Salazar's regime, Pereira only concerns himself with writing bios and translating French novels. Things change after he hires a young writer as his assistant, getting to know also his girlfriend – both opponents to the regime – and reluctantly helps them when they begin to get in trouble for subversive activities. Eventually, he's forced to take a stand...
Five bizarre stories with no apparent connection to one and other eventually become intertwined, resulting in surreal circumstances.
Damiel is now married to Marion, runs the pizzeria “Da Angelo” and the two have a child. The solitarily remaining angel Cassiel is more and more dissatisfied with his destiny as a mere observer of human life and finally decides to take the great leap. As Karl Engel he soon gets into a dubious milieu and finds himself as the assistant of the German American Baker, who makes his money with shady arms deals and sends films east in exchange for weapons. Cassiel’s adventure turns into a “thriller” when he decides to put a stop to Baker’s game.
The referendum whether nuclear power plants should be banned has been held in Japan. People must decide their future.
Ninety minutes of deleted and alternate takes from Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, assembled by David Lynch to continue the story of the final week of Laura Palmer’s life.
In 1840s New York, the uneventful and boring days of the daughter of a wealthy doctor come to an end when she meets a dashing poorer man — who may or may not be after her inheritance.
A demon, a reaper, and the ghost of a prostitute read gothic short stories and act them out.
A man kidnaps his little girl to protect her from an abusive mother, then becomes the first man to enter a woman's underground movement.
The son of a Vietnam War Veteran must deal with neighborhood bullies as well as his dad's post-traumatic stress disorder while growing up in the deep south in the 1970's.
An anxiety-ridden teenager searches for connection at a high school party, until an unexpected connection finds him instead.
The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.
Tita is passionately in love with Pedro, but her controlling mother forbids her from marrying him. When Pedro marries her sister, Tita throws herself into her cooking and discovers she can transfer her emotions through the food she prepares, infecting all who eat it with her intense heartbreak.
The Popes are a family who haven't been able to use their real identity for years. In the late sixties, the parents set a weapons lab afire in an effort to hinder the government's Vietnam war campaign. Ever since then, the Popes have been on the run with the authorities never far behind. Their survival is threatened when their eldest son falls in love with a girl, and announces his wish to live his life on his own terms.
The Toa Metru return to their glorious city of Metru Nui to finally accomplish their mission, only to find the city in ruins, overrun by the dreaded Visorak horde. Captured by their new enemy and transformed into hideous Toa Hordika, our heroes must find a figure out of myth to be cured of their mutations and fulfill their destiny before the beast within overtakes them.
Dong-chun, an elementary school student overwhelmed with seven afterschool learning academies, stumbles upon a mysterious bottle of rice wine during a school retreat. As the rice wine ferments and emits strange sounds like Morse code, Dong-chun sets out to unravel its identity and discovers the secrets of the world and the reasons behind her current way of life.
Phillipe, the son of an ambassador in London, idolizes Baines, his father's butler, a kind of hero in the eyes of the child, whose perception changes when he accidentally discovers the secret that Baines keeps and witnesses the consequences that adults' lies can cause.
The rise of a raucous hayseed named Lonesome Rhodes from itinerant Ozark guitar picker to local media rabble-rouser to TV superstar and political king-maker. Marcia Jeffries is the innocent Sarah Lawrence girl who discovers the great man in a back-country jail and is the first to fall under his spell.
An oil platform dramatically goes down on the Norwegian coast, and researchers try to find out what happened when they realize this is just the start of something even more serious.
Ronia lives happily in her father's castle until she comes across a new playmate, Birk, in the nearby dark forest. The two explore the wilderness, braving dangerous Witchbirds and Rump-Gnomes. But when their families find out Birk and Ronia have been playing together, they forbid them to see each other again. Indeed, their fathers are competing robber chieftains and bitter enemies. Now the two spunky children must try to tear down the barriers that have kept their families apart for so long.
Clarice Starling is a top student at the FBI's training academy. Jack Crawford wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into a case and that Starling, as an attractive young woman, may be just the bait to draw him out.
William Parrish, media tycoon and loving father, is about to celebrate his 65th birthday. One morning, he is contacted by the inevitable, by hallucination, as he thinks. Later, Death enters his home and his life, personified in human form as Joe Black. His intention was to take William with him, but accidentally, Joe and William's beautiful daughter Susan have already met. Joe begins to develop certain interest in life on Earth, as well as in Susan, who has no clue with whom she's flirting.
A man entranced by his dreams and imagination is lovestruck with a French woman and feels he can show her his world.