

Throne of Blood(1957)
Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.

Movie: Throne of Blood
Recommendations Movies

The Hidden Fortress(ja)
In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.

Kagemusha(ja)
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 Lower Depths(ja)
Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her younger sister, Okayo, Osugi extracts her revenge by revealing her infidelity to her jealous husband.

The Human Condition I: No Greater Love(ja)
After handing in a report on the treatment of Chinese colonial labor, Kaji is offered the post of labor chief at a large mining operation in Manchuria, which also grants him exemption from military service. He accepts, and moves to Manchuria with his newly-wed wife Michiko, but when he tries to put his ideas of more humane treatment into practice, he finds himself at odds with scheming officials, cruel foremen, and the military police.

Sanjuro(ja)
Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Kurosawa's tightly paced, beautifully composed "Sanjuro." In this companion piece and sequel to "Yojimbo," jaded samurai Sanjuro helps an idealistic group of young warriors weed out their clan's evil influences, and in the process turns their image of a proper samurai on its ear.

All the Boys Are Called Patrick(fr)
A pickup artist/womanizer named Patrick inadvertently pursues two young women who happen to be roommates.

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail(ja)
Yoshitsune Minamoto, disguised with his retinue as monks, must make do with a comical porter as their guide through hostile territory en route to safety.

Cremaster 3(en)
CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find form in the struggle between Hiram Abiff or the Architect ...

Sekigahara(ja)
The background to and depiction of a watershed battle in Japanese history, at Sekigahara in 1600, when Tokugawa Ieyasu's Army of the East defeated the Army of the West of Ishida Mitsunari. The story includes the intrigues and shifting loyalties of the various retainers, family members, and samurai.

How Do You Measure a Year?(en)
For 17 years, filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt filmed his daughter Ella on her birthday in the same spot, asking her the same questions. In just 29 minutes, we watch her grow from a toddler to a young woman with all the beautiful and sometimes awkward stages in between. Each phase is captured fleetingly but makes an indelible mark. Her responses to her father’s questions are just a backdrop for a deeper story of parental love, acceptance, and ultimately, independence.

Zatoichi on the Road(ja)
Zatoichi is sworn to protect the life of a young girl and without any real allies finds himself in the middle of a bloody turf war.

Habit(en)
Manchester, the present. Michael divides his time between the job center and the pub. A chance meeting with Lee, an introduction to her Uncle Ian and a heavy night on the lash lead to a job working the door at a Northern Quarter massage parlor. After witnessing the violent death of one of the punters, Michael experiences blood-drenched flashbacks and feels himself being sucked into a twilight world that he doesn't understand but that is irresistibly attractive. When he eventually finds out what goes on in the room below Cloud 9, Michaels' life will never be the same again.

Bataan(en)
During Japan's invasion of the Philippines in 1942, Capt. Henry Lassiter, Sgt. Bill Dane and a diverse group of American soldiers are ordered to destroy and hold a strategic bridge in order to delay the Japanese forces and allow Gen. MacArthur time to secure Bataan. When the Japanese soldiers begin to rebuild the bridge and advance, the group struggles with not only hunger, sickness and gunfire, but also the knowledge that there is likely no relief on the way.

Kwaidan(ja)
Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.

The Scarecrow(en)
Two farmhands compete for the love of the farmer's daughter.

Woyzeck(de)
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.

The Mouse That Roared(en)
The Duchy of Grand Fenwick decides that the only way to get out of their economic woes is to declare war on the United States, lose and accept foreign aid. They send an invasion force (in chain mail, armed with bows and arrows) to New York and they arrive during a nuclear drill that has cleared the streets.

Softie(fr)
Ten-year-old Johnny stands out from his family and his tough neighborhood in Eastern France. He's sensitive, intelligent and interested in all kinds of things way beyond his years. With curiosity, he observes the ups and downs of his young single mother's turbulent love life. Things change when a new teacher, fresh from the big city, takes over Johnny's class. Mr. Adamski believes in Johnny and wants to open a new world to him. The sophisticated young teacher also intrigues the boy.
Similar Movies

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy(ja)
An unexpected love triangle, a seduction trap, and a random encounter are the three episodes, told in three movements to depict three female characters and trace the trajectories between their choices and regrets.

Jonathan(de)
A group of vampires terrorizes a small village on the German North Sea Coast. The young Jonathan joins a group of fellow students and locals, who plan an uprising against the vampires.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World(en)
After an abrupt and violent encounter with a French warship inflicts severe damage upon his ship, a captain of the British Royal Navy begins a chase over two oceans to capture or destroy the enemy, though he must weigh his commitment to duty and ferocious pursuit of glory against the safety of his devoted crew, including the ship's thoughtful surgeon, his best friend.

Bringing Out the Dead(en)
Once called "Father Frank" for his efforts to rescue lives, Frank Pierce sees the ghosts of those he failed to save around every turn. He has tried everything he can to get fired, calling in sick, delaying taking calls where he might have to face one more victim he couldn't help, yet cannot quit the job on his own.

The Shell Seekers(en)
Penelope Keeling, a sixty-four-year-old daughter of a famous artist, reflects on her life, and the fate and choices that defined it, when she arrives in the Mediterranean to stay with her headstrong daughter. Shifting through time, and falling into place like the pieces of a jigsaw, the truth of Penelope's rich, heartbreaking and surprising life unfolds.

The Thin Red Line(en)
The story of a group of men, an Army Rifle company called C-for-Charlie, who change, suffer, and ultimately make essential discoveries about themselves during the fierce World War II battle of Guadalcanal. It follows their journey, from the surprise of an unopposed landing, through the bloody and exhausting battles that follow, to the ultimate departure of those who survived.

Candyman(en)
The Candyman, a murderous soul with a hook for a hand, is accidentally summoned to reality by a skeptic grad student researching the monster's myth.

The Right Stuff(en)
As the Space Race ensues, seven pilots set off on a path to become the first American astronauts to enter space. However, the road to making history brings forth momentous challenges.

Spider(en)
A mentally disturbed man takes residence in a halfway house. His mind gradually slips back into the realm created by his illness, where he replays a key part of his childhood.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny(en)
A story of lost love, young love, a legendary sword and one last opportunity at redemption.

Jarrapellejos(es)
Pedro Jarrapellejos is a ladies man who cannot turn the heads of Isabel or her beautiful daughter. When both peasant women are found raped and murdered in a brutal scene, a schoolteacher is falsely accused. Pedro knows his own nephew and his friend participated in the killings, but he uses his considerable influence over the police and courts to intimidate the witnesses into silence.

Smilla's Sense of Snow(en)
Smilla Jaspersen attempts to understand the death of a small boy who falls from the roof of her apartment building. Suspecting wrongdoing, Smilla uncovers a trail of clues leading towards a secretive corporation that has made several mysterious expeditions to Greenland.

Nineteen Eighty-Four(en)
George Orwell's novel of a totalitarian future society in which a man whose daily work is rewriting history tries to rebel by falling in love.

Clear and Present Danger(en)
Agent Jack Ryan becomes acting Deputy Director of Intelligence for the CIA when Admiral Greer is diagnosed with cancer. When an American businessman, and friend of the president, is murdered on his yacht, Ryan starts discovering links between the man and drug dealers. As former CIA agent John Clark is sent to Colombia to kill drug cartel kingpins in retaliation, Ryan must fight through multiple cover-ups to figure out what happened and who's responsible.

Fitzcarraldo(de)
Fitzcarraldo is a dreamer who plans to build an opera house in Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon, so, in order to finance his project, he embarks on an epic adventure to collect rubber, a very profitable product, in a remote and unexplored region of the rainforest.

The Last of the Mohicans(en)
In war-torn colonial America, in the midst of a bloody battle between British, the French and Native American allies, the aristocratic daughter of a British Colonel and her party are captured by a group of Huron warriors. Fortunately, a group of three Mohican trappers comes to their rescue.

Wuthering Heights(en)
Yorkshire moorlands, northern England, in the late 18th century. Young Heathcliff, rescued from the streets of Liverpool by Mr. Earnshaw, the owner of Wuthering Heights, an isolated farm, develops over the years an insane passion for Cathy, his foster sister, a sick obsession destined to end tragically.

Thank You for Smoking(en)
Nick Naylor is a charismatic spin-doctor for Big Tobacco who'll fight to protect America's right to smoke -- even if it kills him -- while still remaining a role model for his 12-year old son. When he incurs the wrath of a senator bent on snuffing out cigarettes, Nick's powers of "filtering the truth" will be put to the test.

Scrooged(en)
Frank Cross is a wildly successful television executive whose cold ambition and curmudgeonly nature has driven away the love of his life. But after firing a staff member on Christmas Eve, Frank is visited by a series of ghosts who give him a chance to re-evaluate his actions and right the wrongs of his past.

Ring 0(ja)
Taking place thirty years before the events of Ringu, Ringu 0 provides the shocking background story of how the girl on the video became a deadly, vengeful spirit.