best: asian movies
by ZeTomes | created - 21 Nov 2010 | updated - 03 May 2020 | PublicWorks of several genres on asian cinnema that express something important as a piece of art, history or culture. Drama, Historical, Martial Arts, Animation, you name it.
- Instant Watch Options
- Genres
- Movies or TV
- IMDb Rating
- In Theaters
- Release Year
- Keywords
1. Ran (1985)
R | 160 min | Action, Drama, War
In Medieval Japan, an elderly warlord retires, handing over his empire to his three sons. However, he vastly underestimates how the new-found power will corrupt them and cause them to turn on each other...and him.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryû
Votes: 136,181 | Gross: $4.14M
This marvelous historical drama reflects the hipocrasy inherent to politics and power strategies leaving true hearts to fiction or death. Like a Shakespeare piece, it reflects the strings of reality pushing the concept tragedy to medieval Japan.
2. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001)
R | 172 min | Drama
The telling of an Inuit legend of an evil spirit causing strife in the community and one warrior's endurance and battle of its menace.
Director: Zacharias Kunuk | Stars: Natar Ungalaaq, Sylvia Ivalu, Peter-Henry Arnatsiaq, Lucy Tulugarjuk
Votes: 6,860 | Gross: $3.79M
Although this is not an asian movie but an innuit production, I decided to label it as so because of the similarities.
3. Eureka (2000)
217 min | Drama
The traumatized survivors of a murderous bus hijacking come together and take a road trip to attempt to overcome their damaged selves. Meanwhile a serial killer is on the loose.
Director: Shinji Aoyama | Stars: Koji Yakusho, Aoi Miyazaki, Masaru Miyazaki, Yôichirô Saitô
Votes: 4,339 | Gross: $0.05M
4. White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2007)
Not Rated | 86 min | Documentary, History
Using extensive interviews with survivors and archival footage, an examination reveals the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Director: Steven Okazaki | Stars: Harold Agnew, Shuntaro Hida, Kiyoko Imori, Morris Jeppson
Votes: 2,324
5. Lady Vengeance (2005)
R | 115 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
After being wrongfully imprisoned for thirteen years and having her child taken away from her, a woman seeks revenge through increasingly brutal means.
Director: Park Chan-wook | Stars: Nam-mi Kang, Jeong-nam Choi, Hye-Sook Go, Bok-hwa Baek
Votes: 86,097 | Gross: $0.21M
6. Oldboy (2003)
R | 120 min | Action, Drama, Mystery
After being kidnapped and imprisoned for fifteen years, Oh Dae-Su is released, only to find that he must track down his captor in five days.
Director: Park Chan-wook | Stars: Choi Min-sik, Yoo Ji-tae, Kang Hye-jeong, Kim Byeong-Ok
Votes: 635,698 | Gross: $0.71M
7. Goemon (2009)
128 min | Action, Drama, History
Based on a Japanese folk legend that echoes the tale of Robin Hood, this ninja thriller follows the exploits of Goemon Ishikawa (Yôsuke Eguchi), who leaves his fighting clan after its chief... See full summary »
Director: Kazuaki Kiriya | Stars: Yôsuke Eguchi, Takao Osawa, Ryôko Hirosue, Jun Kaname
Votes: 5,551
8. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002)
R | 129 min | Crime, Drama, Thriller
A recently laid off factory worker kidnaps his former boss' friend's daughter, hoping to use the ransom money to pay for his sister's kidney transplant.
Director: Park Chan-wook | Stars: Song Kang-ho, Shin Ha-kyun, Bae Doona, Lim Ji-eun
Votes: 75,128 | Gross: $0.05M
9. Enter the Dragon (1973)
R | 102 min | Action, Crime, Thriller
A Shaolin martial artist travels to an island fortress to spy on an opium lord - who is also a former monk from his temple - under the guise of attending a fighting tournament.
Director: Robert Clouse | Stars: Bruce Lee, John Saxon, Jim Kelly, Ahna Capri
Votes: 112,980 | Gross: $25.00M
10. In the Mood for Love (2000)
PG | 98 min | Drama, Romance
Two neighbors form a strong bond after both suspect extramarital activities of their spouses. However, they agree to keep their bond platonic so as not to commit similar wrongs.
Director: Kar-Wai Wong | Stars: Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung, Siu Ping-Lam, Tung Cho 'Joe' Cheung
Votes: 166,818 | Gross: $2.73M
11. In the Realm of the Senses (1976)
NC-17 | 109 min | Drama, Romance
A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.
Director: Nagisa Ôshima | Stars: Tatsuya Fuji, Eiko Matsuda, Aoi Nakajima, Yasuko Matsui
Votes: 22,794
12. Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980)
PG | 162 min | Drama, History, War
A petty thief with an utter resemblance to a samurai warlord is hired as the lord's double. When the warlord later dies the thief is forced to take up arms in his place.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Tatsuya Nakadai, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Ken'ichi Hagiwara, Jinpachi Nezu
Votes: 38,170
13. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000)
PG-13 | 120 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
A young Chinese warrior steals a sword from a famed swordsman and then escapes into a world of romantic adventure with a mysterious man in the frontier of the nation.
Director: Ang Lee | Stars: Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Ziyi Zhang, Chang Chen
Votes: 281,596 | Gross: $128.08M
14. Casshern (2004)
Not Rated | 142 min | Action, Sci-Fi
Live-action sci-fi movie based on a 1973 Japanese animé of the same name (Shinzo Ningen Casshân). Theme song by Utada Hikaru.
Director: Kazuaki Kiriya | Stars: Yûsuke Iseya, Kumiko Asô, Akira Terao, Kanako Higuchi
Votes: 13,791
15. Memories of Murder (2003)
Not Rated | 132 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
In a small Korean province in 1986, two detectives struggle with the case of multiple young women being found raped and murdered by an unknown culprit.
Director: Bong Joon Ho | Stars: Song Kang-ho, Kim Sang-kyung, Kim Roe-ha, Song Jae-ho
Votes: 216,279 | Gross: $0.01M
16. The Twilight Samurai (2002)
129 min | Drama, Romance
As the feudal Japan era draws to a close, a widower samurai experiences difficulty balancing clan loyalties, 2 young daughters, an aged mother, and the sudden reappearance of his childhood sweetheart.
Director: Yôji Yamada | Stars: Hiroyuki Sanada, Rie Miyazawa, Nenji Kobayashi, Ren Ôsugi
Votes: 25,500
17. Ashes of Time (1994)
R | 100 min | Action, Drama
A broken-hearted hit man moves to the desert where he finds skilled swordsmen to carry out his contract killings.
Director: Kar-Wai Wong | Stars: Brigitte Lin, Maggie Cheung, Leslie Cheung, Tony Leung Chiu-wai
Votes: 16,961 | Gross: $0.17M
18. Sorum (2001)
Unrated | 109 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
A 30 year old mystery resurfaces and takes over the lives of the people living in an eerie apartment complex.
Director: Jong-chan Yun | Stars: Jin-young Jang, Kim Myung-min, Jo An, Ju Bu-jin
Votes: 997
19. Love and Honor (2006)
PG-13 | 122 min | Drama, History, Romance
A look at the relationship between a young blind samurai (Kimura) and his wife, who will make a sacrifice in order to defend her husband's honor.
Director: Yôji Yamada | Stars: Takuya Kimura, Rei Dan, Mitsugorô Bandô, Takashi Sasano
Votes: 4,284 | Gross: $0.02M
20. Kikujiro (1999)
PG-13 | 122 min | Drama, Comedy
A young, naive boy sets out alone on the road to find his wayward mother. Soon he finds an unlikely protector in a crotchety man and the two have a series of unexpected adventures along the way.
Director: Takeshi Kitano | Stars: Takeshi Kitano, Yusuke Sekiguchi, Kayoko Kishimoto, The Great Gidayû
Votes: 22,163 | Gross: $0.20M
21. Dolls (2002)
114 min | Drama, Romance
Three stories of never-ending love.
Director: Takeshi Kitano | Stars: Miho Kanno, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Tatsuya Mihashi, Kyôko Fukada
Votes: 17,360 | Gross: $0.00M
22. Baran (2001)
PG | 94 min | Drama, Romance
In a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Turkish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. The revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.
Director: Majid Majidi | Stars: Hossein Abedini, Zahra Bahrami, Mohammad Amir Naji, Hossein Mahjoub
Votes: 8,963 | Gross: $0.13M
23. My Son the Fanatic (1997)
R | 87 min | Comedy, Drama, Romance
Pakistani taxi-driver Parvez and prostitute Bettina find themselves trapped in the middle when Islamic fundamentalists decide to clean up their local town.
Director: Udayan Prasad | Stars: Om Puri, Rachel Griffiths, Akbar Kurtha, Stellan Skarsgård
Votes: 1,664 | Gross: $0.41M
24. Drunken Master II (1994)
R | 102 min | Action, Comedy
A young martial artist is caught between respecting his pacifist father's wishes or stopping a group of disrespectful foreigners from stealing precious artifacts.
Directors: Chia-Liang Liu, Jackie Chan | Stars: Jackie Chan, Ho-Sung Pak, Lung Ti, Anita Mui
Votes: 48,917 | Gross: $11.55M
25. Barefoot Gen (1983)
TV-PG | 83 min | Animation, Biography, Drama
A powerful statement against war, Barefoot Gen is a disturbing story about the effect of the atomic bomb on a boy's life and the lives of the Japanese people.
Director: Mori Masaki | Stars: Issei Miyazaki, Catherine Battistone, Yoshie Shimamura, Iona Morris
Votes: 9,206
26. The Sky Crawlers (2008)
PG-13 | 122 min | Animation, Drama, Sci-Fi
The Kildren, a group of eternally young fighter pilots, experience the sudden loss of innocence as they battle the enemy in astonishing dogfights above the clouds.
Director: Mamoru Oshii | Stars: Rinko Kikuchi, Ryô Kase, Shôsuke Tanihara, Megumi Yamaguchi
Votes: 5,909
27. Afro Samurai (2007)
TV-MA | 26 min | Animation, Action, Adventure
A Black samurai goes on a mission to avenge the wrongful death of his father in a futuristic feudal Japan.
Stars: Samuel L. Jackson, Phil LaMarr, Yuri Lowenthal, Greg Eagles
Votes: 18,227
28. Metropolis (2001)
PG-13 | 108 min | Animation, Adventure, Drama
Kenichi and his uncle Shunsaku Ban must find the mystery behind robot girl Tima.
Director: Rintarô | Stars: Toshio Furukawa, Scott Weinger, Yuka Imoto, Kei Kobayashi
Votes: 22,614 | Gross: $0.64M
29. Hero (2002)
PG-13 | 120 min | Action, Adventure, Drama
A defense officer, Nameless, was summoned by the King of Qin regarding his success of terminating three warriors.
Director: Yimou Zhang | Stars: Jet Li, Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Maggie Cheung, Ziyi Zhang
Votes: 187,628 | Gross: $53.71M
30. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (2002)
110 min | Biography, Drama, Romance
Two youths sent for a Maoist "re-education" in the mountains fall in love with the village tailor's granddaughter.
Director: Sijie Dai | Stars: Xun Zhou, Kun Chen, Ye Liu, Shuangbao Wang
Votes: 4,584 | Gross: $0.67M
31. The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (1939)
Not Rated | 148 min | Drama, Romance
The adopted son of a legendary actor, and an aspiring star himself, turns to his infant brother's wet nurse for support and affection - only for her to give up everything for her beloved's glory.
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi | Stars: Shôtarô Hanayagi, Kôkichi Takada, Ryôtarô Kawanami, Kinnosuke Takamatsu
Votes: 4,394
32. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
TV-MA | 83 min | Animation, Action, Crime
A cyborg policewoman and her partner hunt a mysterious and powerful hacker called the Puppet Master.
Directors: Mizuho Nishikubo, Mamoru Oshii | Stars: Atsuko Tanaka, Iemasa Kayumi, Akio Ôtsuka, Kôichi Yamadera
Votes: 156,855 | Gross: $0.52M
33. Dead Leaves (2004)
Not Rated | 55 min | Animation, Action, Adventure
Two aliens awaken on Earth with no recollection of their past and embark on a devastating crime spree but are sent to an infamous lunar penitentiary named Dead Leaves.
Director: Hiroyuki Imaishi | Stars: Kappei Yamaguchi, Takako Honda, Yûko Mizutani, Mitsuo Iwata
Votes: 4,414
34. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring (2003)
R | 103 min | Drama, Romance
A boy is raised by a Buddhist monk in an isolated floating temple where the years pass like the seasons.
Director: Kim Ki-duk | Stars: Kim Ki-duk, Oh Yeong-su, Jong-ho Kim, Kim Young-min
Votes: 86,809 | Gross: $2.38M
35. Mother (2009)
R | 129 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
A mother desperately searches for the killer who framed her son for a girl's horrific murder.
Director: Bong Joon Ho | Stars: Kim Hye-ja, Won Bin, Jin Goo, Yun Je-mun
Votes: 71,631 | Gross: $0.55M
36. Amazing Lives of the Fast Food Grifters (2006)
104 min | Animation, Comedy, Drama
A fictional documentary about changing Japanese eating habits and the colorful thieves that swindle the restaurants which serve them.
Director: Mamoru Oshii | Stars: Yoshikazu Fujiki, Shinji Higuchi, Mako Hyôdô, Yoshikazu Ishii
Votes: 257
37. Detective Conan (1996– )
TV-14 | 25 min | Animation, Action, Comedy
The cases of a detective whose physical age was chemically reversed to that of a prepubescent boy but must hide his true mental development.
Stars: Minami Takayama, Wakana Yamazaki, Hoang Khuyet, Akira Kamiya
Votes: 15,259
38.
The Animatrix (2003)
Episode:
Kid's Story
(2003)
Unrated | 15 min | Animation, Action, Sci-Fi
A teenager's dreams which conclude with him falling off a building, lead him to believe that the reality he lives in, may not be so real after all.
Director: Shin'ichirô Watanabe | Stars: Clayton Watson, Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, John DeMita
Votes: 7,247
39.
The Animatrix (2003)
Episode:
Matriculated
(2003)
Unrated | 16 min | Animation, Action, Sci-Fi
Using the Matrix, a resistance group attempts to recruit a sentinel to their cause.
Director: Peter Chung | Stars: Melinda Clarke, Dwight Schultz, Rodney Saulsberry, James Arnold Taylor
Votes: 4,867
40. Persepolis (2007)
PG-13 | 96 min | Animation, Biography, Drama
A precocious and outspoken Iranian girl grows up during the Islamic Revolution.
Directors: Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi | Stars: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Gena Rowlands, Danielle Darrieux
Votes: 100,163 | Gross: $4.45M
41. Tokyo Godfathers (2003)
PG-13 | 92 min | Animation, Adventure, Comedy
On Christmas Eve, three homeless people living on the streets of Tokyo discover a newborn baby among the trash and set out to find its parents.
Directors: Shôgo Furuya, Satoshi Kon | Stars: Tôru Emori, Yoshiaki Umegaki, Aya Okamoto, Shôzô Îzuka
Votes: 46,738 | Gross: $0.13M
42.
The Animatrix (2003)
Episode:
World Record
(2003)
Unrated | 10 min | Animation, Action, Sci-Fi
An athlete, Dan, breaks out of the matrix through a feat of strength and gets a brief glimse of the real world outside his existance.
Director: Takeshi Koike | Stars: Victor Williams, John Wesley, Alex Fernandez, Allison Smith
Votes: 5,326
44. Confessions (2010)
Not Rated | 106 min | Drama, Thriller
A psychological thriller of a grieving mother turned cold-blooded avenger with a twisty master plan to pay back those who were responsible for her daughter's death.
Director: Tetsuya Nakashima | Stars: Takako Matsu, Yoshino Kimura, Masaki Okada, Yukito Nishii
Votes: 42,060
45. Seven Samurai (1954)
Not Rated | 207 min | Action, Drama
Farmers from a village exploited by bandits hire a veteran samurai for protection, who gathers six other samurai to join him.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima, Yukiko Shimazaki
Votes: 366,775 | Gross: $0.27M
46. Not One Less (1999)
G | 106 min | Drama
In a remote mountain village, the teacher must leave for a month, and the mayor can find only a 13-year old girl, Wei Minzhi, to substitute. The teacher leaves one stick of chalk for each ... See full summary »
Director: Yimou Zhang | Stars: Minzhi Wei, Huike Zhang, Zhenda Tian, Enman Gao
Votes: 9,359 | Gross: $0.59M
47. Drunken Angel (1948)
Not Rated | 102 min | Crime, Drama, Romance
A drunken doctor with a hot temper and a violence-prone gangster with tuberculosis form a quicksilver bond.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Takashi Shimura, Toshirô Mifune, Reizaburô Yamamoto, Michiyo Kogure
Votes: 13,359
48. Red Beard (1965)
Not Rated | 185 min | Drama
In 19th-century Japan, a rough-tempered yet charitable town doctor trains a young intern.
Director: Akira Kurosawa | Stars: Toshirô Mifune, Yûzô Kayama, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Reiko Dan
Votes: 21,098
Tell Your Friends