Art I adore...
by sophiaxic-38358 | created - 21 Apr 2017 | updated - 04 Apr 2018 | PublicOshima/Suzuki/Imamura/Fukusaku/Miike/Sono
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1. Love & Peace (2015)
117 min | Comedy, Drama, Musical
Bullied and diminished by his fellow employees, demure and bashful Ryoichi Suzuki finds support in an unusual friendship with a turtle. Together they will share many adventures and finally conquer the world.
Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Hiroki Hasegawa, Kumiko Asô, Motoki Fukami, Suidôbashi Hakase
Votes: 1,307
fun, super creative, tragic, melancholic, destructive and finally redemptative.. Love & Peace is completely magical. I need not say I adore Sono.
2. Tokyo Tribe (2014)
R | 116 min | Action, Musical
In an alternate Japan, territorial street gangs form opposing factions collectively known as the Tokyo Tribes. Merra, leader of the Wu-Ronz tribe of Bukuro crosses the line to conquer all of Tokyo. The war begins.
Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Ryohei Suzuki, Young Dais, Nana Seino, Shunsuke Daitô
Votes: 3,647
Hip hop and yakuza and kung fu and anime and musical and a beatboxing maid and MERRA and TERA.
3. Pistol Opera (2001)
Not Rated | 112 min | Crime, Action, Drama
The No. 3 assassin of Japan is given the chance to usurp No. 1 and take their place.
Director: Seijun Suzuki | Stars: Makiko Esumi, Sayoko Yamaguchi, Hanae Kan, Masatoshi Nagase
Votes: 1,518
Beautiful imagery, really atypical and improvisatory dialogue, wondrous costume, great use of symbolism and magical use of colour - the plot is also really loose yet framed throughout, and there is some great comedy thrown in as well. A few moments of funny yet poor cgi aside I really can't recommend 'Pistol Opera' enough. Actually I like the poor cg....
4. Heroic Purgatory (1970)
Not Rated | 118 min | Drama, Fantasy
An engineer's wife returns home with a lost teenager. A man posing as her dad tries to get her back, causing the engineer to recall his youth as a revolutionary, obscured by dreamlike disruptions of time and space, fantasy and reality.
Director: Yoshishige Yoshida | Stars: Mariko Okada, Kaizo Kamoda, Kazumi Tsutsui, Naho Kimura
Votes: 835
An anarchic, destructive, nihilistic collage which leaves just enough clues to the puzzle to construct an infinite range of possibilities. The links are every bit as thematic as they are chronologic... if there even is a chronology to this film. I came up with my own theory as to the events and there were 7 different planes of reality to it. That is how far down the rabbit hole this film can drag you. Visually inspired, completely oblique.. an example of art that you can only engage with clinically, without passivity.
5. Serial Experiments Lain (1998)
TV-14 | 316 min | Animation, Drama, Horror
Strange things start happening when a withdrawn girl named Lain becomes obsessed with an interconnected virtual realm known as "The Wired".
Stars: Kaori Shimizu, Bridget Hoffman, Dan Lorge, Randy McPherson
Votes: 17,182
I first discovered SEL when I was at college and safe to say it was monumental; to date I believe the first episode is one of the most abstract, complex yet stationary and overwhelmingly oblique things I have seen on the television, with a really powerful and empty art style, merging with surreal abstracts.As soon as I saw the first episode I was in love. I was in love from the first scene aka. Chisa's suicide. Of course this is before we even get into the implementation of philosphy and the complexity and abstraction of the story, which, along with the visuals and the singular/enigmatic Lain, elevates the series even further into the sky.
6. Ichi the Killer (2001)
R | 129 min | Action, Crime, Drama
As sadomasochistic yakuza enforcer Kakihara searches for his missing boss he comes across Ichi, a repressed and psychotic killer who may be able to inflict levels of pain that Kakihara has only dreamed of achieving.
Director: Takashi Miike | Stars: Tadanobu Asano, Nao Ômori, Shin'ya Tsukamoto, Paulyn Sun
Votes: 60,034 | Gross: $0.02M
When you get the ultimate masochist and ultimate sadist in a movie; you get Ichi the Killer. 2 hours of completely depraved, rapid fire, cartoonish, absurd mayhem ....
7. House (1977)
Not Rated | 88 min | Comedy, Horror
A schoolgirl and six of her classmates travel to her aunt's country home, which turns out to be haunted.
Director: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi | Stars: Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ôba, Ai Matsubara
Votes: 33,710
Really playful and absurd, with a wondrous array of horrors and a fun cast of characters. So creative in it's use of animation and edits. I also love cats.... and watermelon.
8. Dead or Alive (1999)
R | 105 min | Action, Crime, Drama
A yakuza of Chinese descent and a Japanese cop each wage their own war against the Japanese mafia. But they are destined to meet. Their encounter will change the world.
Director: Takashi Miike | Stars: Shô Aikawa, Riki Takeuchi, Renji Ishibashi, Hitoshi Ozawa
Votes: 8,559 | Gross: $0.00M
comic, graphic, hyperactive and absurd gangster classic.
9. A Page of Madness (1926)
Not Rated | 70 min | Drama, Horror, Thriller
A man takes a job at an asylum with hopes of freeing his imprisoned wife.
Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa | Stars: Masuo Inoue, Ayako Iijima, Yoshie Nakagawa, Hiroshi Nemoto
Votes: 4,570
This was what got me into art so I adore it, I love the sequences with the free jazz drumming coinciding with dance and the riot sequence, I love the hissing sounds of the opening coincided with watery visuals, I love the woodwind sounds and ghostly choir and the shadows within the mental asylum. The plot is highly abstract, yet one can determine narrative, and the film is only short as some of it is lost. The visuals are exquisite throughout and the atmosphere it evokes is entrancing. A+
10. Grass Labyrinth (1979)
40 min | Short, Fantasy, Romance
A young man, haunted by his past, travels the land in search of the lyrics to a lullaby his mother used to sing to him.
Director: Shûji Terayama | Stars: Hiroshi Mikami, Takeshi Wakamatsu, Keiko Niitaka, Yasumi Nakasuji
Votes: 744
Shuji Terayama. This is a quite good introduction to his style as it's only 40 minutes long.
11. Cold Fish (2010)
Not Rated | 146 min | Crime, Drama, Horror
The lives of a bored suburban couple are changed forever when a seemingly nice old man gives their daughter a job at his fish store, and soon his gruesome hobbies are brought to light.
Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Mitsuru Fukikoshi, Denden, Asuka Kurosawa, Megumi Kagurazaka
Votes: 14,516
brutal, disarming and overwhelming Murata's character is straight up amazing from start to finish in terms of acting, dialogue and his presence... some of the dialogue is truly sublime and as with Guilty of Romance Sono is dealing with some very interesting and rewarding themes and his symbolism is up there with Himizu as Sono's most rewarding. I love the use of slight comedic touches which somehow manages to make the film even more bleak. An inspirational work of art, as to be expected...
12. Himizu (2011)
129 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
After two teenagers from abusive households befriend each other, their lives take a dark adventure into existentialism, despair, and human frailty.
Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Shôta Sometani, Fumi Nikaidô, Tetsu Watanabe, Mitsuru Fukikoshi
Votes: 4,704
Actual title is Himizu. Not only does this film have an ingenious re-contextualization of the poem 'Ballade' but, as with Guilty of Romance, the narrative is overlayed with the poems overall theme, this time of identity. In this respect Sono is using the poem in a very clever way, not merely to illustrate, but to illuminate a theme otherwise not available to him through the character's gradual recognition of this poem and it's meaning to him/her internally... to an extent, as with guilty of romance, it can be argued the characters themselves become intertwined and interconnected with the poem in such a way it is hard to separate them out as entities. The young leads are both ferociously abused, the use of the metaphorical and physical gallows the parents are building for their daughter is simply ingenious. There are again slight dark comedic touches, but all shattered with this emotional intensity and bleakness. This film highlights one of my favourite aspects to Sono's art the way Sono's characters repeat and repeat dialogue with increasing and increasing alarm, as if a primal response to a chaotic or evolutionary circumstance, also adore the use of sound design to create this overwhelming crescendo of noise, the use of handheld cameras to create a sense of both physical and emotional brutality and the constant reference to 3/11 and natural disaster. For all the above Himizu is simply astounding.
13. 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
Entrancing, fuses eroticism and sex with such tension, you can cut this film on a knife edge. Beautifully shot, the attention to detail in colours and the symbolism of that is done magnificently, as a period piece it's astounding and as a narrative, it's gradual spiral, descent and this disquieting almost hypnotically tense feeling, and then you have the kind of depth from a film such as this.. seminal. The characters and the tragedy of this film is art indeed.
14. Suicide Club (2001)
R | 99 min | Crime, Drama, Horror
A detective is trying to find the cause of a string of suicides.
Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Ryo Ishibashi, Masatoshi Nagase, Mai Hosho, Tamao Satô
Votes: 22,213
One of Sono's most confounding films, plays out like a rough patchwork or collage of scenes stiched together loosely, just holding together just enough to reveal a scrappy narrative hidden within the twirling blood soaked kaleidoscope...
15. Noriko's Dinner Table (2005)
Not Rated | 159 min | Drama, Horror
A teenager called Noriko Shimabara runs away from her family in Tokoyama, to meet Kumiko, the leader of an Internet BBS, Haikyo.com. She becomes involved with Kumiko's "family circle", ... See full summary »
Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Kazue Fukiishi, Tsugumi, Yuriko Yoshitaka, Shirô Namiki
Votes: 4,991
I felt such a strong relation to the teenagers and their parents at the same time. In fact, Sono's characters are frequently the only characters in films I can see transcend being characters on a screen for me, they feel as though they represent something more real, as do the films themselves .. Dialogue is at times really poetic and clever literately speaking, at times this film is so tragic and emotionally brutal; always a pleasure. I adore Ueno Station 54! Characters are typically developed in such a specific way.
16. Guilty of Romance (2011)
144 min | Drama, Horror, Romance
A grisly murder occurs in Maruyama-cho, Shibuya, Tokyo - a love hotel district - a woman was found dead in a derelict apartment. Kazuko (Miki Mizuno) is a police officer called to ... See full summary »
Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Miki Mizuno, Makoto Togashi, Megumi Kagurazaka, Kazuya Kojima
Votes: 5,835
To explain this film properly I would have to state several plot details, which I won't do, but I will say that every time I see it I fall more in love and I think Mitsuko is an amazing character, her introduction and transformation are magical.
17. Strange Circus (2005)
Unrated | 108 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
The erotic novelist Taeko is writing a morbid story of a family destroyed by incest, murder and abuse. Her assistant, Yuji, sets on a mission to uncover the reality of this story, but the reality might be too much to bear.
Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Masumi Miyazaki, Issei Ishida, Rie Kuwana, Seiko Iwaidô
Votes: 6,255
Perverted, sono at his most messed up. Overall a really almost gothic film, the use of Camille Saint-Saen's 'The Swan' gave the film a exquisitely delicate and elegant yet somber tone, sustained throughout, even despite the extremity one senses a fragility to this film. Disturbing yet obtusely comic. Strange Circus is Sono's bizarre psycho-sexual guide through the grotesque hall of mirrors, death's circus is a swinging guillotine. Yet, 'reality is the mystery'.
18. Tag (2015)
85 min | Action, Drama, Fantasy
A girl's life cascades into chaos as everyone around her suffers a gruesome fate while she becomes less certain of who she is and her once-once normal.
Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Reina Triendl, Mariko Shinoda, Erina Mano, Yuki Sakurai
Votes: 8,089
"Life is surreal. " Strange film this, one of Sono's weaker efforts. This is his highest and most visually... redundant production I think and one of his more popular films of late even so 'Tag' is still one playful adrenaline smash with all it's abrasive cut up form of surrealism dueling with wider philosophical themes. I wish Sono would have stuck to his more distinctive music, while I don't mind Mono; it's more that Mono don't give the film a distinctive edge audibly; not like the baroque of Guilty of Romance providing a tragic tone, the rock and roll of 'Love and Peace' which is precisely the entire backbone of the hyperactive film, and the low pitch drones of 'Himizu' which amplify the alienation and tension superbly... in contrast Tag, in this regard, just evokes nothing seminal throughout, it is passive, as oppose to Sono's normally central emphasis upon music.. Either way Tag still is a complex and challenging film which still more than lives up to Sono's glowing standards.
19. Love Exposure (2008)
Unrated | 237 min | Action, Comedy, Drama
A bizarre love triangle forms between a young Catholic upskirt photographer, a misandric girl and a manipulative cultist.
Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Takahiro Nishijima, Hikari Mitsushima, Sakura Andô, Yutaka Shimizu
Votes: 15,896
I was watching this for the third time and I noticed all the nuance and detail into Yoko's character and her chronology. I thought to myself then that I would never ever come up with a single character of Yoko's complexity, though I could and have spent ages trying.
20. Exte: Hair Extensions (2007)
R | 108 min | Comedy, Horror
About hair extensions that attack the women that wear them.
Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Chiaki Kuriyama, Megumi Satô, Tsugumi, Eri Machimoto
Votes: 3,352
What I considered would be a stupid satire film managed to contain one of the greatest openings I've seen to a film; the tour of the city and work in first person dialogue whilst having second and third person interjections but it didn't end there because this film has some real potency and depth of emotion.
21. The Devil (1972)
Not Rated | 125 min | Drama, Horror
During the Prussian army's invasion to Poland in 1793, a young Polish nobleman, Jakub is saved from the imprisonment by a stranger who wants in return to obtain a list of his fellow ... See full summary »
Director: Andrzej Zulawski | Stars: Leszek Teleszynski, Wojciech Pszoniak, Malgorzata Braunek, Iga Mayr
Votes: 2,846
Diabel is never anything less than ugly, but elevated to such an extremity and combined with a sad, sustained tension and a vicious hallucinatory and almost surreal flair. Astounding.
22. 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: 635,509 | Gross: $0.71M
Bleak and grim korean thrillers are a personal favourite for me, the claustrophobia, relentless smashing, fast pace and vicious ending. Yeah Oldboy kills it.
23. Spirited Away (2001)
PG | 125 min | Animation, Adventure, Family
During her family's move to the suburbs, a sullen 10-year-old girl wanders into a world ruled by gods, witches and spirits, and where humans are changed into beasts.
Director: Hayao Miyazaki | Stars: Daveigh Chase, Suzanne Pleshette, Miyu Irino, Rumi Hiiragi
Votes: 848,924 | Gross: $10.06M
seemingly unending in it's imagination and creative power.
24. Cruel Story of Youth (1960)
Not Rated | 96 min | Crime, Drama
A harsh young man seduces a freeloading young woman and eventually takes advantage of her knack for hitch-hiking to rob middle-class men.
Director: Nagisa Ôshima | Stars: Miyuki Kuwano, Yûsuke Kawazu, Yoshiko Kuga, Fumio Watanabe
Votes: 2,535
25. Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets (1971)
137 min | Drama, Music
An angst-ridden teen dealing with his dysfunctional family hits the streets. The story is inter-cut with various psychedelic, energetic vignettes.
Director: Shûji Terayama | Stars: Eimei Sasaki, Masahiro Saito, Yukiko Kobayashi, Fudeko Tanaka
Votes: 2,295
26. The Pleasures of the Flesh (1965)
104 min | Crime, Drama
After Atsushi commits murder, he is blackmailed into keeping a suitcase full of embezzled money. What follows is a descent into lustful, reckless actions and regret.
Director: Nagisa Ôshima | Stars: Katsuo Nakamura, Mariko Kaga, Yumiko Nogawa, Masako Yagi
Votes: 1,711
27. Night and Fog in Japan (1960)
107 min | Drama
Long takes and a highly theatrical visual approach combine to form a tense and confrontational look at the decline of a socialist student activists' movement in Japan.
Director: Nagisa Ôshima | Stars: Miyuki Kuwano, Fumio Watanabe, Masahiko Tsugawa, Hiroshi Akutagawa
Votes: 854
28. The Sandglass (1973)
124 min | Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Józef visits his dying father at a remote mental institution, where time itself doesn't seem to exist, and the line between dreams and memories becomes indistinguishable.
Director: Wojciech Has | Stars: Jan Nowicki, Tadeusz Kondrat, Irena Orska, Halina Kowalska
Votes: 4,964
29. Tokyo Drifter (1966)
Not Rated | 82 min | Action, Crime
After his gang disbands, a yakuza enforcer looks forward to life outside of organized crime but soon must become a drifter after his old rivals attempt to assassinate him.
Director: Seijun Suzuki | Stars: Tetsuya Watari, Chieko Matsubara, Hideaki Nitani, Tamio Kawaji
Votes: 9,708
30. Fudoh: The New Generation (1996)
98 min | Action, Comedy, Crime
In order to settle a business dispute, a mob leader murders one of his own teenage sons. The surviving son vows to avenge his brother's death, and organizes his own gang of teenage killers to destroy his father's organization.
Director: Takashi Miike | Stars: Shôsuke Tanihara, Miho Nomoto, Tamaki Kenmochi, Marie Jinno
Votes: 3,833
31. Boy (1969)
97 min | Drama
A young boy reluctantly aids his swindling father in a threatening scam.
Director: Nagisa Ôshima | Stars: Fumio Watanabe, Akiko Koyama, Tetsuo Abe, Tsuyoshi Kinoshita
Votes: 1,884
32. Branded to Kill (1967)
Not Rated | 91 min | Action, Crime, Drama
After a botched assignment, a rice-fetishizing hitman finds himself in conflict with his organization, and one mysterious, dangerous fellow-hitman in particular.
Director: Seijun Suzuki | Stars: Jô Shishido, Mariko Ogawa, Annu Mari, Kôji Nanbara
Votes: 10,208
33. Why Don't You Play in Hell? (2013)
Not Rated | 129 min | Action, Comedy, Horror
A renegade film crew becomes embroiled with a yakuza clan feud.
Director: Sion Sono | Stars: Jun Kunimura, Fumi Nikaidô, Shin'ichi Tsutsumi, Hiroki Hasegawa
Votes: 8,982 | Gross: $0.03M
34. The Sun's Burial (1960)
87 min | Crime, Drama
In Osaka's slum, capricious folks without futures engage in pilfering, assault and robbery, prostitution, and the trading of ID cards and blood.
Director: Nagisa Ôshima | Stars: Kayoko Honoo, Kôji Nakahara, Masahiko Tsugawa, Fumio Watanabe
Votes: 1,005
35. Eros + Massacre (1969)
Not Rated | 216 min | Biography, Drama
Two interwoven stories. The first is a biography of anarchist Sakae Osugi which follows his relationship with three women in the 1920s. The second centers around two 1960s students researching Osugi's theories.
Director: Yoshishige Yoshida | Stars: Mariko Okada, Toshiyuki Hosokawa, Yûko Kusunoki, Kazuko Inano
Votes: 2,322
36. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
PG | 117 min | Animation, Adventure, Sci-Fi
Warrior and pacifist Princess Nausicaä desperately struggles to prevent two warring nations from destroying themselves and their dying planet.
Director: Hayao Miyazaki | Stars: Sumi Shimamoto, Mahito Tsujimura, Hisako Kyôda, Gorô Naya
Votes: 182,461 | Gross: $0.50M
37. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (1983)
104 min | Romance, Sci-Fi
A high-school girl acquires the ability to time travel.
Director: Nobuhiko Ôbayashi | Stars: Tomoyo Harada, Ryôichi Takayanagi, Toshinori Omi, Toshie Negishi
Votes: 950
38. Violence at Noon (1966)
99 min | Crime, Drama
Two young women must come to terms with the fact that a man they're deeply linked to is a murdering rapist.
Director: Nagisa Ôshima | Stars: Saeda Kawaguchi, Akiko Koyama, Kei Satô, Rokkô Toura
Votes: 1,192
39. Operetta tanuki goten (2005)
111 min | Comedy, Fantasy, Musical
Amechiyo (The banished prince) falls in love with Tanukihime (a princess of raccoon dog disguised to human). This is an Operetta which includes comedy, singing and dancing, and a love story.
Director: Seijun Suzuki | Stars: Ziyi Zhang, Joe Odagiri, Hiroko Yakushimaru, Mikijirô Hira
Votes: 817
40. Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (1969)
96 min | Comedy, Drama
Story of a bookstore thief named Birdey who is led through various adventures in Tokyo's Shinjuku district by salesgirl Umeko.
Director: Nagisa Ôshima | Stars: Tadanori Yokoo, Rie Yokoyama, Moichi Tanabe, Tetsu Takahashi
Votes: 835
41. Gate of Hell (1953)
Not Rated | 89 min | Drama, History
A samurai pursues a married lady-in-waiting.
Director: Teinosuke Kinugasa | Stars: Machiko Kyô, Kazuo Hasegawa, Isao Yamagata, Yatarô Kurokawa
Votes: 4,273
42. My Neighbor Totoro (1988)
G | 86 min | Animation, Comedy, Family
When two girls move to the country to be near their ailing mother, they have adventures with the wondrous forest spirits who live nearby.
Director: Hayao Miyazaki | Stars: Hitoshi Takagi, Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, Shigesato Itoi
Votes: 380,044 | Gross: $1.11M
43. Youth of the Beast (1963)
Not Rated | 92 min | Action, Crime, Mystery
A violent thug plays opposing yakuza bosses against each other.
Director: Seijun Suzuki | Stars: Jô Shishido, Misako Watanabe, Tamio Kawaji, Minako Katsuki
Votes: 3,913
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