Badge of the Night

A noir action whodunit with Kobayashi his usual jaunty self as the smart aleck private eye whose missing person search soon becomes a murder case. Nightclub-managing, drug-dealing gangster Uchida is the prime suspect in the case until he commits suicide. Kobayashi then discovers evidence that points to the doctor sibling of an innocent girl. The climax in a rural snowy locale is suspenseful and well-staged.

Intimidation

Koreyoshi Kurahara's ingeniously plotted, pocket-size noir concerns the intertwined fates of a desperate bank manager, blackmailed for book-cooking, and his resentful but timid underling, passed over for a promotion. The marvelously moody Intimidation is an elegantly stripped-down and carefully paced crime drama.

Pale Flower

A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs, while taking care of a thrill-seeking young woman, who got in bad company while gambling.

I Am Waiting

A former boxer gets involved with a club hostess trying to escape the clutches of her gangster employer.

Rusty Knife

Udaka is a new, post-war city where corruption has already taken hold. A persistent district attorney wants to arrest and convict Katsumata, a laughing, self-confident thug. The D.A. gets an anonymous letter about the suicide five years' before of a city council member. Evidence about the case leads the D.A. to Tachibana, struggling to go straight after involvement with the mob and a prison sentence for killing the man responsible for the rape and suicide of his fiancée. One of Tachibana's friends is Keiko, the daughter of the dead councilman and the ward of another powerful official. How do these stories connect?

Cruel Gun Story

Businessmen arrange the early release from prison of Togawa, serving time for taking revenge on the truck driver whose carelessness confined Togawa's sister, Rie, to a wheelchair. They want Togawa to hijack an armored truck loaded with 120 million yen; their leverage is to promise him money for surgery for Rie. Togawa consents and plans the heist with three others. The plan is solid, but it doesn't go smoothly. Togawa must improvise, there are traitors somewhere, and double-crosses mount. Can Togawa escape with enough money to help his sister and ensure a passage out of Japan?

OSARU-CHAN

When two brothers steal a valuable heirloom from an elderly Japanese woman, they unknowingly awaken her demigod son, Osaru, who does not take kindly to thieves.

ゆがんだ月

Seijun Suzuki: kabuki & yakuzas

Film director and screenwriter Seijun Suzuki (1923-2017), who in the sixties was the great innovator of Japanese cinema; and his collaborator, art director and screenwriter Takeo Kimura (1918-2010), recall how they made their great masterpieces about the Yakuza underworld for the Nikkatsu film company.

The Most Beautiful Night In The World

Betrayed and disgraced, big-city reporter Kazuya Mizuno is banished to a desk at Kaname's boring little town newspaper. But Kaname isn't as boring as it seems on the surface. Not with characters around like Shimeko, a girl genius with a childlike lack of propriety, and her ace fisherman/folk-singer dad. Or the overbearing and unpleasant local Shinto priest, a former Christian cultist. Or Endo, Kazuya's new colleague, a bitter drunk after his son's suicide. Or Kin, a former terrorist, now a hermit on his boat engaging in secret "research." Or perhaps most importantly Teruko, the hypnotically beautiful bar owner, the focus of all manner of innuendo and intrigue. Something mysterious, even mystical, is going on Kaname, and hapless Kazuya is about to be thrown into the middle of it.

Chained

An abused and bullied boy discovers and befriends a criminal chained inside an abandoned warehouse, but after a violent betrayal the abused becomes the abuser, putting both their lives in peril.

Redwood Massacre: Annihilation

A stranger obsessed with the unsolved Redwood murders, convinces a group of bereaved family members to venture into the wilderness in hope of proving the existence of the infamous killer. Their quest for truth sees a sinister turn of events, as the hunters become the hunted. A blood-soaked fight for survival ensues when they find that the tales told of the axe-wielding manic is very real.

On Floating Bodies

The film explores the spatial dimensions of a being who alternately enters and exits a fragmented world of projections where thoughts, memories and dreams blend into a strange loop of treacherous images. The film explores multiple layers of in-ness such as inclusion, depiction and representation.

Kidnapped Soul

It tells the story of a mother’s desperation to locate her child when the abductor dies before her child can be located. With time running out, the child’s mother seeks the assistance of a spiritual medium.

Shadows

With the mystical power to delve into people’s subconscious, Ching, a psychiatrist, discovers that a social worker is compelled by an inner voice to kill his family and commit suicide. Suspecting his former psychiatrist, Ching collaborates with a cop to investigate, which leads to a revelation from her own traumatized past, and casts a doubt over her motivation. In his first bigscreen adventure, Glenn Chan delivers an exceptional psychological crime thriller that explores the dichotomy of good and evil lurking in our shadows.