Masaki Kobayashi
Series
Criterion collection volume 302
Publisher
Janus Films
Pub. Date
[2005]
Language
日本語
Appears on list
Description
Peace in 17th-century Japan causes the Shogunate's breakup of warrior clans, throwing thousands of samurai out of work and into poverty. An honorable end to such fate under the samurai code is ritual suicide, or hara-kiri.
Series
Criterion collection volume 480
Publisher
The Criterion Collection
Pub. Date
[2021]
Language
日本語
Description
Tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet POW. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals an impediment rather than an advantage.
Series
Publisher
The Criterion Collection
Pub. Date
2009
Language
日本語
Description
Tells of the journey of the well-intentioned yet naive Kaji from labor camp supervisor to Imperial Army soldier to Soviet POW. Constantly trying to rise above a corrupt system, Kaji time and again finds his morals an impediment rather than an advantage.
5) Kwaidan
Series
Criterion collection volume 2540
Publisher
The Criterion Collection
Pub. Date
[2015]
Language
日本語
Description
After more than a decade of sober political dramas and social-minded periodpieces, the great Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this rapturously stylized quartet of ghost stories. Featuring colorfully surreal sets and luminous cinematography, these haunting tales of demonic comeuppance and spiritual trials, adapted from writer Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folklore, are existentially frightening and meticulously...
6) Dora-heita
Series
Publisher
AnimEigo
Pub. Date
2007
Language
日本語
Description
Koheita is a samurai with a reputation for debauchery, so his appointment as magistrate of the most corrupt township in Japan raises a few eyebrows on both sides of the law...but is everything as it seems?
7) Black river
Publisher
Criterion Collection
Pub. Date
2013
Language
日本語
Description
Examines the rampant moral corruption on and around U.S. military bases in Japan following World War II. Kobayashi spirals out from the story of a love triangle that develops between a good-natured student, his innocent girlfriend, and a coldhearted criminal to reveal a nation slowly succumbing to lawlessness and violence.
Publisher
The Criterion Collection
Pub. Date
c2013
Language
日本語
Description
On his deathbed, a wealthy businessman announces that his fortune is to be split equally among his three illegitimate children, whose whereabouts are unknown. A bevy of lawyers and associates begin machinations to procure the money for themselves, resorting to the use of impostors and blackmail. Yet all are outwitted by the cunning of the man's secretary, in this entertaining condemnation of unchecked greed.
Series
Criterion collection volume 90
Publisher
Criterion Collection
Pub. Date
c2000
Language
日本語
Description
Consists of four stories of the supernatural based on Japanese folk material. In The black hair, a poor young samurai leaves his first wife to marry a rich woman. When he is unhappy in his second marriage, he returns to his first wife, who at first appears unchanged from when he last saw her. In The woman of the snow, a woodcutter is spared by a mysterious ghost-like woman in the snow, but must promise never to tell anyone what he has seen. In Hoichi,...
Publisher
The Criterion Collection
Pub. Date
c2013
Language
日本語
Description
Among the first Japanese films to deal directly with the scars of World War II, this drama about a group of rank-and file Japanese soldiers jailed for crimes against humanity was adapted by Abe Kōbō from the diaries of real prisoners.
11) Kwaidan
Series
Criterion collection volume 90
Publisher
Criterion Collection
Pub. Date
[2015]
Language
日本語
Appears on these lists
Description
After more than a decade of sober political dramas and social-minded periodpieces, the great Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this rapturously stylized quartet of ghost stories. Featuring colorfully surreal sets and luminous cinematography, these haunting tales of demonic comeuppance and spiritual trials, adapted from writer Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folklore, are existentially frightening and meticulously...
Publisher
The Criterion Collection
Pub. Date
c2013
Language
日本語
Description
Thick-walled room. Among the first Japanese films to deal directly with the scars of World War II, this drama about a group of rank-and file Japanese soldiers jailed for crimes against humanity was adapted by Abe Kōbō from the diaries of real prisoners.
I will buy you. Masaki Kobayashi's pitiless take on Japan's professional baseball industry is unlike any other sports film ever made. A condemnation of the inhumanity bred by a mercenary, bribery-fueled...