Without further ado and in no particular order:
- 茶の味/The Taste Of Tea (2004)
- Quirky. No plot. It doesn’t need one. This movie is above and beyond plot. It just makes you happy. Plus it really lends itself to repeat viewings. Just watch it, man. I no I said “in no particular order”. I lied. There is a reason why this is at the top of the list.
- バトル・ロワイアル/BATTLE ROYALE (2000)
- A relentlessly bloody orgy of violence wrapped around an emotionally wrenching, thought-provoking story.
Wrapped around an enigma. Wrapped around a conundrum.This is the kind of movie that made Japan great 😀 .
- A relentlessly bloody orgy of violence wrapped around an emotionally wrenching, thought-provoking story.
- インストール/Install (2004)
- I wish 上戸彩 (UETO Aya) had been my neighborhood truant high school girl when I was ten years old 😉 … Fun story. Cool editing. Also pretty quirky, not 茶の味-level quirky, but pretty durn quirky. Based on a grown-up award-winning novel written by an actual high schooler (綿矢りさ/WATAYA Risa).
- 誰も知らない/Nobody Knows (2004)
- Based on a true story. Seriously messed up — it’s about child neglect — and interesting at the same time. Not a tearjerker, though: this film is better than that. Powerful stuff. Might make you want to go and thank your Mum for being such a nag 😛 .
- がんばっていきまっしょい/Give It All (1998)
So I had a crush on 田中麗奈 (TANAKA Rena) after seeing her in NIN×NIN 忍者ハットリくん THE MOVIE/Ninja Hattori-Kun: The Movie (because she has the same eyes as an RL girl I used to really like. Actually, now that I think about it, all my crushes seem to be on different versions of the same three people. Now you know).- Tanaka’s really young in this movie, though, so she definitely doesn’t look as, you know, “all there” as she does in Ninja; she just looks like a middle schooler who will one day grow up to be…Rena TANAKA 😉 . Which leaves the fun of the story, the verdant beauty of the Japanese countryside (Ehime Prefecture/愛媛県) and…whatever you call that feeling you get from watching people who sucked at something, get really good at it. The opposite of Schadenfreude.
- Yes, in terms of surface subject matter, it is a high school sports movie (with girls’ rowing as the sport in question), but the pacing and flow is such that it’s really more than that. It just feels like…an examination of the simple joy of life? At some level.
- AJATT history note: IIRC, this is the first domestic Japanese movie I watched completely unaided — no subs of any kind, no prior knowledge of the plot 😀 .
- デスノート/DEATH NOTE (2006)
- Requires no introduction. I never really got into the manga actually. Um…certain women I know are obsessed with the actor who plays “L”, 松山ケンイチ (MATSUYAMA Kenichi).
- にゃんこ THE MOVIE/Pussycat: The Movie (2006)
- More documentary than movie. Follows the actual lives of real cats. There are about 3 sequels out now, all equally good. Really enjoyable.
- 光の雨/The Rain of Light (2001)
- Based on a novel that’s based a true story, that of the brainwashing, interrogations, physical and psychological torture carried out by idealistic, ultra-left-wing student groups in Japan in the 1970s, specifically the so-called “United Red Army“. What’s jacked up is that these Communists (Maoists?) didn’t lynch random civilians or right-wingers, they lynched each other. For basically not being “communist enough”. They even sentenced each other to death, IIRC.
- Anyway, it’s really jacked up (psychologically, especially…you feel trapped right there with them in that mountain cabin) and won’t leave you feeling good. But at the same time, another level, it’s also powerful and inspiring. I finished the film grateful to be living in a happy time and place, free to live my life without some rear orifice of a human being telling me what to do or think.
- Other than the punch-in-the-crotch content, one interesting thing about the movie is its narrative structure: it’s a movie within a movie. Rather than portray the incident outright, the movie tells the story of a group of typical, apolitical, present-day college students creating a movie re-enacting the original 1971~1972 events. Yeah…weird, and you’d think it might fall apart, but it totally works. It’s also a good device for easing the pressure on the viewer at regular intervals, because it really is hard to watch psychological torture, actually.
- No, really.
- So let’s review: it’s a movie within a movie based on a novel based on real people and events.
- 呪怨/The Grudge (1999)
- Way too freaking scary. I can’t watch this kind of movie. But I’m glad it gets made? In a way 😛 …
- リング/The Ring (1998)
- Again, I cannot watch this type of movie. But as art? I guess…it’s worthy? As freaking emotionally scarring art. Who makes these movies?! How do they sleep?! 😀
Honorable mention (films I haven’t seen sat down and watched properly but that look good and I keep meaning to see from start to finish):
- UDON (2006)…my liking of this movie has very little to do with 小西真奈美 (KONISHI Manami)’s face, by the way. I just want to make that clear.
- クローズZERO/CROWS ZERO (2007): non-stop チンピラ (hooligan) action with great cinematography and bone-crushing sound effects…what’s not to like? 😛
- 本格科學冒険映畫20世紀少年/20th Century Boys: A Serious Science Fiction Adventure Movie, Be Arch (2008): One of the Japanese movie industry’s biggest ever projects, budgetwise. Flawed in places but a great effort and very watchable. I just haven’t watched all of it yet. Hmmm…I guess I sound snobbish. No, I mean…they did a good job; converting an intricate, sprawling, 22-volume manga into a coherent, enjoyable, well-paced, attention-holding movie is no joke, and they took their job seriously. This isn’t some fiasco like the Gantz anime 😛 1. From what I’ve seen of it (it’s actually a trilogy that spilled over into 2009), it’s a decent flick.
Well, that’s it for now. This list is highly subjective and these are just my personal favorites. I actually haven’t watched as many domestic Japanese movies (邦畫) as I could or “should” 😉 . Plus I know I’ve skipped over some really cool stuff that simply escaped my memory at the time of writing, so…yeah.
Anyway…
What have your favorites been? 🙂
Notes:
- Reconstruction of Gantz anime staff meeting: “Let’s take the best manga ever and make it CRAP!” ↩
Er, in my opinion the Death Note[book] movie is quite awful, especially compared to the manga. The Yagami character was turned into a common generic villain, thus ruining the whole dynamics of the story (which was not a “good vs. evil” battle but a “genius vs. genius” battle). And that was like the whole point of the thing. It’s as if someone made a movie Iliad where the Trojans are evil.
I’m going to recommend のだめカンタービレ the movie (comes in two parts). Unlike Gokusen the film (complete rubbish) it’s even better than the drama series, an impressive feat. The music really takes center stage in these films, which are something of a window into all that’s great about the Japanese take on life. You will smile.
www.toho.co.jp/lineup/nodame/
松本人志 and がきの使い fans should also check out しんぼる （２００９）. Highly metaphorical film which may strike the average viewer as completely and utterly random. It’s actually full of meaning though and definitely gives food for thought. It’s also quite funny, but just cool to see 松本さん in a different kind of role. Give it a chance to get going, it moves quite slowly at the start. 🙂
I watched “The Departed” back then when it won an Oscar for foreign film. I’ll give some of those movies a watch too, thanks for compiling this list ☺
My recommendation is 「ドロップ」 drop-movie.jp
The movie about a guy and his hard times in the pursuit of awesomeness. lol =)
成宮寛貴 and 水嶋ヒロ in one movie, what else do you need? 😀
i think yo mean おくりびつ “departures” , and ‘the departed’ i believe is the dicaprio movie?
おくりびと was a great movie!
Yeah, he probably meant Departures. Although The Departed was really good too (it did have DiCaprio in it).
How could you leave out 20th Century Boys from this list?
Shame on you.
Love those grudge movies(don’t know why). I like horror in general but I can never watch it more than once(feels weird watching it more than once). I guess that movie isn’t really the type of one, you’d watch over and over again.
You forgot Fireworks 花火. Best movie ever.
Oh god, you did NOT just remind me of The Ring ;___; I’ve watched that movie two and a half times and every time I’m reminded of it I’m just like “klsdjfklsjdafkldsj cryyyyy” It is scary as hell man.
And aaauuuuggghhh the Grudge, never saw the movie but I’ve been watching a lets play of the video games with my friends. SCARY AS HELL. Oh god. It wasn’t as bad when the guy playing it was drunk, but still ;_; What made it worse was that when I called home to get a ride, when my brother answered the phone it made the noise that the girl makes sooooobbbb.
‘Scuze me while I go watch one of the happy movies on here.
Or maybe I’ll watch ネコナデ again. That’s one of my favourite movies. It’s about a business man who adopts a kitten but keeps it hidden from his family. It’s so cute >w< They also made a TV series based on it. I was following it for a while on stream before the channel I was watching it on stopped working ;_;
studio ghibli animations, goemon, ooku:the inner chambers and all those mentioned above 😉
Good list, Kahtz. I cannot recommend ‘Nobody Knows’ enough. It is powerful and tragic.
Others I like are (some may not be 1998-2008 :P):
リリィシュシュのすべて: Stars Hayato Ichihara in his first movie. Its timeline is [intentionally] all over the place but its meaning and themes are simple, yet deep. (In fact, a few of the teen actors in this have gone on to be quite successful)
Happy Flight: Light hearted comedy set at an airport/flight during a storm where there’s a problem with the plane. Just fun to watch without being to weird, quirky or out there (if you’re not into that sort of thing).
蛇にピアス: Polarizing film which some people love, some people hate about a love triangle between 3 misfits obsessed with tattoos and piercings(also, best viewed by those over 18).
豚がいた教室： A story about a primary school teacher who lets his class take care of a pig for 12 months with the ultimate goal being to kill and eat the pig. The scenes of little children crying over whether or not they want to when the time comes are heart breaking and I had to remind myself that they were acting more than once.
Parade: The story of four housemates dealing with the sudden, uninvited arrival of a 5th housemate, whom they suspect is associated with a spate of recent attacks on women in the neighborhood. Stars the guy who played Light from Death Note.
I could go on for days, but I shall hold back.
オーディション is a fantastic film. Not for the faint of heart, though. And while it isn’t before 2008, the film adaption of Gantz is great.
That’s a terrible list
I can name many Japanese films that are much better than the ones listed.
This comment reads a bit harsh, Jason. Perhaps you could post your list of favorite list of movies without the negative comments.
… and yet you completely failed to.
Bad troll is bad.
Jason it seems has somehow gotten all the way to this point in his life without ever discovering the concept of an opinion.
If you haven’t yet seen the Death Note anime, I definitely recommend.
Great voice acting, great animation; In my opinion it was awesome.
It makes the movie not even worth watching, although you might wanna check out Death Note the Movie 3. That one actually has an okay plot.
東京ソーナータ (2008) its definitely not a ‘feel good movie’ so nobody would watch it more than once, but is worth a look. I thought it was really well made and powerful… gritty and contemporary drama at its best!
Anyone else seen Love Exposure? It won a bunch of international film awards, so I decided to give it a whirl.
10/10 for being the most crazy-messed up-weird-perverted-wrong-disturbing film of the century.
Clocking in at just under four hours of sweet J immersion–excellent! I love Sono’s work; before this movie, I was obsessed with 紀子の食卓 「Noriko’s Dinner Table」, though he is perhaps best known for directing 自殺サークル「Suicide Club」. Sono is a master of crafting movies charged with scathing social critiques that feature cults, teen angst, self-isolation, and dysfunctional families–Noriko’s Dinner Table even presents the spectacle of a family rental business. Yeah. Wow.
“self-isolation”
Whoops, I meant to say isolation from oneself.
And it’s crazy how much you can get out of both Noriko’s Dinner Table and Suicide Club. I loved the social satire of Suicide Club, but Noriko’s Dinner Table left me with so much to think about. It’s my favorite Japanese movie.
That movie was a masterpiece. And I’m being 100% serious when I say that. It was absolutely brilliant.
Love Exposure fits into so many genres. I can’t recommend it enough to anyone who’s into anything Japanese. It’s unlike everything I’ve ever seen. I think Sono Shion is a genius.
I remember when I was watching The Grudge with some friends and was trying to find every possible excuse to go away…Way to be looked down upon.
However, I’d suggest “コアラ課長”, no movie cracked me up like that for years. And if you have nothing better to do, you might also find some deep morals about japanese society in there.
Nobody Knows is such a great movie… so unique! I’ve probably watched it a hundred times 🙂
My favourite movie, definitely.
Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles, directed by Zhang Yimou and starring TAKAKURA Ken, follows a Japanese man’s journey into rural Yunnan, China as he tries to complete his dying son’s last project–filming a local cultural dance. It’s not a domestic Japanese movie but is still half in Japanese, half in Mandarin Chinese! In particular, those “laddering” between those two languages might want to have a look at it.
The story sounds really interesting, I need to check it out.
MOONCHILD is pretty good. Vampire movie starring Hyde and Gackt. It’s set in a dystopian city somewhere in south east asia which has a large Japanese refugee population. The cool thing about this movie is you get people talking to each other in Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese.
As long as it’s not like Twilight 2, a vampire movie should be pretty cool. Thanks.
タンポポ is an impressive and really tasty-sensual movie, i would really recommend it. i guess it’s pretty unknown, but at the same time wonderfully immersing and funny!
愛のむきだし “love exposure” is a four-hour-orgy of incredible and delightful weirdness. inclusive surreal bible citations and sasori-against-all-swordfights and stuff, but only to watch with a good pal, cause it’s incredibly time- and energy consuming. i’ve enjoyed it anyways (with subs, though)
i’ll be taking this occasion to thank you for this amazing site, it’s incredibly helpful and motivating. on a side note, not only can you expand your method to all languages, but also medicine study ; )
When I lived in Japan I found a lot of Japanese home grown stuff pretty weak, with the exception of horror (pant-wettingly scary) and a few films here and there. I actually found myself watching more dubbed US/UK films than anything else.
Saying that, for gripping psychological drama/horror that buzzes around in your head for days afterwards, I recommend pretty much everything by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. ‘Pulse’, ‘Cure’, ‘Doppleganger’ and ‘Tokyo Sonata’ spring to mind.
I avoided watching Akira Kurosawa films for a long time because everyone was always banging on about him, but his films rock. Yojinbo and Rashimon are awesome.
Only one Takeshi Kitano flick?
I love movie talk! Thanks, Khatz.
I really like 岩井 俊二(Iwai Shunji)’s flicks, especially 花とアリス (HanaとAlice). It’s a well written story about two high school friends.
There’s also 歩く、人, which stars 緒形拳 (Agata Ken), who was, until his death in 2008, the master of all things. So it’s worthwhile checking out.
Very nice of you guys to provide the names of movies without links… /s
Use mysoju.com many of them will be on there.
Thx.
Though I ment the links to description – so that I could decide what to watch.
I know mysoju. Just for you, in case you might be interested in this source: letswatchsomething . com for streaming, tehparadox . com (needs free registartion) for downloads (though mostly western movies).
Thanks a lot for the free resource!
I love Cyborg SHE the only romantic comedy I’ve ever enjoyed
For anyone reading these comments looking for more movies I would recommend 東京ゾンビー. It is a Asano Tadanobu film, very funny. Japanese take on Shaun of the Dead?
He’s awesome! He stars with Vinnie Jones in Survival Style 5+ (my all-time favorite Japanese movie, I f***n love it!) and in the weirdest film I’ve ever watch – the Funky Forrest (know this?).
Kamikaze Girls (下妻物語) is probably worth mentioning too (just watch a trailer).
Oh, and Still Walking (歩いても 歩いても) with Hiroshi Abe.
Damn…. anybody aware of a place in London where one could borrow or watch some Jp movies? *Waaaaaaaant!*
Don’t forget Hula Girls. It’s way better than you think. Won the Japanese Academy Award equivalent. You’ll love it.
+1 for Crows Zero (both 1 and 2). Really awesome movies!
Departures was also really good, one of my favorite Japanese movies.
The Taste of Tea was a pretty awesome movie. Very quirky, but I liked it a lot.
Shouldn’t the grudge and stuff like that be on there? I know there’s a Japanese version of most horror movies
おくりびと was a fantastic film. I definitely recommend it.
I also enjoyed Swing Girls (2004) and Linda Linda Linda (2005).
Outside of this timeframe, I’d recommend ハウス. It’s a horror film from the 70’s, but it’s unlike any horror film I’d ever seen. It’s just a weird, amazing movie.
Awesome list. I will definitely be watching 茶の味 tonight. However, I’d like to recommend あの夏、いちばん静かな海(A Scene at the Sea) directed by Takeshi Kitano. Have you seen it?
I like the movie the blue light
Hey Khatz,
I’m looking for some new podcasts. Any chance in an article about your top 10 Japanese podcasts?
I recommend the Movie 仄暗い水の底から (English: Dark Water), released in 2002. I’d avoid the 2005 American remake, I find the Original Japanese better 😛
ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/仄暗い水の底から