The best Kenji Mizuhashi’s movies

Three moments in Takaki's life: his relationship with Akari and their forced separation; his friendship with Kanae, who is secretly in love with him; the demands and disappointments of adulthood, an unhappy life in a cold city.

In this excursion into Tokyo's dark side, a sexually repressed woman finds liberation by turning tricks at night a sex worker is taken by surprise when her ex drops by and a sex blogger finds strange kinship with a loner.

A spell of time in the life of a family living in rural Tochigi prefecture, north of Tokyo. Though her husband is busy working at an office, Yoshiko is not an ordinary housewife, instead working on an animated film project at home. Uncle Ayano has recently arrived, looking to get his head together after living in Tokyo for several years. Meanwhile, Yoshiko's daughter Sachiko is mainly concerned with why she seems to be followed around everywhere by a giant version of herself.

In the immense city of Tokyo, the darkness of the afterlife lurks some of its inhabitants who are desperately trying to escape the sadness and isolation of the modern world.

The murder of a young girl leaves the inhabitants of a small Japanese village in shock. The body of Emili is found by four classmates with whom she was playing. The murder is never solved. Emili's mother, Asako, is torn by grief and puts a curse on the four girls when they claim not to remember the killer's face. Each of the girls, in their own way, will do penance for their silence.

Within days after the mysterious new student Kawagami Tomie joins a high school classroom, all hell literally breaks loose. Simple in-fighting between boys and girls over Tomie's oppressive shadow soon gives way to mind-breaking violence, culminating in a grizzly dissection that ultimately leads to suicide, insanity, and even more violence.

As a Labrador puppy, Quill is sent to live with a couple, Isamu and Mitsuko Nii, who work as volunteers, training guide dogs (seeing eye dogs). When he grows to an adult dog, he is taken to a guide dog school, by a friendly, yet firm trainer Satoru Tawada. Although Quill is a little slower than the other dogs at the school, he seems to have an unusual 'empathy' and remarkable patience with his trainers. Tawada decides that Quill would be the ideal guide dog for Mitsuru Watanabe, but Wanatabe, a lonely and ill-tempered middle aged man, isn't as enthusiastic - he would "would rather sleep than be dragged around by a dog.". From here, the story is narrated by Wanatabe's daughter, Mitsuko, and slowly, Wantanbe is rehabilitated, venturing into the outside world, and learning, not only to trust other humans, but the animal at his side who guides him.

Akira is widowed and left with a pre-teen stepson. Travelling with him to her late husband's hometown, she meets her odd father-in-law and yet decides to make a go of living and working there. She attends training and joins the railway company where her father-in-law works and her late man dreamt of ending up as a child.

Satsuki and Takuya are high school students who meet at kendo practice, where they bash one another with wooden swords. They begin an awkward romance, but Takuya soon reveals a masochistic side to his desires. He has been stealing Satsuki's soiled clothing and secretly surveilling her while imagining her subjugation of him. Disgusted, Satsuki rejects him -- but he persists, and she discovers her own pleasure in manipulating and humiliating him.

Suzume Katagura is an bored housewife, she spends her days doing chores and taking care of her husbands pet turtle. One day she sees an wanted ad for spies, hoping for some excitement she decides to give them a call.

When Kyoko was a child her stepfather loved her sexually. She took refuge in the world of fantasy and multiple personalities. Kyoko has three flat-mates now one of whom is a lesbian who is into Kyoko. In turn, Kyoko is beginning to be horny. Unfortunately, this is not helping Kyoko's precarious mental state.

Following some trauma in her past that has since been repressed, a young woman is trying to recover her memories with the help of a psychiatrist. During her hypnosis sessions, she repeats the name "Tomie" but is unable to recall where she knows it from. Meanwhile, a police detective is investigating a string of brutal murders, where he also runs across the name "Tomie." How are the two connected?

An outrageous collection of surreal, short attention span non-sequiturs largely revolving around Guitar Brother, his randy older sibling, and the pair's portly Caucasian brother.

When three older men buy a 17-year-old schoolgirl named Chikako for a year's-worth of sexual services -- her motivation, aside from money, is never explained -- the relationships among the men (whom she calls A. B and C) keep shifting in ways that redefine power and sex.

Aoi Kuruma (A Blue Automobile) focuses on such a character - a part-time DJ and record-store employee named Richio (Arata). With his spiky yellow hair, wrap-around shades and pale mask of a face, Richio would seem to be an icy moon circling the distant planet of his own regard. But as Okuhara shows us from the first scene, Richio has been traumatized by a boyhood horror - and still bears the physical scars on one eye, the emotional scars in dreams and visions he can neither escape nor explain away. The sunglasses and mask are there for a reason, the pain and rage are real. At the same time, he has a straightforwardness that verges on the cruel - but this is also one of his most appealing qualities.

Two children, each abandoned by their families, come together in the wake of the Sarin gas attack in Tokyo. Based on the true events of the deadly gas attacks perpetrated by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult on the Tokyo subway system.

High school student Erika is sick and tired of her weakness. By chance, Erika begins working at a cabaret night club. She eventually becomes the top lady in the night world and is known by her nickname Kurumi. In the process, she manipulates men and makes a lot of money from them. Deep down inside though, Erika suffers from loneliness and fear. A man then appears in front of her.

Set in the Phillipines, Takashi Miike’s “The Guys from Paradise” weaves together the stories of several real-life criminal cases. Young up-and-coming salaryman Kohei Hayakawa is sent to Paradise prison on false drug charges, and assumes his lawyers will clear up this misunderstanding fairly quickly. However, he soon comes to the realization that his innocence means less than how much bribe money he’s able to come up with for his release. It becomes apparent that Kohei is going to have to get to know his fellow inmates a little better, as he’s obviously in this situation for the long haul; but meeting a female inmate from a nearby jail certainly makes his transition to the criminal life a little easier to take.