Claude Maki

A Japanese Yakuza gangster's deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother's gang.

A deaf garbage collector happens upon a broken and discarded surfboard. The discovery plants in him dreams of becoming a surf champion. Encouraged by his also deaf girlfriend, he persists against all odds.

Former yakuza underling Kazuma Kiryū has recently been released from prison after a lengthy incarceration and is trying to piece his life together and distance himself from his yakuza past. Unfortunately, Kiryū's problems slowly escalate as he is pursued by a former associate, the baseball-bat-wielding psycho Gorō Majima, who has a grudge to settle with Kiryū.

The Isokaze, an Aegis-class escort vessel, sets sail on a routine training exercise, playing host to a platoon from the Fleet Training Group. No sooner is the Isokaze on open water, however, then the FTG reveal themselves to be terrorist stowaways who kill the ship's captain, send the rest of the crew overboard and take control of the vessel. The ship is carrying a secret biological weapon which the terrorists are now threatening to use to level Tokyo! Only a stowaway NCO, Sengoko (played by Sanada Hiroyuki from Ring and Twilight Samurai) is in a position to stop them - but does he really have what it takes to save the day? Playing like a cross between a sea-faring version of Top Gun and Die Hard, director Sakamoto Junji shows that it's not just Hollywood that can produce thrill-a-minute action spectaculars.

Two rogue vagrants make their living as "manure men", turning the waste from the tenement toilets into fertiliser sold to local farmers. Enter Okiku, the only daughter of a fallen samurai, and amongst the overflowing piles of excrement, a well-nourished love story unfolds.

Writer-director Gu Su-yeon's new film draws on his own semiautobiographical account of growing up as a delinquent zainichi Korean (Japanese-born, but of Korean ancestry) in the seaside city of Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi Prefecture, a working-class hellhole overflowing with sex and fury. Day after day, (fictional) Gu finds fresh foes and makes the local hoodlums want to kick his ass. While working multiple dead-end part-time jobs, he cruises around town on his scooter in search of gangland trouble: leaping across rooftops with irate hordes of punks in hot pursuit, running off with a fetching belle in a sailor suit, rescuing a schoolgirl from being gang-raped at a glue-sniffing orgy…

Based on a celebrated book by Kuniko Mukoda, this film directed by Yasuo Furuhata tells of a close friendship undone by love.

A cadre of backup dancers is left astray when their star singer moves on with her life and marriage. They each had their own ambition and hope, which subconsciously rested on the star power of the singer. When plan A does not work, they cling to plan B. When that does not work, in an act of desperation, they are assigned to plan C by their agency. A fight and unprofessionalism seems to put the Backdancers on permanent ice.