Boys, Be Ambitious

Young Thugs: Innocent Blood follows three friends through their first year after leaving high school. Having robbed their teacher on their last day, Ryoko gets a job in a hair salon, while the two boys settle down into a career of enforcement and protection.

Nostalgia is Takashi Miike’s favorite film of his considerable body of work. Including biographical elements, Nostalgia centers around the home and school of a young boy, whose family mix the violent and dysfunctional with the comic and the loveable. Though containing elements of the sudden and shocking brutality that many associate with this director, Young Thugs – Nostalgia is more concerned with a child’s moment of leaving the internalized world of fantasy, and passing on eagerly to the next stage of life. A wonderful, touching, startling vision that is uniquely Miike’s.

A young man working as a first-class fashion designer decides to give up his business and return to his hometown after the sudden death of his father.

After returning from the Burmese front in WWII, a man finds trouble brewing back home.

Kanako returns from the USA to a troubled mother who witnessed a man leaving a murder scene and is consequently under persistent threat. For the time being.

After his girlfriend commits suicide, a man becomes embroiled in gang warfare attempting to obtain a gun in hopes to kill himself.

In 1974, during the height of the recession, a Japanese Korean family relocates to Tokyo to raise money and seek better treatment for their ill son.

A James Brown fanatic gangster decided to disband his own gang and see his long lost daughter before entering prison. Hoping to change his mind, his underlings planned to kidnap James Brown to convince him to perform privately for their boss.

Romeo, A.K.A. Kosuke Matsuyama, is a second-year high school student. A nice, normal, nonviolent type, he suddenly finds himself in the middle of a rampaging crowd of Korean boys, outraged by insults perpetrated by several of his idiotic class-mates on two Korean girls. He makes a narrow escape, but soon after, he and his best bud Yoshio are sent by their home-room teacher to invite the Korean students to a friendly soccer game as a way of restoring the peace.

The story of beautiful Christian nun, Kyoko who is the object of affection for two very different men - one the happy-go-lucky yakuza gangster, Haruhiko who is the next-in-line to takeover the ragtag "Tenryu Gumi" gang and the other bumbling police detective Kumashiro. The Tenryu Gumi is a collection of misfits and other troublemakers but are relatively peaceful due to their Christian beliefs. Their bitter rivals are the more traditional "Kuroiwa Gumi", a much more sadistic and violent group led by godfather Kuroiwa.

Assistant police inspector Aida is assigned to investigate the murder of a former gang member. When a justice ministry official is killed days later in a similar manner, he begins to suspect that something bigger is going on...

Kota hears about an impending 1.5 billion yen gold bar heist from his friend Kitagawa, a former college classmate, and decides to take part. The gold bar sits in the basement of the HQ of Sumita Bank. Helping Kota and Kitagawa are bank security employee Noda, a North Korean spy pretending to be a college student, Kitagawa's younger brother Haruki and a former elevator engineer. These 6 men are about to carry the boldest of schemes to bypass the bank's high-tech defense system.

An ardent culture-vulture youth, previously charged for the murder of a woman when he was young, plans to hold hostage a local bank.

Traditional Japanese pop singer Reiko (Muroi) decides to enter a well-known TV program for amateur singers along with a confused teenager (Ôtomo) and a 40-year-old father of four (Bito).

Following a stint in reform school, Ryu (Shinsuke Shimada) returns to his home, the Minami area of Osaka, accompanied by his new friend Ko (Takeshi Masu). He's greeted by his friends, Chabo (Ryusuke Matsumoto) and Ken (Bang-ho Cho). They seek to forge their own path through a multitude of rival gangs in Kita and Minami, including the Hokushin Alliance, backed by the yakuza, the Hope Association, and various other minor factions, including Zainichi Korean groups. What follows is a wild, fast-paced story of violence, revenge, betrayal, and discrimination, that never loses its sense of humor.

Pink film by Kazuyuki Izutsu.