Ichiko bakes a cake for an end-of-year party with her friends. In the depths of winter, making mochi and curry keeps the people of Komori warm. Later, spring brings thoughts of her absent mother as well as rice planting and sakura, and she begins to think of leaving Komori behind again.
Fleeing heartbreak in the big city, Ichiko returns to Komori, her rural hometown. She battles summer's rain and humidity, bakes her own bread, grows hothouse tomatoes and tills the fields. During autumn, the time for pickling and preserving fish and sweet potatoes, Ichiko begins reaping rice and recalls her departure five years before.
A young woman leaves the city to return to her hometown in the countryside. Seeking to escape the hustle and bustle of the city, she becomes self-sufficient in a bid to reconnect with nature.
Set in the South just after the US Civil War, Laurel Sommersby is just managing to work the farm without her husband, believed killed in battle. By all accounts, Jack Sommersby was not a pleasant man, thus when he suddenly returns, Laurel has mixed emotions. It appears that Jack has changed a great deal, leading some people to believe that this is not actually Jack but an imposter. Laurel herself is unsure, but willing to take the man into her home, and perhaps later into her heart.
The master of a dorayaki pastry store hires a 76-year-old woman whose talents attract customers from all over. But she's hiding a troubling secret. Life's joys are found in the little details, and no matter what may be weighing you down, everyone loves a good pastry.
In Japan in the year 1600, at the dawn of a century-defining civil war, Lord Yoshii Toranaga is fighting for his life as his enemies on the Council of Regents unite against him, when a mysterious European ship is found marooned in a nearby fishing village.
WWII American Army Medic Desmond T. Doss, who served during the Battle of Okinawa, refuses to kill people and becomes the first Conscientious Objector in American history to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Ford Brody, a Navy bomb expert, has just reunited with his family in San Francisco when he is forced to go to Japan to help his estranged father, Joe. Soon, both men are swept up in an escalating crisis when an ancient alpha predator arises from the sea to combat malevolent adversaries that threaten the survival of humanity. The creatures leave colossal destruction in their wake, as they make their way toward their final battleground: San Francisco.
A samurai answers a village's request for protection after he falls on hard times. The town needs protection from bandits, so the samurai gathers six others to help him teach the people how to defend themselves, and the villagers provide the soldiers with food.
A passionate telling of the story of Sada Abe, a woman whose affair with her master led to an obsessive and ultimately destructive sexual relationship.
After discovering that his father is at death's door, Mr. Miyagi sets out to Japan, to see him with Daniel. Upon arriving, Miyagi must confront an old rival. Meanwhile, Daniel encounters a new love, and some new enemies.
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare, which finds him learning to respect the samurai and the honorable principles that rule them. Pressed to destroy the samurai's way of life in the name of modernization and open trade, Algren decides to become an ultimate warrior himself and to fight for their right to exist.
Charts the troubled teenage years of students Yūichi Hasumi and Shūsuke Hoshino, exploring the shifting and complex power dynamics of their relationship against the backdrop of Yūichi's love for the dreamy and abstract music of pop star Lily Chou-Chou.
Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
Kai—an outcast—joins Oishi, the leader of 47 outcast samurai. Together they seek vengeance upon the treacherous overlord who killed their master and banished their kind. To restore honour to their homeland, the warriors embark upon a quest that challenges them with a series of trials that would destroy ordinary warriors.
Before he was a protector, Kenshin was a fearsome assassin known as Battosai. But when he meets gentle Tomoe Yukishiro, a beautiful young woman who carries a huge burden in her heart, his life will change forever.
Joe Enders is a gung-ho Marine assigned to protect a "windtalker" - one of several Navajo Indians who were used to relay messages during World War II because their spoken language was indecipherable to Japanese code breakers.
In 1879, Kenshin and his allies face their strongest enemy yet: his former brother-in-law Enishi Yukishiro and his minions, who've vowed their revenge.
The classic story of English POWs in Burma forced to build a bridge to aid the war effort of their Japanese captors. British and American intelligence officers conspire to blow up the structure, but Col. Nicholson, the commander who supervised the bridge's construction, has acquired a sense of pride in his creation and tries to foil their plans.
Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, "Rashomon" is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.
Hideo Suzuki is a 35-year-old mangaka assistant, whose life seem to be stuck around his exhausting but low-paying job, unfulfilled dreams, strange hallucinations and unsatisfying relationships. He sees himself as a supporting character in his own life, has low self-esteem, resulting in frustration. One day, the world as Hideo knows it is shattered by the presence of a disease that turns people into homicidal maniacs, whose first instinct is to attack and devour the nearest human.
In the future, the Japanese government captures a class of ninth-grade students and forces them to kill each other under the revolutionary "Battle Royale" act.
After one of their shoplifting sessions, Osamu and his son come across a little girl in the freezing cold. At first reluctant to shelter the girl, Osamu’s wife agrees to take care of her after learning of the hardships she faces. Although the family is poor, barely making enough money to survive through petty crime, they seem to live happily together until an unforeseen incident reveals hidden secrets, testing the bonds that unite them.
Three sisters live together in a large house in the city of Kamakura. When their father – absent from the family home for the last 15 years – dies, they travel to the countryside for his funeral, and meet their shy teenage half-sister. Bonding quickly with the orphaned Suzu, they invite her to live with them.
A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and unscrupulous men.
A sweeping epic that explores the lives of two young men, a ranch hand and a rodeo cowboy, who meet in the summer of 1963 and unexpectedly forge a lifelong connection. The complications, joys and heartbreak they experience provide a testament to the endurance and power of love.
Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide—and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he's assigned to his dream post, a remote junction on the Western frontier, and soon makes unlikely friends with the local Sioux tribe.
The Dashwood sisters, sensible Elinor and passionate Marianne, whose chances at marriage seem doomed by their family's sudden loss of fortune. When Henry Dashwood dies unexpectedly, his estate must pass on by law to his son from his first marriage, John and wife Fanny. But these circumstances leave Mr. Dashwood's current wife, and daughters Elinor, Marianne and Margaret, without a home and with barely enough money to live on. As Elinor and Marianne struggle to find romantic fulfillment in a society obsessed with financial and social status, they must learn to mix sense with sensibility in their dealings with both money and men.
When Miley Stewart (aka pop-star Hannah Montana) gets too caught up in the superstar celebrity lifestyle, her dad decides it's time for a total change of scenery. But sweet niblets! Miley must trade in all the glitz and glamour of Hollywood for some ol' blue jeans on the family farm in Tennessee, and question if she can be both Miley Stewart and Hannah Montana.
A Danish family visits a Dutch family they met on a holiday. What was supposed to be an idyllic weekend slowly starts unraveling as the Danes try to stay polite in the face of unpleasantness.
During China's Warring States period, a district prefect arrives at the palace of Qin Shi Huang, claiming to have killed the three assassins who had made an attempt on the king's life three years ago.
When disillusioned Swedish knight Antonius Block returns home from the Crusades to find his country in the grips of the Black Death, he challenges Death to a chess match for his life. Tormented by the belief that God does not exist, Block sets off on a journey, meeting up with traveling players Jof and his wife, Mia, and becoming determined to evade Death long enough to commit one redemptive act while he still lives.
Benjamin has lost his wife and, in a bid to start his life over, purchases a large house that has a zoo – welcome news for his daughter, but his son is not happy about it. The zoo is in need of renovation and Benjamin sets about the work with the head keeper and the rest of the staff, but, the zoo soon runs into financial trouble.
Ricky is a defiant young city kid who finds himself on the run with his cantankerous foster uncle in the wild New Zealand bush. A national manhunt ensues, and the two are forced to put aside their differences and work together to survive.
Annie is stuck in a long-term relationship with Duncan – an obsessive fan of obscure rocker Tucker Crowe. When the acoustic demo of Tucker's hit record from 25 years ago surfaces, its discovery leads to a life-changing encounter with the elusive rocker himself.
Emma Woodhouse is a congenial young lady who delights in meddling in other people’s affairs. She is perpetually trying to unite men and women who are utterly wrong for each other. Despite her interest in romance, Emma is clueless about her own feelings, and her relationship with gentle Mr. Knightly.
A saga of class relations and changing times in an Edwardian England on the brink of modernity, the film centers on liberal Margaret Schlegel, who, along with her sister Helen, becomes involved with two couples: wealthy, conservative industrialist Henry Wilcox and his wife Ruth, and the downwardly mobile working-class Leonard Bast and his mistress Jackie.
An aspiring writer goes to the airport to pick up a high school friend returning from a trip to Africa but is disheartened to see her with another man.
An American girl, sent to the English countryside to stay with relatives, finds love and purpose while fighting for her survival as war envelops the world around her.
Orphaned after a Nazi air raid, Paulette, a young Parisian girl, runs into Michel, an older peasant boy, and the two quickly become close. Together, they try to make sense of the chaotic and crumbling world around them, attempting to cope with death as they create a burial ground for Paulette's deceased pet dog. Eventually, however, Paulette's stay with Michel's family is threatened by the harsh realities of wartime.
An isolated lake, where an old monk lives in a small floating temple. The monk has a young boy living with him, learning to become a monk. We watch as seasons and years pass by.
When eighth-grade cool guy Hiromi transfers from Tokyo to a small elementary/middle school with only six kids enrolled, wholesome and honest Soyo becomes enthralled with his sophisticated world.
When a beautiful young Grace arrives in the isolated township of Dogville, the small community agrees to hide her from a gang of ruthless gangsters, and, in return, Grace agrees to do odd jobs for the townspeople.
It’s 1941 and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has destroyed America’s morale. The US President Franklin D. Roosevelt then decides to risk it all by bombing Tokyo and raise more hope for his citizens. After completing its mission, a unit of the US Air Force is forced to make an emergency landing in China. Its commander Jack Turner (Emilie Hirsch) barely survives but gets rescued by Ying (Crystal Liu), a local widow who will stop at nothing to hide him from the Japanese occupant.
Summer of 1939. Zosia is a young Polish girl who is deeply in love with Ukrainian Petro. Their great love will be put to the test when her father decides to marry her to a wealthy widower Skiba. Right after wedding she is left alone because her husband is drafted to the Polish army for the war with Germany. Meanwhile, tensions grow due to Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians living side by side.
A comedy/drama set in a village and centered on a battle of the sexes, where women threaten to withhold sexual favours as long as the men refuse to install a water pipe.
Paul (Macfadyen), a prize-winning war journalist, returns to his remote New Zealand hometown due to the death of his father, battle-scarred and world-weary. For the discontented sixteen-year-old Celia (Barclay) he opens up a world she has only dreamed of. She actively pursues a friendship with him, fascinated by his cynicism and experience of the world beyond her small-town existence. But many, including the members of both their families (Otto, Moy), frown upon the friendship and when Celia goes missing, Paul becomes the increasingly loathed and persecuted prime suspect in her disappearance. As the violent and urgent truth gradually emerges, Paul is forced to confront the family tragedy and betrayal that he ran from as a youth, and to face the grievous consequences of silence and secrecy that has surrounded his entire adult life.
Villaviciosa de al Lado is a peaceful town stuck in time, living exclusively of the fame of a 200 years-old spa. Therefore, city hall's debts threatens to close the spa and ruin all town. Their salvation becomes when suddenly mayor Anselmo and the rest of members of city hall realize that they won the Christmas Lottery. But their happiness turns in horror after to discover that the prize belongs to a serial number distributed by the town's brothel, causing the suspicion of the wives and fear of the husbands after a TV interview where Mari, brothel's owner, claims that the almost men of the town will have prize from the lottery. Wanting a way to charge the prize to save the town without having to suffer the anger of their respective women, Anselmo, Ricardo, César, Juandi and Paco plots a plan in order to steal the money from the brothel, meanwhile Mari tries reconcile her stranded life and restore the memory of her deceased father, a former mayor.
An average, everyday metalworker and volunteer firefighter content in his marriage to his childhood sweetheart finds his emotions unexpectedly stirred when he falls for a pretty waitress from a nearby town.
The discovery that she has a terminal illness prompts introverted department store saleswoman Georgia Byrd to reflect on what she realizes has been an overly cautious life. With weeks to live, she withdraws her life savings, sells all her possessions and jets off to Europe where she lives it up at a posh hotel. Upbeat and passionate, Georgia charms everybody she meets, including renowned Chef Didier. The only one missing from her new life is her longtime crush Sean Matthews.
When Johnny is released from prison following a forgery charge, he quickly lands a job as a short-order cook at a New York diner. Following a brief fling with waitress Cora, Frankie develops an attraction for Cora's friend and fellow waitress Frankie. While Frankie resists Johnny's charms initially, she eventually relents when her best friend, Tim, persuades her to give Johnny a chance.
Diagnosed with a mental illness halfway through his senior year of high school, a witty, introspective teen struggles to keep it a secret while falling in love with a brilliant classmate who inspires him to open his heart and not be defined by his condition.
Two spoiled Beverly Hills sisters who have been left penniless after their father's sudden death are forced to move in with their estranged aunt in East Los Angeles.
A retired and widowed Chinese master chef Chu and his family live in modern day Taipei, Taiwan. He lives with his three attractive daughters, all of whom are unattached. Soon, each of the daughters encounter new men in their lives. When these new relationships blossom, stereotypes are broken and the living situation within the family changes.
An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a râmen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.
Tita is passionately in love with Pedro, but her controlling mother forbids her from marrying him. When Pedro marries her sister, Tita throws herself into her cooking and discovers she can transfer her emotions through the food she prepares, infecting all who eat it with her intense heartbreak.
Master chef Kate Armstrong runs her life and her kitchen with intimidating intensity. However, a recipe for disaster may be in the works when she becomes the guardian of her young niece while crossing forks with the brash sous-chef who just joined her staff. Though romance blooms in the face of rivalry, Kate needs to look outside the kitchen to find true happiness.
Julia Child and Julie Powell – both of whom wrote memoirs – find their lives intertwined. Though separated by time and space, both women are at loose ends... until they discover that with the right combination of passion, fearlessness and butter, anything is possible.
Young Nigel Slater has big culinary aspirations, even though all his mother knows how to make is toast. When his mother dies, relations grow strained between Nigel and his father, especially when he remarries a woman who wins his heart with a lemon meringue pie. Nigel enters culinary school, starts working in a pub, and finds himself competing with his stepmother - both in the kitchen and for his father's attention.
Swedish efficiency researchers come to Norway for a study of Norwegian men, to optimize their use of their kitchen. Folke Nilsson (Tomas Norström) is assigned to study the habits of Isak Bjørvik (Joachim Calmeyer). By the rules of the research institute, Folke has to sit on an umpire's chair in Isak's kitchen and observe him from there, but never talk to him. Isak stops using his kitchen and observes Folke through a hole in the ceiling instead. However, the two lonely men slowly overcome the initial post-war Norwegian-Swede distrust and become friends.
Rob Haley, an up-and-coming chef and restaurateur in London, is grief-stricken when he loses his wife. With encouragement from his infamous friend and real life TV Chef Gordon Ramsay, Rob decides to spice up his life by turning a run-down country pub into a gourmet restaurant. His food catches the eye - and taste buds - of beautiful American food critic Kate Templeton and they soon both write a recipe for love that leaves both their hearts - and their stomachs - in full.
Masato is a young ramen chef in Japan. When he finds his late mother's journal after the sudden death of his emotionally distant father, he takes it with him to her native country, Singapore, hoping to piece together the story of his family and his life.
Daphne is a young woman negotiating the tricky business of modern life. Caught in the daily rush of her restaurant job and a nightlife kaleidoscope of new faces, she is witty, funny, the life of the party. Too busy to realise that deep down she is not happy. When she saves the life of a shopkeeper stabbed in a failed robbery, the impenetrable armour she wears to protect herself begins to crack, and Daphne is forced to confront the inevitability of a much-needed change in her life.
Lauren Hennessey has always loved to cook and is a proud perfectionist at her job at "Food & Entertainment Magazine's" test kitchen while she dreams of being able to finally afford culinary school in Paris. When her boss offers her a bonus if she agrees to ghostwrite the cookbook of a difficult celebrity chef, Lauren sees her dream becoming a reality as soon as she can tame the notorious bad boy chef in question, Dexter Durant. Slowly peeling back the layers of Dexter's tough-guy persona, she starts seeing a different, vulnerable side to this big-shot chef. Suddenly, their dueling culinary styles become the perfect complement in the kitchen and an attraction between them starts to boil over.
A rising star at agri-industry giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Mark Whitacre suddenly turns whistleblower. Even as he exposes his company’s multi-national price-fixing conspiracy to the FBI, Whitacre envisions himself being hailed as a hero of the common man and handed a promotion.
An Algerian man's life-long dream finally comes true when he receives an invitation to take his cow Jacqueline to the Paris International Agriculture Fair.
Breathtaking in its subtle beauty, Harvest is an achingly romantic tale of an innocent but ever increasingly passionate affair that develops between two simple farmhands. Life on a farm is all that sullen teen Marco knows- leading a perfunctory and quiet life of working, going to school and avoiding the advances of girls. However, his self-imposed solitude ends when curly-haired Jakob, rejecting the banking world for farming, arrives to train on the farm. Although initially cautious and tentative with each other, it is soon obvious that the unspoken sexual tension is becoming increasingly hard to resist - something a spontaneous trip to Berlin. Proving that true love can blossom in even the most unlikely of places, Harvest is as rich and rewarding as it is heart-warming.
A collection of intersecting short stories set in early 1980s Los Angeles, depicts a week in the lives of an assortment of socially alienated, mainly well-off characters who numb their sense of emptiness with casual sex, violence, and drugs.
Ryota is an unpopular writer although he won a literary award 15 years ago. Now, Ryota works as a private detective. He is divorced from his ex-wife Kyoko and he has an 11-year-old son Shingo. His mother Yoshiko lives alone at her apartment. One day, Ryota, his ex-wife Kyoko, and son Shingo gather at Yoshiko's apartment. A typhoon passes and the family must stay there all night long.
Johnny is a successful banker with great respect for and dedication to the people in his life, especially his future wife Lisa. The happy-go-lucky guy sees his world being torn apart when his friends begin to betray him one-by-one.
Daikichi learns that his recently deceased grandfather has an illegitimate daughter with an unknown mother. The girl's name is Rin and she is just 6 years old. Everybody in Daikichi's family looks at the girl as an embarrassment and wants no part of her. Daikichi, annoyed by his family's attitude, decides to raise Rin by himself. Even though Daikichi himself has no experience raising a child and is still single.
On a quiet street in Helsinki, Sachie has opened a diner featuring rice balls. For a month she has no customers. Then, in short order, she has her first customer, meets Midori, a gangly Japanese tourist, and invites her to stay with her.
Just days before Rhett (Chris Pine) is leaving for Nashville to pursue a lifelong dream of being a singer/songwriter, his girlfriend Samantha (Bre Blair) realizes that "his" future may not be "their" future. This news comes as a shock to Rhett, and he is faced with having to choose between following his dream and staying in his hometown in order to be with the woman he loves.
A university student attends a Japanese tea ceremony near her house with her cousin. There she has the Japanese tea ceremony in her life and it's there for her during moments when she is sad or happy.
A happy-go-lucky Mumbai suburban housewife Sulochana, fondly known as Sulu, lands the role of a night RJ, resulting in drastic changes to her routine life.
Unsure of what to do next, 23-year-old Marnie tries her best to navigate life after college. Still partying like there's no tomorrow, Marnie drags herself out of bed for her miserable temp job and can't decide whether she's wasting her time going after best buddy Alex, who doesn't seem to be interested.
An aging 80 year old drag queen forms an unlikely friendship with a younger queen, both struggling with their own issues of gender identity and mortality. As they discover more about each other, they realize how to truly be themselves.
Keller Dover is facing every parent’s worst nightmare. His six-year-old daughter, Anna, is missing, together with her young friend, Joy, and as minutes turn to hours, panic sets in. The only lead is a dilapidated RV that had earlier been parked on their street.
In the questionable town of Deer Meadow, Washington, FBI Agent Desmond inexplicably disappears while hunting for the man who murdered a teen girl. The killer is never apprehended, and, after experiencing dark visions and supernatural encounters, Agent Dale Cooper chillingly predicts that the culprit will claim another life. Meanwhile, in the more cozy town of Twin Peaks, hedonistic beauty Laura Palmer hangs with lowlifes and seems destined for a grisly fate.
Years have passed since the Three Musketeers, Aramis, Athos and Porthos, have fought together with their friend, D'Artagnan. But with the tyrannical King Louis using his power to wreak havoc in the kingdom while his twin brother, Philippe, remains imprisoned, the Musketeers reunite to abduct Louis and replace him with Philippe.
When a willful young man tries to venture beyond his sequestered Pennsylvania hamlet, his actions set off a chain of chilling incidents that will alter the community forever.
Jose Luis is an executive at his parents underwear factory where his girlfriend Sylvia works on the shop floor. When Sylvia becomes pregnant, Jose Luis promises her that he will marry her, most likely against the wishes of his parents. Jose Luis' mother is determined to break her son's engagement to a girl from a lower-class family, and hires Raul, a potential underwear model and would-be bullfighter to seduce Sylvia.
Story of a young woman who marries a fascinating widower only to find out that she must live in the shadow of his former wife, Rebecca, who died mysteriously several years earlier. The young wife must come to grips with the terrible secret of her handsome, cold husband, Max De Winter. She must also deal with the jealous, obsessed Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, who will not accept her as the mistress of the house.
After a bleak childhood, Jane Eyre goes out into the world to become a governess. As she lives happily in her new position at Thornfield Hall, she meet the dark, cold, and abrupt master of the house, Mr. Rochester. Jane and her employer grow close in friendship and she soon finds herself falling in love with him. Happiness seems to have found Jane at last, but could Mr. Rochester's terrible secret be about to destroy it forever?
Raised by his science teacher father, Joseph Pagnol, and seamstress mother Augustine, young Marcel grows up during the turn of the century in awe of his rationalist dad. When the family takes a summer vacation in the countryside, Marcel becomes friends with Lili, who teaches him about rural life.
Aspiring to an easy job as personal physician to a wealthy family, Noboru Yasumoto is disappointed when his first post after medical school takes him to a small country clinic under the gruff doctor Red Beard. Yasumoto rebels in numerous ways, but Red Beard proves a wise and patient teacher. He gradually introduces his student to the unglamorous side of the profession, ultimately assigning him to care for a prostitute rescued from a local brothel.
In 1986 Iran, Sahebjam, whose car breaks down in a remote village, enters into a conversation with Zahra, who relays to him the story about her niece, Soraya, whose arranged marriage to an abusive tyrant ended in tragedy.
A spell of time in the life of a family in rural Tochigi prefecture. Yoshiko is not an ordinary housewife, instead working on an animated film project. Uncle Ayano, a successful music producer, is looking to get his head together after living in Tokyo. Meanwhile, Sachiko is concerned with why she seems to be followed by a giant version of herself. As the lazy days pass by, each member of the family is followed in a series of episodic vignettes.
Based on the literary classic by Thomas Hardy. Bathsheba Everdene, attracts three very different suitors: Gabriel Oak, a sheep farmer, captivated by her fetching willfulness; Frank Troy, a handsome and reckless Sergeant; and William Boldwood, a prosperous and mature bachelor. This timeless story of Bathsheba's choices and passions explores the nature of relationships and love – as well as the human ability to overcome hardships through resilience and perseverance.