Ask This of Rikyu (2013)
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Japan in the 19th century. A poetic love story far beyond any other samurai movie stereotype...
Years after the death of legendary tea master Rikyu, his disciple Honkakubo attempts to resolve the mystery of the master's death.
Near the end of the nineteenth century, as the balance of power shifts from Shogunate towards the Emperor, Japan restlessly awaits the dawning of a new age. But not all are content...The Shinsengumi, a small army of samurai, farmers and peasants, band together to do battle against the tide of history. Their leader, Isami Kondo (Mifune) is a man who rises from farmer to fighter to head the fierce Shinsengumi brigade. Using a stern hand and a heart of gold, he rallies his men in defense of the tottering Shogunate. But bloodshed and treachery lurk around every corner.
Lord Asano resists a bribery attempt by a member of the Shogun's court. His honesty, however, is useless against the corruption of the administration, and he is forced to commit harakiri. His samurai retinue are dispersed as masterless ronin. The leader of the samurai, Oichi, plots with a loyal band of ronin to seek revenge for their master's dishonor.
Following the detonation of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese military and the government clash over the demand from the Allies for unconditional surrender. Minister of the Army Anami leads the military officers who propose to fight on, even to the death of every Japanese citizen. Emperor Hirohito, however, joins with his ministers in asking the unthinkable, the peaceful surrender of Japan. When the military plots a coup to overthrow the Emperor's civilian government, Anami must face the choice between his desires and loyalty to his Emperor.
Nathan Algren is an American hired to instruct the Japanese army in the ways of modern warfare -- in this lush epic set in the 1870s, which finds Algren 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.
Paradesi is set in the late 1930s in a tea plantation run by British somewhere in Munnar. The people in a poor Tamil village are conned by a ruthless middleman or 'Kankani' to work in the plantation promising them decent wages. Little do these innocent people realize that they are going to be enslaved in a tea plantation as 'coolies' for the rest of their life. It is a double edged sword: Those who try to escape end up with their calf muscles cut off and those who reluctantly stay behind fall prey to deadly diseases and torture. In short there is no escape from the hell and they are destined to be slaves for life.
Inspired by a true story. Jun Shik works for Tatsuo's grandfather's farm while Korea is colonized by Japan, but he has a dream to participate in Tokyo Olympics as a marathon runner. Tatsuo also aims to become a marathon runner, so the two are in rivalry. But war breaks out and they both are forced to enlist in the army. Tatsuo becomes the head of defense in Jun Shik's unit and he devises a scheme but fails. Jun Shik and Tatsuo are captured by the Soviets. They run away but soon are captured by Germans and forced to separate. In 1944, they meet again at the shores of Normandy.
A 17th century Hungarian countess embarks on a murderous undertaking, with the belief that bathing in the blood of virgins will preserve her beauty.
In the third installment of Yoshikawa's novel Musashi, things continue from the 2nd film at the end of battle, where Miyamoto continues on a mission of learning; with the introduction of his arch-rival Sasaki Kojiro; and lastly the large cast of characters rendezvouses for a fateful finale.
Iyobinte Pustakam (English: The Book of Iyob) is a Malayalam period thriller film directed, filmed and co-produced by Amal Neerad. Set in the backdrop of the picturesque Munnar, it tells the story of Iyob, a slave-turned-master.
A story of greed, a lust for power, and ultimate revenge when an elderly lord abdicates to his three sons, and the two corrupt ones turn against him. A profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.
Molly is a girl living in the year 1944 and WWII has brought many changes to Molly's life. An English girl comes to live with Molly's family to escape the bombings. They slowly become good friends.
Featuring some of the most spectacular, innovative and explosive martial arts ever staged, The Legend Is Born is the remarkable true story of the early life of Ip Man, the formidable kung fu genius who would become Bruce Lee's mentor.Beginning at the start of his journey from his initial training through to the ultimate battle to become supreme master of the art of Wing Chun, The Legend Is Born has already been hailed as one of the greatest martial arts films of all time and features an all-star cast, including Sammo Hung (Enter The Dragon), Yuen Biao and Ip Man's real life son, 76-year-old Ip Chun, as Ip Man's kung fu master.
Directed by Shen Dong and starring Ray Lui, An Yixuan and Yuan Wenkang, Death and Glory in Changde recalls one of the most cruel and controversial battles during China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1937-45), Changde Battle, in November 1943.
Peace in 17th-century Japan causes the Shogunate's breakup of warrior clans, throwing thousands of samurai out of work and into poverty. An honorable end to such fate under the samurai code is ritual suicide, or hara-kiri.
In this first episode, we are introduced to Takezo, what Musashi used to be before he became the man of legend. His beginning are not exactly auspicious. He sides with the Toyotomi at Sekigahara, and as a result finds himself on the losing side of the historic battle. He and his friend Matahachi manage to escape the slaughter although the latter is wounded in his leg. They stumble across the young Akemi who makes her living with her mother Oko by robbing corpses of their armor and anything else they can sell. Oko takes it into her head to seduce Matahachi, which she does first by skillfully sucking the gangrene from his blood, and then just by sucking.
The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped away from her husband by the lord. The husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to get her back.
Veronica is brilliant, gifted and beautiful, but the handsome aristocrat she loves, Marco Venier, cannot marry her because she is penniless and of questionable family. So Veronica's mother, Paola, teaches her to become a courtesan, one of the exotic companions favored by the richest and most powerful Venetian men. Veronica courageously uses her charms to change destiny -- and to give herself a chance at true love.
A mysterious woman frequents tea shops and other places looking for the right man. A cup of green tea will show you the way to find your true love.
Amitabha Roy (Soumitra Chatterjee) is a Calcutta based scriptwriter who is driving around in the country to collect material for a film. His vehicle breaks down in a small town. A tea planter, Bimal Gupta, offers hospitality for the night. Amitabha is forced to accept the offer as he has no alternative.
The young bride of a rich planter finds herself the only white woman at Elephant Walk tea plantation, British Ceylon.
A haunting erotic fairytale about Lucy, a young University student drawn into a mysterious hidden world of beauty and desire.
A U.S. missionary (Barbara Stanwyck) is gradually seduced by a courtly warlord (Nils Asther) holding her in Shanghai.
Lucy Harmon, an American teenager is arriving in the lush Tuscan countryside to be sculpted by a family friend who lives in a beautiful villa. Lucy visited there four years earlier and exchanged a kiss with an Italian boy with whom she hopes to become reacquainted.
A powerful and emotional coming of age story, this remarkable tale is told with honesty and originality that will leave audiences moved. In the film, two outsiders, both shaped by the circumstances that have brought them together, forge a deep and lasting love. Directed by Gus Van Sant, one of the most astute observers of people living life on the edge, comes a take on friendship and young love as engaging and true as it is provocative and stirring.
A more horrific and gloomy version of The Beauty and the Beast. Julie is a bankrupt merchant's daughter who as the only one of the three daughters chooses to save her father's life by going to the Haunted Wood's Castle where she meets Netvor. He wants to kill her, but her beauty prevents him from that. Although she is forbidden to see him she starts to love him and the love rescues him from his curse.
The merchant and his children, Adélaïde, Belle, Félicie, and Ludovic, are near ruin bankruptcy, but Adélaïde and Félicie nonetheless still spend lavishly on themselves keeping beautiful, whereas Belle slaves around the house. Crossing the forest one evening, their father becomes lost and takes refuge in a castle. Upon leaving, he steals a blossom off a rose bush. An angered beast demands one of his daughters for the theft.
In a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Kurdish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. When Lateef is given heavier tasks to compensate for new Afghan worker Rahmat, he resents his displacement and treats Rahmat cruelly. After one of his pranks, however, Lateef discovers Rahmat's secret--he is a girl named Baran. Latif's heart softens towards Baran and he shows his new affection for her by doing what he can to ease the hardships she suffers at work. revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.Baran is a 2001 Iranian film directed by Majid Majidi, based on an original script by Majid Majidi. The movie is set during recent times in which there are a large number of Afghan refugees living on the outskirts of Tehran. Almost a silent movie, Baran won a number of awards both nationally and internationally for the director and writer Majid Majidi.
After winning a beauty contest in Texas, a teen-aged girl is unprepared for the demands of travel, press conferences and interviews that go with winning the title and participating in a national beauty pageant.
At a railway station cafe, housewife Laura Jesson meets doctor Alec Harvey. Both of them are already married, but they continue to meet at the cafe every Thursday despite the knowledge that their blossoming love is impossible.
Rick Leland makes no secret of the fact he has no loyalty to his home country after he is court-marshaled out of the army and boards a Japanese ship for the Orient in late 1941. But has Leland really been booted out, or is there some other motive for his getting close to fellow passenger Doctor Lorenz? Any motive for getting close to attractive traveller Alberta Marlow would however seem pretty obvious.
A car dealer, well-to-do and with a beautiful wife, finds himself attracted to his rather plain new temporary secretary. Despite her own commitments she feels the same and the two soon embark on an affair. Though it would seem it has happened before his wife finds this particular entanglement of her husband's very difficult to accept.
When they say âlove is blindâ they must have been talking about Amy and Ben. Amy is a beautiful young woman with a mysterious past. Ben is a scruffy slacker, whose only ambition seems to be avoiding growing up. However, Amy sees something in Ben that Ben doesn't see in himself, which gives Ben the confidence to make something of his life. The power of love shows Ben that being a grown-up isn't such a bad thing after all.
An all-star cast sparks this captivating comedy about a group of old friends whose 10-year high school reunion creates some hilariously unexpected surprises. Willie, Tommy, and Paul may have lost a bit of their youth, but they're still ready to party with Uma Thurman, Rosie O'Donnell, Lauren Holly, and Mira Sorvino -- the beautiful girls who've turned their lives upside down!
The young Harold lives in his own world of suicide-attempts and funeral visits to avoid the misery of his current family and home environment. Harold meets an 80-year-old woman named Maude who also lives in her own world yet one in which she is having the time of her life. When the two opposites meet they realize that their differences donât matter and they become best friends and love each other.
A quixotic artist hypothesizes about why he feels bad when a mystery girl stands him up. The event prompts him to ask: what's the content of a momentary feeling? Is it the sum of your experiences? And perhaps more importantly, are your experiences the sum of you?
In 9th century China, a corrupt government wages war against a rebel army called the Flying Daggers. A romantic warrior breaks a beautiful rebel out of prison to help her rejoin her fellows, but things are not what they seem.
A curse transforms a handsome and arrogant young man into everything he detests in this contemporary retelling of Beauty and the Beast. Wealthy Kyle Kingson has everything a teenager could want in life, but he still gets off on humiliating the weaker and less attractive. When Kyle invites his misfit classmate Kendra to an environmental rally at their school, she questions his motivations but reluctantly accepts. Later, Kyle blows Kendra off, prompting the spurned goth girl to cast a dark spell on the swaggering egotist.
In a beauty salon in Beirut the lives of five women cross paths. The beauty salon is a colorful and sensual microcosm where they share and entrust their hopes, fears and expectations.
Fact-based story of top fashion model Gia Marie Carangi follows her life from a rebel working in her father's diner at age 17 to her death in 1986 at age 26 from AIDS, one of the first women in America whose death was attributed to the disease. In between, she followed a downward spiral of drug abuse and failed relationships.
The fictitious story of a real person called Lina Cavalieri who was known at the time as "the most beautiful woman in the world".
Seibei Iguchi leads a difficult life as a low ranking samurai at the turn of the nineteenth century. A widower with a meager income, Seibei struggles to take care of his two daughters and senile mother. New prospects seem to open up when the beautiful Tomoe, a childhood friend, comes back into he and his daughters' life, but as the Japanese feudal system unravels, Seibei is still bound by the code of honor of the samurai and by his own sense of social precedence. How can he find a way to do what is best for those he loves?
A look at the relationship between a young blind samurai (Kimura) and his wife, who will make a sacrifice in order to defend her husband's honor.
During the French Revolution, a mysterious English nobleman known only as The Scarlet Pimpernel (a humble wayside flower), snatches French aristos from the jaws of the guillotine, while posing as the foppish Sir Percy Blakeney in society. Percy falls for and marries the beautiful actress Marguerite St. Just, but she is involved with Chauvelin and Robespierre, and Percy's marriage to her may endanger the Pimpernel's plans to save the little Dauphin
The story centers on a group of gossipy, high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily-wedded Mary Haines finds her marriage in trouble when shop girl Crystal Allen gets her hooks into Mary's man.
A popular and beautiful woman is forced into a loveless marriage with an older man to save her brother from an embezzlement charge.
A writer awakens one day to find a strange but beautiful woman in bed with him. He quickly falls in love with her, thinking he has found his muse, but as time passes she becomes more and more unattainable.
Filmed during the German occupation, this French milestone centers around the theatrical life of a beautiful courtesan and the four men who love her. Voted the "Best French Film in History" by the French Film Academy in 1990.
The clash between love and ideology is portrayed in this love story between a radio executive and a beautiful revolutionary. Dil Se is a 1998 Hindi film directed by Mani Ratnam. The film stars Shahrukh Khan, Manisha Koirala, and Preity Zinta. Mani Ratnam also wrote the screenplay for the film. It was produced by Mani Ratnam and Ram Gopal Varma in conjunction with Shekar Kapur.
An adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Long Island-set novel, where Midwesterner Nick Carraway is lured into the lavish world of his neighbor, Jay Gatsby. Soon enough, however, Carraway will see through the cracks of Gatsby's nouveau riche existence, where obsession, madness, and tragedy await.
Elvis plays Johnny, a riverboat entertainer with a big gambling problem. Donna Douglas plays Johnny's girl, Frankie. A fortune teller tells Johnny how he can change his luck. Enter a new lady luck played by Nancy Kovack and the cat fight begins.
Set in the late '20s. A thirtyish young man, who heads a small factory, faints at the funeral of a close friend. He decides to go home to his aunt and uncle for a while, but gets involved with a family of five women who had been in love with him at one time though he had apparently loved only one, who, unknown to him, has died since his departure. The women are mainly disillusioned with life or estranged from husbands while the youngest has a crush on him.
This multiple-Oscar-winning film by Roman Polanski is an exquisite, richly layered adaptation of Thomas Hardyâs Tess of the dâUrbervilles. A strong-willed peasant girl (Nastassja Kinski, in a gorgeous breakthrough) is sent by her father to the estate of some local aristocrats to capitalize on a rumor that their families are from the same line. This fateful visit commences an epic narrative of sex, class, betrayal, and revenge, which Polanski unfolds with deliberation and finesse. With its earthy visual textures, achieved by two world-class cinematographersâGeoffrey Unsworth (Cabaret) and Ghislain Cloquet (Au hasard Balthazar)âTess is a work of great pastoral beauty as well as vivid storytelling.
When Paris of Troy abducts the beautiful Helen, wife of Spartan King Menelaus, the trojan war begins.
A housemaid falls in love with Dr. Jekyll and his darkly mysterious counterpart, Mr. Hyde.
Madam Nadine manages with pride the "Vénus beauté" Salon which offers relaxation, massage and make-up services. The owner and her three beauticians: Samantha, Marianne and Angèle are pros. Contrary to her friend Marianne, who still dreams of the big day, Angèle no longer believes in love. Marie, the youngest of the three employees, discovers love in the hands of a sixty year-old former pilot, who risks everything...
This heart wrenching drama is about a beauty shop, in Louisana owned by Truvy, and the tragedies of all of her clients.
Modern finnish movie about two very different young adults that after a chance meeting end up making music together and fall in love.
While Nellis parents have the perfect career and man planned, she dreams of becoming a singer. Through a chance meeting at the studio, she meets the young and grungy Hip Hop music artist Sunen and asks him to help her make a demo tape. Not only is the ensuing story about differences growing closer and the difficulties that have to be overcome, well told. Also the music is exceptionally well made. It is quite unbelievable that this is the first feature of the director.
A story of three friends - Guri, Deep and Sher Singh - who are studying in a university and are staying together in the hostel of the same university. The movie explores this very friendship between these three boys as they spend their student days doing all the usual things that students normally do. They do everything together - bunking classes, getting into fights with a rival group, talking and laughing over numerous cups of tea - and they even fall in love together. However, the love stories of all the three friends turn out to be complicated. Written by Anterpreet Singh
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