Free Resources of Rare Movies
Japanese
Kamikaze Girls (Shimotsuma monogatari) (2004)
Feb 12th
Momoko is an ordinary girl, living an ordinary life. Ordinary, that is, if you define ordinary as wearing elaborate Lolita dresses from the Rococo period in 18th Century France. A complete fish out of water in her rural and sleepy Japanese town, where everyone buys their clothes (and everything else) at the same store and no one understands her, Momoko’s life is one of sugared sweets and frilly treats. Desperate to make some money to pay for her expensive indulgence, Momoko tries selling bootleg Ver*ace and Uni*ersal Studios clothes left over from her Dad’s yakuza (gangster) days. However, when punk girl and self-styled ‘Yanki’ Ichiko comes calling, her days as ‘ordinary’ are most certainly numbered… Friendship brings these two unlikely girls together.
Izo (2004)
Feb 12th
We begin in 1865, when the Shogunate is on its last legs, but still capable of punishing its enemies. One is Izo (Kazuya Nakayama), an assassin in the service of Hanpeida (Ryosuke Miki), a Tosa lord and Imperial supporter. After killing dozens of the Shogun’s men, Izo is captured and crucified. Instead of being extinguished, his rage propels him through the space-time continuum to present-day Tokyo, where he finds himself one with the city’s homeless. Here Izo transforms himself into a new, improved killing machine, his entire soul still enraged by his treatment in his past life. His response to the powers-that-be, whose predecessors put him to death, is the sword.
Mind Game (2004)
Feb 12th
The film follows Nishi, a loser who has a crush on his childhood girlfriend. After an encounter with the Japanese mafia, the film follows Nishi as he journeys to heaven and back, and ends up trapped in an even more unlikely place. Nishi (and some friends) attempt to break out of their trap, and discover what it truly means to be alive along the way. This is a mind-bending trip that uses some of the most innovative animation ever created.
The Place Promised in Our Early Days (2004)
Feb 12th
The story takes place in a alternate postwar period, in 1996, where Japan is divided. Hokkaido is ruled by the “Union” while Honshu and other southern islands are under US authority. A tall tower was built on Hokkaido, which could even be seen from Tokyo. In the summer of 1996, three middle-school students make a promise that they’ll cross the border with a self-constructed plane and unravel the tower’s secret, but their project was abandoned after the girl, Sayuri Sawatari, became mysteriously ill and transferred to Tokyo. Years later on the brink of another war Hiroki Fujisawa finds out that Sayuri had been in coma since then, and he asks Takuya Shirakawa to help him finding a way to wake her up.
The Hidden Blade (Kakushi ken oni no tsume) (2004)
Feb 12th
During the time of change of the mid-19th Century, Yaichiro is bid farewell by his fellow samurai friends Munezo and Samon as he leaves their clan’s fiefdom on the northwest coast of Japan (Unasaka) to take an important position within the shogunate in far away Edo. Munezo has lived modestly with his mother and sister Shino after his father was forced into suicide after the failure of a bridge project. Kie, a farm girl serves them as a maid in their house. As time passes, Munezo’s sister marries Samon, his mother dies, Kie is married into a merchant family, and he is required to learn western methods of warfare such as the use of artillery and firearms from an official sent from Edo. Learning that Kie is ill due to abuse, he rescues her from her husband’s family. Although sharing mutual affection and respect, a marriage between Munezo and Kie is still impossible due to different castes, and when he…
Tony Takitani (2004)
Feb 12th
Due to his Western name, Tony was shunned by other kids and spent a solitary childhood. Though gifted as an artist, his drawings lacked feeling, so as an adult, he carved a career as a technical illustrator. Then in middle age, Tony suddenly falls for a pretty young woman, Eiko Konuma, who visits him one day on business. Eiko is like an angel in Tony’s daily existence, and for the first time in his life, he feels connected to the outside world. However, Eiko does have one fault: she’s a clothing shopaholic. Confusion also begins to develop when it appears that Eiko has a double.
Marebito (2004)
Feb 12th
In Tokyo, the freelancer cameraman Takuyoshi Masuoka is obsessed investigating the fear sensation near death. When he shots with his camera a man stabbing himself in the eye in the access to the subway, he seeks what the suicidal might have seen to experiment the same sense of horror the man felt when he died. He finds a passage to the underground of Tokyo where he meets a mysterious naked woman that does not speak and he calls her F. He brings F to his place and he has difficulties to feed her, until he discovers that she drinks blood. Masuika becomes a serial killer draining the blood of his victims to nurse F.
Hana and Alice (Hana to Arisu) (2004)
Feb 12th
Upon entering high school, two best friends named Hana and Alice notice a boy a year older them while waiting for the train, and they both develop a pretty strong crush on him. One day while secretly following him home, Hana witnesses the boy walk right into a wall and pass out. When he wakes up, she lies and convinces him that he must have amnesia, because he doesn’t remember the fact that she was his girlfriend. After this, hilarity ensues as the two girls attempt to run with the lie. Of course, complications soon arise.
Swing Girls (2004)
Feb 12th
A tale of delinquent and lazy school girls. In their efforts to cut remedial summer math class, they end up poisoning and replacing the schools brass band.
Kansen (2004)
Feb 12th
In a general hospital near bankruptcy, the reduced staff is working under a severe stress. During the emergency attendance to a burned patient with Dr. Uozumi (Masanobu Takashima) and two other nurses, Dr. Akiba (Koichi Sato) and the nurse commit an error, injecting sodium chlorate and killing him. Dr. Uozumi convinces the team to forge the report to save their careers. Meanwhile, an ambulance leaves a patient in the emergency with a lethal infection. When the muscles and internal organs of the patient liquefy, Dr. Kiyoshi Akai (Shiro Sano) convinces his two colleagues to examine and research the virus, leading the employees of the night shift to a tragic end.
The Taste of Tea (Cha no aji) (2004)
Feb 12th
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.
Howl’s Moving Castle (Hauru no ugoku shiro) (2004)
Feb 12th
A love story between an 18-year-old girl named Sofi, cursed by a witch into an old woman’s body, and a magician named Hauru. Under the curse, Sofi sets out to seek her fortune, which takes her to Hauru’s strange moving castle. In the castle, Sophie meets Hauru’s fire demon, named Karishifa. Seeing that she is under a curse, the demon makes a deal with Sophie–if she breaks the contract he is under with Hauru, then Karushifa will lift the curse that Sophie is under, and she will return to her 18-year-old shape.
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (Innocence) (2004)
Feb 12th
Bato is a living cyborg. His whole body, even his arms and legs, are entirely man-made. What only remains are traces of his brain and the memories of a woman. In an era when the boundary between humans and machines has become infinitely vague, Humans have forgotten that they are humans. This is the debauchery of the lonesome ghost of a man, who nevertheless seeks to retain humanity. Innocence… Is what life is.
Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai) (2004)
Feb 12th
In Tokyo, the reckless single mother Keiko moves to a small apartment with her twelve years old son Akira Fukushima and hidden in the luggage, his siblings Kyoko, Shigeru and Yuki. The children have different fathers and do not have schooling, but they have a happy life with their mother. When Keiko finds a new boyfriend, she leaves the children alone, giving some money to Akira and assigning him to take care of his siblings. When the money finishes, Akira manages to find means to survive with the youngsters without power supply, gas or water at home, and with the landlord asking for the rental.
Casshern (2004)
Feb 12th
In a world with an alternate history, a great war finally comes to an end leaving the earth diseased and polluted. The geneticist Dr. Azuma vies for support from the government for his neo-cell treatment that he claims can rejuvenate the body and regenerate humankind. The government leaders, guarding their own deeply entrenched powers, turn down the professor. Driven to complete his work, Dr. Azuma accepts a secret offer from a sinister faction of the powerful military. After an incident occurs in Dr. Azuma’s lab, a race of mutant humans known as the Shinzo Ningen are unleashed upon the world. Now only the warrior known as Casshern, reincarnated with an invincible body, stands between the Shinzo Ningen and a world on the brink of annihilation.
Appleseed (Appurushido) (2004)
Feb 12th
In a utopian society created at the end of the third world war, a female warrior who has been plucked from the badlands begins to see cracks in this new facade. And what does this community have planned for the rest of humankind?
Gekijo-ban Naruto: Daikatsugeki! Yukihime ninpocho dattebayo!! (2004)
Feb 12th
Naruto Uzumaki the ninja-in-training knuckle-headed and his team are sent on a mission to guard Yukie Fujikaze, a popular actress starring the hit movie “The Adventures of Princess Gale.” The crew is heading toward the Land of Snow, a land forever covered in snow, to shoot the final scenes of the film. When Yukie refuses to go and escapes from the set, she is brought back by force by Naruto and his teammates. But little do they know there are three rouge Snow Ninja lying in wait with a sinister purpose that forces Yukie to make a crucial decision and face her hidden past.
The Face of Jizo (Chichi to kuraseba) (2004)
Feb 12th
Based on a play by Hisashi Inoue, it focuses on the sufferings of the survivors of Hiroshima. The film takes place during 4 days in the summer of 1948, as the ghost of her father visits Mitsue (Rie Miyama). He had somehow learned that she has fallen in love, and tries to convince her to start her new life. But Mitsue obstinately refuses his warm and humorous encouragements
Dead Leaves (2004)
Feb 12th
Retro and Pandy, two unlikely renegades, awaken naked on Earth with no recollection of their past, but with superior physical abilities…
Sekai no chushin de, ai o sakebu (2004)
Feb 12th
In 1980s Kyushu, two teenagers fell in love, and exchanged their secrets and thoughts by way of sending tape recordings to each other. More than a decade later, the boy (now grown-up and bittered) rediscovers the last recording of his long-dead lover’s voice. Her words trigger a series of flashbacks illustrating the joyful beginning and tragic end of their relationship.
