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Spirited Away [2001] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
The highest grossing film in Japanese box-office history, Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (Sen To Chihiro Kamikakushi) is a dazzling film that reasserts the power of drawn animation to create fantasy worlds. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and Lewis Carroll's Alice, Chihiro plunges into an alternate reality. On the way to their new home, the petulant adolescent and her parents find what they think is a deserted amusement park. Her parents stuff themselves until they turn into pigs, and Chihiro discovers they're trapped in a resort for traditional Japanese gods and spirits. An oddly familiar boy named Haku instructs Chihiro to request a job from Yubaba, the greedy witch who rules the spa. As she works, Chihiro's untapped qualities keep her from being corrupted by the greed that pervades Yubaba's mini-empire. In a series of fantastic adventures, she purges a river god suffering from human pollution, rescues the mysterious No-Face, and befriends Yubaba's kindly twin, Zeniba. The resolve, bravery and love Chihiro discovers within herself enable her to aid Haku and save her parents. The result is a moving and magical journey, told with consummate skill by one of the masters of contemporary animation. --Charles Solomon

Ashura [2005] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Kodocha, Vol. 7: Adult Sized Secrets (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence [1983]
A highly unusual war movie with as many detractors as fans, this English-language feature directed by Nagisa Oshima (In the Realm of the Senses) stars David Bowie as a silent, ethereal POW in a Japanese camp. Protesting--via his own enigmatic rebellion--the camp's brutal conditions and treatment of prisoners, Bowie's character earns the respect of the camp commandant (Ryuichi Sakamoto). While the two seem locked in an unspoken, spiritual understanding, another prisoner (Tom Conti) engages in a more conventional resistance against a monstrous sergeant (Takeshi). The film has a way of evoking as many questions as certainties and it is not always easy to understand the internal logic of the characters' actions. But that's generally true of Oshima's movies, in which the power of certain relationships is almost hallucinatory in self-referential intensity. The cast is outstanding, and Bowie is particularly fascinating in his alien way. --Tom Keogh

Maborosi [1996]
Hirokazu Kore-eda's haunting, graceful Japanese film features a concentrated and powerfully reserved performance by Makiko Esumi as Yumiko, a young woman whose life is defined by the death and disappearance of her loved ones. As a child, she witnessed her grandmother walking away from her family; as an adult, she must face the fact that her husband has committed suicide. Impeccably lit and framed, this self-consciously classical first feature blends characteristics of two of the great Japanese masters: a sensitive portrait of a woman's suffering is reminiscent of Mikio Naruse and a serene, minimalist style is suggestive of Yasujiro Ozu. At times, Kore-eda seems to be trudging too dutifully in the path of his illustrious predecessors and there is little in the film that could be qualified as original. Yet Maborosi remains convincing in its subtle, sustained moods and the quiet confidence of its approach. --Dave Kehr, Amazon.com

Afterlife [1999]
Without special effects, corny music or any flashy visual jiggery-pokery whatsoever, former documentary-maker Hirokazu Kore-eda's elegantly discreet drama manages to be one of the most haunting films ever made about life after death. The action unfolds in what looks like (and is, in real life) a disused school, powdered with the first winter snows. This is Limbo, a sort of dole office cum movie studio, where a group of clerical workers process the recently dead. Their task is to help each recently deceased choose one memory from their life to take with them into all eternity, a memory the will help recreate with props and jerry-rigged sets, for the celestial video records. Those who can't choose a memory, like Arata (Takashi Mochizuki), must stay on to help the new arrivals until they decide.

Kore-eda's last film, Maborosi, was concerned with a woman coming to terms with her husband's suicide, and had a blackened mournful palette to match its subject. Ironically, After Life is a sunnier, warmer movie, full of delightfully unforced performances by its largely non-professional cast, many of whom are "playing themselves" having been culled by interviews Kore-eda conducted during development. The leisurely pace leaves one unprepared for the sudden stabs of emotion and drama that eventually puncture the placid surface. All in all, it easily puts such nauseating Hollywood kitsch as What Dreams May Come to shame, and leaves one pondering its teasing central question: what moment would you choose? --Leslie Felperin

Kodomo shakai bunka: Dotokuteki na kokoro no hattatsu (Raiburari asu ni sodatsu kodomotachi)

Spirited Away [2003]
The highest grossing film in Japanese box-office history, Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away (Sen To Chihiro Kamikakushi) is a dazzling film that reasserts the power of drawn animation to create fantasy worlds. Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz and Lewis Carroll's Alice, Chihiro plunges into an alternate reality. On the way to their new home, the petulant adolescent and her parents find what they think is a deserted amusement park. Her parents stuff themselves until they turn into pigs, and Chihiro discovers they're trapped in a resort for traditional Japanese gods and spirits. An oddly familiar boy named Haku instructs Chihiro to request a job from Yubaba, the greedy witch who rules the spa. As she works, Chihiro's untapped qualities keep her from being corrupted by the greed that pervades Yubaba's mini-empire. In a series of fantastic adventures, she purges a river god suffering from human pollution, rescues the mysterious No-Face, and befriends Yubaba's kindly twin, Zeniba. The resolve, bravery and love Chihiro discovers within herself enable her to aid Haku and save her parents. The result is a moving and magical journey, told with consummate skill by one of the masters of contemporary animation. --Charles Solomon