Sixty-one years ago, the United States and Japanese armies met on Iwo Jima. Decades later, hundreds of letters are unearthed from that stark island's soil. The letters give faces and voices to the men who fought there, as well as the extraordinary general who led them. Leading the defense is Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. With little defense other than sheer will and the volcanic rock of the island itself, Gen. Kuribayashi's unprecedented tactics...

In a village, everyone who reaches the age of 70 is banished to the top of Mt. Narayama to die, so as not to be a burden on the village and bring disgrace upon their family. Orin is 69 and despite being in good health, her time is coming. First, though, she has things to do and a score to settle.

No Regrets For Our Youth. Yukie, the spoiled bourgeois daughter of a university professor, begins a soul-searching journey that takes her from the elegance of Kyoto to the peasant farms of impoverished rural Japan, the rise and fall of ultranationalism corresponding with her own moral awakening. One Wonderful Sunday. Yuzo and Masako, a middle-class couple suffering from economic postwar decline, meet on Sunday in Tokyo with only thirty-five yen to...

Three sisters, Sachi, Yoshino and Chika, live together in the city of Kamakura, Japan. When their father, absent from the family home for the last fifteen 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. Suzu eagerly agrees and a new life of joyful discovery begins for the four siblings.

"Master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu directed fifty-three feature films over the course of his long career. Yet it was in the final decade of his life, his "old master" phase, that he entered his artistic prime. Centered more than ever on the modern sensibilities of the younger generation, these delicate family dramas are marked by an exquisite formal elegance and emotional sensitivity about birth and death, love and marriage, and all the accompanying joys...

"From cutting classes to brawling in the streets, Yusuke Urameshi is not your typical role model. In fact, this kid's nothing more than a fourteen-year-old delinquent with a talent for trouble. But in a single selfless act Yusuke dies while saving another. For such noble sacrifice he is given a second chance at life, but it's to be a life far different than the one left behind. Now a Spirit Detective, the young man must track down demons and humans...

Nishi, too wimpy to try to save his childhood sweetheart from gangsters, is shot in the butt by a soccer-playing psychopath, projecting Nishi into the afterlife. In this limbo, God--shown as a series of rapidly changing characters--tells him to walk toward the light. But Nishi runs in the other direction and returns to Earth a changed man.

Hirokazu Kore-eda's revelatory international breakthrough is a bittersweet fantasia in which the recently deceased find themselves in a limbo realm where they must select a single cherished moment from their life.

Hospitalité : Mikio Kobayashi lives quietly with his wife, daughter, and divorced sister in downtown Tokyo, where xenophobic neighbors insist they attend community watch meetings, and the only recent excitement is the disappearance of a pet parrot. One day Kagawa appears, claiming to be the son of a financier who once helped Kobayashi's company. Kagawa soon ingratiates himself as a live-in employee and proceeds to comically turn the Kobayashi's monotonous...

This haunting, kabuki-inflected version of a Japanese folk legend is set in a remote mountain village, where food is scarce and tradition dictates that citizens who have reached their seventieth year must be carried to the summit of Mount Narayama and left there to die. The sacrificial elder at the center of the tale is Orin, a dignified and dutiful woman who spends her dwindling days securing the happiness of her loyal widowed son with a respectable...