Title : Year of Release : Director

• Rashomon ‘50 Akira Kurosawa
• Seven Samuri ‘54 Akira Kurosawa
• Yojimbo ‘61 Akira Kurosawa
• The Insect Woman ‘63 Shohemi Imamura
• Youth of the Beast ‘63 Seijun Suzuki
• Woman in the Dunes ‘64 Hiroshi Teshigahara
• Gate of Flesh ‘64 Seijun Suzuki
• Tokyo Drifter ‘66 Seijun Suzuki
• Double Suicide ‘69 Masahiro Shinoda
• Blind Beast ‘69 Yasuzo Masumura
• Lady Snowblood ‘73 Toshiya Fujita
• Sexy and Furry ‘73 Norifumi Suzuki
• In the Realm of the Senses ‘76 Nagisa Oshima
• The Ballad of Narayama ‘83 Shohemi Imamura
• Ran ‘85 Akira Kurosawa
• Tampopo ‘85 Juzo Itami
• Testsuo the Ironman ‘89 Shinya Tsukamato
• Black Rain ‘89 Shohemi Imamura
• Tokyo Decadence ‘92 Ryu Murakami
• Angel Dust ‘94 Sogo Ishii
• Audition ‘99 Takashi Miike
• Battle Royale ‘00 Kinji Fukasaku
• Ichi the Killer ‘01 Takashi Miike
• Pulse ‘01 Kiyoshi Kurosawa
• Suicide Club ‘02 Sion Sono

I have listed only films I have personally seen and can vouch for, though clearly I’m on a quest to check out more from the catalogs of each director. Also, I have given English titles here, which should be OK for database searches - but many of these films had several English titles. Multiple genres are represented here: horror, suspense, sexploitation, classics, experimental (also for any who don’t realize - lots of ‘Adult Situations/nudity/blood and kooky fucking’ represented here), but it’s all ‘live action’ I have excluded anime - perhaps that’s another list for another time. The idea is: films I consider to be worth seeing - but to sit and watch this list over a long weekend, there would be a lack of continuity in ‘overall quality’. I’d like this list to grow so please post others you find noteworthy and I’ll check them out.

*Akira Kurosawa is considered a ‘master of world cinema’, most all of his films rule. I have only mentioned what I consider to be the MOST important/possibly overlooked*