Best movies like Bright Future

Revered sushi chef Jiro Ono strives for perfection in his work, while his eldest son, Yoshikazu, has trouble living up to his father's legacy.

Follows the ups and downs of four female friends in Tokyo looking for love and trying to cope with the responsibilities in their lives.

Teenager Midori's family moves back to the city where she lived as a child and is relieved to discover that her old friend Ryusuke still lives there. Her terrifying nightmares begin intersecting with her everyday life. Do her nightly dreams about an anonymous fortune-teller have anything to do with the tragedies plaguing her high school?

Murakawa, a Tokyo yakuza tiring of gangster life, is sent by his boss to Okinawa along with a few of his henchmen to help end a gang war, supposedly to mediate between two warring clans. He finds that the dispute between the clans is insignificant and whilst wondering why he was sent to Okinawa at all, Murakawa’s headquarters are bombed and he and his gang are ambushed.

Amélie, a young Belgian woman, having spent her childhood in Japan, decides to return to live there and tries to integrate in the Japanese society. She is determined to be a "real Japanese" before her year contract runs out, though it precisely this determination that is incompatable with Japanese humility. Though she is hired for a choice position as a translator at an import/export firm, her inability to understand Japanese cultural norms results in increasingly humiliating demotions. Though Amelie secretly adulates her, her immediate supervisor takes sadistic pleasure in belittling her all along. She finally manages to break Amelie's will by making her the bathroom attendant, and is delighted when Amelie tells her the she will not renew her contract. Amelie realizes that she is finally a real Japanese when she enters the company president's office "with fear and trembling," which could only be possible because her determination was broken by Miss Fubuki's systematic torture.

1970s Japan saw the rise of biker gangs, known as Bōsōzoku, which drew the interest of the media. God Speed You! Black Emperor follows a member of the bike gang and his interaction with his parents, after he gets in trouble with the police.

Shiratori Tatsuhiko works as a scout for Burst, a talent agency in Kabukichō, Shinjuku's red light district. In a business where money means everything Tatsuhiko finds himself in a constant struggle between rival talent scouts and the yakuza.

The story takes place in a new residential area in the outskirts of Tokyo. A family photograph adorns the living room of the Hashimoto family. It is a heartwarming shot of the three family members from when they first moved here, finally having bought their own home that they had wanted for so long. Wife Michiko hangs the laundry everyday. Husband Ken-ichi leaves for work without a word. Son Hiroaki has a part-time job, returns home early and disappears into his room. The Hashimoto Family no longer eats meal together at the dining table or spends time together in the living room. Michiko yearns for a different relationship with her family and is gradually overcome by loneliness. While feeling pressured from the trifling matters that occur within the residential community, Michiko tries to fill the emptiness that she hides in her heart.

Kihachi, an unemployed worker, wanders around the industrial flatlands of Tokyo's Koto district with his two young sons, Zenko and Masako. He is unable to find a job and has to rely on his sons catching stray dogs to earn reward money for their meals. As days go by, Kihachi and the boys no longer have enough money to stay at an inn for the night. Luckily for him, he encounters an old friend, Otsune, who finds him a job and allows them to stay at her eatery house.

A writer retreats to a secluded suburban house to work on her new novel. But her attention is instead occupied by her archaeologist neighbor's newly discovered mummy and a ghostly presence in her house.

The lives of five prostitutes employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation is debating the passage of an anti-prostitution law.

An aging couple decide to leave their quiet lives in the country to pay a visit to their children and grandchildren in Tokyo. Once there, they discover that neither their oldest son, a doctor named Koichi, nor their eldest daughter Shigeko - who runs a beauty parlour - has time for them: both are too busy attending to their everyday concerns. Even the youngest son went his own way. The old couple feel lonely and bewildered in the fast-paced metropolis.

Koji, a university student and budding photographer, is asked by a man to secretly take pictures of his wife Yurika. As a result, his relationships with a girl who visits his part-time workplace called Tominaga and his step-sister Misaki begin to change subtly.

Newspaper correspondent Kyoko Togakure visits a nursing home in the outskirts of Tokyo. She finds the dead body of a resident. It was an apparent suicide. He's holding a piece of paper with the mystifying word "Death Water" written on it. Nearby are blood-stained scissors, and his eyes are squashed. She has no idea that this death is just the beginning of a horrendous nightmare.

If You Were Young: Rage highlights the other side of post-war Japanese prosperity, focusing on the throngs of young people who missed out on the boom. We follow a group of young men that can't seem to get ahead, despite their willingness to try. Then one hits upon a plane - to work together to save for a dump truck and thus become independent contractors and be their own bosses at last. Ultimately life presents obstacles: jail for one, violence at the hands of the police for another and a girlfriend and subsequent children for the third. An early Kinji Fukasaku gem that imports the freewheeling style of the French New Wave and the hip detachment of American noir.

An unemployed man learns that his ex-girlfriend was murdered. He suddenly finds himself travelling through time to his middle school years and has chance to change the future and save the girl. He aims to rise to the top of the most brutal delinquent gang.

Yuuta and Rikka are in their third year of high school. One day in Spring, Touka declares that she will take Rikka to Italy with her, as her job has stabilized there and thinks they should migrate together as a family. Touka is also worried about Rikka not being competent enough to advance to universities in Japan. The gangs from the club suggested Yuuta, who doesn't want to be separated, to elope with Rikka!! A runaway drama throughout Japan begins.

The stage emulates life and compresses it, setting free skills learned over lifetimes in brief but dazzling displays for the amusement and judgment of others. For the performers, it is the ultimate risk, and some will rise while others must fall. Nowhere is this truer than at the Seisho Music Academy, where music, dance and real weapons all come into play in the creation of the next great Star. Karen and Hikari’s destinies have been linked since a childhood promise, but their journeys here have taken very different paths. Now, after Hikari leaves, Karen must discover who she is without her opposite, while Hikari must rediscover her own course. Nor are they the only girls who must reassess and change if they want to achieve their dreams, as the dance, magic, and swordplay continue!

Junk Food consists of four intertwining stories. The first and fourth sections show the morning routine of an blind, old Japanese woman, waking up, buying bread and milk, praying at the family alter; however, it is the second segment where the true story begins.

A shopping arcade in a working-class Tokyo neighborhood filled with Baki fans comes under threat when an unscrupulous corporation tries to take over.

After the war, Kijima (Bunta Sugawara) returns to Tokyo where he meets Ôba (Noboru Andô), an Ex-Kamikaze pilot, and the two ruffians gather hooligans to join their group. In Ginza, the Togawa gang have taken over Sakurada's territory. After several fights Kijima and Ôba gain control of the territory by chasing out the notorious Togawa Group in the name of Sakurada. But Kijima is arrested for assaulting an American soldier. A few years pass. Kijima has served his prison term and the sears of war have been erased from Ginza. Ôba is now president of a company specializing in collection of bad debts, cheque frauds and everything that means money. People call their organization the “Private Police,” and Kijima begins to work for Ôba. Now the Takegami gang waits a chance to seize the Ginza territory.

The stage of this work is Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo in the early Heisei period. Immediately after the bubble burst gangster countermeasures law, there were gangsters who defended the last territory and young people who freely controlled the city. The youth conflict escalated day by day and became a force that surpassed the yakuza, and the runaways were sent to juvenile prisons one after another, where exclusive rules awaited.

Seiji (played by Battle Royale’s Tatsuya Fujiwara) struggles to look after his younger brother Michio, who suffers from Xeroderma Pigmentosum – a rare disease that is fatal if exposed to sunlight. Matters are even more complicated due to Michio’s state of mind, which is equivalent to that of a six year old child. In order to support his younger brother, Seiji is forced to join the local Yakuza and work through the ranks to become a respected member. One night, Seiji saves a woman named Keiko (Aya Okamoto) from a drunken pervert. By sheer coincidence, she is also Michio’s nurse and falls in love with Seiji thanks to his courageous act. Whilst Seiji continues to see his new girlfriend, the activities of the Yakuza begin to affect their lives…

Hirayama seems utterly content with his simple life as a cleaner of toilets in Tokyo. Outside of his very structured everyday routine he enjoys his passion for music and for books. And he loves trees and takes photos of them. A series of unexpected encounters gradually reveal more of his past.

A story of three escort girls living in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. They work at the same escort service while feeling lonely in their urban lives.

Mio is 20 years old. Having lost her parents early, she and her grandmother run a traditional inn in Nagano. However, her grandmother gets sick. Mio moves to Tokyo and lives with her father’s best friend, Kyosuke. He runs a public bath. She begins to work at the public bath, but it is scheduled to be demolished to make way for redevelopment.

The story of two men, one middle aged one mid twenties, who make friends and exchange cigarettes and stories of their sex lives, unaware they have unwittingly exchanged partners. The story, told in flashbacks, as the two men travel through the night on a motorcycle, is loaded with highly charged eroticism. Sex and violence are juxtaposed against the drabness of the men's everyday lives, effectively blurring the line between what is real and what is fantasy. Founded on the well-known myth of furtive sexual gropers on the rush-hour Tokyo commuter trains, Tandem is a low-key masterpiece of Japanese Pink Cinema.

Six women attempt to make it in current day Tokyo, living their everyday lives the best and worst they can. For them, every little moment becomes a ritual of the ordinary and the exciting, a balancing act for their dreams and hopes as the days perpetually tug on their heartstrings.

Teenager Kazuki Miyaichi has always felt unloved by her mother due the circumstances surrounding her birth. Because she harbors anxiety and perceives herself as being worthless to others, she engages in acts of juvenile delinquency. One day, a transfer student from Yokohama named Eri introduces her to Hiroshi Haruyama, a reckless youth who’s a member of the “Nights” motorcycle gang. Kazuki finds herself increasingly drawn to Hiroshi over time, but he soon becomes leader of the Nights and gets caught up in a conflict with a rival gang.

Classmates Shuji and Eri becomes friends, both young people have family problems. When Eri is taken away to Tokyo by her relatives, Shuji becomes increasingly isolated at school and drifts into criminal activity.

I is a university, who came to Tokyo from his hometown. I lives alone and doesn't have friends or a girlfriend. I's university life is boring and he doesn't have a dream. I supports himself by working as a day laborer at a construction site. I meets two people at a hide-and-seek club. One is his Senior and the other person is Black Suit. By meeting them, I's boring life changes. They start the "Midnight Maiden War," which is their plan to destroy Tokyo.

In the formally ravishing Every-Night Dreams, set in the dockside neighborhoods of Tokyo, a single mother works tirelessly as a Ginza bar hostess to ensure a better life for her young son—until her long-lost husband returns.

A group of teenagers unleash a curse when they use haunted public lockers in Shibuya. Supposedly, if you leave a gift in one of the lockers you will be lucky in love. However, the results are anything but lucky as a creepy female ghost with long black hair soon shows up to kill them off one by one.

Nikkatsu Roman Porno film about a brothel headhunter named Miura who brings young runaway Choma to a bathhouse/brothel and begins her prostitution career. Miura also falls in love with Choma, which causes problems when she falls for a dangerous yakuza gangster.

University student Nozomi tries to get a job. Back in her hometown, she was lazy, but now Nozomi is used to the quicker pace of Tokyo. Nozomi is also experiencing problems with her boyfriend Kameyama, who seems to be travelling at a different speed in life and work. Meanwhile, Saeko works very hard in the advertising field and she is faithful to her boyfriend Tomoya. Yet, on their first year anniversary, Saeko hear's woman's voice on Tomoya's cellphone. Based on the anthology manga of the same name.