Best movies like Ryan Gander: The Idea of Japan

Harry Kilmer returns to Japan after several years in order to rescue his friend George's kidnapped daughter - and ends up on the wrong side of the Yakuza, the notorious Japanese mafia.

Three young ladies perform yoga without clothes in the open air of Cyprus. Another does the same in a studio. These visuals are interspersed with images of Eastern art, processed for "psychedelic" effect. The narrator relates the practice of yoga to Buddhist philosophy.

As the front man of the Clash from 1977 onwards, Joe Strummer changed people's lives forever. Four years after his death, his influence reaches out around the world, more strongly now than ever before. In "The Future Is Unwritten", from British film director Julien Temple, Joe Strummer is revealed not just as a legend or musician, but as a true communicator of our times. Drawing on both a shared punk history and the close personal friendship which developed over the last years of Joe's life, Julien Temple's film is a celebration of Joe Strummer - before, during and after the Clash.

Powerful businessman Russ Duritz is self-absorbed and immersed in his work. But by the magic of the moon, he meets Rusty, a chubby, charming 8-year-old version of himself who can't believe he could turn out so badly – with no life and no dog. With Rusty's help, Russ is able to reconcile the person he used to dream of being with the man he's actually become.

After accidentally crash-landing in 2022, time-traveling fighter pilot Adam Reed teams up with his 12-year-old self on a mission to save the future.

The day before the Christmas holiday, Ebenezer Scrooge, a hard-fisted miser, refuses to contribute to the Charity Relief Committee, and then rudely rejects his nephew Fred when he visits Scrooge in his office. When Scrooge returns home, he sees the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley, who warns him of the punishment he will suffer in the next life if he does not change his ways. That night, Scrooge is visited by three more spirits, who show him his past, the present, and the future that awaits him.

A bitter old miser who makes excuses for his uncaring nature learns real compassion when three ghosts visit him on Christmas Eve.

Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.

A group of teens discover secret plans of a time machine, and construct one. However, things start to get out of control.

Unlucky assassin Ladybug is determined to do his job peacefully after one too many gigs gone off the rails. Fate, however, may have other plans, as Ladybug's latest mission puts him on a collision course with lethal adversaries from around the globe—all with connected, yet conflicting, objectives—on the world's fastest train.

Searching for escape in Tokyo's back alleys, a haunted English teacher explores love and lust with a dashing Yakuza, as their tumultuous affair takes her on a journey through the city's dive bars and three-hour love hotels.

In the near future, Major is the first of her kind: a human saved from a terrible crash, then cyber-enhanced to be a perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world's most dangerous criminals.

Gilbert Wooley is a second-rate magician who is sent to entertain the troops in the pacific. During his time in Japan he becomes attached to a little orphan boy.

Teacher Sara has always played by the rules and has never thought of herself as one who's attracted to the "bad boy" type. That all changes when tattoo artist Virgil takes part in a classroom show-and-tell session and Sara reluctantly finds herself attracted to the biker guy. Will straightlaced Sara allow herself to fall for a man who's completely different from her?

Frederick Fitzell is living his best life—until he starts having horrific visions of Cindy, a girl who vanished in high school. After reaching out to old friends with whom he used to take a mystery drug called Mercury, Fredrick realizes the only way to stop the visions lies deep within his own memories, so he embarks on a terrifying mental odyssey to learn the truth.

Ebenezer Scrooge is far too greedy to understand that Christmas is a time for kindness and generosity. But with the guidance of some new found friends, Scrooge learns to embrace the spirit of the season. A retelling of the classic Dickens tale with Disney's classic characters.

Famed movie director Paul Robaix breaks with tradition by not casting his actress-comedienne wife, Lucy Dell, in his latest film production, a version of Madame Butterfly. Undaunted, the resourceful Lucy wings her way to Tokyo and, masquerading as a Japanese geisha, lands the coveted role from her unsuspecting husband! But in front of the cameras (and behind the pancake makeup), Lucy faces greater challenges: her lecherous leading man - and a husband who is beginning to realize that his talented new "discovery" seems vaguely familiar...

Space Cop is the story of a cop from the future of space who travels back in time to the present and is teamed up with a cop from the past who is unfrozen in the present. Together, they must defeat evil aliens with a sinister plan. Out of time and out of place, these two unwitting heroes must work together to save the world from a group of renegade aliens and the re-animated brain of a mad scientist bent on global extinction.

Hyasaka Yukari only wants one thing: to enter the college that her mom wants. One day, she meets an extravagant group that loves fashion. They were searching for a model and Yukari fits their ideal model. From now Yukari will know the world of fashion and modeling, and what she really wants.

At the prompting of his diplomat friend, Alex, writer Ted Fletcher takes his wife, Laura, and daughter, Amy, on an extended working holiday. Alex finds a house for them in Kyoto, Japan, and the Fletchers move in, laughing off rumors that the place is haunted. But the ghost of 19th-century samurai Shigero turns out to be very real, and is intent on making the family re-enact an ancient murder-suicide.

Gena is a sweet and dedicated mother to her little son. One day, whilst shopping with him for a halloween mask, her son is accidently shot through the chest by a Japanese Gunman, trying to kill an opposing gang of bus operators. Gena notices that the gunman has a picture of a blue tiger on his chest. She is turned into an obsessed person and has an identical red tiger etched into her skin. She then tracks down the killer and plots his death. This leads her into the world of the Japanese Mafia

After inadvertently unleashing an ancient curse, a documentary crew of American exchange students is haunted by angry spirits in Japan's infamous Suicide Forest.

Well meant is often the opposite of good. Audry, who wanted to use her knowledge of Japanese to help her husband Ward, a golf instructor, enter the professional league of golf, has to learn the same thing: she lets the sleazy lawyer Rictus persuade her to play Sushi-Jo - a kind of living salver for the Japanese national dish – to be able to unobtrusively overhear a meeting with Japanese business people. Unfortunately, these people are members of the yakuza; and the business lunch takes a fatal turn when heavily armed thugs show up.

Townsend Harris is sent by President Pierce to Japan to serve as the first U.S. Consul-General to that country. Harris discovers enormous hostility to foreigners, as well as the love of a young geisha.

Mary Class is a highly successful business executive - who just happens to be the daughter of Santa Claus. But when her father falls ill, Mary returns to the North Pole and the life she left behind to take over for her dad and implement her innovative ideas for running Christmas.

Past Present Future is a feature-length film about two friends, Rachel and Noah, who have had an on-again, off-again relationship since high school, meeting up for the first time after years apart.

In Los Angeles, naive and lonely waitress and aspirant singer Carol finds an advertisement for a job opportunity in Tokyo. Traveling to Japan to work at the White Orchid nightclub, she discovers the scheme of prostitution in the club that belongs to Yakuza. Alone, without money and her passport, she is protected by Shiro, but pressed by the managers Madame Mori and her husband Hatanaka to be receptive to client's proposals.

This landmark film uses new evidence to investigate the truth behind Mona Lisa's identity and where she lived. It decodes centuries-old documents and uses state-of-the-art technology that could unlock the long-hidden truths of history's most iconic work of art.

The Haywain by John Constable is such a comfortingly familiar image of rural Britain that it is difficult to believe it was ever regarded as a revolutionary painting, but in this film, made in conjunction with a landmark exhibition at the V&A, Alastair Sooke discovers that Constable was painting in a way that was completely new and groundbreaking at the time. Through experimentation and innovation, he managed to make a sublime art from humble things and, though he struggled in his own country during his lifetime, his genius was surprisingly widely admired in France.

Celebrated conceptual artist Ryan Gander investigates the selfie – the icon of a new kind of self-regard that hardly existed just ten years ago. He discovers the roots of the selfie go back hundreds of years before smartphones. In the age of social media, when we are told to be our best selves and live our best lives, he investigates what that really means and what technology is doing to our sense of self.

In a twist on a Dickens novel, we meet Holly, a tightly-wound businesswoman who's spent her life running from the ghosts of her past. But this holiday, they come back to find her.

A photographer based in Tokyo, who's in love with local beauty Tamiko, begins to court an embassy official so she can help him gain entry into the United States.

The story of Spencer Hayes, a washed-up childhood actor, determined to get back into the show business ventures to charming Franklin and Charleston, South Carolina for a new role as a small-town Southern man. Struggling between his desires as an actor and his longing to experience true connections and real love, catastrophic turns of event unleash, both past and future.

1 Giant Leap is a concept band and media project consisting of the two principal artists, Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman. This is the film part of their first project. The result is a flowing, loose-knit tapestry of imagery, interviews, and diverse performances. Gathering material from 25 countries and dozens of famous and not-so-famous musicians, authors, celebrities, spiritualists, philosophers, and unique individuals from nearly every cultural background, this enveloping DVD is best enjoyed as a soothing audiovisual odyssey (select "loop mode" for continuous play!). Assembling this cornucopia by theme (Time, Inspiration, Sex, God, Death, etc.), Bridgeman and Catto function as co-composers with an astonishing array of collaborators, giving 1 Giant Leap its richly international (and some might say inter-spiritual) identity. The result is a far-reaching glimpse of our world through the eyes of those who improve it by their musical presence. --Jeff Shannon

Japanese animation - or 'anime' for those in the know - boasts one of the fastest growing fan bases in the entertainment industry. Harnessing the explosive momentum of the Internet, anime heralds a revolution in 21st century culture. *What is anime - high art or mere entertainment? *How did anime get its start? *How did WWII and the atom bomb affect the anime industry? *Just who are the American fans and why are they so fascinated? *What is the future of anime in America? Through intimate conversations with top Japanese artists, scholars and American industry professionals, highlighted with clips from classic and current anime productions, we lead you through the anime's beginning and reveal the answers to these and many other questions. The Invasion is here.