Best movies like The Ceremony
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Ceremony Starring Kenzō Kawarasaki, Atsuko Kaku, Nobuko Otowa, Kei Satō, and more. If you liked The Ceremony then you may also like: Intentions of Murder, Visitor Q, The War Zone, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, The Wash and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.
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Visitor Q
In a dysfunctional family where the mother is a heroin addict and prostitute, beaten by her son, and the father is an ex-TV reporter, sleeping with his daughter and filming his son being beaten up, ‘Q’, a complete stranger enters the bizarre family, changing their lives for the better, finding a balance in their disturbing natures.
The War Zone
An alienated teenager, saddened that he has moved away from London, must find a way to deal with a dark family secret.
Warm Water Under a Red Bridge
A down-and-out businessman travels to a seaside town, where he meets a woman with unusual sexual powers.
What Dreams May Come
Chris Neilson dies to find himself in a heaven more amazing than he could have ever dreamed of. There is one thing missing: his wife. After he dies, his wife, Annie killed herself and went to hell. Chris decides to risk eternity in hades for the small chance that he will be able to bring her back to heaven.
Woman in the Dunes
An entomologist suffers extreme psychological and sexual torture after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village.
Night and Fog in Japan
Uninvited guests crash a former student radical's wedding and accuse him, his bride and other guests of ignoring their political commitments.
Kuroneko
In the Sengoku period, a woman and her daughter are raped and murdered by soldiers during a time of civil war. Afterwards, a series of samurai returning from the war through that area are found mysteriously dead with their throats torn out. The governor calls in a wild and fierce young hero to quell what is evidently an Onryō ghost. He encounters the two beautiful women in an eerie, beautiful scene. After spiritual purification, he meets the demon in a thrilling fight.
August: Osage County
A look at the lives of the strong-willed women of the Weston family, whose paths have diverged until a family crisis brings them back to the Midwest house they grew up in, and to the dysfunctional woman who raised them.
Death at a Funeral
A myriad of outrageous calamities befalls an eccentric English clan with more than a few skeletons in its closets when the family's patriarch dies an unexpected death.
Japanese Summer: Double Suicide
A sex-obsessed young woman, a suicidal young man she meets on the street, a gun-crazy wannabe gangster—these are just three of the irrational, oddball anarchists trapped in an underground hideaway in Oshima’s devilish, absurdist portrait of what he deemed the “death drive” in Japanese youth culture.
Why Not?
The film depicts carnivalesque atmosphere summed up by the cry "Ei ja nai ka" ("Why not?") in Japan in 1867 and 1868 in the days leading to the Meiji Restoration. It examines the effects of the political and social upheaval of the time, and culminates in a revelrous march on the Tokyo Imperial Palace, which turns into a massacre. Characteristically, Imamura focuses not on the leaders of the country, but on characters in the lower classes and on the fringes of society.
The End of Summer
The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.
The Funeral
When Wabisuke's father-in-law unexpectedly dies, the family goes through a series of random events and occurrences as the funeral unfolds over three days in their home.
Funeral Parade of Roses
In late 60s Tokyo, Eddie, a young drag queen, is the favourite of Gonda, the owner of the bar where she works. This relationship provokes the jealousy of Gonda's mistress, Leda, the bar's matron. Eddie and Gonda decide to get rid of her...
Easy Rider: The Ride Back
In this revisionist drama, the film delves into the family lineage of Wyatt Williams, the character made famous by Peter Fonda in the original Easy Rider Movie. Centering around the Williams family, and their internal family struggles throughout the eras of the 40's to present day, as they struggle to connect with one another through the only way they know how. Their love of motorcycles and the freedom of the ride.
Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets
Conditions have been better for the nameless protagonist: his grandmother is a shoplifter and his war criminal father and sister have an unhealthy, intimate relationship with the family rabbit.
Diary of a Shinjuku Thief
In Tokyo's Shinjuku district, the lives of a young man prone to theft, a young woman he meets at a bookstore, and a kabuki actor intersect.
The Man Who Left His Will on Film
A metaphysical mystery involving a university student's camera getting stolen, and the thief then committing suicide. Looking back upon the event, the situation comes to be questioned if it happened at all.
Satan's Slave
A young girl is caught up in a devil cult run by her evil uncle and cousin. She can trust no one and even people she thought were dead comes back to haunt her.
The Insect Woman
A woman, Tome, is born to a lower class family in Japan in 1918. The title refers to an insect, repeating its mistakes, as in an infinite circle. Imamura, with this metaphor, introduces the life of Tome, who keeps trying to change her poor life.
Pigs and Battleships
In the city of Yokosuka, Kinta and his lover Haruko, both involved with yakuza, brave the post-occupation period with a goal to be together.
The Pornographers
Subu makes pornographic films. He sees nothing wrong with it. They are an aid to a repressed society, and he uses the money to support his landlady, Haru, and her family. From time to time, Haru shares her bed with Subu, though she believes her dead husband, reincarnated as a carp, disapproves. Director Shohei Imamura has always delighted in the kinky exploits of lowlifes, and in this 1966 classic, he finds subversive humor in the bizarre dynamics of Haru, her Oedipal son, and her daughter, the true object of her pornographer-boyfriend’s obsession. Imamura’s comic treatment of such taboos as voyeurism and incest sparked controversy when the film was released, but The Pornographers has outlasted its critics, and now seems frankly ahead of its time.
Profound Desires of the Gods
Tokyo engineer Kariya arrives on a primitive tropical island, where he interacts with the Futori clan, to drill a well to power a sugar mill.
Samurai Rebellion
The mother of a feudal lord's only heir is kidnapped away from her husband by the lord. The husband and his samurai father must decide whether to accept the unjust decision, or risk death to get her back.
Savage Grace
This examination of a famous scandal from the 1970s explores the relationship between Barbara Baekeland and her only son, Antony. Barbara, a lonely social climber unhappily married to the wealthy but remote plastics heir Brooks Baekeland, dotes on Antony, who is homosexual. As Barbara tries to "cure" Antony of his sexuality -- sometimes by seducing him herself -- the groundwork is laid for a murderous tragedy.
Death at a Funeral
Aaron's father's funeral is today at the family home, and everything goes wrong: the funeral home delivers the wrong body, his cousin accidentally drugs her fiancé, and Aaron's successful younger brother, Ryan, flies in from New York, broke but arrogant. To top it all off, a mysterious stranger wants a word with Aaron.
Splitting Heirs
A member of the English upper class dies, leaving his estate and his business to an American, whom he thinks is his son who was lost as a baby and then found again. An Englishman who thinks he is an Indian comes to believe that he is actually the heir. He comes to hate the American who is his boss, his friend, and the man who has stolen the woman after whom he lusts.
Gimme Shelter
The mother does half-nude aerobics until her son rapes her, and the daughter falls into bed with a female teacher. Despite the shocking goings-on, the film is much more in keeping with Sato's usual themes of alienation and corrupted innocence than its brutal predecessor.
The Living and the Dead
A descent into Hell is triggered when "Ex-Lord" Donald Brocklebank finds that he must leave Longleigh House for London to find a way to pay for the medical treatments for his wife Nancy. Alone, his over-protected, delusional, adult son, James, fancies himself in charge of the manor house with his terminally ill mother, and barricades the two of them into the house.
Death by Hanging
A Korean man is sentenced to death in Japan but somehow survives his execution, sending the authorities into a panic about what to do next.
Boy
A family of four lives off of scams in which they pretend to be injured by automobiles. After suffering an injury during the war, the father believes he is an invalid. He and his wife have a 10-year-old boy and another, younger boy. The adults pretend to be injured by autos in crowded traffic, blackmailing the fearful motorists with threats to call in the police.
The Embryo Hunts in Secret
A man keeps his girlfriend tied up in his small apartment and tortures her. She is undressed, subjected to various types of bondage, whipped, and tortured with a razor blade.
A Story Written with Water
Struggling with his true emotions, dreams, memories of the past and the reality Shizuo is about to marry, but is torn between his wife-to-be and the love to his mother.
Love & Loathing & Lulu & Ayano
A timid young woman who lives with her domineering mother accepts an Adult Video scout's offer to "become somebody else" by performing in porn videos. As she rises in popularity, the boundaries between her two lives begin to disintegrate.
The Affair
As a young woman, Oriko condemned her widowed mother for openly pursuing relationships with younger men. After her mother passes away, she finds herself in an unhappy, loveless marriage and begins to understand her mother’s actions.
Inugami
Akira, a teacher from Tokyo, has just arrived in a small rural town to begin his new job. Soon after arriving, he meets, and begins to fall for, Miki, a papermaker and part of a large and unusual family. When he learns of an ancient legend that the family carries the curse of the Inugami, or Dog God, he brushes it off as silly superstition. After a series of mysterious deaths, however, the townspeople begin to grow restless, and Akira must confront the truth about Miki and her family.
Shogun's Ninja
In the middle of the 16th century, Hideyoshi, a power hungry warlord sets out to destroy the Momochi clan. He sends his war commander in search of the clan's hidden gold only to find that two daggers are the key to the hiding place of the treasured gold. Spanning decades, the quest for the missing daggers takes Shiranui through war and ancient tradition.
Death Powder
Three conspirators steal a secret android. In their warehouse hideout, the android secretes a reality-altering substance, which casts them into a frightening nether-world of interconnected subjectivity.
The Crazy Family
The Kobayashi family finally get the chance to move out of their tiny, cramped Tokyo apartment in favour of the suburban house of their dreams. But all is not well: the house is infested by termites and the family starts cracking up: Son Masaki is studying so obsessively for his exams that he's losing his mind; daughter Erika is oblivious of all but her forthcoming record company audition, grandfather Yasukuni starts getting World War II flashbacks and father Katsuhiko is so worried about his family's "sickness" that he thinks can only be cured by group suicide.
I'd Like to Be Alone Now
After losing his wife and three kids, all Kyle wants is to mourn in peace. Unfortunately, his family insists on helping him.
Sex After Kids
A disparate variety of couples from all walks of life strive to maintain active sex lives despite the notable distraction of having kids.
Dear Summer Sister
Sunaoko come to Okinawa to find his brother Tsuruo. Her searching is not very painless because it tears up old wounds in complicated relationships, some of which date back to the horrors of war.
This Transient Life
Near a remote Buddhist monastery, a young man falls in love with his sister and gets her pregnant. After a monk finds out, the young man becomes an assistant to a master sculptor, only to proceed to complicate matters with his affairs.
Sing a Song of Sex
Four sexually hungry high school students preparing for their university entrance exams meet up with an inebriated teacher singing bawdy drinking songs. This encounter sets them on a less than academic path.
Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.
A unique, carefully handpicked, selection of the best movies like The Ceremony Starring Kenzō Kawarasaki, Atsuko Kaku, Nobuko Otowa, Kei Satō, and more. If you liked The Ceremony then you may also like: Intentions of Murder, Visitor Q, The War Zone, Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, The Wash and many more popular movies featured on this list. You can further filter the list even more or get a random selection from the list of similar movies, to make your selection even easier.
Intentions of Murder
The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect of a better life.