#118 – Floating Clouds, (浮雲), 1955, Mikio Naruse
A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn’t and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.
#124 – Humanity and Paper Balloons, (人情紙風船), 1937, Sadao Yamanaka
The story develops in the Tokugawa era of the 18th century, in a poor district of Tokyo, where impoverished samurai live from hand to mouth among equally poor people of lower social classes. One such ronin (masterless samurai) Matajuro, spends his day looking for work whilst his wife, Otaki, makes cheap paper balloons at home. One rainy night, Shinza, a barber, and equally penniless, impulsively abducts the daughter of a wealthy merchant, hiding her at Matajuros home. Their desperate plan has grave consequences when a ransom attempt backfires. The film, which starts and ends with suicide, is deeply pessimistic, insisting that life in feudal Japan was hellish and short for those at the foot of the social ladder.
#125 – The Sword of Doom, (大菩薩峠), 1966, Kihachi Okamoto
Ryunosuke, a gifted swordsman plying his trade during the turbulent final days of Shogunate rule, has no moral code and kills without remorse. It’s a way of life that leads to madness.
JUMBO CACTUAR APPROVED FILM
#129 – Twenty-Four Eyes, (二十四の瞳), 1954, Keisuke Kinoshita
Schoolteacher Hisako Oishi struggles to imbue her students with a positive view of the world and their place in it, despite the fact that she knows full well that most of them will die in the war.
#140 – Shoplifters, (万引き家族), 2018, Hirokazu Kore-eda
After one of their shoplifting sessions, Osamu and his son come across a little girl in the freezing cold. At first reluctant to shelter the girl, Osamu’s wife agrees to take care of her after learning of the hardships she faces. Although the family is poor, barely making enough money to survive through petty crime, they seem to live happily together until an unforeseen incident reveals hidden secrets, testing the bonds that unite them.
JUMBO CACTUAR APPROVED FILM
#147 – The Naked Island, (裸の島), 1960, Kaneto Shindō
Deals with the intolerably hard life of a family of four, the only inhabitants of a very small Japanese island in the Setonaikai archipelago. Several times a day they row over to the neighboring island to fetch water for their miserable fields.
#155 – The Face of Another, (他人の顔), 1966, Hiroshi Teshigahara
A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality.
JUMBO CACTUAR APPROVED FILM
#164 – Princess Mononoke, (もののけ姫), 1997, Hayao Miyazaki
Ashitaka, a prince of the disappearing Emishi people, is cursed by a demonized boar god and must journey to the west to find a cure. Along the way, he encounters San, a young human woman fighting to protect the forest, and Lady Eboshi, who is trying to destroy it. Ashitaka must find a way to bring balance to this conflict.
JUMBO CACTUAR APPROVED FILM
#207 – Intentions of Murder, (赤い殺意), 1964, Shōhei Imamura
Sadako, cursed by generations before her and neglected by her common-law husband, falls prey to a brutal home intruder. But rather than become a victim, she forges a path to her own awakening.
#209 – Tokyo Twilight, (東京暮色), 1957, Yasujirō Ozu
Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot take the truth of being abandoned as a child.
Jumbo Cactuar Film Index 