A.li.ce (1999)
Anime/Dystopian Future/Time Travel
This was the first anime film made in CGI, an ambitious SF film involving a time travel plot and a struggle against a machine-dominated future
Japanese Cinema
After Life (1998)
The Afterlife
Entirely charming film from Hirokazu Kore-eda about a group of people who find themselves in the afterlife and their often comical attempts to deal with the situation
Akira (1988)
Anime/Psychic Powers Amok
The film that created the cult of anime in the West. Essentially a Cyberpunk version of The Fury, this has been construed as a series of climaxes that get progressively larger in scale until they almost reach a point of sensory overload
Alakazam the Great (1961)
Mischievous Monkey's Adventures/Animation
Anime version of the classic tale Chinese legend Journey to the West made Osamu Tezuka, this comes with a fast-paced action and is undeniably likable
Andromedia (1998)
Teenage Girl Uploaded to the Internet
An early Takashi Miike film where a teenage girl is killed and her personality uploaded to the internet, having been conveniently backed up by her father on three cd roms!
Angel Dust (1994)
Japanese Serial Killer Thriller
A Japanese variation on The Silence of the Lambs that is one of the better copies. Made with a cool, composed fascination and some original twists
Angel’s Egg (1985)
Anime/Surreal Journey Across an Alien World
One of the earliest works of anime director Mamoru Oshii, later famous for Ghost in the Shell. This is a plotless, almost dialogueless work about a young girl journeying across a strange planet that is more surrealism than SF
Anthem of the Heart (2015)
Anime/Girl Cursed With Being Unable to Speak
Sweet and tender anime about a young girl who has a curse placed on her that causes her to lose her voice and how this actually allows everyone around her to voice things they don’t say.
Apartment 1303 (2007)
Japanese Ghost Story
Another J-horror on the bandwagon created by the Ring and Ju-on/The Grudge films. Some promisingly initial scares traipse off into a dull mystery about investigating the past
Appleseed (1988)
Anime/Future Anti-Terrorist Squad
The first anime film to be based on the manga, this is set in a future where the heroine is the head of a heavily armoured SWAT team fighting terrorists. Several different incarnations followed.
Appleseed (2004)
Anime/Future Anti-Terrorist Squad
A dazzling reboot of the earlier manga/anime made with stunning photorealistic animation design and breathtaking action scenes that made this a benchmark for modern anime. Sequels followed.
Appleseed Alpha (2014)
Anime/Post-Holocaust Cyborg Action
Shinji Aramaki returns to the Appleseed franchise for a third time with this prequel. Though it abandons the Cyberpunk milieu, Aramaki crafts action scenes with a stunning realism
Appleseed Ex Machina (2007)
Anime/Future Anti-Terrorist Squad
Shinji Aramaki’s immediate sequel to his reboot of the Appleseed franchise. This lacks the visually stunning qualities of its predecessor and seems more conceptually muddled but Aramaki eventually gets it together
Aragami (2003)
Samurai vs Immortal Monster
An action film that takes place in a single room. A samurai is invited to dine by a mysterious host who reveals he is an immortal monster and believes they have been destined to fight
Arrietty (2010)
Anime/Miniature People Adventures
Studio Ghibli tackle Mary Norton’s classic books about a miniature family that live inside the walls of a house. Norton’s essential Englishness translates surprisingly well to anime and the results are quite magical
Assault Girls (2009)
Virtual Reality Videogaming
Disappointing live-action film from anime director Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, construed as nothing beyond a live-action videogame with kick-ass girls engaged in serial combat encounters
Atomic Rulers of the World (1965)
Japanese Superhero Film
The US release of several short Japanese films featuring the superhero Starman. Cheap and entertainingly absurd, filled with tatty superheroics and laughable science
Atragon (1963)
Super-Submarine Adventure
Ishiro Honda, the director of Godzilla, makes a colourful dventure film about a super-submarine battling an undersea empire in the vein of other works of the era like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Attack Girls’ Swim Team vs. the Undead (2007)
Lesbian Japanese Schoolgirls vs Zombies
You feel that a film about lesbian Japanese schoolgirls vs zombies should have been more interesting. The zombies barely mount to a dozen and the director seems more preoccupied by his softcore predilections
Attack of the Monsters (1969)
Japanese Monster Movie
The fifth of the Gamera films, Japanese monster movies that are made for children. This abandons the relative realism of the earlier films for a colourful silliness with frequently lunatic results
Attack on Titan (2015)
Live-Action Anime Adaptation/Invasion by Giants
The live-action adaptation of a popular manga series, this comes with a completely WTF premise about humanity defending itself from an invasion by a horde of misshapen giants that like to bite people’s heads off
Attack on Titan II: End of the World (2015)
Live-Action Anime Adaptation/Invasion by Giants
Sequel the demented Attack of Titan with its wild images of humanity under attack from mindless giants that bite their heads off, which was shot back-to-back and released a few months later
Audition (1999)
Twisted Love Story/Sadism and Torture
The film that made the world pay attention to Takashi Miike. Starting out as a seeming love story, this culminates in some of the most brutal and hard-to-watch torture scenes ever committed to film
August in the Water (1995)
Japanese Mystical End of the World
Baffling and incomprehensible Japanese SF film about a catastrophe that is causing people to turn to stone
Avalon (2001)
Virtual Reality
Visually stunning live-action film from Mamoru Oshii, director of Ghost in the Shell, set in the beautifully stylised faded sepia tone world of a Virtual Reality game
AVN (2010)
Ninjas Fight Alien Creatures
Japanese film that true to its title offers pits ninja against alien creatures. The film plants tongue considerably in cheek as it offers up a series of wildly fantastique action scenes and creature effects
Batman: Gotham Knight (2008)
Compilation of Batman Anime Shorts
Taking a leaf from The Wachowskis with The Animatrix, DC went to Japan and hired a bunch of anime directors to deliver an anthology of six different animated Batman stories
Batman Ninja (2018)
Batman Anime
This gets full marks for a WTF set-up, an anime that imagines Batman and most of the villains transplanted back to feudal Japan. There is fun to seeing the familiar characters reinterpreted in terms of Japanese imagery
Battle in Outer Space (1961)
Alien Invasion/Japanese Space Opera
Godzilla director Ishiro Honda makes a colourfully entertaining space opera about Earth’s battle to fight off an alien invasion force on The Moon
Battle League Horumo (2009)
Combat Tournaments with Miniature Creatures
Japanese film about teams that engage in combat tournaments with hordes of Smurf-like creatures. This spends too much time on its high school drama cliches but eventually finds the dementia of its concept at the climax
Battle Royale (2000)
Deadly Elimination Game
An entertainingly violent Japanese comic-book of a movie in which a classroom of school pupils is abandoned on an island with weapons to eliminate one another. Frequently cited as the inspiration for The Hunger Games
Battle Royale II: Requiem (2003)
Deadly Elimination Game
This was the sequel to Battle Royale and ups the scale of the conflict but somewhere loses the gleeful fun of the original and strays off to become a war film
Battlefield Baseball (2003)
Combat Baseball/Gonzo Japanese Film
Japanese film clearly inspired by Battle Royale that has a wonderfully appealing premise where a high school baseball game that has been turned into a deathsport
Before We Vanish (2017)
Japanese Alien Invasion Film
Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa is known for his intensely uncanny and bafflingly cryptic horror films. Here he makes an alien invasion film, although a minimalist and very different one that proves quite fascinating
Belladonna of Sadness (1973)
Anime Erotica/Temptation by the Devil
Osama Tezuka is a cult figure in anime and manga – what is less well known is that he also made adult animation. This, about a woman’s temptation by The Devil in mediaeval France, is a mind-boggling array of psychedelia and eroticism
Belle (2021)
Anime/Beauty and the Beast in Virtual Reality
A beautiful anime from Momoru Hosoda that retells Beauty and the Beast and spins it in SF terms as tale about a girl who finds fame as a singer in Virtual Reality
Big Bang Love, Juvenile A (2006)
Prison Murder Mystery with Surreal SF Elements
This is one of Takashi Miike’s most incomprehensible films – what appears to be a murder mystery and gay love story set in a prison, along with random SF elements
Big Man Japan (2007)
Giant Japanese Superhero Mockumentary
A bizarre Japanese about a documentary crew who make a film about a man who becomes a giant-sized superhero to fight off giant rubber monsters
Big Tits Zombie (2010)
Gonzo Japanese Zombie Film
Strippers and zombies Japanese style. An entry into the Gonzo Japanese Splatter film fad. Cheaply made, with surprisingly little nudity and a whole lot of tongue-in-cheek splatter
The Bird People in China (1998)
Lost Culture
An early Takashi Miike film that forsakes his usual ultra-violence and surreal weirdness for a genteel road movie through backwater China to the discovery of a lost culture
Blade of the Immortal (2017)
Immortal Samurai/Manga Adaptation
Takashi Miike’s 100th film, the adaptation of a manga about an immortal samurai. Miike bookends the film with awesome sequences with his hero battling hundreds of opponents but the film in between drags
Bleach (2018)
Manga Adaptation/Monster Hunter
The live-action adaptation of a manga about a teenager who inherits the powers of Soul Reaper and is thrust into a battle against monstrous supernatural entities
Blood: The Last Vampire (2000)
Vampire Battles Demons/Anime
Stunning Mamoru Oshii-prodcued anime short about a vampire girl who operates as an American agent eliminating vampires in post-War Japan
Bloody Chainsaw Girl (2016)
Chainsaw-Wielding Schoolgirl Battles Mutant Cyborgs
Another of the gonzo Japanese splatter films about a schoolgirl who tries to go about her schoolday while fighting off mutant cyborgs with the chainsaw she carries
Blue Remains (2000)
Anime/Underwater Post-Holocaust Environmentalism
Epic and beautifully animated anime set largely underwater about the struggle to save a dying Earth from an evil super-computer that wants eradicate humanity
The Boy and the Beast (2015)
Anime/Boy Becomes Apprentice to a Beast Warrior
If Hayao Miyazaki ever follows through on his threat to retire, the one most likely inheritor would be Mamoru Hosoda. This is a perfectly enjoyably film that is sort of The Karate Kid by way of Disney’s The Jungle Book
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
Anime/Boy Enters Otherworld
The twelfth film from Hayao Miyzaki at age 82, a quasi-autobiographical if a slightly less classic work. A renaissance of many Miyazaki themes as a boy follows a heron though into a strange fantasy otherworld
Bubble (2022)
Anime/Mysterious Bubble Covers Tokyo
Anime in which Tokyo is covered by a mysterious energy bubble of alien origin and of a group of defiant youths who live on in its midst until the appearance of a mystery girl
Bugmaster (2006)
Wandering Exorcist/Manga Adaptation
Akira director/creator Katsuhiro Otomo returns with this live-action manga adaptation about a wandering exorcist. Very different to any of Otomo’s anime, this is much quieter and rooted in Japanese folklore but has some undeniably way out scenes
Bullet Ballet (1998)
Man's Obsession with a Gun
Shinya Tsukamoto of Tetsuo: The Iron Man fame turns his fascination with repressions to the story of a salaryman (played by himself) who deals with his girlfriend’s death by obsessively trying to obtain a gun
Bus (1987)
Japanese Dystopia
Obscure Japanese film set in a computer-controlled dystopia where a simple bus driver makes a defiant stand against against conformity
Carved: The Slit Mouthed Woman (2007)
Boogeywoman from Japanese Urban Legend
J-horror film based on the Japanese urban legend of a boogeywoman with a face slit from ear to ear who appears to kill people
Casshern (2004)
Future Superhero/Anime Remade in Live-Action
Live-action film based on an anime series where the original is built out with a series of of extraordinarily gorgeous over-ornamented visuals set in a strange retro-future world
The Cat Returns (2002)
Anime/Girl's Adventure in the World of Cats
Studio Ghibli anime in which a girl saves the life of a cat only to be drawn into a world of cats where a cat prince decides she will be his bride
Children Who Chase Lost Voices from the Deep (2011)
Anime/Lost Underground Realm
Makoto Shinkai conducts a flawless capturing of Hiyao Miyazaki’s style – the clean simplicity of the animation, reverence for nature, the tender intimacy of the characters – in this beautifully animated work about the discovery of an underground realm
Cinderella Game (2016)
Deadly Elimination Card Game
Bizarre Japanese copy of Battle Royale by way of American Idol where a group of schoolgirls from a singing competition are trapped on an island where they must play a deadly card game
Cold Fish (2010)
Serial Killer Black Comedy
From cult director Shion Sono, a typically bizarre and gore-drenched Japanese black comedy about tropical fish salesmen, serial killings and the reclamation of traditional male pride
The Complex (2013)
Japanese Ghost Story/Haunted Apartment
Hideo Nakata will always be known as the director of the original Ring. Here he revisits the kaidan eiga in the story of a haunted apartment but the show falls apart after a confusing Sixth Sense-type twist mid-film
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001)
Anime/Future Bounty Hunters
The feature film spinoff of a cult anime tv series
Cross Fire (2000)
Pyrokinesis
Japanese director Shusuke Kaneko turns his attention to the pyrokinesis theme. Thanks to Kaneko’s expertise with effects, this becomes the best film on the firestarter theme yet
Cube (2021)
Mysterious Labyrinth
Japanese remake of the Vincenzo Natali film where a group of people wake up in mysterious labyrinth of identical cubed rooms filled with death traps
Cure (1997)
Hypnotism Murders
The film that brought Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa to attention. Set around a series of hypnotism murders, this is, as with Kurosawa’s films, cryptic and frequently inexplicable but has an undeniable uncanniness
Cyborg She (2007)
Romance With a Time-Travelling Cyborg
A Japanese romantic comedy about a lonely nerd who falls in love with a cyborg girl that has time travelled back from the future
Dark Water (2002)
Japanese Ghost Story/Haunted Apartment
Hideo Nakata made the highly influential Ringu but his other films have been uneven. This ghost story is one of his few follow-ups that comes near recapturing the same uncanny mood
Darkside Blues (1994)
Anime/Dark Future/Mysterious Stranger
Anime where a mysterious other-dimensional stranger aids future rebels. This has a wonderfully ornate Gothic feel but an entirely confusing plot
Dead Ball (2011)
Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film/Combat Baseball
If you aren’t acquainted with the Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film go and do so immediately – a madcap genre filled with buckets of gore, demented combat moves, bizarre bio-mechanoid transformations. This concerns itself with a game of baseball that has become a blood-drenched combat sport
Dead or Alive (1999)
Gonzo Yakuza Film
A Yakuza film from Takashi Miike filled with ultra-violence and casual perversity before Miike goes nuts in a totally gonzo ending. Two unrelated sequels followed from Miike
Dead Or Alive 2 – Birds (2000)
Gonzo Yakuza Film
Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive was a Yakuza film with a gonzo ending. In this sequel, Miike brings back the same two actors and makes it ALL gonzo
Dead or Alive: Final (2002)
Cyberpunk Dystopia/Androids
The third of Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive trilogy. While the previous entries are Yakuza films, this is an action film about androids set in Blade Runner-homaging Cyberpunk future
Dead Sushi (2012)
Man-Eating Sushi Amok/Gonzo Japanese Horror
Completely insane Japanese film about man-eating killer sushi. A film that has a whacko anything goes lunacy to it, resulting in some of the most surreally crazed monster movie scenes that this author has seen in some time
Death Note (2006)
Notebook with Killing Powers
Interestingly original Japanese horror film adapted from a manga that has spawned several sequels and an American remake. The premise of a killing book is certainly different, while much of the show is stolen by the supremely weird Kenichi Matsuyama
Death Note: The Last Name (2006)
Notebook with Killing Powers
The second of the Japanese Death Note films, released almost back-to-back with the first. This is an even better film than its predecessor, delighting in the twists and turns in the games as Light and his nemesis L outwit each other
Demon City Shinjuku (1988)
Anime/Suburb of Tokyo Taken Over by Demonic Forces
Anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri, director of Wicked City and Ninja Scroll, concerning a suburb of Tokyo that is transformed into a borderland zone inhabited by demonic forces. Like Wicked City, this is a work filled with wild and perverse visions
Demon Pond (1979)
Haunted Pond/Japanese Legend
Forgotten Japanese film about a man searching for a friend finding a village where a bell must be struck to prevents creatures escaping from a pond. Beautiful, bizarre and quite unlike any fantasy film you have seen before
Destroy All Monsters (1968)
Japanese Monster Bash
The 20th Toho monster movie where the studio decided to gather Godzilla and all the other monsters under their roof together for a massive tag team brawl. Disappointingly, the monsters are upstaged by space opera elements for long sections
Digimon: The Movie (2000)
Animation/Cute Cyber-Creatures
The first film from Mamoru Hosoda based on a tv series that was a blatant attempt to copy the Pokemon phenomenon and concerning cute creatures that live on the internet
The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (2010)
Anime/Alternate Timeline/Reality-Bending Teenager
Extraordinary anime based on a popular manga where those an after school club secretly harbour great powers, this expands out into something of reality-bending scope
Dogora the Space Monster (1964)
Japanese Monster Movie
Japanese monster movie from Godzilla’s creator Ishiro Honda about a giant alien blob that appears in the sky and sucks up coal and diamonds
Doman Seman (2009)
Gonzo Japanese Fantasy
Bizarre and entirely incomprehensible Japanese urban fantasy. I reached the end with no idea what this film’s string of strange happenings was about at all
The Door Into Summer (2021)
Time Travel
Robert Heinlein’s time travel novel gets a surprisingly faithful adaptation from Japan. This keeps the story’s double structure that tells one story and then with considerable conceptual dexterity reveals another hidden in the margins
Downrange (2017)
Roadside Sniper
Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura creates a gripping survival thriller about a group trapped on a small stretch of road by a sniper
Dracula (1980)
Anime/Dracula vs Satanism
Not an adaptation of Bram Stoker but an anime based on the Marvel comic-book Tomb of Dracula (the same title that gave birth to Blade)
Dreams (1990)
Japanese Ghost Story Anthology
It is some surprise that the only time Akira Kurosawa ventured into fantastic cinema was with his penultimate film here. A beautifully filmed anthology of eight tales, including several ghost stories and anti-nuclear parables
Drifting Home (2022)
Anime/Apartment Building Drifts Out to Sea
Peculiar but very nicely made anime about a group of children who go on a fantastical journey in an abandoned apartment building that is washed away to sea
Earwig and the Witch (2020)
Anime/Witch’s Apprentice
Charming anime from Hayao Miyazaki’s son Goro about a young girl adopted into a witch’s strange household. The occasion where Studio Ghibli made the switch over to computer animation
Embalming (1999)
Blackmarket Organ Legging/Sinister Cult
Japanese horror film that winds a convoluted plot involving stolen corpses, organ harvesting, split personality and religious cults
The Empire of Corpses (2015)
Anime/Alternate Victorian England Based on Frankenstein Technology
Fascinatingly original anime set in an alternate history Steampunk version of Victorian England that has developed a technology based on Frankenstein’s corpse resurrection experiments
Empire of Passion (1978)
Japanese Ghost Story
Japanese ghost story in the neo-realist style where a wife and her lover kill her husband and dump his body down a well only for him to return as a ghost
Entrails of a Virgin (1986)
Pinku Film/Demonic Rapist
Welcome to the bizarre and decidedly politically incorrect world of the Japanese pinku film. Words fail me on this one, which concerns a demonic rapist that attacks a porn film shoot
Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone (2007)
Anime/Invasion by Vast Alien Machines
The first in a series of film reboots of the Neon Genesis Evangelion anime tv series. Epic animation but you need to the part of the fanbase of the original to understand what is going on
Evangelion 2.0: You Can (Not) Advance (2009)
Anime/Invasion by Vast Alien Machines
The second of the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot films, this gets the essentials right and delivers some stunningly epic anime action scenes
Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo (2012)
Anime/Invasion by Vast Alien Machines
Third of the Neon Genesis Evangelion reboot films. These films are frustrating – filled with stunning scenes of mecha battling cryptic alien machines but baffling as to what is going on
Evil of Dracula (1974)
Japanese Vampire
The third in a trilogy of spookily eerie Japanese vampire films. This echoes the basics of Hammer’s Lust for a Vampire in being set at a girls’ boarding school, which is spun in interesting ways
Exte: Hair Extensions (2007)
Killer Living Hair Extensions
An earlier effort from Shion Sono that concerns itself with hair extensions that take over and kill their host. More straightforward than many of Sono’s other works but the outlandish of the effects make the film
The Face of Another (1966)
Man With No Face
A neglected Japanese classic, a haunting existential meditation on identity as a man loses his face in an accident and then is granted a lifelike mask
The Family Complete (2010)
Gay Incest Virus
Controversial Japanese film about a virus that causes members of a family to engage in gay incest. This is perhaps the dullest taboo-breaking film I have ever sat through
Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41 (1972)
Women's Prison Breakout/Revenge
A cultish Japanese Women in Prison film made with a wild ferocity as a female prisoner makes an escape and leads a team of women as they take revenge against men who seeks to abuse them
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (2005)
Anime/Computer Game Adaptation
Not a seventh sequel to the earlier Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, this adapts the videogame of the same name. Dazzling anime action but it is kind of take-no-prisoners when it comes to offering explanations about what is happening to anybody who has not played the game
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
Anime/Alien Soul Devourers
Despite being made by the same company, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Final Fantasy videogame. It is a visually stunning work of anime that takes place on an epic scale set after Earth has been invaded by spirit beings
Foreboding (2017)
Japanese Alien Invasion Film
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a director who specialises in cryptic spooky horror films. This is a sequel to his earlier alien invasion film Before We Vanish about aliens come to steal concepts from people’s minds