1Ikiru
TMDB8.3
1952·1.4K votes
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.
Less scrolling. More watching.
The deepest movie search there is: load the whole catalog, cut your dealbreakers — any actor, genre, or vibe— and the machine ranks what's left.
or load up the machine below
1Load it up
Genre, era, runtime, who's in it — and every dealbreaker you've got.
2Crank it
The machine searches the whole catalog and ranks the matches to your taste.
3Out pops the one
Ranked, with a trailer and where to watch. Press play.
The controls
Genres(Click once to Include and twice to Exclude)
Content Rating (US)(Click once to Include and twice to Exclude)
Actors & Actresses
Release Year
IMDb Rating
Rotten Tomatoes
Highest Rated
while you load up
1
2Throne of Blood
TMDB7.9
1957·981 votes
Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.
3The Hidden Fortress
TMDB8.0
1958·708 votes
In feudal Japan, during a bloody war between clans, two cowardly and greedy peasants, soldiers of a defeated army, stumble upon a mysterious man who guides them to a fortress hidden in the mountains.
4Tokyo Twilight
TMDB7.7
1957·154 votes
Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot accept the fact that she was abandoned as a child.
5Good Morning
TMDB7.7
1959·314 votes
A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.
6Street of Shame
TMDB7.7
1956·151 votes
Follows five sex workers employed at a Japanese brothel while the nation debates the passage of an anti-prostitution law.
7Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple
TMDB7.2
1955·142 votes
After years on the road establishing his reputation as Japan's greatest fencer, Takezo returns to Kyoto. Otsu waits for him, yet he has come not for her but to challenge the leader of the region's finest school of fencing. To prove his valor and skill, he walks deliberately into ambushes set up by the school's followers.
8I Live in Fear
TMDB7.3
1955·122 votes
An aging foundry patriarch, gripped by terror of nuclear annihilation, tries to uproot his family to Brazil. When they petition to have him declared incompetent, a family-court counselor witnesses his obsession slide into ruin—and asks whether ignoring the atomic threat is any saner.
9The Lower Depths
TMDB7.1
1957·142 votes
Residents of a rundown boardinghouse in 19th-century Japan, including a mysterious old man and an aging actor, get drawn into a love triangle that turns violent. When amoral thief Sutekichi breaks off his affair with landlady Osugi to romance her younger sister, Okayo, Osugi extracts her revenge by revealing her infidelity to her jealous husband.
10Stray Dog
TMDB7.6
1949·358 votes
A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side.
11Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto
TMDB7.2
1954·209 votes
Struggling to elevate himself from his low caste in 17th century Japan, Miyamoto trains to become a mighty samurai warrior.
12The Idiot
TMDB7.0
1951·127 votes
A gentle, war-shattered ex-soldier, Kinji Kameda, arrives in wintry Hokkaidō and is pulled into a volatile tangle of love and pity between the disgraced Taeko Nasu, the proud Ayako, and his possessive friend Akama. Kameda’s saintly compassion exposes everyone’s wounds, steering the quartet toward jealousy, violence, and inexorable tragedy. Adapted from Dostoevsky’s novel.