ZEGEN (The Pimp). “Of Imamura’s late films, Zegen is the most like his early masterworks: epic, energetic, sexually impudent, and grotesquely funny. A satire about colonialism, commerce, and carnality, Zegen is based on the true story of a hairdresser, Iheiji Muraoka (Ken Ogata), sent to Manchuria to spy on the Russian army. A born entrepreneur, Muraoka set up a chain of brothels throughout Asia —a kind of fornication franchise— and became ‘the big Boss of the South Seas.’ As Imamura portrays him, the ‘zegen’ is a decent but doltish and blindly patriotic businessman who views his development of a prostitution empire throughout Southeast Asia as the vanguard of Japan’s military adventurism: ‘For the sake of a great cause, I procure women.’”Imamura's rambling epic is filmed entirely outside Japan in early 1900's South East Asia. It satirizes Japanese imperialism with considerable bite, but is also very entertaining in its characters and story. Based on the autobiography of a Japanese business man named Muraoka, if follows the main character from when he jumps ship swimming ashore in Hong Kong harbour, to Manchuria where he works as a Japanese spy using prostitutes to gain information from the Russians, to Malaysia where he sets up brothels of Japanese prostitutes in a effort to further Japanese colonization in the area. Ken Ogata plays the lead, giving a nuanced performance of the man who runs brothels as part of his noble service to the Emperor. There is also a compelling love story, some very humourous satirical lines and plenty of half clothed women. What more could you want?Note: The title 'oyabun' is used for Muraoka often in the film. It means Boss, or Big Boss or Godfather... I think you get the picture. Trivia: Director Takashi Miike was given his first film credit, as assistant director on Zegen. He was a student at the Japan Institute of the Moving Image at the time. The Institute was founded by Imamura.

‘They have conducted the rite of blood and sold their souls to resurrect evil, but that was only the beginning. The time has come for them to finish the rite. When the curse of blood begins, it’s the end of everything’. Police are left baffled after uncovering a ritualistic mass suicide. Each body is left stretched out in front of a heavily pregnant woman atop an altar. Barely alive the woman is rushed to hospital but dies shortly after arriving, but the child is saved and delivered seemingly healthy. Twenty years later and the survivors are being discovered brutality murdered and all are missing their ring finger, coincidentally the child saved on that fateful day twenty years ago is having visions of the murders. Seung Hee knows nothing of her past or her mother or how she has become embroiled in these murders but now everyone wants to know her, including Satan himself.

Mitsuko (Riisa Naka) is a young woman who believes everything will be okay and always tries to help those around her. One day, she met an American man and wanted to help him. They became involved in a relationship and she moved with him to California. A little later, her boyfriend left her and Mitsuko returned to Japan alone. Her parents, who run a pachinko parlor, still think Mitsuko is living happily in California. Now, Mitsuko is nine-months pregnant, unmarried and almost broke. She has to move out of her apartment. Yet, Mitsuko still believes everything will be okay. Mitsuko doesn't know where she will go, but she lays downs on a bench and watches where the wind blows. Mitsuko then knows where she will go. She'll visit an elderly woman who was her parents' landlord many years ago. Mitsuko will also see again the boy (Aoi Nakamura) that held a life-long crush on her.

Once a year, on Christmas Eve, Cafe Telekinesis holds a real psychic party. At the party, psychics gather together to show off their abilities while for the rest of the year they hide their abilitties. Yone Sakurai (Masami Nagasawa) is a program director for a psychic variety TV show called "Asunaro Psychic". She is stressed out and tired from her work, but proud of what she is doing. Yone actually believes in psychic abilities. By an audience request a new plan is set out for the program, a plan which requires the show to uncover real psychics or psychic events. Yone is selected to find these people. Yone then goes on a nationwide search, but uncovers only fakes. As Christmas draws closer, Yone, a normally cheerful girl, becomes depressed. Her boss at the Tokyo station orders Yone back if she can't find a psychic. Before Yone ends her search she makes one last stop at Cafe Psychic on Christmas Eve! Can the psychics there, who all hate Yone's TV show, hide their abilities from Yone or will Yone finally get her program material?

An engaged couple believes that they are meant to be together, but their conviction shatters when their families meet each other.

The story takes place in a beautiful pavilion in 1930's Suzhou. Jade is a famous songstress courtesan, marrying into the noble house. She develops a dubious relationship with a female cousin of the family and also being admired secretly by her butler. LAN, the cousin, is a modern woman who wants to be independent and serves her country, but when she meets the charismatic Shing, an official from the North, all her plans go astray. These two women's love bears no fruit with their men and in the end, they have only each other to lean on.

IP MAN: KUNG FU MASTER harks back to Ip’s early days before the Communist Revolution in 1949. Ip Man was then a police captain who was framed for the murder of a ruthless but honorable mobster, and targeted for vengeance by his dangerous daughter. Forced to quit the force, Ip soon also has to contend with the arrival of the Japanese army in Guangzhou.

The Quartzers, calling themselves the Wardens of Time, appear after Sougo Tokiwa collected all of the Heisei Ridewatches. A grand conspiracy behind the birth of the King of Time becomes clear...