11.	View Larger Image	Versus (Special Edition) Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
		From Description Deep within the mysterious Forest of Resurrection, a spectacular battle between good and evil has gone on since the dawn of time. When Prisoner KSC2-303 escapes from a maximum security facility, he enters the forest, believing it will lead him to safe haven. Instead, he finds himself a pawn in an endless struggle played out across multiple temporal planes of existence. ... more Buy from Amazon

12.	View Larger Image	Visions of Light: The Art of Cinematography Actors: Conrad L. Hall, John Bailey, Vilmos Zsigmond, Charles Lang, Sven Nykvist, Robert Wise, László Kovács Directors: Arnold Glassman, Todd McCarthy, Stuart Samuels
		From Amazon.com Visions of Light is not just for film buffs. In fact, if the presentation of the Oscar for Best Cinematography is your cue to take a bathroom break from the Academy Awards, then this exhilarating documentary will help you see movies in a whole new light. Named Best Documentary by the National Society of Film Critics as well as several film-critic ... more Buy from Amazon

13.	View Larger Image	Castle in the Sky Director: Hayao Miyazaki
		From Amazon.com Inspired by "Gulliver's Travels," the fantasy-adventure Castle in the Sky (1986) was Hayao Miyazaki's third feature, and helped to establish his reputation as a visionary in both Japan and America. The orphan Sheeta inherited a mysterious crystal that links her to the legendary sky-kingdom of Laputa. With the help of resourceful Pazu and a rollicking band of sky pirates, she makes ... more Buy from Amazon

14.	View Larger Image	Perfect Blue Director: Satoshi Kon
		From Amazon.com One of the most ambitious animated films to come out of Japan (or anywhere, for that matter), Perfect Blue is an adult psycho-thriller that uses the freedom of the animated image to create the subjective reality of a young actress haunted by the ghost of her past identity. Mima is a singer who leaves her teeny-bop trio to become an actress ... more Buy from Amazon

15.	View Larger Image	Entrails of the Virgin Director: Kazuo 'Gaira' Komizu
		From Description A group of people on a photo shoot in the woods take refuge in a dark house as a dense fog rolls in. When night falls, a mud-covered creature from the nearby swamp stalks them one by one brutally killing them and performing horrific sex-games with the women. ENTRAILS OF THE VIRGIN is the controversial sex-and-gore nightmare from director Gaira (Kazuo ... more Buy from Amazon

16.	View Larger Image	Ghost in the Shell Actors: Atsuko Tanaka, Iemasa Kayumi Director: Mamoru Oshii
		From Amazon.com essential video The skillful blending of drawn animation and computer-generated imagery excited anime fans when this science fiction mystery was released in 1995: many enthusiasts believe Ghost suggests what the future of anime will be, at least in the short term. The film is set in the not-too-distant future, when an unnamed government uses lifelike cyborgs or "enhanced" humans for undercover work. One ... more Buy from Amazon

17.	View Larger Image	Suicide Club (Suicide Circle) Director: Shion Sono
		From Description A wave of unexplainable suicides sweeps across Tokyo after 54 smiling high school girls join hands and throw themselves from a subway platform into an oncoming train. Are the jumpers part of a cult? What is the connection to the website that chronicles suicides...before they happen? And, what is the connection to the Japanese all-girl pop group "Desert?" Suicide Club is ... more Buy from Amazon

18.	View Larger Image	In the Realm of the Senses Actors: Tatsuya Fuji, Eiko Matsuda Director: Nagisa Oshima
		From Amazon.com Nagisa Oshima's sensational, 1976 film concerns a woman (Eiko Matsuda) whose obsessive sexual relationship with her husband (Tatsuya Fuji) crosses the line from passion into the territory of life and death. One of the most sexually explicit films ever to play in mainstream theaters (though it did run into legal trouble both in the U.S. and Japan), it has an air ... more Buy from Amazon

19.	View Larger Image	Nobody Knows Actors: Yûya Yagira, Ayu Kitaura, Hiei Kimura, Momoko Shimizu Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
		From Description Based on true events that shocked Japan, this story of abandoned siblings is a "harrowing, tender film" (The New York Times) that "unfolds with leisurely beauty" (LA Weekly). Filmed over a year and featuring a performance by 12-year-old Yagira Yuya that won the Best Actor prize at the 2004 Cannes International Film Festival, this "haunting" (Newsday) tale is "heartbreakingly brilliant" (The ... more Buy from Amazon

20.	View Larger Image	Akira (Special Edition) Actors: Mitsuo Iwata, Nozomu Sasaki, Mami Koyama Director: Katsuhiro Ôtomo
		From Amazon.com essential video Artist-writer Katsuhiro Ôtomo began telling the story of Akira as a comic book series in 1982 but took a break from 1986 to 1988 to write, direct, supervise, and design this animated film version. Set in 2019, the film richly imagines the new metropolis of Neo-Tokyo, which is designed from huge buildings down to the smallest details of passing vehicles or ... more Buy from Amazon