The river Suzhou that flows through Shanghai is a reservoir of filth, chaos and poverty, but also a meeting place for memories and secrets. Lou Ye, who spent his youth on the banks of the Suzhou, shows the river as a Chinese Styx, in which forgotten stories and mysteries come together. Mardar, a motorcycle courier in his mid-twenties, rides all over the city with all kinds of packages for his clients. He knows every inch and is successful thanks to the fact that he never asks questions. One day he is asked by a shady alcohol smuggler to deliver his sixteen-year-old daughter, Moudan, to her aunt. Mardar and Moudan grow fond of each other. But their tender happiness is disrupted when Moudan thinks that Mardar has kidnapped her for a ransom. She is so disappointed in him that she jumps off the bridge into the Suzhou River. Mardar is now suspected of murder. When a couple of years later he comes out of jail, he meets the dancer Meimei, an alter-ego of Moudan, and becomes fascinated by her. Beautifully written and engaging story of romance and determination. Not your average Chinese made film which saw this film banned in China. This is the version as the director intended it to be.

One day, Ga-In, who has been suffering from Ripley syndrome, meets high school friend Eun-Jung after 7 years hiatus. She feels jealous of her friend who seems to have everything she ever wanted in her life: gorgeous house, husband, children and even her job. Ga-In's envy turns into obsession as she begins to think of herself as Eun-Jung, trying to assume her very identity, including seducing her husband and stealing her child.

Based on the ancient Japanese Tale of Genji. Set in 900AD and tells the story of a famous female writer of the time, Murasaki Shikibu. Her story begins from the death of her husband, a Japanese noble, then moves on to her recruitment to train the Prince's young 'wives in waiting'. It is dotted throughout and actually composed mainly of one of the fictional stories she wrote, the tale of Genji. Genji is a rich playboy who falls in love and has a son to his stepmother. He falls in love often and has many wives whom are all completely subservient to him.

A group of martial arts students are enjoying a reunion party when a bomb goes off in the building. When they wake up, some of their friends have been kidnapped and they soon find a group of assassins coming after them. The only way to survive is to fight their way out.

Nomi plays a samurai named Kanjuro who decided to give up his sword after a certain incident. He wanders aimlessly with his daughter (Kumada Sea), but because he abandoned his position as a samurai without permission, a price is put on his head and they're eventually captured. However, a notoriously eccentric feudal lord offers Kanjuro a unique opportunity to earn a full acquittal.

Ki Joon and Hee Yeol are new students at the Korean National Police University. They are not the best students, but they are sincere when it matters. They decide to go out one evening. Towards the end of their night, they witness a young woman being kidnapped. Ki Joon and Hee Yeol try to get the police involved, but they meet apathy and bureaucracy. The two police cadets decide to save the young woman's life before it's too late.

Rani Padmavati - the wife of Maharawal Ratan Singh, is known for her beauty and valour in 13th century India. She captures the fancy of the reigning Sultan of Delhi, the tyrant Alauddin Khilji, who becomes obsessed with her and...

I was fortunate enough to attend the International Premiere of "Life Can Be So Wonderful" at the Miami Film Festival this year. At the premiere Director Osamu Minorikawa presented a question and answer session after the movie to explain his creative process behind the film. He described his movie as turning pages through the lives of five wandering Japanese people. It is perhaps better to address this movie as five different movies, presented in a way that was incredibly different and fresh to me--movie poetry. Each of the five movie poems followed the mundane life of a person living in Japan. The first, a nude model, is a woman who is tangled in the beauty of modeling for art, its connotations, and her desire to be a muse of art. The poem incorporated a weave of images that captured different visual aspects of her story--interview-like images of the woman talking on a couch, lush plants outside the subway station that she passed everyday, and other flashes of scenes that portrayed her thoughts. While there was an absence of plot throughout the majority of the poems, which I can only guess will irk many of those who do not appreciate the essence of poetry, the movie served a different purpose: catering to the visual and auditory senses, Osamu Minorikawa accomplished with film what Ezra Pound managed to do through words. Many of the images will remain to haunt me, others were completely temporary, but it was the sensitivity of the film that really carried it to a different level. While many will disagree with its slow unraveling beauty in a culture of instant gratification and reason, personally, I found this film to be a breath of fresh air and an astounding journey. Not eligible to be branched in the category of Academy Award dramas, the film is of a different genre. The only way to describe the five movie poems of "Life Can Be So Wonderful" would be to compare it to watching the beauty of waves on a beach-- it enables you to see the wonder in life.