After more than a decade of sober political dramas and social-minded period pieces, the great Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this rapturously stylized quartet of ghost stories. Featuring colorfully surreal sets and luminous cinematography, these haunting tales of demonic comeuppance and spiritual trials, adapted from writer Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folklore, are existentially frightening and meticulously...

A small time porno filmmaker in Osaka, struggles to cope with the corrupt sexual mores in his family, the world outside, and in himself. He peddles his films to condescending executives and panders a little on the side, believing he provides a socially valuable service.

Nishi, too wimpy to try to save his childhood sweetheart from gangsters, is shot in the butt by a soccer-playing psychopath, projecting Nishi into the afterlife. In this limbo, God--shown as a series of rapidly changing characters--tells him to walk toward the light. But Nishi runs in the other direction and returns to Earth a changed man.

Faced with a future of strict ceremony and royal duties, Empress Elisabeth of Austria rebels against her public image and comes up with a plan to protect her legacy.