Film

A Taxing Woman

A 1987 Japanese comedy-crime film where a relentless tax investigator pursues a slippery millionaire hiding his wealth through a chain of love hotels. It's a battle of wits wrapped in deadpan humour and bureaucratic absurdism, sharply satirising corruption and greed. For anyone who loves clever procedurals with teeth and a wicked sense of fun.

TMDb rating3.4

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy sharp, dry satire where the pleasure is in two smart people circling each other, and the tax paperwork becomes a kind of cat-and-mouse thriller.

Skip it if you want a brisk plot or a clear moral arc, since this is a leisurely, talky film that takes its time making its points and rarely hurries.

What it asks of you: Expect just over two hours of patient, talkative scenes, with comic beats that land quietly and a lot of ledgers, bank records and bluffing to follow.

If you liked this

High and Low1963

Kurosawa's masterpiece of class conflict and moral ambiguity. A wealthy businessman's kidnapped chauffeur's son forces him into an agonising choice. Structurally brilliant, visually devastating, and deeply human.

But It's three hours and shifts tone dramatically halfway through. The pacing demands patience, and some find the second half less gripping than the first.

High and Low poster

In the Mood for Love2000

Wong Kar-wai's achingly beautiful meditation on desire, restraint and the spaces between people. Every frame is a painting. A film that moves at its own dreamlike pace and rewards total attention.

But Almost nothing happens. If you need plot momentum or dialogue to drive a story, the extreme slowness and visual abstraction will frustrate you badly.

In the Mood for Love poster

Ikiru1952

Kurosawa again—a dying bureaucrat searches for meaning in a life spent pushing papers. Simultaneously heartbreaking and oddly funny. A profound meditation on dignity and how we spend our days.

But It's bleak. A man confronting his wasted life is heavy material, and the film doesn't look away from that weight or offer easy comfort.

Ikiru poster

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Floating Clouds1955

Both films dissect Japanese society's corruption and its victims through a protagonist who sees clearly what others deny. Naruse and Itami share an eye for how systems grind people down.

Naruse's masterpiece about a woman and man shaped by war and post-war Japan, reuniting in Tokyo while their lives crumble. Visual understatement of extraordinary power—the camera barely moves but everything shatters. A film about desire, duty, and the crushing weight of circumstance.

But The tragedy is relentless and quiet. If you need plot propulsion or emotional catharsis, the passive suffering and formal restraint will feel like punishment rather than cinema.

Floating Clouds poster
More like this (7)

Branded to Kill1967

Suzuki's surreal yakuza film plays like a fever dream: a hitman obsessed with snails, impossible plot twists, and a visual language that predates everything. Wildly inventive and darkly comic.

But The narrative spirals into abstraction and doesn't resolve cleanly. If you want coherence, this will feel deliberately obtuse and frustratingly mannered.

Branded to Kill poster

Cure1997

Kurosawa Kiyoshi's psychological thriller about a detective hunting a serial killer who plants hypnotic suggestions. Slow-burn dread, philosophical questions about will and influence, masterful tension.

But Glacially paced and genuinely bleak. There's no catharsis, and the ambiguity about what's actually happened will bother you if you need clear answers.

Cure poster

Vengeance Is Mine1979

Shohei Imamasu's portrait of a serial killer on the run. Sociologically sharp, morally complex, with extraordinary performances. It treats cruelty and survival with unflinching intelligence.

But It's deeply unsettling and never judges its protagonist morally. The violence is implied but the psychological ugliness is relentless and exhausting.

Vengeance Is Mine poster

Harakiri1962

Masaki Kobayashi's devastating critique of honour culture told through a samurai's ritual suicide. Visual compositions are extraordinary. A political film disguised as period drama.

But It's a film about ritual suicide and it takes that seriously. Emotionally punishing, deliberately slow, and the final act is unbearable if you're not prepared.

Harakiri poster

The Firemen's Ball1967

Milos Forman's absurdist comedy about a provincial firehouse's chaotic fundraiser. Satire of bureaucracy and small-town pomposity done with affection and chaos. Funny in a completely unsettling way.

But The humour is anarchic and uncomfortable rather than warm. Nothing resolves, nobody learns anything, and the chaos might just seem like mess.

The Firemen's Ball poster

Shogun Assassin1980

A protagonist alone against a rigged system that has failed justice. But where Itakura works within the bureaucracy to expose it, this man destroys everything. Inverse approach, same target.

Lone Wolf and Cub's Kenji Misumi brings a samurai on the run with his child through a blood-soaked revenge odyssey. Operatic violence, visual poetry, unstoppable momentum. A man against a corrupt system, entirely his own rules.

But The gore is extreme and the violence graphic. If you flinch from explicit swordplay and blood, or need moral ambiguity rather than righteous vengeance, this will be unwatchable.

Shogun Assassin poster

The Ballad of Little Jo1993

Both films are about characters operating outside official systems to survive and build lives—one through disguise, one through cunning. Both are dry, unsentimental studies of endurance.

Maggie Greenwald's strange gem: a woman in 1860s Montana passes as a man to survive, building an unexpected life. Austere, unsentimental, visually stark. A western that's really about identity, survival, and the masks we need.

But The pacing is deliberate and the landscape is unforgiving. Character development is minimal and the tonal shifts between tragedy and quiet resilience feel abrupt. Also almost completely unknown.

The Ballad of Little Jo poster

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