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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 42 movies from Office Shirous
Marie-Lou Fontaine, director of a nursing home in the Paris suburbs, defies convention by adopting the 'Humanitude' method despite her team’s resistance. Her encounter with Mari Morisaki, a terminally ill Japanese playwright, transforms her life. Together, they turn the facility into a symbol of resistance and humanity against the system’s limits.
Jun 2026
1960s Japan—economic boom, Olympic pride, and a crackdown on “public morals.” An anti-prostitution law targets women but spares male sex workers, the so-called “blue boys.” When police arrest the doctor performing their sex reassignment surgeries, the sensational “Blue Boy Trial” begins. Three transgender women take the stand, igniting a national debate on identity, medicine, and happiness—long before the language of LGBT existed. Though the court ruled surgery legal, the verdict cast a shadow: no such operations would occur in Japan for 29 years. Half a century later, this buried history still reverberates in the lives of sexual minorities.
Nov 2025
Yuriko (Yuki Shibamoto) is tired of her relationship with a married man. She leaves Tokyo and goes back to her hometown of Yugafu, which is located on small island in Okinawa. The married man though follows Yuriko to the small island. In addition, the married man's wife also arrives on the island. They married couple causes all kinds of disturbances...
Jul 2009
Mizuki's husband Yusuke has been missing for three years. He suddenly comes back home as a ghost and asks Mizuki to go on a trip with him. Their trip consists of visiting the people that helped Yusuke on his previous travel.
Sep 2015
An old swordsman, his former comrade and a young braggart are hired by prostitutes to track down bandits who mutilated one of the women.
Sep 2013
A married woman with a lovely daughter lives a carefree life, until she meets her ex-lover at a friend’s wedding. They haven’t seen each other in ten years, but they begin an affair.
Feb 2020
After losing their restaurant in a fire, a husband and wife come up with a strange plan to rebuild their shattered finances: marrying the husband off to a series of lonely women and defrauding them.
Sep 2012
A widowed lumberjack's life is turned upside down when a film crew shooting a zombie movie asks for his help and increasingly starts to rely on him.
Feb 2012
Yumiko Haruno works as a waitress at a cafe that has been around for a long time. She spends her days aimlessly and without a dream for her future. On an ordinary day at her job, Yumiko notices middle aged man Ichirou Haga looking intently at shunga (Japanese erotic paintings that were popular during the Edo period). He suddenly talks to her and asks her what shunga is to her. Yumiko becomes interested in the eccentric shunga researcher and he invites her to visit his home to learn more. After his wife passed away, Ichirou has lived a reclusive life and concentrated solely on his study of shunga. Yumiko visits his home and begins to take shunga lessons from him.
Oct 2023
Hotel Hibiscus is the story of one very young energetic girl named Mieko and her international family who live in Okinawa. They live in a run down old hotel called Hotel Hibiscus with only one room for rent.
Oct 2002
10-year-old children Midori and Futa live separate lives. Both feel alone and isolated from their parents. They struggle to be kids under the stress and weight of their fractured family lives.
Two different high school children - a swimmer and an academic - set off on a quest together one summer.
Aug 2021
The lives of a young cop, a sanitation worker and a brooding pharmacist violently intersect on a bus that's hijacked by a suicidal political flunky, then cross paths again months later.
Oct 2005
A young student believes that the spirit of an alien from another planet has gone back in time, taking over his body to infiltrate and study humanity in order to find the reasons why our civilization is doomed to future destruction. He replicates the spirit of another alien in a girl that he meets, and together they use their video cameras to document modern urban Japanese society.
Jul 1997
An essayist, he finds peace in his mountain life. His routine is pleasantly disturbed by occasional visits from Machiko, his editor and love interest, as he struggles to let go of his late wife's ashes.
Nov 2022
It has been 14 years since the murder of an elementary school student by a classmate. At the time, Akari was deified by the name Sunny, "the cutest murderer in criminal history". Two men, abduct Akari. Holding her captive, they upload pictures and video of her on the internet. Meanwhile, Akari makes every effort to escape from her prison.
Feb 2018
Shirayuri Club is an amateur band started in 1947. They still are playing wonderful music in various occasions. The documentary captures their first tour to Tokyo.
Jul 2003
After the death of his wife, Kenzaburō receives an unexpected letter from beyond the grave. His late wife asks him to travel to Lake Windermere in England with their son to scatter her ashes. Plagued by sweet and painful memories of his wife, Kenzaburō travels to England from Tokyo to fulfill her final wish, but the father and son's fraught relationship threatens to upend their journey.
Feb 2024
A woman has a fine life with rewarding work, a nice house, and a serious boyfriend in the lowlands of Japan. In walks her long lost husband who years ago disappeared and abandoned her. The wife allows her lost husband to secretly live in her house. More specifically, he lives in the wife's closet. The closet has a peep hole, so he does nothing day and night but watch his wife live her life.
Jul 2002
Nanako returns to her hometown on the tiny island of Aguni to meet her grandmother Nabbie. However, when Nanako's ferry arrives, it is also carrying Nabbie's former lover, who has returned to Aguni after a long absence.
Dec 1999