RiverMovies like River
- Key Features:
- Time loop, Tokyo, Mystery, Supernatural, Repetition, Existentialism, Small town
- Tone:
- restrained, stylized
- Target Audience:
- Art house film enthusiasts, Mystery lovers, Fans of Japanese cinema
- Emotional Arc:
- Confusion → Frustration → Acceptance
River

The one-hundred-year-old Fujiya inn stands in the quiet region of Kyoto. Mikoto is standing in front of the Kibune river at the back of the building when she is called back to work. But two minutes later, she finds herself back at the river again. The whole inn seems to be stuck in a time loop!
River
A cafe owner discovers that the TV in his cafe suddenly shows images from the future, but only two minutes into the future.

Six high schoolers stuck in a murderous time loop must find the scattered remains of an unknown victim to break the curse and finally see another day.

A group of travelers is stranded in a small country inn when the river floods during heavy rains. As the bad weather continues, tensions rise amongst the trapped travelers.

Young art student Hideo paints an unnerving portrait of Tomie, who whispers that she loves him. Inexplicably, he reacts by stabbing her to death with a painting trowel. Two friends, Takumi and Shunichi, arrive on the scene and help him dispose of the body. To cheer him up, the boys take the unwitting murderer to the nearest bar for a party... but a mysterious girl named Tomie shows up, bearing a few odd physical resemblances to the dead girl in the ground.

A man finds himself stuck in a mysterious time loop, reliving the same day again and again. As the cycle repeats, he is forced to confront his daily routines, question his relationships, and search for meaning in a world that refuses to change.

Kazu works at "Funiculi Funicula" cafe. There is a mysterious rumour that if a customer takes a specific seat at the cafe, that customer can travel back to a time of their choice.

As the perpetually lecherous Ataru and his friends prepare for a carnival at Tomobiki High School, they gradually realize the days are literally repeating themselves. Any effort to break the pattern dumps them back where they started.

Teddy wakes up the morning after his wedding to discover that he's jumped forward a year in his life to his first anniversary. Trapped in an endless cycle of time jumps, transported another year ahead every few minutes, he is faced with a race against time as his life crumbles around him.

In the immense city of Tokyo, the darkness of the afterlife lures some of its inhabitants who are desperately trying to escape the sadness and isolation of the modern world.

In different parts of Tokyo, four young and seemingly healthy people suddenly die of heart failure at exactly the same moment. Reporter Kazuyuki Asakawa decides to investigate the deaths, and discovers that the four had stayed at a rural inn together just a week earlier. At the inn, he comes across a strange video that ends with a message saying that anyone who watches it will die exactly seven days later. Now the clock is ticking for Asakawa. Can he break the curse in time?

A disillusioned filmmaker has an encounter with a young woman who has a ritual of repeating "Tomorrow is my birthday" everyday. He tries to communicate with her through his video camera.

A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.

A detective starts spiraling out of control when a wave of gruesome murders with seemingly similar bizarre circumstances is sweeping Tokyo.

María José and Alfredo are about to celebrate their 20th anniversary and their children give them a trip to the hotel where they celebrated their honeymoon, but a spell will make them repeat the same day.

An aging poet summons his estranged sons to the hotel he is staying at because he feels his death is near; meanwhile, he encounters two women staying at the hotel.

Three American tourists follow a mysterious map deep into the jungles of Japan searching for an ancient temple. When spirits entrap them, their adventure quickly becomes a horrific nightmare.

A Japanese actress begins having strange visions and experiences after landing a role in a horror film about a real-life murder spree that took place over forty years ago.

An unexpected love triangle, a seduction trap, and a random encounter are the three episodes, told in three movements to depict three female characters and trace the trajectories between their choices and regrets.

When carefree Nyles and reluctant maid of honor Sarah have a chance encounter at a Palm Springs wedding, things get complicated when they find themselves unable to escape the venue, themselves, or each other.

12-year-old Oriko Seki, who lost her parents in a car accident, ended up living in her grandmother's Onsen Ryokan "Haru no Ya." With the ghost "Uribou" cohabitating with her and all the other odds, she ended up training to be a young female innkeeper. At first, she didn't like the training, but gradually felt her admiration for her title and began to train seriously. Thus, the growth of the young warrior Oriko begins.

Jane is the subject of a twisted science experiment where she is placed in a parallel world and is forced to find a way to either alter her reality or be stuck in a time-loop, destined to repeat the same test over and over again, with no memory of her doing it before. But with each 'reset' she starts to retain fragments of memory. With clues pointing to the mysterious Wytness Quantum Research Centre, she tries to find a way out. (The film was shot entirely on an iPhone during the UK’s first lockdown.)

In a distinctly contemporary Tokyo that looks backwards to the city’s disappearing past, Yoko is a writer investigating the life of a modernist composer of the 1930s. She is pregnant by a man she does not want to marry and has found a kindred spirit in a used bookstore owner who aids her research.

After getting out of prison, small-time crook Mardar stumbles upon a woman who looks exactly like his long-lost lover, who he attempted to kidnap 3 years ago.

Asako lives in Osaka. She falls in love with Baku, a free-spirit. One day, Baku suddenly disappears. Two years later, Asako now lives in Tokyo and meets Ryohei. He looks just like Baku, but has a completely different personality.

Documentary filmmaker Genya Tachibana has tracked down the legendary actress Chiyoko Fujiwara, who mysteriously vanished at the height of her career. When he presents her with a key she had lost and thought was gone forever, the filmmaker could not have imagined that it would not only unlock the long-held secrets of Chiyoko’s life... but also his own.

A teenager is stuck in a time loop that is not quite the same each time. She must uncover the truth but her actions have consequences for herself and others.

A South Korean woman in her sixties enrolls in a poetry class as she grapples with her faltering memory and her grandson's appalling wrongdoing.

During a wedding in a riad on the edge of the Moroccan desert, Paul meets Louna, the bride's sister and witness. Following a paranormal event, they both find themselves trapped in the same space-time, forced to live the same day over and over again. And so begins a love story set against the backdrop of a time loop and a never-ending marriage…

Three years ago, a father saved his daughter's life. After she's involved in a car accident, it looks like he'll have to do it again, no matter how many attempts it takes.

Three distinct tales unfold in the bustling city of Tokyo. Merde, a bizarre sewer-dweller, emerges from a manhole and begins terrorizing pedestrians. After his arrest, he stands trial and lashes out at a hostile courtroom. A man who has resigned himself to a life of solitude reconsiders after meeting a charming pizza delivery woman. And finally, a happy young couple find themselves undergoing a series of frightening metamorphoses.

In a strange and isolated chateau, a man becomes acquainted with a woman and insists that they have met before.

Before they can complete renovations on their new inn, a father and daughter are visited by a woman seeking immediate lodging for her strange group of travelers.

The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.

In a Tokyo love hotel district, a woman is found dead in a derelict apartment. As police investigate, a romance novelist's wife lives a life that seems simply a daily repetition without romance. To break away from the loveless monotony, she follows her desires and becomes a nude model enacting sex in front of a camera. Soon, she meets a mentor and begins selling her body to strangers, while at home, she hides behind the façade that she's still the doting wife she's supposed to be.

Diagnosed with a black hole growing inside her chest and stuck in a loop reliving the last five days of her life, a 55-year-old wife and mother from Miami, Florida decides to solve time travel in order to go back and be the person she always intended to be.

An American journalist travels through 19th-century Japan to find the prostitute he fell in love with but instead learns of the physical and existential horror that befell her after he left.

One year after the events of the anime, Rintarou begins to feel the repercussions of extensive time travel, and eventually completely fades from reality. Kurisu, being the only companion to remember him, now must find a way to bring him back.

A street vendor with a grim home-life forges a connection with a young woman on her way to Paris.

On the Japanese island of Amami, despite lacking parental guidance, Kaito and his girlfriend Kyoko try to find their place in the world. While Kaito suffers from the absence of his father, who moved to Tokyo after his birth, Kyoko must come to grips with her mother’s terminal illness.

A restaurant opens at midnight. Both the menu offerings and personality of the owner draw a series of flawed patrons including Tamako, whose boyfriend has passed away, live-in worker Michiru, and ruckus-raising Kenzo.

An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a ramen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.

Four women in their thirties reevaluate their relationships, both shared and private, after a startling revelation concerning one's marriage forces each of them to ask one of life's biggest questions: "Am I who I want to be?"

Hoping to find a sense of connection to her late mother, Gorgeous takes a trip with her friends to visit her aunt's ancestral house in the countryside. The girls soon discover that there is more to the old house than meets the eye.

While investigating the horrifying death of her boyfriend, Mai Takano learns about a videotape haunted by the spirit of a disturbing girl named Sadako, which kills anyone who watches it exactly one week later. When her boyfriend’s son, Yoichi, starts to develop the same psychic abilities as Sadako, Takano must find a way to keep the boy and herself from becoming the next victims.

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.

A fear-obsessed freelance cameraman investigates an urban legend involving mysterious spirits that haunt the subways of Tokyo.

A woman wakes up in a river. Wounded and without memory, then races to elude mysterious followers and recover from amnesia.

When the wife of a 17th century Kyoto scroll-maker is falsely accused of having an affair with his best employee, the pair flee the city and find themselves falling for one another.

A gritty mind-bending thriller about three twenty-somethings who find themselves in an impossible time labyrinth, where each day they awaken to the same terrifying day as the preceding one.

A lonely, chain-smoking office lady in Tokyo falls for her teacher when she decides to take English lessons. When her teacher disappears, she sets out on a journey to find him.

In the chambers of the Edo harem, two newcomers uncover political intrigue, rivalry and a vengeful spirit only one traveling medicine seller can vanquish.

A tragedy strikes a young woman's life without warning or reason. She continues living while searching for meaning in a lonely world.

The story follows a Roman architect named Lucius, who is having trouble coming up with ideas. One day, he discovers a hidden tunnel underneath a spa that leads him to a modern Japanese bath house. Inspired by the innovations found there, he creates his own spa, Roma Thermae, bringing in the modern ideas to his time.

A group of students become trapped inside a mysterious cave where they discover time passes differently underground than on the surface.

On the most important day of his young life, a high school senior is forced to relive his failed attempt at losing his virginity over and over again, until he gets it right.

A man trying to get home to his dog becomes stuck in a time loop that forces him to relive a deadly run-in with a cop.

A man and woman meet by chance at a romantic inn over dinner and, although both are married to others, they find themselves in the same bed the next morning questioning how this could have happened. They agree to meet on the same weekend each year—in the same hotel room—and the years pass each has some personal crisis that the other helps them through, often without both of them understanding what is going on.

A shy high schooler in Kyoto meets a man claiming to be his future self, who tells him he’s hacked into the past to save their first love.

On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.

A lonely university student develops a romance with a beautiful interesting woman, who turns out to be a cyborg from the future.

A down-and-out businessman travels to a seaside town, where he meets a woman with unusual sexual powers.

An architect heads to the altar with her fiancé, unsure of her marriage and their future. She relives her disastrous wedding day, put together by her fiance’s overbearing mother, over and over until, with the help of his brother, she begins to face her biggest fears and discover what she really wants in herself and in her life.

On a cold Monday morning, a group of counselors clock in at an old-fashioned social services office. Their task is to interview the recently deceased, record their personal details, then, over the course of the week, assist them in choosing a single memory to keep for eternity.

An old man and a young woman meet in Tokyo. She knows nothing about him, he thinks he knows her. He welcomes her into his home, she offers him her body. But the web that is woven between them in the space of twenty four hours bears no relation to the circumstances of their encounter.

Following some trauma in her past that has since been repressed, a young woman is trying to recover her memories with the help of a psychiatrist. During her hypnosis sessions, she repeats the name "Tomie" but is unable to recall where she knows it from. Meanwhile, a police detective is investigating a string of brutal murders, where he also runs across the name "Tomie." How are the two connected?

The inhabitants of a small Japanese town become increasingly obsessed with and tormented by spirals.

Amid the opulent teahouses of 1930s Hong Kong, a humble courtesan and the wayward scion of a wealthy family fall in love and embrace death by suicide pact. Fifty years later, her ghost returns to find him, drawing a young contemporary couple into her quest to rekindle a passion that may be as illusory as time itself.

Beat Takeshi lives the busy and sometimes surreal life of a showbiz celebrity. One day he meets his blond lookalike named Kitano, a shy convenience store cashier, who, still an unknown actor, is waiting for his big break. After their paths cross, Kitano seems to begin hallucinating about becoming Beat.

A group of travelers, including a monk, stay in a lonely inn in the mountains. The host confesses the monk his habit of serving poisoned soup to the guests, to rob their possessions and to bury them in the backyard. The story unfolds as the monk tries to save the guest's lives without violating the holy secrecy of the confession.

A reflection on human life in all its beauty and cruelty, its splendor and banality, guided by a Scheherazade-esque narrator. Inconsequential moments have the same significance as historical events. Simultaneously an ode and a lament, presents a kaleidoscope of all that is eternally human, an infinite story of the vulnerability of existence.

The elderly Shukishi and his wife, Tomi, take the long journey from their small seaside village to visit their adult children in Tokyo. Their elder son, Koichi, a doctor, and their daughter, Shige, a hairdresser, don't have much time to spend with their aged parents, and so it falls to Noriko, the widow of their younger son who was killed in the war, to keep her in-laws company.

Dante accidentally kisses Alice and they get engaged. After a surprise party for his 40th birthday, he wakes up a year later, not remembering what happened. Not only does he discover that Alice is pregnant... He feels time is passing too quickly and he starts forgetting some of the most important moments of his life.

Taeko and her husband, Jirō, are living a peaceful existence with her young son, Keita, when a tragic accident brings the boy's long-lost father, Park, back into her life. To cope with the pain and guilt, Taeko throws herself into helping this deaf and homeless man.

Arthur is invited to a New Year's Eve party to celebrate the year 2000. His girlfriend Lucie would like a baby from him but he refuses. Through the ceiling of the toilets, he discovers a passage leading to this futurist Paris. There, he meets an old man Ako who affirms he is his son and that he wants to exist. Otherwise he will vanish into the air. Arthur is still hesitant because his life is an unfulfilled one: a has a little lucrative job, is uncertain about his future and things are getting out of hand when Ako discovers the passage and interferes in the party.

Takatoshi Minamiyama majors in art at an university in Kyoto. On the train to the school, he sees Emi Fukuju and falls in love with her at first sight. Gathering up all his courage, he speaks to her. They begin to date and enjoy happy days together, but Emi reveals her secret to him.

When Irene takes a position at a hotel deep in the woods of the Austrian Alps, she soon discovers the girl she replaced vanished without a trace.

A group of travelers, including a monk, stay in a lonely inn in the mountains. The host confesses the monk his habit of serving poisoned soup to the guests, to rob their possessions and to bury them in the backyard.

Minami mistakenly kills a gangster associate of his named Brother. Almost as soon as the murder takes place, the body of the deceased man is gone, prompting Minami to conduct a search. While looking, he finds a mysterious isolated hotel where he decides to take a rest. Not only are the front desk clerks a bit strange, but even the ambiance feels unusual. Minami soon realizes he may have gotten more than he bargained for.

An isolated lake, where an old monk lives in a small floating temple. The monk has a young boy living with him, learning to become a monk. We watch as seasons and years pass by.

A detective investigates a series of murders. A possible serial killer might be on a rampage, since they all are in the same vicinity and by the same method, but as the evidence points toward the detective as the prime suspect, a ghost in red follows him, and he begins to question his identity. His realization of what seems to have really happened results in something much more sinister and larger in scope, and it leaves his psyche scarred.

A mysterious video has been linked to a number of deaths, and when an inquisitive journalist finds the tape and views it herself, she sets in motion a chain of events that puts her own life in danger.

20-year-old Margaux makes the acquaintance of 45-year-old Margaux: they have a lot in common – so much so that it turns out they are one and the same person, at two different ages and stages of their life…

A young woman from the future forces a local gunman to help her stop an impending alien invasion which will wipe out the human race.

A woman wakes in a cryogenic chamber with no recollection of how she got there, and must find a way out before running out of air.

Four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife.

Camille was only sixteen and still in high school when she fell in love with Eric, another student. They later married and a child and were happy for a while. But now twenty-five years have passed and Eric leaves her for a younger woman. Bitter and desperate Camille drinks so much liquor at a New Year Eve's party that she falls into an ethylic coma and she finds herself... propelled into her own past! Camille is sixteen again when she wakes up this morning, her parents are not dead anymore and she must go to school, where she will meet her schoolmates and, of course, Eric. Is she going to fall for him again and... be miserable twenty-five years later? Or will she avoid him with the result never having her beloved daughter? Who ever said that time traveling was fun?

A man accidentally gets into a time machine and travels back in time nearly an hour. Finding himself will be the first of a series of disasters of unforeseeable consequences.

A spell of time in the life of a family in rural Tochigi prefecture. Yoshiko is not an ordinary housewife, instead working on an animated film project. Uncle Ayano, a successful music producer, is looking to get his head together after living in Tokyo. Meanwhile, Sachiko is concerned with why she seems to be followed by a giant version of herself. As the lazy days pass by, each member of the family is followed in a series of episodic vignettes.

Searching for escape in Tokyo's back alleys, a haunted English teacher explores love and lust with a dashing Yakuza, as their tumultuous affair takes her on a journey through the city's dive bars and three-hour love hotels.

Office employee Barry Thomas is caught in a "time bounce" caused by a glitch in the company's secret project. Now the same day occurs again and again - and Barry's the only one who can do anything about it, including saving the life of beautiful research assistant Lisa Fredericks.

A romantic comedy of a young man and woman that is told in the background of hotel 'Emross'. It has stories of people who met each other at Hotel Emross during the New Year holidays. Each one has his own memory to relate and create relationships or just going nostalgic.

Koji Shiraishi interviews the survivors of an indiscriminate attack at a sightseeing resort and starts investigating the strange events that have been happening to them.

On her 40th birthday, Amelia makes a fateful wish to be 18 again back in 2002 but soon regrets it when she's stuck reliving the day over and over again.

Mitsuko, a young student, encounters a series of horrifying incidents set in alternate realities where people wind up dead in the most horrendous fashion.

Eight visually rich vignettes drawn from Kurosawa’s own dreams—fox weddings and vanished orchards, a soldier’s ghosts, a walk through Van Gogh’s canvases, nuclear nightmares, and a water-mill utopia—meditate on childhood, art, mortality, and humanity’s uneasy bond with nature.

Collegian Tree Gelbman wakes up in horror to learn that she's stuck in a parallel universe. Her boyfriend Carter is now with someone else, and her friends and fellow students seem to be completely different versions of themselves. When Tree discovers that Carter's roommate has been altering time, she finds herself once again the target of a masked killer. When the psychopath starts to go after her inner circle, Tree soon realizes that she must die over and over again to save everyone.

A curse is placed on grinchy Chuy, who wakes up to find he's lived a full year, but is doomed to remember only Christmas Day. Every year. From now on.

Hirayama is content with his life as a toilet cleaner in Tokyo. Outside of his structured routine, he cherishes music on cassette tapes, books, and taking photos of trees. Through unexpected encounters, he reflects on finding beauty in the world.

