(Kanzo Sensei). Imamura's delightfully black-comic take on militarized Japan follows a country doctor on his rounds, where he discovers that it's not the war that's weakening his country, but the liver. Dr. Akagi hopes to stem the nation's hepatitis epidemic, but it's hard to convince Japan's military leaders of the need when it's their soldiers spreading the sexually transmitted disease. While trying to avoid the rapidly escalating paranoia and war fever, Akagi enlists some particularly "unhealthy" suspects—a lascivious monk, a morphine-addicted surgeon, a teenage prostitute, a brothel madam, and a Dutch P.O.W.—for help in battling the disease. This is no polite portrait of a nation at war; Imamura presents a cluttered, loud, and sex-obsessed Japan barely listening to the not-so-orderly military that tries to control it (the scene of an "officer" training a militia of grandmothers to "defend the nation" destabilizes any notion of glory). Dr. Akagi is also a tribute to Imamura's father, a small-town doctor.

—Jason Sanders

• Written by Imamura, Daisuke Tengan, from the novel by Ango Sakaguchi. Photographed by Shigeru Komatsubara. With Akira Emoto, Kumiko Aso, Juro Kara, Keiko Matsuzaka. (129 mins, In Japanese with English subtitles, Color, 35mm, From Kino)