@Wick,
The Raid and
The Raid 2 are the best action movies probably in decades. Indonesian. Scottish director with film stars he plucked out of a small Indonesian martial arts dojo. The 2012
Dredd film was a Western attempt to imitate
The Raid and the John Wick films are clearly heavily inspired by them (director has also mentioned them as inspiration). Both Raid flms are better than any of the films they've inspired. There's also an Indonesian half-martial arts half-superhero flick called
Gundala that's not nearly as good as the Raid movies but still fairly fun.
There are tons of good Korean films. You've got
Burning, with the friend zoned guy competing with the charming sociopath playboy for a chick, except the sociopath is REALLY a sociopath...
Train to Busan and
#Alive if you like zombie films, both of which are better than any Western zombie flick since
28 Days Later.
Oldboy, which is just legendary.
The Age of Shadows is supposed to be good but I haven't seen it yet (it's on my list). A lot of people liked
Parasite but I loathed it... it's exactly one of the types of movies I most hate, about stupid people with a lack of foresight trapped in a preventable-yet-inexorable march toward doom.
Chinese cinema has produced things like
Ip Man, which is totally bad ass. It's got films about polygyny, like
Raise the Red Lantern, which gives you an interesting perspective into the harem system (and also makes super clear why so much of the ancient Chinese handbook for female morality
Biographies of Exemplary Women is focused on teaching women how to be good, virtuous, cooperative co-wives... because that it not going to tend to be their natural condition).
Ne Zha is awesome and way better than anything Pixar's come out with in a long time.
Huluwa (Calabash Brothers) is a classic Chinese children's cartoon that you can instantly connect with any Chinese who grew up in mainland China in the 1980s over, because they all have seen it and loved it. Honorable mention for
The Last Emperor, which was made by Italians, filmed in English, but takes place in China with Chinese actors and is just really good cinema.
Japanese cinema-wise,
Rashomon is sort of necessary viewing, as the first movie in movie history to do the "different narrators with different perspectives on the story" thing. A friend recently recommended two other of the director's films to me,
Ikiru and
Seven Samurai, but I haven't seen them yet. The
Ringu films are fun if you like horror. The best stuff coming out of Japan though in my opinion is the anime... I only started getting into anime a few years ago, but
Berserk is just so awesome (the 1997 version... the first episode you will be like "Huh? I don't get it" but watch to episode 3 and you'll be completely hooked; it is so worth the ride... guaranteed you will go read the rest of the manga after you watch that).
Attack on Titan is the best TV show I've ever seen. It starts off looking like a pretty straightforward story (good guys vs. monsters) but then as it goes it just gets more and more complicated... if you haven't seen it, don't spoil it for yourself first, just get into it and let your mind blow as the plot twists come.
Those are my Eastern cinema recommendations for now.
Chase