Tokyo Sonata (2008)

Though it was widely seen and written about on its initial release, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata is so full of forgotten detail that it is more than worth a second or a third look. While it is the story of a salaryman who loses his job and almost loses his family, it is far more …

Retribution / (2006)

In Retribution, Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns to the roots of Japanese horror movies in which a man is haunted by the ghost of a woman but, as we have come to expect from this director, in a new and more disturbing fashion than the other similar films in the J-horror revival. As in Cure and Charisma, …

Vital (2004)

The story in Shinya Tsukamoto's Vital is quite simple: A medical student Hiroshi is involved in a car crash which kills his girlfriend Ryoko. When he at last returns to medical school, his dissection class several years later finds him working on a body that will eventually turn out to be that of his girlfriend. …

Choice of Hercules / Totsunyuseyo! Asama Sanso jiken (2002)

The Asama-Sanso Incident in 1972 was the most dramatic and shocking public event in Japan between the war and the Sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway in 1995. The remnants of a radical group calling themselves the United Red Army, one of many groups around the world at about the same time that helped …

I Went To . . . / Alley Cat / Dora-Heita (2000)

Koheita is the second son of a high-level samurai, which means he has developed a reputation as a dora, which the subtitles translate as “playboy” or “stray cat.” Nevertheless, he is sent to clean up the clan's castle town, a task at which three other commissioners have already failed. The crime is generally assigned to …

Eureka (2000)

An apparently normal man boards a bus on its way into town. Without warning or explanation, he shoots all but three of the riders before he is himself shot by the police. Aoyama's Eureka examines the damage done by that event rather than the event itself. Other Japanese films have dealt with similar situations: the …

Doppelganger / Dopperugenga (2003)

Japanese movies have a long tradition of starting in one direction and then suddenly changing tone to go a completely unexpected way, but rarely have they taken the turns to be found in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Doppelganger. The doppelganger, of course, has long been a subject of horror stories and films, usually in the manner of …

Warm Water Under a Red Bridge / Akai hashi no shita no nurui mizu (2001)

Since the whole plot of Warm Water Under a Red Bridge revolves around a pun, translated as a “pot” in the subtitles, it would destroy a great deal of the pleasure of the movie to go into the story-line of the movie in any detail. Yosuke is a forty-something salaryman who has lost his salesman …

Bounce Ko Gals (1997)

Japan has long been known for teen girl fashion fads that seem unique to the country, but one of the first to gain real nationwide (and international) attention was the Ko Gal in the nineties, the subject used in Masato Harada's Bounce Ko Gals to look at one of the seamiest aspects of Japanese culture. …

Lost Paradise / Shitsurakuen (1997)

I keep thinking there must be dozens of movies about love affairs like Lost Paradise, but my mind goes blank trying to think of a comparable example. Kuki (Koji Yakusho) and Rinko (Hitomi Kuroki) are each married but they have fallen in love with each other. Because it is a Japanese movie and also is …