Masatoshi Nagase

letterboxd wrote:
The film opens with kidnappers of a corporate executive making an unusual ransom demand: that a wizened executive from another company haul large bags of money through downtown Tokyo as the media documents his every move. When the first old man almost dies from exhaustion, a second, and eventually a third elderly corporate fat cat is ordered to do the same. The police detective assigned to the case (Tetsuya Watari) and his younger partner (Masatoshi Nagase) are livid with indignation at this sorry spectacle. They learn that these four men were involved in a massive industrial spill that poisoned an entire rural hamlet 20 years previous. Suddenly, the detective – who studied in the States and apparently absorbed some John Wayne-like mannerisms in the process – isn’t sure who are the victims and who are the villains.Read More »

imdb:
Keisuke, an aspiring samurai-movie actor lands a major role in a new film, but must contend with a director who has nothing but scorn for him, but who continually fawns over the film’s obnoxious ham of a star. Meanwhile, Keisuke has been dumped by his girlfriend, Eri, after she becomes heartbroken when he considers working full-time as a bar manager rather than pursuing his dream. Through her job as a translator, she meets an Italian professor who claims to talk to trees, and who immediately starts trying to woo her.Read More »

Synopsis:
When Kotaro meets Kuroe, it is love at first sight. They resolve to spend the rest of their lives together. But one day, Kuroe collapses and X-rays reveal something resembling a flower budding in her lung. She refuses surgery and goes home with Kotaro, unable to drink water, lest the bud blooms. When Kotaro discovers that other flowers in the room cause the first water lily to shrivel up, so he fills the house with fresh flowers. Kotaro loses his job, but is more than ever desperate to meet the expense of fresh flowers for Kuroe. Kotaro is finally offered a job with the florist. The house literally shrinks around Kuroe, as the flower blooms inside her and she fades away.Read More »

Quote:
Somewhere on the coast of Taiwan is Hotel Iris, a mouldering seaside establishment run by a cold and thrifty Japanese woman (Nahana) and her lonely half-Taiwanese daughter Mari (Lucia). One night, Mari hears the cries of a woman from the upper floors. Heading up to investigate, she witnesses a distraught woman in a red camisole dress escape an impeccably dressed but violent man (NAGASE Masatoshi) whose cold voice is entrancing. Mari’s initial shock turns into a strange fascination which drives her to follow the man to discover more about him. He is a translator who lives on an isolated island one can only reach by boat and rumours swirl around him and recent murders. The closer she gets to the man, the more a hidden layer of Mari’s personality awakens as she allows herself to be engulfed by his strange passions.Read More »

Part One of the Maiku Hama Private Eye Trilogy
Detective Maiku “Mike” Hama (Masatoshi Nagase; Mystery Train) navigates the Yokohama underworld with razor sharp threads, Belmondo cool and two-fisted street savvy. But when he comes to the aid of a Taiwanese waiter at a local mah-jongg parlor, the unflappable Hama has no idea what he’s in for. Though seemingly a luckless immigrant teetering on the threshold of Yokohama’s gutter, Hama’s Taiwanese client holds the secret to a ferocious gangland revenge triangle that soon has bullets, fists and severed fingers flying. Hama’s plunge into a dizzyingly escalating, brutally violent multiethnic gang war ultimately snares him in a web of revenge and deceit that spans continents and severs bloodlines.Read More »

Quote:
O-Shin is a young brothel worker who, one night, helps a young samurai escape from his pursuers. Against the warnings of her fellow workers, particularly Kikuno and the brothel’s owner, O-Shin falls in love with the samurai.Read More »

Synopsis:
Mike Hama is a private investigator who has been reduced to combing the mean streets of the Yokohama waterfront on a borrowed bicycle.Read More »

Nagase is a young man on a train, apparently deciding at random where to go. As he walks out of a train station, he bumps into a woman, Nami. He is immediately fascinated by her, and follows her to the estate agent’s office where she works.

At the office her boss and husband, Hideki, invites him inside. He rents an apartment and asks for a job. Although Nami tells her husband that she has a certain feeling about Nagase, he is given a job.Read More »

One of seven new films in a series–called the “Asian Beat” series–which revolve around the exotic adventures of a young Japanese hero, Tokio.Read More »