Yūji, fresh out of prison on parole, is taken to a bar that Nao operates and there he meets his old love Emiko, now working as hostess, and accepts Nao’s appeal for help in finding drug thieves. After grilling one of the small hoodlums about who took the marijuana, Yūji and Nao find the looter is a mammoth underground organization. Meanwhile, a group of hoodlums are disgruntled over their failure to sell the drug through Nao.Read More »
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Barbara, a dancer / stripper, traveling, going home to Nagoya after a long absence. She lives above the bar Nami no ue, in an area whose inhabitants are mainly from Okinawa. Upon her return, Barbara faces problems beyond his reach, his brother and two friends took one of their teachers hostage to extort money to go on a school trip … Miyazato, the man who shares the life of Barbara is there, but not Aiko, her best friend, who had yet to wait. Miyazato, yakuza and laborer in a nuclear, Barbara learns that Aiko was forced into prostitution for the workers of the plant, and he helped him escape from this hell … Aiko has been distributed to Mihama [ 1 ] (central Japan). Without even thinking for a moment, Barbara decided to go see her friend.Read More »
A police detective tries to investigate the mystery of a victim who was shot in the head, but no bullet was found. From the Sunday Horror Series.Read More »
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Nine convicts escape from prison; most are convicted murders. They commandeer a van from a strip club. Their plan is to find a stash of counterfeit money that a deranged cell mate told them about, divide it, then part ways. They make it to the site where the money is supposed to be hidden, and then one by one, each seeks out the place he wants to be, a version of home, somewhere to connect. Will it end well for any of them?Read More »
Tsuyoshi Shindo came to the town of Tamari to prove the innocence of his friend, Sakaguchi. Sakaguchi was accused of attacking the president of Shimoyama Kensetsu, a local construction company, with a knife. Shindo knew Sakaguchi was not capable of committing such a crime. During his investigation, Shindo discovered the town and its police force to be under the control of Shimoyama. That made Shindo a marked man, with Shimoyama’s henchmen attacking in an effort to force him to end his investigation and leave town.Read More »
A wealthy man frames his son’s girlfriend (Meiko Kaji) to keep them apart. She briefly goes to prison for a crime she didn’t commit before breaking out to reunite with the man she loves. Along the way she befriends a group of hippies who try to reunite her with her boyfriend.Read More »
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Kaido is a professional pickpocket who works the Tokyo subway with his young foster-daughter, Rei: She lets herself be groped while Kaido relieves the groper of his wallet. More often than not they’re observed by a middle-aged cop, who generally lets Kaido go free. Rei is unsettled when Kaido takes on a young street punk, Kazuki, as an apprentice — with instructions to make Kaido stop drinking. Kazuki, however, would like to go into business with Rei.Read More »
Kazuo Kuroki’s international award-winning period drama was produced in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the death of Shozo Makino, “the father of Japanese films.” Set in the 1830s near the end of the age of the samurai, Ronin Gai is populated by an ensemble of colorful characters, social outcasts who patronize a restaurant and brothel on the outskirts of Edo. Among them are prostitutes and masterless samurai reduced to drunkenness and debauchery. The disgraced and disillusioned former warriors get a chance at redemption when renegade samurai invade the area to murder the prostitutes.Read More »
This was also voted No.55 on 1999’s Kinema Jumpo Poll of Top 100 Japanese Films of All Time.
It’s a samurai film but its style is rather different from those Toei & Daiei jidaigeki in 50s & 60s (probably not surprising as an ATG production), It has a non-heroic (or at least, unorthodoxy) portrait of the protagonist: Ryoma, at times even a parody, with the wry humor everywhere in the film. But it also looks a bit like a documentary, as the film is very grainy and the cinematographer is Masaki Tamura, who’s responsible for the look of many Shinsuke Ogawa & later, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s films. Read More »