Eri Ishida

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Hibi tells about mother who does pottery and lives rather simple life, growing her children up. She does remarkable job in pottery, finding a new way to make natural pottery in her own tunnel kiln. Then, her son gets leukemia. And entire family has to fight hard to find a donor who has matching bone marrow. The movie is unique and beautiful story about life, but at the same time, very hard and realistic movie about leukemia. Little a bit eccentric character of Kiyoko, acted by Yuko Tanaka is fantastic as such characters haven’t yet seen in Japanese screen since eighties. Read More »

Based on the script by the late Shoji Kaneko, director Toru Kawashima turned it into a buddy movie that has quite the cult following in Japan. The two already collaborated on the, in my opinion, excellent Ryuji a year earlier and shortly before Kaneko’s death.Read More »

Kato (Ittoku Kishibe) is a small time TV producer. He has a wife Masako (Naoko Otani), and a young son Taro. Kato also has a friend Yamazaki (Akira Emoto) who he knew since college. Yamazaki has a girl friend Riko (Eri Ishida) who lives with her younger sister Yuko (Hitomi Takahashi) who’s an actress. Yamazaki is a lyric writer/womanizer and he starts to have an affair with Masako, but he’s still going out with Riko.Read More »

Kenji, abandoned by his mother, scrapes out a meager existence doing odd jobs including driving bar hostesses and their customers home. Besides this he takes care of the sister of an old friend in jail and a young illegal immigrant. But his life reaches a turning point when he happens to meet Chiyoko, his long lost mother. She is now married to Mamiya, the owner of an express package delivery service. They also have a teenage son, Yusuke. Subdued feelings of alarm, discomfort and resentment between Chiyoko, Kenji, and his half brother Yusuke hide underneath and are seemingly caused by the inseparable blood ties that seem to wield control over everyone’s destiny. Is blood that powerful? What exactly defines a mother or a father? While Kenji struggles with these questions and attempts to escape his fate, Chiyoko seems content to let these issues unfold and find a solution. Where will it ultimately lead them?Read More »