Susumu Terajima

  • Kazuyoshi Kumakiri – Sora no ana AKA Hole in the Sky (2001)

    2001-2010AsianDramaJapanKazuyoshi Kumakiri

    Quote:
    Following up on his acclaimed debut feature, Kichiku Dai Enkai — an intense portrait of a band of 1970s radicals who descend into morass of fratricidal blood lust — Kazuyoshi Kumakiri shifts gears completely by offering this understated romantic drama. Ichio (Takeshi Kitano regular Susumu Terajima) runs a rundown eatery on a Hokkaido highway. One day, a couple gets into a spat resulting in the guy — an overly tanned self-satisfied clod — hopping in his red sports car and driving off without her. The woman, Taeko (Rinko Kikuchi), returns to order a meal. When she tries to dash without paying, Ichio nabs her but lets her off with a warning. Ichio soon finds himself similarly stranded when his horseracing-mad father — and owner of the restaurant — swipes Ichio’s car for a crazed gambling road trip with his buddies. Later that night while camping out, Taeko inadvertently burns down one of the restaurant’s sheds. This time around, Ichio puts Taeko to work. Soon, in spite of themselves, a relationship is born.
    ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie GuideRead More »

  • Takeshi Kitano – Hana-bi AKA Fireworks (1997)

    1991-2000DramaJapanTakeshi Kitano

    Quote:
    “Hana-bi” is the highly acclaimed drama from and with Takeshi Kitano. In this film Kitano In a very honest way, also works up and reflects about his own inner life after his motorcycle accident that nearly cost him his life. So, it’s no big surprise that he implemented certain aspects of his character in the main lead as he did in Horibe.

    With tranquil pictures and on a subtle level Kitano creates a story, that revolves around loneliness, isolation, guilt, love and grief. Very Kitano-like the almost poetically meditative looking pictures are interrupted by sudden bursts of violence. However, this just serves the purpose to imbue the story with the necessary amount of authenticity.Read More »

  • Takashi Miike – Nintama Rantarô AKA Ninja Kids!!! (2011)

    Takashi Miike2011-2020ComedyFantasyJapan

    Plot
    Rantaro was born into a low class ninja family. His parents hope he can one day become an elite ninja to make his family proud. Rantaro, bearing his parents’ expectations, enters the Ninja Academy. At the academy, he becomes friends with Shinbe (Futa Kimura), the son of a wealthy merchant family and Kirimaru (Roi Hayashi ), who lost his father in the war. The students at the Ninja Academy are called Nintama – which means future ninjas. Rantaro has a fun time at school, but Rantaro, Shinbe and Kirimaru have difficulties with their studies.Read More »

  • Hirokazu Koreeda – Wandâfuru raifu aka After Life (1998)

    1991-2000ArthouseAsianHirokazu KoreedaJapan

    Every Monday morning, a team of advisors welcome in a facility a group of people that has just died with the mission of helping each one of them to select their best memory that will last for the eternity in the first three days. On Thursday, filmmakers begin to recreate the selected memory, and in the end of the week they screen it in a movie theater and he or she moves to Heaven.Read More »

  • Hirokazu Koreeda – Distance (2001)

    2001-2010ArthouseDramaHirokazu KoreedaJapan

    Quote:
    With its focus on the emotional aftermath of a religious cult’s terrorist attack on Tokyo, “Distance” was always going to invite comparisons with the Aum cult’s nerve gas attack on the city’s subway system in 1995.

    Yet, rather than simply recreating that tragedy, “Distance” takes us into a far more complex, and decidedly more unsettling, drama about loss and bereavement.Three years after the fictional Ark of Truth group has contaminated Tokyo’s water supply with a genetically-engineered virus, leaving 128 people dead and 8,000 injured, four of the dead cult members’ relatives meet to pay their respects to their loved ones at the lake where their ashes were scattered.Read More »

  • Hirokazu Koreeda – Distance (2001)

    2001-2010ArthouseDramaHirokazu KoreedaJapan

    Synopsis:
    A massacre initiated by the followers of an apocalyptic religious sect, the Ark of Truth, leaves more than a hundred people dead – including the self-appointed executioners, slain by fellow cult members.

    Three years pass. On the anniversary of the slaughter, four friends who lost loved ones in the tragedy seek solace by journeying to the secluded lake where it all began. They encounter a man who was with the executioners until the very moment the killing began, and their pilgrimage takes a strange, unexpected turn.Read More »

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