Akiko Monô
Kumiko Hoshizaki’s “Akane Sasu Heya” is the story of Maki, a 20-something temp who is sick of her boring job and life in general. The rather bizarre solution she comes up with is to conceive a child behind her boyfriend’s back. Makoto Nagahisa offers the much more impressionistic “Frog.” The story meanders around a bunch of unrelated characters, using experimental techniques like repeated scenes, hallucinatory visuals, blurred shots and disconnected sounds. Lastly, we have “Bouquet Garni,” a much more conventional work from director Junpei Hatano. The plot is centered on a reporter, the relative of a kidnapping victim, and a woman who is obsessed with the case.
An American named Anthony is living and working in Tokyo and married to a Japanese woman. When their son is killed by the same driver who creates the Tetsuos in previous films, he makes the transformation into Tetsuo.
A young woman escapes from a city in the near future, where people's anger is medically controlled, and drifts away to a lonely island. It is the developer of the emotion-controlling medicine who finds her and marries her. Her memory is erased and she starts an entirely new quiet life as a different person. But an unexpected incident happens; many people get hurt; the truth is revealed; then she falls in love... And this is a comedy after all!
An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a râmen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.
The film is told in three acts, beginning with a historical background of Japan's student movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, mostly using archive footage and a narrator. The second act follows the formation of the group to their mountain training camps in the southern Japanese Alps. It emphasizes the dogmatic (and eventually hypocritical) bullying of the group by Mori and Nagata, with 12 members being killed for infractions as small as improperly cleaning a gun, wearing make-up, and kissing. The third act shows the splitting up of the group after two members run off. It follows one group of five members to Karuizawa and a hostage-taking and police standoff known as the Asama-Sansō incident.
Kamei mixes humour, drama and, in this occasion, bits of horror to visualize the physical transformation in yôkai that the three main actresses undergo. Mihiro Iwasaki (Anri Ban) is a model extremely preoccupied by how others look at and think of her. Then, her nails start growing disproportionately until they become killing weapons. Michiko Yamane (Mariko Miyamitsu) is an unsociable university student and part-time worker in her early twenties only crazy for a hobby. At night she becomes a rokurokubi (female yokai with an extremely long and flexible neck). Finally, Mana Saeki (Haruki Ichikawa) is a last year junior high school student with a very bad character and very distrustful of all her friends, who metamorphoses into a nopperabo (yokai without face).
Four different worlds are connected through the "Baumkuchen Seeds of Happiness." The World of the Kawanobe's - Three brothers, Taro (Mame Yamada), Jiro (Hiroshi Yamamoto), and Hiroto (Shoichi Honda) who is a so-called NEET (short for "Not in Employment, Education, or Training) make up the Kawanobe household. The World of a Bar - Two men (Mame Yamada and Hiroshi Yamamoto) sits in a bar and discusses the Kawanobe brothers' love story. The World of Yumi - Yumi is reading a novel about the characters in the bar. The World of a Novelist - Novelist Masatoshi (Shoichi Honda) is writing a novel about Yumi. In their own worlds, in their own way, each character will find a way to arrive at their happiness.
Omnibus of six short films: Return; Ken-do star; Hana to oji-san; Adagietto Sehr, langsam; Nakayoki koto wa yoki koto ka na; Slow is Beautiful. Third installment of "SF" series produced by Hiroyuki Nakano.
Two lost souls visiting Tokyo -- the young, neglected wife of a photographer and a washed-up movie star shooting a TV commercial -- find an odd solace and pensive freedom to be real in each other's company, away from their lives in America.
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.
Three centuries ago, a precious sword has been stolen by Kazamatsuri -- the sword, which historic and symbolic value is priceless for the clan (Shogun Tokugawa donated it to clan 80 years before that, at the same time that he established them as the local rulers). Lord's counselor's young son Heishiro goes to retrieve the sword himself to protect the clan from the shame or possible demise. He is accompanied with two friends, Shintaro and Tadasuke, and followed by the ninjas of the clan. After Kazamatsuri wounds Heishiro and kills one of his friends, the young aristocrat still wants revenge more than sword itself, but meanwhile have to recover from his wounds, in the small forest house of a lonely samurai and his daughter. At the same time, Kamazatsuri stays in nearby town in the entertainment center run by Okatsu and falls into her. The older samurai tries to dissuade Heishiro from fighting with Kamazatsuri, but is himself gradually drawn into the conflict.
