Mariko Kaga Movies

Director Shunji Iwai, who has gained wild popularity in his native Japan, creates this gorgeously rendered tale of love, remembrance, and loss. Though her fiancé Itsuki Fujii died in a mountain climbing accident over two years ago, Hiroko Watanabe (Miho Nakayama) is unable to move on. After a ceremony marking Itsuki's death, Hiroko pays an emotional visit to his mother. There she discovers his boyhood address in an old high school yearbook, and, on a whim, she writes a letter addressed to her old lover. Needless to say, she is more than a little surprised when she actually gets a response from Itsuki Fujii. This Itsuki Fujii, however, is a young woman (also played by Nakayama) working at a library and suffering through a particularly tenacious cold in the snowy expanses of Hokkaido. She also endured three years of classroom taunts at having the same name as her male classmate as junior high student-the same male Itsuki Fujii that Hiroko eventually fell for. Though the female Fujii initially worries that she has somehow been targeted by a lunatic, she and Hiroko begins to develop an odd sort of correspondence. The two begin to piece together their respective memories about the male Itsuki, revealing a love lost and a love rediscovered. Though Miho Nakayama gives a nuanced performance as the film's two lead characters, pop star Ranran Suzuki almost walks away with the film in her hilarious cameo as Sanae Oikawa, the deeply weird teenaged rival suitor to the male Fujii's attention. Iwai's deft touch fashions a narrative that could have been jumbled and maudlin into an elegant work, that, like Wong Kar-wai's brilliant Chungking Express (1994), artfully fuses humor with melancholy. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Shuji's life has taken a steady downward course from the very day he was in a railroad accident. He progressively loses his job and his wife and eventually loses even his career. However, from the day the rescue workers took him to the hospital after the accident, he has had a compelling, haunting relationship with a woman who was in the hospital room with him. Every seven years she reappears in his life. Every seven years, she is seven years younger. This poetic drama is based on a novel by Taichi Yamada. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this romantic and erotic drama, Oda has achieved a place in the world which makes him think that it would be appropriate for him to find a mistress. He is a well-known poet and is married. He selects Yuko, a girl still in school, and duly finds an apartment for her. However, he is seldom around, and she spends a lot of her time waiting for him to come around and make love to her. Their relationship is very uneven: she is not allowed to play around, while he carries on with a divorced woman next door. They almost have a child, but he insists on an abortion. Later, when he dies, she shows up at his funeral. Her presence there is unwelcome, though everyone knows who she is. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Set at the mouth of a river in Osaka, Japan less than 10 years after WW II, this touching drama centers on the life lessons learned by two disparate young boys. Asahara's parents own a small restaurant. Sakurai is his new friend. He lives with his mother in a houseboat.. It does not take long for Sakurai and Asahara to become close friends, but the latter is puzzled by Sakurai's unwillingness to talk about his mother and his refusal to allow Asahara to visit his home. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Set in 1901, this movie depicts the fate of two military training companies sent on war exercises to Mount Hakkoda in the northernmost part of the main island of Japan. They were preparing for maneuvers in the Russo-Japanese War, on the orders of Maj. General Tomoda, in terrain which they believed would be similar to those they would encounter during the war itself. They were asked to rendezvous somewhere on the mountain. The smaller group was headed by a man who scouted the local area and asked local people how best to survive the conditions they would encounter. This group also asked for local guides. They survived quite handily, but could not complete their mission because the larger group, which trusted their modern procedures and military training and spurned the locals' offers of guidance, was lost -- frozen, on the mountain. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this Japanese melodrama, a young painter struggles in all things to remain true to his art and to his friends, a difficult task in a society where such a quest can lead to a truly disastrous individualism. In his case, in late 19th-century Japan, repression and death surround and follow him as his culture painfully adjusts to the changes sweeping through it. Because he has absorbed some Western ideas about artistic realism, he seeks situations where he can see the things he plans to paint, whether it be a naked woman, or a scene of hara-kiri. At one time, he was poised to become an official painter for the Imperial Court. However, his indignation at the authorities, for having chopped his rebellious friend to death, puts him in grave danger. Because of his associates and his known attitudes, he is likely to be subject to investigation about his past. His pariah mother kills herself to prevent the authorities from discovering damaging information about his birth. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this Japanese romance, a writer travels to a hot-springs resort and finds himself falling in love with a geisha. He completes his vacation and then returns to his wife and family in Tokyo. The next winter he again goes to the resort to see the geisha. Unfortunately for her, he cannot offer her a commitment, and so he decides to return home and never see her again. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Masahiro Shinoda's brilliant film opens with mobster Murakami just getting released from prison for murdering a member of a rival clan, only to learn that during his internment, the two syndicates arranged a truce. Not unlike the protagonist in Albert Camus' The Stranger, Murakami's motives for killing were vague and that life holds little value for him. At an illegal gambling parlor, he finds himself drawn to a mysterious waif-like young woman named Saeko (Mariko Kaga) who lives life from one thrill to the next. Though she seems remarkably adept at losing large sums of money, she asks Murakami to find games with larger and larger stakes. Soon they become involved in an intense mutually destructive relationship. High stakes gambling and racing her little sports car eventually grow tiresome, and Saeko becomes attracted to drugs. Instead of dope, Murakami offers to let her watch him kill a rival clan leader, describing it as the ultimate thrill. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Takashi Fujiki stars as a rebel in this drama about life on the Yokohama waterfront by New Wave director Masahiro Shinoda. The rebel works as an errand boy for a shipping company and vents his frustrations by plucking on the guitar. His interpretations of popular trends in music are sometimes right-on, and sometimes not exactly. Bereft of his guitar, the rebel's modes of expression are not as effective in generating interest as the Yokohama docks themselves, a fascinating world in their own right. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi