Tomoyo Harada Movies

A Christmas Eve power outage provides a collection of troubled Tokyo denizens the opportunity to come clean on the misdeeds of their past in director Takashi Minamoto's snowbound winter drama. Fourteen year-old Shota (Kanata Hongo) longs to get a better look at the winter sky, but upon peering through the lens the youngster is shocked to see a distraught woman (Yu Kashii) leap from the roof of a nearby hospital. When Shota realizes that the suicide attempt failed and the woman landed safely on a rooftop below, he travels to the hospital in hopes of making contact with the woman. Elsewhere in the hospital, a dying father (Tomoyo Harada) longing to see his true love one last time reveals to his son Saeki (Tomorowo Taguchi) that the boy is the product of a marital indiscretion and that his supposedly dead mother is alive and well and living in Tokyo. Already reeling as his wife (Tomoyo Harada) prepares to divorce him and his lover (Haruka Igawa) refuses to acknowledge that fact that he is no longer interested in her, Saeki prepares to meet his mistress in the very same hotel where Chinese bellboy Dong Dong (Tsuyoshi Abe) is preparing to catch a flight to Shanghai to be with his girlfriend for Christmas. In another part of town, lovelorn bar owner Shinichi (Etsushi Toyogawa) laments the loss of his ex-lover as adoring candle shop manager Nozomi (Tomoko Tabata) admires him from afar, and pregnant Reiko (Shinobu Terajima) nervously awaits the arrival over her one-time lover Ginji (Koji Kikkawa), who has just been released after serving a six-year prison sentence. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

This highly commercial romantic drama is aimed at the Japanese teen market and is packed with product plugs and tie-ins for items ranging from automobiles and fashions to ski equipment and resorts. The story concerns the burgeoning romance on the slopes between a young, cute, and very shy champion skier and an attractive girl. Back in Tokyo, he is just too busy promoting ski clothing for his employer to see anyone socially, and it seems that their relationship will end. Soon, however, they team up to ensure that he appears at a crucial fashion show back on the slopes, despite sabotage attempts by a rival company. Reportedly, every one of the leads is extremely cute and endearing, and the skiing footage is quite watchable. Since the fashions, cars and equipment being touted in it are now well-past their sell-by dates, this light movie's ephemeral themes might be of special interest to ski and fashion history buffs. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

This story starts out to be about a romantic 16-year-old in love with the stars and flowers and a classmate who seems equally romantic. Eventually, the teenager starts dreaming about events before they actually happen. As it turns out, the object of her love is actually a space alien affected by her own romantic views of life and because of their unified wave length, some of his abilities have found their way into her own mental processes -- and in the end, both are uniquely star-crossed lovers. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi