Kenji Sawada Movies

Japanese cult director Seijun Suzuki's combination sequel to and remake of his 1967 gangster film classic Branded To Kill stars Makiko Esumi as Miyuki Minazuki, AKA "the Stray Cat," a beautiful female assassin. She is number three in the hierarchy of killers in her criminal organization at the beginning of the film, but soon a battle breaks out among the assassins, all of whom are trying to become the number one killer by murdering their competition. Miyuki finds herself fighting her fellow assassins one by one, encountering along the way such eccentrically-nicknamed opponents as The Teacher, who is confined to a wheelchair, Painless Surgeon, a bearded Westerner who literally feels no pain, and Dark Horse (Masatoshi Nagase), who wears a blond wig and has a perpetual case of the sniffles. Also making an appearance is Goro Hanada, the hero of Branded To Kill (played in the original by Jo Shishido, but here by Mikijiro Hira), who becomes a mentor to Miyuki, and is now known as number zero. The film's skeletal plot mostly allows director Suzuki to develop elaborate visual tableaus that stretch the possibilities of narrative cinema. ~ Tom Vick, Rovi

With an eye to Yasujiro Ozu's masterpiece Tokyo Story (1953), director Jun Ichikawa creates this drama about a dysfunctional family. Fourteen-year-old Shimotsuki, like most Japanese students her age, is struggling through studying for high school entrance exams -- until her world is shattered when her parents, who try to maintain a living as the failing comedy duo Harumi and Ryusuke, suddenly divorce after her father has a child by another woman. For a while, her parents still try to maintain the comedy until her deadbeat father disappears, devastating her mother. Shimotsuki decides that enough is enough and goes to look for Dad. Ichikawa is interested not only in creating a compelling narrative but also in bringing out Osaka's unique culture. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

A Japanese science teacher (Kenji Sawada) creates a homemade atomic bomb, and threatens to use it unless his strange demands -- which include a Rolling Stones concert -- are met. This dark comedy centers on the teacher's attempts to achieve his goals, while avoiding capture by a persistent detective. ~ Judd Blaise, Rovi