Hitoshi Ueki Movies

In 1964, an outbreak of the so-called "German" measles in Okinawa struck a U.S. military base and swiftly spread to the local population. One result of that outbreak was that a number of Okinawan children became deaf or were otherwise handicapped. This uplifting movie, based on a novel and a comic strip, tells how a group of these kids formed a baseball team and succeeded in getting to the national championships. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

The Japanese title for this drama about human relationships, "(new) times of joys and sorrows," is descriptive of the story. Director Keisuke Kinoshita (director of the first, 1958 Ballad of Narayama) reprises the theme of a lighthouse keeper featured in his 1957 film of the same title (without the "new"). Rather than simply pick up where the characters and story left off, Kinoshita explores the relationships between a lighthouse keeper and his family and friends over many years. Yoshiaki (Go Kato) tends the lighthouse and lives with his wife Asako (Reiko Ohara) and three children. He and his family move constantly as he goes from one assignment to another, introducing stunning new locations and new characters with each change, but his friendships with other lighthouse keepers remain strong. One of the recurring characters is his egotistical father (Hitoshi Ueki), who visits the family each time they move and seems to mellow with age. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Ran is Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's reinterpretation of William Shakespeare's King Lear. The Lear counterpart is an elderly 16th-century warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai), who announces that he's about to divide his kingdom equally among his three sons. In his dotage, he falls prey to the false flattery of his treacherous sons (Akira Terao and Jinpachi Nezu), while banishing his youngest son (Daisuke Ryu), the only member of the family who loves him enough to tell him the unvarnished truth. Thanks to his foolish pride, his domain collapses under its own weight as the sons battle each other over total control. Kurosawa's first film in five years, Ran had been in the planning stages for twice that long; Kurosawa had storyboarded the project with a series of vivid color paintings that have since been published in book form in England. The battle scenes are staged with such brutal vigor that it's hard to imagine that the director was 75 years old at the time. This 160-minute historical epic won several international awards, but it was not a hit in Japan, and it would be five more years before Kurosawa would be able to finance another picture. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this strange crime comedy, three disparate Japanese men travel from Tokyo to L.A. and find themselves thrown together for an adventure in Las Vegas. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi