Kazuko Yoshiyuki Movies

A self-referential comedy that serves as prolific Japanese filmmaker Takeshi "Beat" Kitano's latest attempt at "creative destruction" (that process was set into motion with the release of 2005's Takeshis), Kantoku Banzai! follows an ageing filmmaker (Kitano) who is eager to revive his failing career. Realizing that he has taken to falling back on familiar clichés, the weary director experiments with producing everything from an Ozu-inspired home drama to an ultra-commercial J-horror film - all with varying degrees of failure. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

After losing his father and his will to carry on, a suicidal 22-year-old embarks on an eye-opening journey of self-discovery in director Claude Gagnon's intimate family drama. After Ken awakens to discover that he has somehow survived a plunge from a bridge that by all accounts should have ended his life, his desperate mother enlists the aid of her estranged brother, Takuma, in shaking her son out of his current funk. An internationally renowned potter whose eccentric nature couldn't set him farther apart from Ken's late father, Uncle Takuma is an unpredictable outsider who lives by his own indecipherable moral code. When Ken arrives at his uncle's home and finds himself greeted by a disorienting blend of sake, art, sexual tension, and intrigue, the sense of wonder and curiosity that sadly seemed to wither away following the death of his father is gradually resuscitated by his mysterious new surroundings. The title of the film refers to a centuries-old method for firing Japanese pottery in a kiln. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Hisako Matsui follows up on her 1997 opus Yukie -- about an elderly Japanese woman living in America stricken with Alzheimer's -- with this domestic drama also about the elderly suffering from the same disease. Tomoe (Mikiko Harada) is an ordinary housewife living outside of Nagoya, married to a frequently absent workaholic named Yuzo (Masahi Tomizu). The film opens with Yuzo's cankerous mother Masako (Kazuko Yoshiyuki) moving in. Soon Masako begins to exhibit bizarre, erratic behavior -- she dumps garage on their neighbor's property, and accuses Tomoe of theft. Finally, Tomoe drags the old woman kicking and screaming to the doctor's who diagnoses her with Alzheimer's. Her husband is little help, demanding that Tomoe quit her part-time job in a florist shop to care for his mother full time. After Masako disappears from her during a rainstorm, Tomoe convinces Yuzo that his mother must be placed in a home. On her last night in the house, the guilt-wracked Tomoe sleeps in the same room as Masako, listening to her reminisce about her past. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

After the success of Hana-Bi (1997), Takeshi Kitano, or 'Beat' Takeshi, as he is often called, made another film in which once again he is the director, screenwriter, editor, the leading player and the talent behind the art work. Unlike many of his films about the violent lives of the yakuza, Kikujiro is a bittersweet road movie about two characters who have very little in common. Masao (Yusuke Sekiguchi) is a sensitive nine-year-old boy who has to spend his summer vacation alone with his grandmother. Soccer practice is suspended and all his friends are away at the beach. In his boredom, he decides to look for the mother he has never met; with only a photo, an address, and very little money, this does not seem like a good idea. A friend of his grandmother's volunteers to send her husband along. The problem is that the irresponsible, loudmouthed, and greedy Kikujiro (Kitano), a low-level yakuza, is hardly the ideal companion for a child. He does not even like children. Starting with the excursion to the cycle races, this mismatched couple goes through a fanciful journey full of oddball characters and pleasant surprises. The best surprise of all is to discover how much they have in common. By the end of the journey, sullen Masao gains the sense of magic that had been missing from his life. As for Kikujiro, he now has a better understanding of who he is and what has been wrong with his life, although it takes a child to make him realize this. Kitano has declared that his own father, who passed away when he was a little boy, was the inspiration for the character of Kikujiro. The man was a house painter, carpenter, and master of traditional Japanese dance, but also a gambler who let his family down on many occasions. Another Japanese director, Makoto Shinozaki of Okaeri fame, has made Jam Session, a feature-length documentary on the making of Kikujiro. In competition at the 52nd Cannes Film Festival, 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, Rovi

Sumio is a 15 -year-old teenager who lives with his mother and older sister in a small fishing village. Abandoned by his father who went to live with his mistress, Sumio and his family struggle to make ends meet. When his sister Yasuko falls in love with a schoolteacher, her mother forbids her to marry the man, and the heartbroken Yasuko goes to work in a bar after the schoolteacher marries another woman. Sumio has trouble academically but makes friends with the son of his father's mistress. Later, Yasuko runs off to the big city, leaving her younger brother to deal with yet another void in his life. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

With a story that many could readily understand, this film is about a divorced policeman whose salary does not expand far enough to support his ex-wife, to handle his bills at the local bar, and to manage all the hand-outs his semi-delinquent daughter demands of him. The man is close to bottoming out, as few respect him for his low-paying job -- not because of what he does but because of his pay scale. He buys a computer to fill the hours when he is alone, which gets him into more debt that he hopes to eliminate by gambling. That leads to a vicious circle, hard to break unless someone can come and help him out of this quagmire. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Also known as Phantom Love, the French/Japanese co-production L'Empire de la Passion follows famed Japanese director Nagisa Oshima's multinational production, the chilling and erotic In the Realm of the Senses, which was banned in several countries and was disqualified from appearing at the Cannes Film Festival. This straightforward Japanese murder-mystery and ghost story, unlike that previous movie, does not focus on eroticism but concerns the aftermath of passion and the fruits of crime. In the story, based on an 1895 incident in rural Japan, Seki (Kazuko Yoshiyuki), a beautiful peasant woman, and her young lover Toyoji (Tatsuya Fuji), conspire to murder her husband when their erotic games get out of hand. After getting the husband drunk, the two lovers kill him and throw his body down an abandoned well, claiming that he has gone to do business in Tokyo. In order to avoid suspicion, the two only see each other seldom. In the meantime, Seki begins seeing visions of her husband, and her grown stepdaughter has dreams of him. Guilt consumes both of them, and their nemesis, in the form of a bumbling police inspector sent to investigate an unrelated murder, pursues them. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi