Ayumi Ishida Movies

In this Japanese melodrama, a youthful truck driver does all he can to keep away from hospitals and physicians. Then he meets a pretty nurse while visiting an ailing friend. Later, following a traffic accident, he reluctantly undergoes a check up and must reveal that he has terminal leukemia. The kindly nurse takes him to her home to spend the last few months of his life in peace. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This is a badly re-edited and "Americanized" version of a popular Japanese disaster movie, The Submersion of Japan (1973). The trouble begins when scientists learn that Japan's islands are sinking and must be evacuated within two years. The story chronicles the ways in which various people react to the decree. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The infamous "Criminal 22" is at large in Tokyo. This is a vicious, sadistic murderer who takes special delight in "offing" cops. Detective Ken Takakura makes it his mission in life to wipe Criminal 22 from the face of the earth. If The Station plays like an American crime-and-punishment picture at times, it comes by this honestly. Like Kurosawa's High and Low, the film was adapted from an "87th Precinct" novel by Ed McBain (aka Evan Hunter and Salvatore Lambino). The Station bears no relation to the 1990 Italian film of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

If Western nations had the juvenile delinquency depicted in this Japanese film about a delinquent teen, they would be grateful. The teen does not do drugs or alcohol, she does not murder school children with her parents' rifles, she is not promiscuous, she does not commit armed robbery or belong to an abusive and immoral street gang, or torture anyone. Her crimes consist of having questionable taste in clothes and make-up, once in awhile sniffing a paint thinner, sometimes skipping school, and hitting her mother once. It is not clear what motivates her admittedly less-than-ideal behavior, though it is suggested that her father's extra-marital affairs and her mother's subsequent anger sparked the teen's rebellion. A sure sign of her strangeness is the fact that her hair permanently turned red from a childhood illness, and nothing is quite as descriptive of something totally foreign, totally Western. Maybe in the end, that is meant to be a subtle reference to delinquency as a Western cultural import - if so, it is the only subtlety in this otherwise conventional film. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

This drama is based on the experiences of celebrated novelist Kazuo Dan. Kazuo Katsura (Ken Ogata) is a writer, with a wife and six children, who indulges in booze and extra-marital affairs. When he takes the flighty actress Keiko (Mieko Harada) as his mistress, Kazuo's long-suffering wife Yoriko (Ayumi Ishida) leaves him. The author must endure the situation he has set for himself as he suffers through arguments in between his sexual encounters. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi