Atsuyuki Shimoda Movies

A fierce woman warrior joins a wandering demon hunter on his quest to recover the missing body parts and regain his natural form in director Akihiko Shiota's adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's popular manga of the same name. Years ago, malevolent ruler Daigo Kagemitsu promised to deliver his unborn son to the forty-eight devils of the underworld in exchange for the power to conquer his country. When his son was born with forty-eight body parts missing, Daigo knew he had gotten his wish and cast the infant child into the river. Rescued from certain death and given the name Hyakkimaru (Satoshi Tsumabuki) by a poor herb doctor, the boy was outfitted with a glass eye, fitted with artificial limbs, and raised amidst the confusion of war. Now, every time Hyakkimaru slays a demon, he regains another one of his missing body parts. One day, as Hyakkimaru does battle with a particularly fierce spider demon, a scrappy female thief named Dororo (Kou Shibasaki) takes notice and comes to his aid. Fascinated by the strange sword affixed to Hyakkimaru's artificial arm and awestruck by the fact that he somehow managed to grow a new leg after defeating the giant spider, Dororo agrees to follow Hyakkimaru on his journey after learning of his story from an ageing minstrel. But while Dororo is a fearless ally indeed, she has a troublesome habit of getting into mischief at the most awkward times. Later, as Hyakkimaru prepares to face off against his powerful father - he leaves his new friend behind in order to face his fate alone. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Yuka (Hiromi Nagasaku) is an attractive young woman whose brother has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Shortly before his untimely death, Yuka got her first glimpse of his double, who has since moved into their apartment and taken his place. Hayasaki (Koji Yakusho) is a brilliant but mercurial scientist obsessed with perfecting a robot chair for the disabled, with wheels and mechanical arms that are supposed to function according to the "will" of the user. In his single-mindedness, he harangues his underlings and aggravates his employer, who is focused on the bottom line. After a co-worker tells Hayasaki about Yuka's experience, he finds himself being stalked by a doppelganger. At first, he thinks he is doomed, like Yuka's brother, and tries to avoid his double. Eventually, he loses his job, and control of his invention, and the doppelganger steps in to take care of everything. The double trashes Hayasaki's former lab, stealing the robot chair so the scientist can continue his work. The double also hires a young thug, Kimishima (Yusuke Santamaria), to work for them. The double says Kimishima is "just dumb enough not to find us alarming." But Hayasaki's fears come to the fore when the double takes advantage of Yuka's interest in him. And when his former employer, Aoki (Masahiro Toda), now disgraced, comes looking for a piece of the robot-chair action, the scientist finds himself uncertain who to trust. Doppelganger, a dark comedy directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure) from a script by Kurosawa and Ken Furusawa, was shown at the 2004 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

As one of the most cutting-edge Japanese filmmakers, Kiyoshi Kurosawa once again wraps a lowbrow, much-maligned genre -- in this case horror flicks (which were the rage in Japan at the time of this release) -- around some decidedly highbrow philosophical concepts. At the film's outset, Michi (Kumiko Aso) and her cohorts at a rooftop nursery cannot get ahold of their co-worker, Taguchi (Kenji Mizuhashi), who has an important floppy disk. When she ventures over to his apartment, she finds him pale, listless, and unusually quiet -- that is until he suddenly hangs himself. While the suicide is disconcerting, what really freaks Michi out is that Taguchi's body seems to dissolve into the wall, leaving a sickly black stain. Meanwhile, college slacker Ryosuke Kawashima (Haruhiko Kato) logs onto the Internet for the first time even though he is not particularly fond of computers. Instead of stumbling into a porn site or a chat room, he finds himself in a most peculiar site -- he just sees ghostly images of other people going about their everyday life. Then the computer prompts him, asking, "Would you like to meet ghosts?" Even though he eventually pulls the plug, the machine still on occasion springs to life. He eventually consults a comely computer maven named Harue (Koyuki), who is also utterly baffled. As more and more Internet users seal themselves into their rooms with red duct tape and melt into black splotches, Kawashima and Michi independently come to discover that the Internet has become portal for an increasingly crowded afterlife. As Tokyo becomes increasingly depopulated, Kawashima and Michi cross paths. This film -- which also features cameos by Kurosawa regulars Koji Yakusho, Jun Fubuki, and Sho Aikawa -- was screened at the 2001 Cannes and Toronto Film Festivals. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

When oddball auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa received an eccentric offer to make two films in two weeks, on a low budget and using the same cast, the result was the cinematic equivalent of fraternal twins. Though both Spider's Gaze and Serpent's Path are gangster films about the desire for revenge, and both films feature a protagonist named Nijima played convincingly by Sho Aikawa, the two movies are completely different in tone and plot. Nonetheless, they seem freakishly interlocked in ways that defy the conventionally linear relationship of a sequel, as each of these enigmatic, absorbing films elucidates our understanding of the other. Unlike the light-hearted tone of Spider's Gaze, Serpent's Path is a grim yakuza film featuring extremes of violence and brutality. Nijima is an astrophysics lecturer who, for some obscure reason, aids a half-crazed mobster named Miyashita in his pursuit of those responsible for the brutal rape and murder of his young daughter. They abduct a series of Miyashita's colleagues, drag them to a remote warehouse, and attempt to extract confessions from them through torture. As the body count rises, it becomes clear that Miyashita and his dwindling gang were involved in the production of snuff movies. When Nijima reveals his motives for helping the gangster, our understanding of both this film and Spider's Gaze are completely altered. This film was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival as part of the Director's Spotlight. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

In a departure from his acclaimed horror films Cure (1997) and Charisma (1998), Kiyoshi Kurosawa's License to Live is a gentle family melodrama that doubles as a meditation on personal identity. The film focuses on Yutaka (Hidetoshi Nishijima), the victim of an ugly car accident who suddenly wakes up from a 10-year coma. He soon discovers that his world has been turned upside-down in the intervening years. His formerly close-knit family has parted ways and his family home has been turned into a low-rent fish farm and industrial dumping ground by Fujimoto (Koji Yakusho), a gruff huckster friend of his father. Though Yutaka moves back into his family home, he is left feeling confused and unsettled, helped only by Fujimoto, who reluctantly serves as pseudo-father. Yutaka tries to pick up where he left off, but his attempts at meeting old friends and family members leave him feeling only more isolated. In a last-ditch attempt to reclaim his past, he reopens the pony ranch run by his financially incompetent father when he was a child. For a time, his mother Sachiko (Lily) and his sister Chizuru (Kumiko Asou) return to the homestead, and a semblance of the old family begins to cohere -- until a surprising, emotional twist forces Yutaka to realize that he must move on. As in his other films, Kurosawa couches metaphysical themes of identity and mortality in an engaging genre vehicle. Yet this work displays a strikingly minimalist style and a deft use of mood and pacing that point toward a greater maturity. This film was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival as part of the Director's Spotlight. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Veteran indie filmmaker Sogo Ishii spins this dream-like pulpy yarn about death and buses. Tomiko Tomonari (Rena Komine) works as a bus conductress, and though she gets to wear a spiffy uniform, she is thoroughly bored with her job and her life. One day, a new bus driver named Tatsuo Niitaka (Tadanobu Asano) starts working at her company. Mysterious, moody, and silent, he has garnered the notice of almost all the women in the company -- but Tomiko has a particular interest in him. Tomiko's best friend was once engaged to Niikata, before she died in an accident while he was at the wheel. Even more unnerving, her best friend sent her a letter before she died, talking much about death at the hands of her lover. Instead of going to the police, Tomiko purposefully falls for the guy. This, she tells herself, is the adventure she as been looking for. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi