Kippei Shiina Movies

Grudge director Takeshi Shimizu returns to tell this tale of a film crew that descends upon a hotel that was once the scene of a vicious killing spree, only to find that the horrors of the past have a malevolent means of manifesting themselves in the present. Years after a professor slaughtered his wife, his young daughter, and nine hotel guests at the Ono Kanko just north of Tokyo, horror filmmaker Ikuo Matsumara (Kippei Shiina) and his crew prepare to make a movie about the murders. As pre-production on the film gets underway, the lead actress experiences a vivid vision of the murders and is shocked to awaken in the very room where the body of the professor's daughter was discovered. In her vision, the actress watched helplessly as the professor sadistically captures the final moments of his victims on film. When the actress finds the very same camera she saw the professor using in her vision and the cast members begin dying in the same manner as their real-life counterparts, it begins to appear as if the mad professor has returned from beyond the grave to ensure that his dark story never makes it to the silver screen. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Takeshi Kitano (aka Beat Takeshi) returns to his roots as a star and director with this edgy gangster tale. The Chairman (Soichiro Kitamura) is the head of the Sanno-kai crime family, Japan's most powerful underworld syndicate, with his right-hand man, Ikemoto (Jun Kunimura), handling much of the crew's daily business. The Chairman's greatest rival is Murase (Renji Ishibashi), whose operation has made its money in drug peddling while the Sanno-kai has been striving to move its operations into more legitimate schemes. The Chairman believes that Ikemoto has become too close to Murase for comfort, and he wants the two sides to distance themselves. Ikemoto, not wanting to dirty his hands with any unpleasantness, orders one of his mechanics, Otomo (Beat Takeshi), to deliver a few reminders that the two gangs are on opposite sides. What begins as some brutal but petty recriminations by Otomo and his crew against Murase's underlings turns into a private war, and the violence on each side escalates with each exchange. Autoreiji (aka Outrage) received its world premiere at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Yoichi Sai's prison film Doing Time stars Tsutomu Yamazaki as Hanawa, a man serving a sentence in a minimum-security prison. Life in the jail is rigid and organized, eventually leading all of Hanawa's cellmates to abandon their individuality. Hanawa lasts longer than the others, but a stint in solitary confinement leads him to the same emotional and psychological state as the others. Doing Time was screened at the Vancouver Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

This Japanese action film offers Westerners a look into the seamy world of the Japanese Mafia (the yakuza). Nami loved her husband, a policeman with an undercover assignment to get into a yakuza gang of drug-dealers. The ruse failed and he was shot to death and dumped into the sea. While Nami was mourning, the drug dealers broke into her home looking for confiscated amphetamines. They then raped her and broke her husband's funeral urn. Traumatized, Nami attempts suicide but is rescued by the mysterious and heavily tattooed yakuza, Muraki. She decides to seek revenge and so pretends to be a prostitute in order to get close to yukaza ring leader Ikejima. She succeeds, but then fails in her attempt to murder the crime lord. Once again she is saved by Muraki. She is sold to a brothel where she becomes a drug addict. Muraki again intervenes and she is able to kick the drugs and return to her quest for revenge. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi