Naoto Takenaka Movies

A simple Chinese immigrant wages a perilous war against one of the most powerful criminal organizations on the planet in this sprawling action drama directed by Derek Yee (One Night in Mongkok) and starring Jackie Chan, Daniel Wu, and Masaya Kato. In Japan, foreign migrants are shunned by mainstream society. Taunted by the yakuza, they live in constant fear of being discovered and repatriated. Into this perilous world ventures Steelhead (Chan), a humble tractor repairman who has traveled to Tokyo in search of his missing girlfriend, Xiu Xiu (Xu Jinglei), who vanished into thin air shortly after arriving in the city. It doesn't take Steelhead long to learn just what kind of hardships Chinese immigrants in Japan endure at the hands of underworld gangsters and foreign crime syndicates, and upon discovering that Xiu Xiu has adapted a Japanese identity and married up-and-coming yakuza chief Eguichi (Masaya Kato), the two men form an uneasy alliance. Over time, Steelhead earns the respect of his fellow Chinese immigrants by establishing a place for them to gather. But the dark side still beckons to Steelhead, because after helping Eguichi dispense with a powerful rival, he is granted full control of Shinjuku's most popular nightspots. Resistant to the allure of the criminal lifestyle, Steelhead discovers a new love and opens a tractor repair business just outside the city. When Equichi begins using Steelhead's former compatriots as pawns to front the yakuza's drug trade, the vengeful immigrant returns to the city determined to exact justice, even if it means destroying the future of the woman he once loved. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Directors Michel Gondry, Bong Joon-ho, and Leos Carax each direct a segment of this triptych feature about life in 21st century Tokyo. The saga begins with Gondry's segment, entitled "Interior Design," about a young couple who moves in with an old friend while attempting to establish themselves in Tokyo. Hiroko (Ayako Fujitani) and Akira (Ryo Kase) have just arrived in the city. They're eager to launch their careers, but first they'll have to find a place to stay. Though Hiroko's old friend Akemi (Ayumi Ito) opens her doors to the ambitious young couple, her boyfriend isn't exactly thrilled by the new living arrangement. As Akira takes his first steps toward becoming a filmmaker, the neon jungle beckons to Hiroko. Before long, Hiroko begins to experience a startling metamorphosis that instills her with a newfound sense of peace and purpose.

The second chapter, Leos Carax's "Merde," follows the debased exploits of an unsightly subterranean creature (Denis Lavant) who emerges from the Tokyo sewers to taunt and torment the unsuspecting denizens of the city. Stealing cash, pilfering cigarettes, frightening old ladies, and even going so far as to salaciously lick schoolgirls, the gibberish-spewing troublemaker dubbed Merde sparks a media frenzy that sends all of Tokyo into a panic. The situation spirals as Merde discovers an arsenal of hand grenades in his underground lair, and begins throwing them in the streets at will, creating an environment of total urban terror. Later, Merde is apprehended and pompous French magistrate Maître Voland (Jean-François Balmer) arrives to defend the deviant in a Japanese court. The only person capable of speaking his client's unintelligible language, Voland stands at the center of a media circus that soon engulfs all of Japan. When Merde is convicted by the court and sentenced to death, justice takes a turn for the surreal.

The trilogy winds to a close with Bong Joon-ho's "Shaking Tokyo," in which a reclusive pizza addict who hasn't left his apartment in over a decade falls for a pretty delivery girl at the very same moment an earthquake hits Japan. A so-called hikikomori who never dares venture outside, the lonely shut-in (Teruyuki Kagawa) subsists almost solely on pizza delivery. When a beautiful delivery girl shows up at his door and promptly faints when the ground begins to shake, it's love at first sight. Later, the agoraphobic man discovers that the object of his affections has become a hikikomori herself, and boldly ventures out of his apartment in order to declare his love. The moment he sets eyes on her, the ground starts to rumble once again. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A group of scheming Japanese schoolgirls attempt to get out of summer math class by delivering bento boxes to the school's brass band, in the process contaminating the meals and forming a stand-in band with the one real musician who hasn't fallen ill. A group of struggling female math students are in class when daydreaming Tomoko (Juri Ueno) peers out the window and sees the brass band loading into a bus to perform at a local baseball game. Shortly after their bus pulls away, a catering truck carrying the band's bento boxes arrives to discover that the band has left without their meals. Tomoko immediately recognizes this as a surefire way to get out of class for the day, and proposes to the teacher that the girls deliver the lunches personally. But on the way to the game the girls drop the lunches into a mud puddle, and decide to dunk them in a local stream to clean them off. In the process, the bento boxes get contaminated, causing everyone in the band except for Nakamura (Yuta Hiraoka) to fall badly ill. The only thing that saved Nakamura was the fact that Tomoko ate his lunch before the girls arrived. Now, as the rest of the band gets rushed to the hospital, it's up to Nakamura to find some replacements. Naturally, he recruits the girls who caused all the trouble in the first place. Over the course of the next few days, the girls really begin to enjoy playing music. When the band recovers and comes back to claim their instruments, however, the girls scheme with Nakamura to raise enough money top purchase their own instruments, ultimately forming the band "Swing Girls and a Boy" and rehearsing for their debut performance at the upcoming winter music festival. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

This erotic drama from director Masahiro Kobayashi was filmed almost entirely alongside the austere, snow-filled landscape of the Japanese island of Hokkaido. Featuring Kill Bill alumni (Kazuki Kitamura) as unhinged loner Kenji, Onna Rihatsushi No Koi takes off when salon owner Harumi (Keiko Oginome) is kidnapped and ferried off to a broken-down shack that Kenji has deemed appropriate for their new life together. Though Harumi initially begs to go home, she eventually comes to see her kidnapper as a viable alternative to Ikuo (Jiro Sato), her gambler husband -- particularly in the bedroom. Ikuo eventually finds and confronts Kenji, and forces him to explain his obsession with Harumi. The film also features Yutaka Nakazawa, Yasufumi Hayashi, and Naoto Takenaka. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

Ikuo Sekimoto's O-Yo is an erotically charged drama about artists and a model. Yumeji Takehisa (Naoto Takenaka) and Seiun Ito (Tetsuya Kumakawa) both hire model Kaneyo Sasaki (Aki Shibuya). The artists have very different approaches to the work, causing the model to alter her perceptions of art, sex, and life. O-Yo was screened at the Hawaii Film Festival. The artists depicted in the film are real-life figures, and the film is based on their memoirs. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Can five teenage boys overcome clumsiness, inexperience, and the taunts of their classmates to become a champion team of synchronized swimmers? That's the key question in this comedy from Japan. Suzuki (Satoshi Tsumabuki) is an enthusiastic competitive swimmer who is the linchpin of his high school's swim team. However, lately there isn't much of a team to lead -- interest in swimming among the school's male students has dropped to almost zero, with Suzuki being the only one who still shows up for practice. When Sakuma (Kaori Manabe), a beautiful young teacher new to the school, takes over as swim coach, the men's team finds itself with a host of new members, but the new enthusiasm for swimming (and seeing Sakuma in a damp bathing suit) soon wanes when she unveils her dream project -- creating a boy's synchronized swimming team. While Suzuki remains loyal as always, before long only four other students remain to help make Sakuma's dream a reality -- math geek Kanazawa (Kuen Kondo), 98-pound-weakling Ohta (Akifumi Miura), athletically inept Sato (Hiroshi Tamaki), and timid Saotome (Takatoshi Kaneko), who hides the secret of his homosexuality from everyone at the school. Just as the team is starting to take shape, Sakuma is forced to take maternity leave, and with their first major public performance on the horizon, Suzuki and his teammates are driven to take advice wherever they can get it, ranging from a dolphin trainer at a water park to a group of aquatically inclined cross-dressers. By the way, if Kaori Manabe looks especially comfortable performing in a swimsuit, that's to be expected -- in Japan, she's best known as a high-profile bikini model. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Takashi Ishii directs this jet-black erotic thriller about a woman's past coming back to haunt her. Chihiro (played by model Harumi Inoue) is enjoying her life -- she likes her white-collar job and she loves her handsome co-worker boyfriend. Then one day, she sees an unusually attractive stranger poking through her mail. To her horror, she recognizes him as Hirokawa (Kazuki Kitamura), one of three thugs who gang-raped her years previous. Worse, he recognizes her and forces himself into her apartment. Acting like a long-lost lover, he tells her that he and the other two rapists -- including yakuza boss Baba (Naoto Takenaka), who just got out of prison -- are coming soon to relive the old times. He shows her photographs of the last rape, which he shows to her baffled boyfriend (Shunsuke Matsuoka), who makes a brief visit, and which he has stuffed in the mailboxes of all of her neighbors. The following day, he goes to her work and creates a scene that results in her getting canned. Chihiro's slow burn suddenly erupts into a fantastically violent catharsis. Preparing herself for the impending visit of the other rapists, she stuffs Hirokawa's body in the refrigerator. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Celebrated Japanese filmmaker Kaneto Shindo, at 88, was the world's second-oldest working director when he made this biopic of character actor Taiji Tonoyama (Portugal's Manoel de Oliveira, age 91, held the distinction of being the oldest). Tonoyama, who acted in 250 films throughout his career -- many of which were directed by Shindo -- began working as an actor in the 1950s. His first lead role was in Shindo's The Island (1960), a dialogue-free film shot while Tonoyama was suffering from cirrhosis of the liver. Despite his prolific output, the actor was more widely recognized for his off-screen activities, which included womanizing and excessive drinking. Shindo's biopic opens with Tonoyama (played by Naoto Takenaka) flirting with the 17-year-old Kimie, with whom he would maintain a relationship for the rest of his life, despite his quasi-legal marriage to wife Asako. Over the course of the film, much attention is paid to the competition between the two women, and it becomes clear that their relationship was as compelling as their respective ties to Tonoyama. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

Shinya Tsukamoto's latest work is a bit of a departure for the director of such over-the-top cult films as Tetsuo: Iron Man (1989). Though punctuated by his trademark kinetic camera work, this moody gothic horror film has the sort of brittle formalism more common in Japanese domestic dramas of the 1940s and 1950s. Dr. Yukio Daitokuji (Masahiro Motoki) is a well-to-do doctor living in a wealthy neighborhood located near a shantytown. He lives in a gorgeous old house along with his father, mother, and beautiful young wife Rin (Ryo). The couple seems happy, but Rin's lack of a past, due to amnesia, is a source of anxiety for the socially conscious doctor. The rigid respectability of the couple's upstanding bourgeois life shatters when a bizarre rag-wearing man kills off Daitokuji's parents in sudden and gruesome manners. The terror gets ratcheted up a notch when the mysterious assailant throws Daitokuji into a deep well on the family grounds and then reveals himself to be physically identical to the young doctor. The stranger assumes Daitokuji's identity by making passionate love with his wife and threatening to kill his patients. Tsukamoto brilliantly juxtaposes the oppressive opulence of the upper class, characterized by deathly silences and Kubrick-like compositions, with the grubby, desperate world of the slums, whose residents could have populated The Road Warrior (1981). While Tsukamoto's fascination with revenge, doppelgangers, and male rage, as seen in Tokyo Fist (1995) and Bullet Ballet (1998), are clearly present in this work, it also showcases the director's growing stylistic maturity. This film was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Get Carter meets Heidegger in this slick, two-fisted gangster epic brimming with furtive sex and shocking violence. The film centers on five poster-boys of Japan's post-bubble economic malaise: Bandai (Koichi Sato), the owner of a once popular nightclub who's up to his fashionable lapels in debt to the yakuza; the gay extortionist (Masahiro Motoki) who loves him; Ogiwara (Naoto Takenaka of Shall We Dance fame), a downsized salaryman on the brink of mental collapse; an drug addict ex-police detective just out of stir (Jimpachi Nezu); and failed prize-fighter turned spastic pimp (Kippei Shiina). Each has a beef with the yakuza, most particularly Bandai, who is daily taunted and threatened by the unruly thugs. He organizes the motley crew and raids a yakuza office, and not only manages to make off with almost a hundred million yen but humiliates the thugs in front of their syndicate boss. In retaliation, the mob hires a hitman (Takeshi Kitano) who sports an eyepatch and works with ruthless efficiency, killing the five -- and those closest to them -- one by one without pity or remorse. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Tsuda (played by Shinya Tsukamoto) is a frustrated insurance salesman who lives a life of quiet desperation with his girlfriend Hizuru (Kaori Fujii). His job yields little fulfillment, his relationship lacks passion, and he feels perpetually fatigued, as if overwhelmed by the inhuman scale of Tokyo. His life takes a bizarre turn when his old high school acquaintance Kojima (Kohji Tsukamoto) pays him a visit. The wild-eyed professional boxer attempts to seduce Hizuru, driving Tsuda into a jealous fury. When he confronts Kojima, he ends up in the hospital and Hizuru ends up with the boxer. Seeking revenge, Tsuda begins boxing training with insane intensity. Watching his former high school chum thrash his sparring partners gives Kojima a rise of some form, bolstering his sagging career in the ring. Meanwhile, Hizuru begins her own brand of self-discovery though self-mutilation, from relatively mild tattoos and nose rings to driving metal stakes into her flesh, until she looks like a vengeful goddess from Japanese mythology. What develops has to be one of the most bizarre, masochistic love triangles ever committed to celluloid. Kojima relishes ripping the rings from Hizuru's flesh; Hizuru tenderly beats Tsuda into a bloody pulp; and Tsuda bashes his own head against the wall. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Continuing his penchant for directing films in the characteristically Japanese genre he virtually created, director Takashi Ishii here presents yet another stylish rape/thriller. Nami is an attractive woman, and she loves her husband, who runs the real estate agency she works at. One day, during a rainstorm, a mysterious drifter stumbles into her and, following her on her way back to the office, asks for (and gets) a job from her husband, over her protests. Not long after that, Nami and the newcomer are trading amorous glances. When the drifter gets her alone in a model house, he rapes her on the floor. For some reason, this doesn't offend Nami, and she encourages the socially backward man to take her to bed often. Eventually, the two of them decide to do away with her husband, despite the fact that Nami still loves him. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Wim Wenders' sprawling cyberpunk noir epic -- shot in no less than nine different countries -- is set in 1999 and stars Solveig Dommartin as Claire, a young Frenchwoman who comes into contact with a large sum of money stolen during a bank heist; in her travels she picks up a mysterious American hitchhiker (William Hurt), who himself steals some of the money before parting from her company. Upon discovering the theft, Claire sets out on his trail, with both a Hammett-styled German private eye (Rudiger Vogler) as well as her former lover, a novelist portrayed by Sam Neill, in tow. The hitchhiker is really Sam Farber, the son of an underground scientist (Max Von Sydow), and his mission is to travel the globe in order to acquire the funding necessary to develop the technology which will allow his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) to "see" visual recordings of her family members; the second half of the film takes place largely in the Farbers' compound in the Australian Outback, where Sam, Claire and the others take refuge while attempting to bring the sight project to its fruition, in the meantime pondering earth's future in the wake of a nuclear disaster in outer space. Wenders' most ambitious film to date, budgeted at $23 million, Until the End Of the World is also among his most seriously flawed efforts -- despite a keen sense of cultural perception, a fascinating sci-fi take on life in the near-future and stunning Robby Muller cinematography, the picture never quite gels. Much of the blame seems to fall upon its distributors -- upon its wide release in 1991, the movie was drastically cut to a running time of 2 1/2 hours, resulting in a disjointed narrative that doesn't shift gears so much as grind them as the action moves from country to country. Still, while a three-hour version, issued on laserdisc in Japan, comes closer to realizing the full scope of Wenders' epic vision, rumors of a five-hour director's cut -- said to have been screened to thunderous applause at a handful of film festivals -- continue to persist, suggesting that a masterpiece may well exist here after all. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide