Etsushi Toyokawa Movies

As the Korean War draws to a close and the pressing demand for copious amounts of coal takes a sudden plunge, the remote Japanese mining town of Joban attempts to compensate for the devastating economic blow by transforming itself into a lavish Hawaiian retreat in an affectionate comedy inspired by real events and directed by Lee Sang-il. The year s 1965 and the changes that have swept through the outside world are finally reaching Joban. As the mineworkers are laid off and the women of the town take it upon themselves to gently nudge their once-prosperous community from the brink of economic collapse, the ancient Hawaiian art of the hula dance seems to offer the ideal means of doing so. Though highly fashionable Tokyo urbanite Madoka Hirayama (Yasuko Matsuyuki) at first seems terribly out of place when she arrives in Joban to teach local ladies how to saw their hips with authentic grace, her noble efforts soon instill her students with a newfound sense of confidence in both themselves, and their struggling community. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

One young man's struggle to find happiness in a family and a city fraught with strife sets the stage for this coming-of-age drama. Shuji (Yuya Tegoshi) and Shuichi are two brothers who were born and raised in Hama, a city in Western Japan. Shuichi is an ambitious young man who is determined to make something of himself, while Shuji is a quieter sort who is willing to let his brother be the star of the family. Hama becomes an increasingly difficult place to live, as a resort project designed to economically jump-start the city proves to be a massive failure and it's discovered that the village priest, Father Yuichi (Etsushi Toyokawa), has a scandalous past. The tensions of life in Hama become too much for Shuichi, who begins setting fire to buildings to vent his rage. Shuji, meanwhile, has taken solace in a romance with Eri (Hanae Kan), a girl from his school who has become an outcast after her parents killed themselves. Shuichi is finally captured by the police for his string of arsons, and is sent to jail; his parents go missing shortly afterward, and Father Yuichi struggles to hold the family together by keeping Shuichi in contact with his brother Shuji. Shuji falls into a deep depression and contemplates suicide, but instead decides he needs to see Eri. However, she has moved to Tokyo, so Shuji sets out to find her. En route, he becomes friendly with a woman named Akane (Miki Nakatani), which puts him in great danger when he learns she's the girlfriend of a notorious gangster. Shisso (aka Dead Run) received its North American premiere at the 2005 New Montreal Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A pair of sadistic killers finds their bloody game turned against them in director Toshiharu Ikeda's screen adaptation of Masayuki Shuno's novel of the same name. Methodical madman Yasunaga (Etsushi Toyokawa) and his self-destructive sidekick, Chinatsu (Kumiko Aso), have been carving up schoolgirls all across Tokyo, but when a mysterious stranger beats them to their next intended victim, they are unexpectedly called in as witnesses by the police. As the murderous duo attempts to uncover the identity of a mysterious older man whom they had seen with their intended victim just moments before the murder, they are forced to bluff their way through a series of intense interviews with police investigator Isone and his deskbound superior Horinouchi. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Famed pink eiga turned indie impresario Zeze Takehisa directs this very odd romance yarn between a young lass with a heart of gold and a seeing-eye dog. Shiro is a white dog raised by a kind-hearted family and who is particularly close to their daughter, Haruka. After a few years, Shiro's training begins and he is matched with Gong (Ryo Ishibashi), a blind boxing trainer. One night after knocking back one too many beers, Gong gets hit and killed by a truck. Shiro survives but is so racked by guilt that the dog's health begins to decline. Gong's spirit appears and grants him one wish -- to be human and find the family that loved him as a pup. Suddenly, Shiro is transformed into a hunk cad in white (Etsushi Toyokawa). He learns that the family was killed in a plane crash with the exception of Haruka (Haruka Igawa), who now teaches kindergarten in a remote corner of Japan. Shiro's transition into being a human proves to be awkward: When he tracks down a very suspicious Haruka, she brands him a pervert for sniffing her bicycle seat. Soon however, Shiro manages to win Haruka's heart. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Junji Sakamoto spins this tale of a socially inept yet indomitable woman searching for freedom and self-respect. Set in Kobe at the beginning of 1995, the film introduces Masako (Naomi Fujiyama), a withdrawn, middle-aged woman living above her mother's dry cleaning shop. She rarely leaves the house and is often tormented by her pretty younger sister. After their mother suddenly dies, the sisters' sibling rivalry takes a rather nasty turn. Immediately after the funeral, Masako strangles her sister in an explosion of rage and humiliation. Just as she stumbles into life on the run, the Kobe earthquake strikes. Terrified that the disaster is some divine retribution for her crime, she flees willy-nilly to Osaka, where, after losing her virginity to a rape, she finds shelter and eventually employment at a "love hotel." When the owner of that establishment hangs himself to escape a mountain of bad debt, Masako flees to Beppu on the southern island of Kyushu. There she falls in love with a down-and-out salesman and finds camaraderie with a world-weary bar owner. In spite of the constant air of violence and the occasional rape, Masako blossoms in her new surroundings until her past -- and the police -- start to catch up with her. This film was screened at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Director Shunji Iwai, who has gained wild popularity in his native Japan, creates this gorgeously rendered tale of love, remembrance, and loss. Though her fiancé Itsuki Fujii died in a mountain climbing accident over two years ago, Hiroko Watanabe (Miho Nakayama) is unable to move on. After a ceremony marking Itsuki's death, Hiroko pays an emotional visit to his mother. There she discovers his boyhood address in an old high school yearbook, and, on a whim, she writes a letter addressed to her old lover. Needless to say, she is more than a little surprised when she actually gets a response from Itsuki Fujii. This Itsuki Fujii, however, is a young woman (also played by Nakayama) working at a library and suffering through a particularly tenacious cold in the snowy expanses of Hokkaido. She also endured three years of classroom taunts at having the same name as her male classmate as junior high student-the same male Itsuki Fujii that Hiroko eventually fell for. Though the female Fujii initially worries that she has somehow been targeted by a lunatic, she and Hiroko begins to develop an odd sort of correspondence. The two begin to piece together their respective memories about the male Itsuki, revealing a love lost and a love rediscovered. Though Miho Nakayama gives a nuanced performance as the film's two lead characters, pop star Ranran Suzuki almost walks away with the film in her hilarious cameo as Sanae Oikawa, the deeply weird teenaged rival suitor to the male Fujii's attention. Iwai's deft touch fashions a narrative that could have been jumbled and maudlin into an elegant work, that, like Wong Kar-wai's brilliant Chungking Express (1994), artfully fuses humor with melancholy. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide