Miho Kanno Movies

Master filmmaker Takeshi Kitano returns behind the camera for the first time since his indifferently received English-language effort Brother (2000) with this operatic tale of lost love. Dolls takes puppeteering as its overriding motif -- specifically, the kind practiced in Bunraku doll theater performances -- opening each section of his film with a story provided by the puppets and their masters, which relates thematically to the action provided by the live characters. Chief among those tales is the story of Matsumoto (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and Sawako (Miho Kanno), a young couple whose relationship is about to be broken apart by the former's parents, who have insisted their son take part in an arranged marriage to his boss' daughter. He initially agrees, causing the unstable Sawako to be committed to a psychiatric hospital. When he leaves his new bride at the altar to save Sawako, however, he realizes that she's so incapable of caring for herself that she needs to be tied to him with a red rope. Inextricably bound, the two wander through Japan, encountering others along the way who have similarly overlooked love for other, more fleeting pleasures: fame, power, money. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

Riding the trend of Japanese horror flicks after the wild international success of Ring, this film -- directed by Ataru Oikawa -- centers on a murder victim who just won't die. The film opens with the police investigating the murder of high school girl Tomie Kawakami (Miho Kanno). They learn that in the months following the crime, nine students and one teacher have either committed suicide or gone insane. The detective assigned to the case (Tomoro Taguchi) learns that three years prior another Tomie Kawakami was murdered in rural Gifu prefecture. Other slain Tomie Kawakami's are discovered stretching all the way back to the 1860s, right when Japan began to modernize. The detective tracks down one of Tomie's classmates called Tsukiko (Mami Nakamura), an art student who is being treated for amnesia. She has absolutely no memory of the three-month period around Tomie's death, and is starting to suspect the cause has a supernatural source. Meanwhile, Tsukiko's neighbor (Kota Kusano) is rearing a peculiar baby-like creature. Over the span of a couple weeks, it grows into a beautiful teenaged girl with orange eyes responding to the name of Tomie Kawakami. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Shimako Sato directs this school-themed horror flick featuring Satan worship, lesbian orgies, and buckets of blood. Misa Kuroi (Kimika Yoshino) is a doe-eyed transfer student with a shadowy past. She soon finds a friend in the class president Mizuki Kurabashi (Miho Kanno), and a suitor in hunky soccer star Shina (Shuma). Little do her newfound friends know that she is an itinerate witch who travels from school to school dispelling the work of the devil. When Kurabashi tries to tell Misa about the rumored lesbian encounters between their homeroom teacher Ms. Shirai (Mio Takaki) and various classmates, the lass is suddenly struck down by a blinding pain. Misa immediately suspects black magic. As the film progresses, Misa and eleven of her classmates find themselves locked in school as some malevolent force kills them, one by one, until the film's final fiery clash between the forces of good and evil. This film was based on a popular horror Manga by Shinichi Koga. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide