Genji Nakamura Movies

Ryuichi Hiroki, Genji Nakamura, and Hitoshi Ishikawa left Nikkatsu to form their own company, Yu Productions, following the mondo S & M film Sekkan. At Yu, they continued to direct "ero-gro" pinku eiga together under the collective pseudonym Go Ijuin, and this Ijuin film achieved cult status outside Japan due to its extreme content. It's the story of a nice young couple whose car breaks down in the forest. They are saved by a passing local (Shiko Shima), or so they think. Fans of ero-gro know that Shima, a former newspaper editor who later opened his own members-only torture chamber, is Japan's king of S & M, claiming to have personally trained over 3,500 women. So the young couple is bound, gagged, and subjected to some pretty intense torture. When it's all over, the young man (Souji Kanehako) is so impressed by the way Shima handled his girlfriend (Kei Sano), that he becomes the master's apprentice, joining him in more kidnapping and torture. The American title is something of a misnomer, as this is actually a sequel to Ikenie, while the film generally released as Captured for Sex is Hakujitsumu Zoku, the sequel to a film released as Daydream. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

Edward Zwick returned to the director's chair for the first time since 1998's The Siege with this sweeping period drama set in 19th-century Japan. After centuries of relying on hired samurai for national defense, the Japanese monarchy has decided to do away with the warriors in favor of a more contemporary military. Tom Cruise stars as Nathan Algren, a veteran of the U.S. Civil War who is hired by the Emperor Meiji to train an army capable of wiping out the samurai. But when Algren is captured by the samurai and taught about their history and way of life, he finds himself conflicted over who he should be fighting alongside. Billy Connelly, Tony Goldwyn, and Ken Watanabe co-star. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

When Akira Kanmyo (Masato Ibu) leaves for a trip to the store one weekend, everything seems to either go wrong or to simply shock him -- he comes across a former lover, and in a separate instance, a woman with a definite sexual fixation, and an unstable man brandishing a knife. While he has this cast of characters to handle, his wife gets a phone call from a stranger who says he has kidnapped their son. In reality, there is no kidnapping, the son is just looking for a way to become famous on the television news. The poor mother is at her wit's end (not a long distance) when she opens the door to a salesman, who turns out to be a rapist and a thief. She is raped and sustains partial amnesia as a result. So when three of her acquaintances come to visit, the rapist poses as her husband (apparently her husband has never met these three friends) and no one is any the wiser. There is additional violence at the end, some of which is directed at an already wounded credibility factor. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi