Kamatari Fujiwara Movies

Just as many American studio-era directors found acclaim abroad that was denied them in their home country, by 1980 Akira Kurosawa's reputation outside Japan exceeded his esteem at home. As uncompromising as ever, he found considerable difficulty securing backing for his ambitious projects. Unsure he would be able to film it, the director, an aspiring artist before he entered filmmaking, converted Kagemusha into a series of paintings, and it was partly on the basis of these that he won the financial support of longtime admirers Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Set in the 16th century, when powerful warlords competed for control of Japan, it offers an examination of the nature of political power and the slipperiness of identity. For some time, Shingen Takeda Tatsuya Nakadai has been able to stay removed from the heat of battle by using his brother Nobukado Tsutomu Yamazaki as a double. As the film opens, Nobukado offers another option, having discovered a condemned thief (also played by Tatsuya Nakadai) bearing an uncanny resemblance to the warlord. After he insists on witnessing the fall of an enemy in person, Shingen falls victim to a sniper's bullet, forcing his advisers to present the thief as the fallen warrior. At first awkward in his new position and plagued by dreams in which the spirit of his double confronts him, he slowly grows into the role even as his enemies begin to advance on his kingdom. The winner of the Palm D'Or at Cannes, Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior has also been released as The Double. ~ Keith Phipps, Rovi

A masterpiece of Japanese New Wave cinema, renowned filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda directs this brilliant modernist reworking of a famous 1720 bunraku (puppet theater) play written by Chikamatsu Monzaemon. Set in Osaka in the 18th century, the film centers on the doomed romance between Jihei (Kichiemon Nakamura), a down and out married paper merchant passionately in love with doe-eyed courtesan Koharu (Shima Iwashita), whom he cannot afford to buy out of servitude. Koharu herself has also fallen in love with Jihei; she even starts turning away other patrons to be with him. Their love is further imperiled by Tahei (Hosei Komatsu), a rich, obnoxious merchant who flaunts his ability to buy Koharu's indenture. Suicide is the only way for the two to be together. Jihei's wife Osan (also played by Iwashita) senses the couple's intent and writes Koharu a letter pleading for his life. Touched by the sincerity of the letter, Koharu feigns reservations with killing herself, prompting Jihei to tearfully renounce her. Later, as Jihei skulks about the house as his wife runs the family business, he overhears that Tahei has at last bought his former lover's contract. Knowing that Koharu would just as soon kill herself, Osan -- the ideal of the dutiful wife -- offers Jihei her kimonos to pawn to save her husband's lover. Just as everything seems to be working out for the better, Osan's misinformed father bursts in just before Jihei is about to leave. The enraged old man cannot believe that Jihei is sacrificing his family for a prostitute and drags Osan away, demanding a divorce over Osan's protestations. Later, Jihei and Koharu--together at last--steal into the night, cut their hair -- absolving them from societal obligations -- and make love all night in a graveyard before they commit double suicide. This film won the prestigious Kinema Jumpo "Number One" prize for both Best Picture and Best Actresses. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

An inspirational teacher is the focus of this Japanese drama. After his friend kills himself, Natsuki takes a teaching job on an isolated island. His new students, the children of ignorant fishermen, can see no value in education; therefore, they have no desire to learn. Natsuki then introduces the children to volleyball. The kids are immediately fired up by the game. After winning the island tourney, they go on to win the national championship. Suddenly learning has taken on a whole new dimension. Meanwhile Natsuki gets married. Unfortunately for his wife, he refuses to leave the island. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Often described as a French New Wave film made in Hollywood, Arthur Penn's 1965 art movie enters the unsettlingly paranoid world of a nightclub comic on the run from the Mob. Having fooled around with the wrong blonde and gambled himself into an unpayable debt, an entertainer (Warren Beatty) flees to Chicago, where he hides out and changes his name to Mickey One. He hooks up with Jenny (Alexandra Stewart) and Castle (Hurd Hatfield), the owner of the nightclub Xanadu, but he cannot shake the paralyzing conviction that he's being pursued no matter where he is. After being beaten by unknown assailants, Mickey finally decides that escape is impossible, so he might as well just do his thing. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Different Sons was originally released in Japan as Futari no Musuko. When Kensuki (Akira Takarada) marries a bar hostess, he is disowned by his family--who, truth to tell, aren't much higher on the social scale than Kensuki's bride. Over the years, Kensuki's financial condition improves by leaps and bounds; still, his poor but proud family refuse to accept help from him, choosing instead to rely on his "faithful" brother Shoji (Yuzo Kayama). The bitterness rages on until the rift is finally repaired in a most unexpected fashion. Perhaps better suited temperamentally for a Japanese audience, Different Sons still has much to offer for non-Japanese filmgoers. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Toshiro Mifune portrays a Samurai who finds himself in the middle of a feud-torn Japanese village. Neither side is particularly honorable, but Mifune is hungry and impoverished, so he agrees to work as bodyguard (or Yojimbo) for a silk merchant (Kamatari Fujiwara) against a sake merchant (Takashi Shimura). He then pretends to go to work for the other, the better to let the enemies tear each other apart. Imprisoned for his "treachery," he escapes just in time to watch the two warring sides wipe each other out. This was his plan all along, and now that peace has been restored, he leaves the village for further exploits. Yes, Yojimbo was the prototype for the Clint Eastwood "Man with No Name" picture A Fistful of Dollars (1964). The difference is that Fistful relies on Eastwood for its success, whereas Yojimbo scores on every creative level, from director Akira Kurosawa to cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa to Mifune's classic lead performance. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this engaging drama, acclaimed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa deftly splices together the nuances of hypocrisy, old feudal misconceptions lingering in modern corruption, and Shakespeare's Hamlet. The rotten corporate world is taken on by Koichi Nishi (Toshiro Mifune), who is looking for revenge in the death of his father. Koichi is a private secretary to a government official, and in the opening scene, at Koichi's wedding to the official's disabled daughter, a special cake is brought in which jolts those present -- it reminds them of the suicide that paved the way for their current positions of power. Then the police arrive and arrest one of the wedding guests. Unknown to the others, Koichi is the hidden force behind all the strange happenings that begin to sting their consciences and ruin their lives. Ghostly figures and would-be killers in the dark streets contrast with shining corporate offices as the plot maneuvers to its tragic conclusion. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

As Yasujiro Ozu's final black-and-white picture, the 1957 Tokyo Twilight explores the emotional landscapes and nuances within a strained Japanese family. Two daughters - Akiko (Ineko Arima) and Takako (Setsuko Hara) - grew up under the sold guardianship of their father, Mr. Sugiyama (Chishu Ryu) after their mother walked out on the family. This created serious psychological problems for both young women that extended well into adulthood: Akiko now spends all of her free time haunting bars and pachinko parlors, looking for her boyfriend, while Takako withdraws from a severely dysfunctional relationship with her alcoholic husband, by whom she has one daughter. In time, Akiko meets a woman who claims to know her as an acquaintance from their childhood neighborhood, and senses that the lady might actually be her mother. This film ventures into slightly darker psychodramatic territory than much of Ozu's work, by courageously dramatizing and exploring issues such as maternal abandonment, broken families and substance abuse. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

When an elderly, wealthy man decides that nuclear holocaust is eminent in his country, he decides to move his family to Brazil at all costs--a place which, for some mysterious reason, he believes to be safe. His family refuses to move because they fear that the move will jeopardize their financial well-being. Nakajima burns down his foundry to force them to go to Brazil but, instead, they go to the courts and have him declared mentally incompetent. After several more increasingly irrational acts, he is finally placed in a mental asylum, where he sits staring at the sun, believing that he is on another planet and the sun is the raging inferno created by the Earth when it went up in the nuclear holocaust--vindicating his actions. A strong indictment against the inherent evils of nuclear warfare, it is also the story of a man's love and dedication to his family in the face of his own fears and endangerment. ~ Tana Hobart, Rovi

Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru details the existential struggle of one ordinary man in his desperate search for purpose. Upon learning he has terminal stomach cancer, a low-level government bureaucrat (Takashi Shimura) leaves his job of thirty years without a word to find meaning in the year he has left to live. He is completely alone in the world -- his wife is dead, his son is practically estranged, and his co-workers (the people with whom he has more contact than any others) are little more than strangers. Rather than face a death alone in pathos, Shimura opts to make up for lost time by going to the bar (for the first time in his life), spending every last yen in his wallet and drinking himself to death. There he meets a black-clad artist (a Mephistopheles to his Faust) who leads him on a hellish (and darkly humorous) tour of the city after dark as the two crawl through every booze-soaked juke-joint in town (Kurosawa's classical training as a painter surfaces in this sequence; many critics have noted the striking similarity of the crowded dance hall scenes to the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch, (particularly Walpurgis Night). Realizing he has missed nothing, Shimura then sets his sight on a pretty young girl from the office to divert his attention from his looming mortality. Although the girl fails to serve as a lifebuoy, she does give him the inspiration to do something meaningful -- to leave a legacy, however small, that makes the world a better place. A synopsis of Ikiru cannot serve the film justice; it simply must be seen. ~ Jeremy Beday, Rovi