Robert Ito Movies

Canada and Japan aren't often mentioned in histories of "America's Pastime," an oversight Jari Osborne's documentary hopes to correct. Sleeping Tigers: The Asahi Baseball Story focuses on Vancouver's Asahi Tigers, founded in 1914, whose 1930s winning streak in the Pacific Northwest made them the most formidable opponents in the entire province. When WWII broke out, however, the government's internment of any person of Japanese descent forced the men into holding camps. Still, they were allowed to play baseball, and the game became their only intermittent escape from the inhuman conditions of camps -- even as their life on the field was made that much worse by racist slurs and violent outbursts from the crowds. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi

In this spiritual thriller, an ancient prophecy is about to be fulfilled as a secret code brings the world to the edge of Apocalypse. Gillen Lane (Casper Van Dien) is a expert on theology and mythology who has gained international fame as a motivational speaker. Lane is approached by Stone Alexander (Michael York), the owner and founder of a major media empire, who has been made chairman of the European Union and needs someone to help spread the word about his goal of a world united behind a single vision of peace. Lane begins to realize that there's something sinister behind Alexander's veneer of charity and benevolence: a secret code was embedded in the original texts of the Torah that will allow the person who cracks it to unlock the secret powers of the Christian scriptures; if it falls into the wrong hands, it could mean the end of Man's Reign on Earth. After the death of his mother, Lane lost his faith in God and embraced a New Age philosophy, but now he must confront his lost faith as he tries to discover both the all-powerful secret of the Omega Code and his own true identity. The Omega Code also stars Van Dien's wife Catherine Oxenberg as Cassandra Barris, a reporter working for Alexander's network, and Michael Ironside as Dominic, Alexander's thuggish underling. The Omega Code was produced in association with the Trinity Broadcasting Network, America's largest Christian broadcasting outlet. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Set in British Columbia, Canada shortly after Pearl Harbor, this thought-provoking made for television drama chronicles the fate of the Kawashima family, who are forcibly uprooted from their lovely Vancouver home and successful business by the Canadian government and sent to a backwater mining camp deep in the province's interior to live until the war ended. Both Mr. and Mrs. Kawashima were Japanese immigrants, but their two children were born in Canada. Mr. Kawashima is also a WWI veteran who fought with the Canadian army so the government's suspicious and insensitive treatment of his family comes as quite a shock. They, and the 400 other "enemy" guests of the mining town, are all city dwellers are also shocked by the primitive living conditions. The townsfolk are uniformly ignorant and unsophisticated. They too have trouble adjusting to their visitors and for a while racial tensions run high. Aya Kawashima, the eldest child, gets a job working as a housekeeper for her neighbors Peg and Ed Parnham. She also helps out with their two daughters. Ed is pretty friendly and open minded about the Japanese, but Peg is at first nervous around Aya and treats her like a maid. Eventually they become real friends and this is an important part of the story. As time passes the Japanese and the townsfolk begin to intermingle and young romances bloom. Things are looking up until the Kawashima's learn that the government they have supported and staunchly believed in, sold their house and business without consulting them. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Benton Quest and Race Bannon are invited to attend a phenomenology conference in the Himalayas, little suspecting that the conference is a sham created by their old enemy Jeremiah Surd. With Quest Compound apparently unprotected by adults, Surd leads his henchmen on an assault of the Quest team's Maine headquarters -- and also enslaves the mind of Jonny's friend Hadji. With no other choice, Jonny and Jessie pretend to be their fathers, Benton and Race, in order to foil Surd's mad scheme. "Assault on Questworld" first aired on September 4, 1996. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

One of Charlie's (Philip Akin) former students is Jimmy Sang (Dustin Nguyen), a rising martial-arts movie star. While shooting a film based on his earlier life as a street gang member, Jimmy is apparently targeted for murder. But though at least one other person has been killed on the set, Jimmy refuses to cower in the corner, daring his attackers to come out into the open. As usual, Duncan (Adrian Paul) gets involved in the proceedings with startling results. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Dudley Moore stars as Emory Lesson, an advertising genius whose finds himself committed to an insane asylum in Tony Bill's Crazy People. Emory becomes tired with creating phony ad campaigns and decides to create his own campaigns that tell the brutal truth. Since sex sells, Emory designs an explicit ad campaign consisting of unadorned sexuality. The campaign is so offensive that his colleagues have Emory put in a mental institution. At first Emory resists, but under the tutelage of a concerned psychiatrist, Dr. Liz Baylor (Mercedes Ruehl) and the tender love of Kathy (Daryl Hannah) a beautiful patient, Emory begins to like it in the mental home. Befriending the cute and lovable patients in the mental ward, Emory discovers that the crazy people are natural-born advertising geniuses and Emory utilizes their genius for a new ad campaign. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Aloha Summer is set in 1959 Hawaii. The six teenaged protagonists are drawn from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, resulting in the expected prejudices, hostilities and misunderstandings. The story's focus is on Chris Makepeace, an Italian-American lad who learns by means both soft and hard how to get along with, and understand, those different from himself. A few Kung-Fu scenes are thrown in whenever the action threatens to flag. While bereft of surprises, Aloha Summer is a magnificently photographed delight for surf-movie aficionados. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The made-for-television American Geisha was based on the published reminiscences of real-life anthropologist Liza Dalby. Pam Dawber stars as the Dalby counterpart, here renamed Gillian Burke. As part of the research for her Stanford University grad-school thesis, Gillian heads to the Japanese town of Kyoto, there to work as an authentic geisha girl. Richard Narita costars as the Japanese gentleman with whom Gillian falls in love. Less than a year before American Geisha's September 11, 1986 premiere, Narita essayed a similar role in the white-slavery melodrama Girls of the White Orchid. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this sequel to the second-season episode "Jororo Kill", Danny Lin (Wesley Ogata), the young crown prince of the Jororo Island, has come to Hawaii to play in the Little League International Goodwill Tournament. Going undercover to protect Danny from an assassination plot, Magnum (Tom Selleck) finds his efforts thwarted by the youngster's fondness for sneaking away from his bodyguards to have a little fun on his own. John Saxon is seen as security chief Ed Russler, a role played in "Jororo Kill" by Burr DeBenning. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Inasmuch as series star Jack Klugman had been railing about the mediocre script writing which he felt had plagued the past seven seasons of Quincy, M.E., it is little wonder that Klugman himself receives writing credit for several episodes telecast during the series' eighth and final season on NBC. As before, the series' protagonist is Dr. Quincy, hard-driving medical examiner for the L.A. County Coroner's Office. In addition to such familiar series regulars as John S. Ragin, Robert Ito, Val Bisoglio, and Garry Walberg, season eight features a new recurring character, Dr. Emily Hanover, played by Anita Gillette. After years of playing the field romance wise, Quincy decides this season that it is time to settle down, thus he proposes marriage to Emily -- though how he finds the time to do this while solving murders and crusading against a vast array of social ills is anybody's guess! In the season opener "Baby Rattlesnakes," Quincy comes up against a young gang member who would seemingly rather take a murder rap than rat on his friends. The next episode,"A Ghost of a Chance" puts Quincy in the unenviable position of proving that an eminent heart surgeon may be a fraud; and a few weeks later, he must wean a fellow medical examiner (Ina Balin) away from a ruinous alcohol dependency in "Dying for a Drink." In later episodes, Quincy ends up in a small town court where the witnesses in a murder trial have been bullied into committing perjury; he takes the controversial position that punk rock music may have brought about a youngster's death; he goes head to head with the dreaded Japanese underworld organization The Yazuka; he reconstructs the last few days in the life of a young girl who has been found dead on the side of highway; he exposes a faulty school system which allows illiterate students to be promoted without question (his involvement arises from a fatal accident that might have been prevented had the victim known how to read); and in the two-part "Quincy's Wedding," Quincy and his sweetheart, Dr. Emily Hanover, have their nuptial plans ruined by the pressures of Quincy's job (most of them brought on by himself). The series finale, "The Cutting Edge," was originally intended as the pilot for a new weekly hospital drama starring Barry Newman as Dr. Gabriel McCracken. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The sixth season of Quincy, M.E. features the familiar cast from the past several seasons, chief among them Jack Klugman as Dr. Quincy, the star medical examiner of the L.A. County Coroner's Office. By this time, Quincy's superior and frequent adversary Dr. Robert Astin (John S. Ragin) is no longer the pompous bureaucratic boob that he'd been in the earliest episodes, but instead one of Quincy's closest friends and biggest public supporters -- even when our hero rubs the powers that be the wrong way with his relentless crusade against medical stupidity, organized crime and social iniquities. Also prominently featured, as before, are Quincy's police contact, Lt. Monahan (Garry Walberg), his lab assistant, Sam (Robert Ito) and his restaurateur pal Danny (Val Bisoglio). New to the series this season is Diane Markoff in the recurring role of Danny's top waitress, Diane. Season six opens with a typically complex, multi-plotted entry, "Last Rights," in which Quincy tries to prove that a grieving father is covering up the facts of his son's death, while simultaneously doing battle with owner of a textile mill where several suspicious accidents have occurred. The issue of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome is probed in "The Night Killer," with Quincy trying to find out if a woman has killed her baby in a fit of rage, or if the child's death was a tragic accident; and a later episode, "Seldom Silent, Seldom Heard," tackles the issue of Tourette's Syndrome -- and a solution for the ailment that may be worse than the disease. In "Welcome to Paradise Palms," Quincy runs into a wall of bureaucratic silence surrounding a possible bubonic plague epidemic at an Arizona Indian reservation. "Stain of Guilt" largely takes place at a movie studio where Quincy is acting as technical director for a film in progress -- and where, while watching the re-enactment of a real-life murder, he arrives at the conclusion that the person convicted for the crime may be innocent. Similarly, Quincy can't keep quiet while listening to the gaffes in the prosecution's case as he does "Jury Duty" in the episode of the same name. The sixth season ends with "Vigil of Fear," wherein Quincy tries to clear a group of well-meaning urban vigilantes from a charge of killing an innocent bystander. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Dr. Quincy (Jack Klugman), star pathologist of the L.A. Coroner's Office, continues to use his vast knowledge of forensic medicine to solve baffling crimes and right a wide variety of social wrongs as Quincy, M.E. launches its fourth season on NBC. The season's first episode, "The Last Six Hours," proves anew that poor Quincy can never take a vacation without stumbling upon a mysterious death (in this case, apparently caused by an unidentified poison). In the later "A Test for the Living," Quincy battles bureaucracy to re-evaluate a supposedly retarded child as autistic (this episode guest stars Lloyd Nolan, in real life the father of an autistic son). Other top-rank episodes find Quincy investigating the murder of a prominent newswoman (played by Jessica Walter) who suddenly turns up alive and well; he inaugurates a police probe when his latest girlfriend uncovers a pair of mummified corpses in her new apartment; he tries to prove that a hospital has not prematurely terminated a man's life simply to harvest the dead man's organs; he probes the possibility that a magician has deliberately murdered his assistant in an on-stage "accident"; and he attempts to stem a gonorrhea epidemic by meticulously tracing it to its source. The season's highlight is the two-part "Walk Softly Through the Night," in which Quincy comes to the aid of his old friend, a big time children's TV star whose son has been killed as the result of recklessly administered drug prescriptions. In one prescient note, the episode "Promises to Keep" includes a lengthy flashback sequence featuring Anita Gillette in the role of Quincy's late wife, Helen. Gillette would return to the series four seasons later, this time in the recurring role of Quincy's fiancée, Dr. Emily Hanover. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Jack Klugman returns as the titular medical examiner in the third season of Quincy, M.E.. Also back on the job are Robert Ito as Quincy's lab assistant, Sam; John S. Ragin as Dr. Robert Astin, our hero's superior at the L.A. Coroner's Office (not as pompous and bureaucratic a character as in the previous two seasons); Val Bisoglio as Danny, owner of Quincy's favorite restaurant; and Garry Walberg as police lieutenant Monahan, who officially must resist Quincy's chronic habit of playing detective as well as pathologist, but who privately welcomes the good doctor's assistance in solving murders and other baffling crimes. Other recurring characters include Eddie Garrett as Eddie, Joseph Roman as Sgt. Brill, and a newcomer to the series, Marc Scott Taylor, as Marc. The season opener, "No Deadly Secret," finds Quincy perplexed over the fact that a body upon which he had been performing an autopsy -- and the results of that autopsy -- have completely vanished from the morgue. In subsequent episodes, Quincy proves that a boxer who supposedly died in a ring accident was actually murdered; he exposes the questionable and dangerous procedures at a fashionable health spa; he employs his forensic skills to locate a kidnap victim after the kidnapper dies in a car crash; he clears a man of murder, even after the man confesses to the crime without coercion; and he goes on a personal crusade to solve the suspicious death of his favorite western movie star (played by veteran stunt man Chuck Roberson). Perhaps the most fascinating episodes of season three are "Passing," which was obviously inspired by the 1976 disappearance of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa; and the year's final episode, "Requiem for the Living," a Quincy-fied variation on the 1950 film noir classic D.O.A.. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi