Shigeru Izumiya Movies

Veteran television director Ben Wada spins this bizarre romance of sorts based on a script written by acclaimed filmmaker Kaneto Shindo. The film opens with lonely recent divorcé, Iwamoto (Naoto Takenaka), drugging and abducting a comely high school student named Kuniko (Hijiri Kojima). After tying her to the bed, he does not violate or brutalize her. Instead, he tells her that he is looking for a perfect union of spirit and body and sets about to make her fall in love with him by catering to her every whim. Several McDonald's meals later, she starts to view her captor with new eyes. Meanwhile, Iwamoto deflects questions from his inquisitive and horny landlady (Eriko Watanabe), who seems just as interested in the strange sounds coming from his room as getting him in her futon. Other wacky characters in the same boarding house include gay mascara enthusiast salesman (played by director Shinya Tsukamoto) and an S & M queen (Asami Sawaki), who has a hard time keeping her job at the work place. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

In the 12th century, Buddhism was still a relatively new religion in Japan. At that time, one school (Shingon) offered extensive training in complex and very demanding practices which might eventually bring about spiritual purification and realization. Various Zen schools offered students a lengthy path, literally composed of a blank wall and unceasing meditation. Yet another school (Tendai) emphasized complex metaphysics and the study of philosophical systems. Basically, all of them were designed to cater to the few who were able to give up everything else in their lives and focus on liberation, such as scholars and noblemen. In this historical and biographical drama, this is the situation that the young Shinran (1173-1263) discovered when he began exploring Buddhism as an alternative to the violence and ceaseless civil wars that racked Japan at the time. There was nothing out there for the common man, and the common man was desperately in need of hope and succor. Out of his experiences, the compassionate priest came to understand that "self-power" forms of practice were not especially helpful, and his teachings emphasized "other-power," the compassionate intervention of the Buddha Amida (Amitabha), which followers could receive by reciting an homage to him (Namo Amida Butsu). This alone would ensure the devotee's rebirth in Amida's Pure Land (a kind of heaven) and many blessings in this life. Hence, the school of Buddhism he founded came to be known as "Pure Land" or Shin Buddhism, and along with its many offshoots it became (as intended) the most popular and widespread form of Buddhist practice in Japan and continues in that role today. As for this complex movie, though lavishly produced, it was reportedly quite confusing to less well-informed (usually non-Japanese) audiences and failed to involve those for whom these religious controversies were not particularly compelling. ~ Clarke Fountain, 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