Ittoku Kishibe Movies

Comedy and suspense take turns in this crowd-pleasing picture from popular Japanese director Shinobu Yaguchi. Flight 1980 is preparing to take off from Tokyo to Hawaii, and a team of trained professionals is working to see the flight goes smoothly. Capt. Harada (Saburo Tokito) is a tough, by-the-book pilot who is training young co-pilot Suzuki (Seiichi Tanabe) who is eager to move up to full pilot's status. The flight is also carrying a new stewardess, Saito (Haruka Ayase), who is nervous about working under exacting Chief Purser Yamazaki (Shinobu Terajima), a taskmaster who also intimidates the more experienced Mari (Kazue Fukiishi). Meanwhile at the airport, Kimura (Tomoko Tabata) deals with lost luggage and disgruntled passengers, and the head of the ground crew (Ryosei Tayama) and his chief weather adviser (Ittoku Kishibe) strive to get the flight off the ground safely and on time. Despite the hard work and expertise of everyone involved, two unexpected crises put the flight in grave danger -- a new computer system aboard the jet malfunctions, and as Capt. Harada turns back to Tokyo, it's discovered a hurricane is brewing just off the coast. Can Flight 1980 safely land before the storm hits the airport? A major box office success in Japan, Happy Flight was also screened in competition at the 2008 Pusan International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A bout of terminal cancer alters the course of a man's life in completely unexpected ways in Walking My Life (AKA Zo No Senaka), Japanese director Satoshi Isaka's thoughtful domestic drama. At age 48, Yukihiro Fujiyama (Koji Yakusho) has virtually everything a man could want - a respectable job as a project chief at a real estate company, a satisfying marriage and two children. When the said diagnosis hits, however, it prompts Yukihiro to both shun conventional treatment and set about righting past wrongs from his life - he visits his undeclared high school love to inform her of his feelings, reestablishes contact with his estranged brother (Ittoku Kishibe) and re-initiates a friendship with his buddy from high school. Problematically, however, Yukihiro finds that he is somehow unable to inform his wife of the impending disease, even as he struggles with an even graver secret of which she is unaware. When she finally learns of the cancer and questions her husband about his reason for concealing the disease, he declares that, however much time he has left, he would much rather live for today than for the future. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

As the Korean War draws to a close and the pressing demand for copious amounts of coal takes a sudden plunge, the remote Japanese mining town of Joban attempts to compensate for the devastating economic blow by transforming itself into a lavish Hawaiian retreat in an affectionate comedy inspired by real events and directed by Lee Sang-il. The year s 1965 and the changes that have swept through the outside world are finally reaching Joban. As the mineworkers are laid off and the women of the town take it upon themselves to gently nudge their once-prosperous community from the brink of economic collapse, the ancient Hawaiian art of the hula dance seems to offer the ideal means of doing so. Though highly fashionable Tokyo urbanite Madoka Hirayama (Yasuko Matsuyuki) at first seems terribly out of place when she arrives in Joban to teach local ladies how to saw their hips with authentic grace, her noble efforts soon instill her students with a newfound sense of confidence in both themselves, and their struggling community. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Masahiko Makino's willfully offensive comedy Nezu No Ban concerns a beloved comedian (Hiroyuki Nagato) who from his deathbed asks to see the private parts of a woman. The people he has worked with for years attempt to make that dream a reality, but their success has unintended consequences. Based on a traditional Japanese theatrical style that utilizes exceedingly vulgar language, the film continues onto a series of funerals as the various people who worked with the old man die themselves. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Veteran filmmaker Kihachi Okamoto revives his similarly named 1960s television series about happy-go-lucky avenger-for-hire Sukeroku (Hiroyuki Sanada) who prefers to brandish a wooden pole or a rope rather than a sword. The film opens with Sukeroku returning to his home in the mountainous Joshu region after a seven-year absence to visit his mother's grave. He quickly encounters not only old flame Osen (Kyoka Suzuki) -- who is still clearly in love with him -- but also his boyhood rival Taro (Takehiro Murata) -- who tells him that local samurai Katakura (film legend Tatsuya Nakadai) is the target of revenge. Sukeroku tries to get hired as one of the avengers but is told that four professionals have already been hired for the job. When the dignified Katakura meets his fate, Sukeroku begins to plot revenge on a more personal note. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Two old friends on opposite sides of the law are brought together under dangerous circumstances in a taut gangland drama from Japan. Kaneo and Chan-ryon are two men who grew up rough on the streets of Okinawa; when Kaneo accidentally burned down the office of a local crime boss, Chan-ryon saved his friend's life by killing a gangster who had come to take revenge against the boy. Thirty years later, the two have taken very different paths in life; Chan-ryon (Tomoyasu Hotei) is a respected businessman, while Kaneo has become a member of the criminal underworld, working for yakuza kingpin Awano (Ittoku Kishibe) of the powerful Sahashi clan. When the leader of the Sahashi family dies, Awano and fellow gangster Nakhira (Koichi Sato) find themselves battling over control of the business, and Kaneo has to step in to protect Chan-ryon, who finds himself caught in the middle of a gang war against his will. Shin Jinginaki Tatakai is based on a story by Koichi Iiboshi, which was previously filmed in 1973. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The Sixth Sense and A Simple Plan by way of Martin Heidegger, this genre-bending thriller is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Katsuhiko (Koji Yakusho) is a mild-mannered sound-technician who is married to Junco (Jun Fubuki). While at first glance Junco seems to be an average hausfrau, she possesses great clairvoyant powers. Though she has slowly and quietly built a reputation as a medium, she proves to be completely incapable of working in a normal service industry job; she has the unfortunately tendency of being able to see the crimes of her patrons. Katsuhiko is aware of her unusual abilities but prefers to think of her as "normal." Young psychology graduate student Hayakawa (Teuyoshi Kusanagi) invites Junco to join his study on the paranormal. At the same time, the police are desperately searching for a young girl who was kidnapped by an ex-cop turned pervert. At Hayakawa's behest, the cops consult with Junco as to the child's whereabouts. Ironically enough, the girl escapes her captor and takes refuge in Katsuhiko's equipment case while he records sounds in the mountains. The next day, Junco's psychic sonar goes off and she discovers the missing child in their garage. This freak happenstance awakens a long-dormant ambition in Junco: convinced that her discovery was not a striking enough find, she hatches an ill-conceived scheme to make it seem more dramatic. While Katsuhiko tends to the unconscious girl, Junco scatters clues throughout the western suburbs of Tokyo and then informs the police of her psychic "insights." As the film progresses, their plan goes awry and the child meets a bad end. Junco's abilities boomerang on her, and soon she and Katsuhiko are haunted by the ghost of the girl. Noted stars Yukari Ishida and Show Aikawa make cameos. This film was screened at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Yoichi Sai spins this grim and gory crime drama about a serial killer and a lone cop looking to catch him. The film centers on a murderer whose preferred method of killing is a sharpened object to the skull. When a low-level yakuza shows up with a hole in his head, the police respond with their typical jaded professionalism, but when a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Justice suffers a similar fate, every law enforcement agency in Tokyo is hunting after clues. As offices jostle one other for leads, a bureaucratic turf war breaks out. In the midst of all of this, one cop named Goda (Kiichi Nakai) manages to link the two victims but he is still unable to seek out a motive. His investigation leads him to a suspiciously tight-lipped lawyer (Nenji Kobayashi) and a mysterious mountain hideaway. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Yojiro Takita directs this comedy-drama about a quartet of Japanese salarymen engaging in wacky hijinks in a squalid, war-ravaged Third World country. Prim and polished engineer Takahashi (Hiroyuki Sanada) is sent on a business trip to the fictitious southwest Asian nation of Tarckistan, run by corrupt military autocrats and crippled by rampant poverty. Takahashi is immediately appalled by the child beggars on the streets, by the water that is undrinkable, and the crime -- especially after his prized Walkman is swiped by his maid. He meets up with the decadent regional manager Nakaido (Tsutomu Yamazaki), who lives like a colonial potentate complete with three nubile "personal assistants." The main competitor for the prospective contract is also Japanese, represented by the slick ex-government officials Tomita (Ittoku Kishibe) and Matsumoto (Kyusaku Shimada), who actually bothered to learn the local language. As the four try to curry favor with the colonel who runs the country, war breaks out. Soon, instead of pursuing a contract, the quartet are fleeing for their lives into the jungles. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Hikaru is truly an odd duck. He completely expects a flood of the sort described in the Christian Bible to sweep everyone away momentarily. Meanwhile, he hangs out with Sadaro, a very critical friend, who occasionally beats up on him just for fun. One day, after getting whomped on, Hikaru finds that he has several unusual and virtually useless powers: he can bend spoons and explode light bulbs. In one respect, his life improves at this point, because he meets a cheerful young woman who lives, handily enough in his view, on a barge. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Veteran director Kohei Oguri helms this stylized look at marital discord based on a book written by Toshio Shimao. The film centers on Toshio (Ittoku Kishibe), a struggling writer with a wandering eye, and his wife Miho (Keiko Matsuzaka), who is slowly being driven insane from jealousy. Designed as a series of set pieces, Miho rages at her husband who passively takes her abuse -- until he too explodes. Numerous screaming arguments and two suicide attempts later, they are still in the grips of despair. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

The environment and the movie stars at a Japanese film studio in the early '30s are recreated in this drama that looks back on a distinctive period in cinematic history. Using celebrated director Yasujiro Ozu as a model, fictional director Ogata (Ittoku Kishibe) discovers a new female star quite by accident. Koharu Tanaka (Narimi Arimori) works selling candy at a studio theater when she is given a part as a bit player. After the studio's top leading lady is embroiled in a scandal, Koharu is suddenly thrust into the limelight when she replaces her in a film and gains instant fame and fortune. But the going is not always easy, and she soon seeks help from unexpected quarters. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi