Kinya Kitaoji Movies

Himatsuri is based on a real life tragedy, in which a Japanese man inexplicably slaughtered his family and then killed himself. Kinya Kitaoji plays the thoroughly self-centered "protagonist," who does what he pleases no matter who he hurts. No one dares question Kitaoji due to his blasting-cap temperament. The only thing Kitaoji holds sacred is the land around him, but he's willing to destroy even that to have his own way. He befouls a lake that is sacred to the Shinto religion, spilling oil into the waters rather than letting them fall into the hands of land speculators. Suddenly experiencing a religious awakening, Kitaoji decides to "atone" -- by murdering his family, then committing suicide. No explanations are offered by director Kenji Nakagami: one takes what one wishes from Himatsuri. The film was released to some English-speaking markets as Fire Festival. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Glowing Autumn starts out like a dark-hued Rembrandt, loses some focus like an Impressionist painting by Monet, and finally descends into the chaos of Jackson Pollack dribbling paint all over the helpless canvas. The sensuality of the images remains compelling, but their clarity and style have abruptly changed. In the clear and well-wrought beginning of the film, a woman (Kyoko Maya) is on a brief vacation in Kyoto when she is smitten by an innocent young photographer - he stands in sharp contrast to the erotic obsessions of her older lover, whom she is trying to jettison. She gets back to Tokyo and continues to develop her relationship with the photographer, but finds she has become hooked on the eroticism of her former lover - who keeps on interrupting her life when she least expects it. A mystifying part of their erotic pasttimes involved Persian rugs, and when her lover dies he leaves her a round-trip ticket to go load up on the carpets in Iran (before Khomeini). At this point, the story takes a flying leap and lands in Iran as she goes on her carpet hunt. Then the naive photographer shows up and drives them both into spasms of uncontrolled hilarity as he enthuses over mass-producing Persian carpets in Japan. This is where the film begins throwing sensual images around like a Pollack, but does not tie them together as in the earlier scenes. The viewers themselves will have to decide what the intent of the director (Masaki Kobayashi) might have been. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

In this violent and morally ambiguous crime drama from master genre filmmaker Kinji Fukasaku, Takeda (Akira Kobayashi), a longtime leader of one of Hiroshima's Yakuza families (the Japanese Mafia), attempts to resolve the longtime war between various mob factions by reshaping his organization into a political organization that would be both powerful and legal. But not all of Takeda's men take to this new way of doing things, and a rash act by one veteran gangster (Jo Shishido) leads to a final turf war between the families. Jingi Naki Tatakai: Kanketsu-Hen (aka Yakuza Papers, Vol. 5: Final Episode) was the last film in the landmark series Fukasaku began with Jingi Naki Tatakai. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Though a farmer and his fellow villagers in this Japanese film resist the effort to turn the unspoiled region in which they live into a land development, they are ultimately unsuccessful. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

The Japanese title of Band of Assassins was Shinsengumi, which pinpointed the assassins in question. The Shinshen was a covert military organization in the employ of the 19th-century Japanese aristocracy. To protect their decadent employers, the Shinshen regularly ventured out to kill political enemies and other undesirables. Toshiro Mifune is among the participants in the film's steady (and seemingly endless) stream of bloodletting. Band of Assassins was one of the bread-and-butter pictures which Mifune made in order to afford to work in more prestigious fare. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this Japanese melodrama, a youthful truck driver does all he can to keep away from hospitals and physicians. Then he meets a pretty nurse while visiting an ailing friend. Later, following a traffic accident, he reluctantly undergoes a check up and must reveal that he has terminal leukemia. The kindly nurse takes him to her home to spend the last few months of his life in peace. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide