Tsuyoshi Abe Movies
- 2005
A Christmas Eve power outage provides a collection of troubled Tokyo denizens the opportunity to come clean on the misdeeds of their past in director Takashi Minamoto's snowbound winter drama. Fourteen year-old Shota (Kanata Hongo) longs to get a better look at the winter sky, but upon peering through the lens the youngster is shocked to see a distraught woman (Yu Kashii) leap from the roof of a nearby hospital. When Shota realizes that the suicide attempt failed and the woman landed safely on a rooftop below, he travels to the hospital in hopes of making contact with the woman. Elsewhere in the hospital, a dying father (Tomoyo Harada) longing to see his true love one last time reveals to his son Saeki (Tomorowo Taguchi) that the boy is the product of a marital indiscretion and that his supposedly dead mother is alive and well and living in Tokyo. Already reeling as his wife (Tomoyo Harada) prepares to divorce him and his lover (Haruka Igawa) refuses to acknowledge that fact that he is no longer interested in her, Saeki prepares to meet his mistress in the very same hotel where Chinese bellboy Dong Dong (Tsuyoshi Abe) is preparing to catch a flight to Shanghai to be with his girlfriend for Christmas. In another part of town, lovelorn bar owner Shinichi (Etsushi Toyogawa) laments the loss of his ex-lover as adoring candle shop manager Nozomi (Tomoko Tabata) admires him from afar, and pregnant Reiko (Shinobu Terajima) nervously awaits the arrival over her one-time lover Ginji (Koji Kikkawa), who has just been released after serving a six-year prison sentence. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Etsushi Toyokawa, Tomoko Tabata, (more)
Infernal Affairs powerhouse Andy Lau and Alan Mak bring the most popular manga in Japan screaming to life in this in this live-action look at the high-speed sport of "drifting" that shot straight to the top of the Hong Kong box office. Eighteen-year-old Takumi (Jay Chou) is never late for a tofu delivery, and though he speeds the tofu to its destinations with the velocity of a landlocked stealth plane, his true aspiration in life is to follow in the footsteps of his formerly fast-driving father (Anthony Wong) -- an ex-adrenaline junkie who eventually gave up the race track for the restaurant business. In his five years delivering meals from his father's restaurant Takumi has learned the streets of his hometown like the back of his hand, and he can take every corner with the needle planted firmly on the right. The trick to Takumi's amazing driving skills is a technique known as "drifting," and in a world where high-risk racing has spilled out of the tracks and onto the streets, this daring driver is about to become a legend. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jay Chou
Edward Zwick returned to the director's chair for the first time since 1998's The Siege with this sweeping period drama set in 19th-century Japan. After centuries of relying on hired samurai for national defense, the Japanese monarchy has decided to do away with the warriors in favor of a more contemporary military. Tom Cruise stars as Nathan Algren, a veteran of the U.S. Civil War who is hired by the Emperor Meiji to train an army capable of wiping out the samurai. But when Algren is captured by the samurai and taught about their history and way of life, he finds himself conflicted over who he should be fighting alongside. Billy Connelly, Tony Goldwyn, and Ken Watanabe co-star. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Cruise, Timothy Spall, (more)
- 2002
This dark-humored feature by Hong Kong's Fruit Chan stars Tsuyoshi Abe as Dong Dong, nicknamed "The God of Toilets" by his friends, who was born and abandoned in the filthiest public toilet in Beijing. Through a series of interconnected narratives set off by Dong Dong's quest to find a wonder drug to cure his dying grandmother, the film follows a variety of characters on similar searches through China, India, Korea, and New York. The disparate characters, representing a polyglot cross section of the Asian diaspora, are linked both in their search for ways to transcend death and by a much less lofty fascination with the ways different cultures dispose of human waste. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tsuyoshi Abe, Zhe Ma, (more)
