Suzuka Ohgo Movies
- 2007
The new kid in town finds his new friends might know something his father doesn't in this playful comedy from Japanese filmmaker Isao Yukisada. Ryunosuke Kusunoki (Ryunosuke Kamiki) is a boy from Tokyo who moves with his family to a farming community in Hokkaido province, where he soon finds he doesn't fit in. Ryunosuke's difficulties with his new school mates isn't helped by the fact his father (Tomokazu Miura) is a government functionary who has come to persuade a handful of farmers to sell their land so that a new airport can be built. Ryunosuke's father isn't the first man to try to get the local farmers to sell their land, and the landowners don't regard him with any greater friendliness than they did his predecessors. Ryunosuke is frequently taunted by Kohei Tsuchida (Yuma Sasano), whose father is a scientist and the leader of the local opposition to the new airport, but while their parents are increasingly at odds, Ryunosuke and Kohei strike up a friendship through their shared love of pranks. As Ryunosuke slowly begins to enjoy his new environment and the joyously eccentric community around him, he finds he can no longer support his father's desire to tear up the countryside in the name of air transportation. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ryunosuke Kamiki, Suzuka Ohgo, (more)
This film, based on the novel by Arthur Golden, unfolds from the perspective of Chiyo (Zhang Ziyi), a girl who, at the age of nine, is sold to a geisha house in Kyoto in the early 1930s. Here, she learns that becoming a geisha can be the single path to wealth and independence for a woman. The head geisha of her house, however, Hatsumomo (Gong Li), is bitterly jealous of Chiyo and abuses her at every opportunity. Eventually Chiyo is taken under the wing of Hatsumomo's rival, Mameha (Michelle Yeoh), by far the most famous and successful geisha in their district. Under Mameha's tutelage, Chiyo becomes Sayuri, the most legendary geisha in the nation, skilled in all areas, from conversation to dance, and sought after by seemingly every man alive...except for the one whom she has secretly longed for since she began her training, The Chairman (Ken Watanabe) -- a man who showed her kindness at a time when her view of the world had turned the most bleak. Now as World War II approaches, Japan stands at the brink of a new era and Sayuri must confront the possibility that history will leave all that she has worked for behind. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Zhang Ziyi, Ken Watanabe, (more)
