Being Good - Award-winning director Mipo O’s (The Sun Shine Only There) moving and unforgettable contemplation on child raising and compassion. Okano, a primary school teacher, struggles with how to handle problems such as angry parents, bullying and domestic violence and tries to extend a helping hand to his affected students. Masami is a mother who cannot stop herself from hurting her own three-year-old daughter. Akiko, living alone and suffering from dementia, finds comfort in communicating with a handicapped boy. Circumstance brings their 3 lives together. One of the finest Japanese films of 2015.
Flying Colors: How a Teen Girl Went from Academic Absurdity to an Elite University in One Amazing Year - As a middle school student Sayaka spends her time cutting classes, avoiding study and having fun. By high school, it is clear that her future prospects are bleak, and she enrols in a cram school run by Tsubota. With his encouragement, she commits to apply for entry to Tokyo’s elite Keio University. Her challenges are not just academic but also making her teachers and family take her seriously. Based on Nobutaka Tsubota’s breakthrough novel, How a Teen Girl Went from Academic Absurdity to an Elite University in One Amazing Year, this is a funny, moving and inspiration film.
Bitter Honey - Playfully surrealistic and gorgeously photographed, this sensual literary fantasy is based on poet and novelist Saisei Muro’s 1959 masterpiece. The great poet and voluptuary – informed of approaching death by his doctor – experiences a final great firing of the imagination. He is visited by a manic pixie girl – actually a goldfish in human form – who vies for his romantic attention. Her rivals are the ghost of his past lover and a young war widow. This gleefully opaque but never-the-less engaging and breathtakingly beautiful contemplation on sex, death and literature, is like nothing you have ever seen.
Nobunaga Concerto - Saburo – an athletic but academically unmotivated high school student – mysteriously time slips to the Sengoku period of 1549. There he meets the great Nobunaga Oda who – physically weakened but bearing a striking resemblance to Saburo – asks him to take his place and bring peace to Japan. The film drops us into a story already well underway: the completion of Azuchi Castle and the unification of the country are close. At the same time Saburo happens upon a textbook and learns that Nobunaga Oda is fated to die in the near future.
Sailor Suit and Machine Gun - Graduation - High school student and yakuza mob boss Izumi Hoshi (J-pop star Kanna Hashimoto) attempts to resume ordinary student life after wreaking bloody revenge on the people who murdered her yakuza boss father. When a classmate dies under suspicious drug-related circumstances, Izumi must once again adopt the mantle of boss and train her deadly machine gun on a cadre of outlandish madmen, rival mobsters and corrupt politicians. Blood-soaked, tongue-in-cheek B-movie madness and a “spiritual sequel” to Hiroko Yakushimaru’s cult 1981 yakuza satire. Based on the novel by Jiro Akagawa.
Rurouni Kenshin - The Legend Ends and Kyoto Inferno - Kenshin Himura, a legendary swordsman in the wars accompanying the turbulent fall of Japan’s Shogunate in the 19th century, now lives peacefully with his companions Kaoru, Sanosuke, Megumi and Yahiko. Summoned by leaders of the new Meiji government he finds his successor Shishio has turned and is now a terribly disfigured maniac with a private army of bloodthirsty mercenaries planning the destruction of Japan from his base in Kyoto. Kenshin is the only warrior with the fighting skill to defeat Shishio and so he sets off to confront this crazed and fearsome enemy. Huge in scale and gorgeous visuals, filled with spectacular jidaigeki action and featuring a who’s-who of Japan’s most popular young stars, the new Rurouni film is a treat for fans of both samurai action and Japanese pop culture.
Kainan 1890 - This blockbuster Japanese-Turkish production was nominated for Japanese Academy Awards in 9 categories including Best Film, Best Director and Best Male and Female Performances. The film links two significant historical moments in the relations between these two countries: the wrecking of the Ottoman frigate Ertuğrul off the Japanese coast in 1890 where more than five hundred sailors were drowned with the survivors being salvaged through the extraordinary efforts of Japanese locals; and the rescue of 215 Japanese nationals from Tehran by a Turkish Airlines team during the Iraq-Iran War in 1985. A moving tale of international friendship featuring an international all-star cast, gripping intrigue and spectacular effects.
Three Stories of Love - Called “The Best Film of 2015” by Kinema Junpo, the film marks award-winning director Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s (All Around Us) first feature-length drama in seven years. Atsushi is a bridge repairman who lost his wife to a random killer on the street. Toko sublimates her creative ambitions to serve a disinterested husband and abusive mother-in-law. Shinomiya is an elite gay lawyer suffering an unrequited love. All are complete strangers, however their stories share threads of personal tragedy and disillusionment – of love lost, love wanted, and love rejected. Its three leads are relative unknowns chosen in auditions by Hashiguchi, who wrote their roles especially for them. Funny, wise, frank and deeply moving.
The Magnificent Nine - An all-star cast leads Yoshihiro Nakamura’s comedy adaptation of a story from the novel Mushi no Nihonjin by Michifumi Isoda. In the 18th century the residents a poor town lead a miserable existence: mired in poverty, forced into manual labour and heavily in tax debt to their feudal lord. Nine townspeople, led by Juzaburo, cook up with a cunning financial scheme to turn around their fortunes. They will sell everything they own, anonymously lend large amounts of money back to the samurai estates, then distribute the resulting interest to the villagers. But the plan is not without its risks: if they are discovered, they will lose their heads – literally.
Sing My Life - Nobuo Mizuta’s charming remake of the Hwang Dong-hyuk’s Korean box office smash tells the story of Katsu, a cantankerous and sharp-tongued 73 year-old woman who feels she missed out on life because she had to raise her daughter alone. Entering a mysterious photo studio she finds that in a flash (literally) she is reborn in the body of a 20 year―old girl. The opportunities to pursue her lifelong dream to become a singer and to repair her relationship with the daughter are too much to resist. A heartfelt fantasy film full of comedy, drama, family and song.
Persona Non Grata - Chiune Sugihara is known as the “Schindler of Japan” for saving 6,000 Jewish people from the Holocaust. Diplomat Sugihara, a master of Russian language and intelligence, hopes to be posted in the Soviet Union but is sent to Lithuania instead. In 1939, Germany invades Poland and masses of Jewish refugees oppressed by the Nazis turn to Sugihara for visas. With no approval from the Japanese government, Sugihara decides to start issuing transit visas to the refugees, putting himself and his family in grave danger. This Japanese–Polish co-production is an epic telling of a powerful but little-known story of the Second World War.
Parasyte - In this hit adaptation of Hitoshi Iwaaki’s popular manga series, humankind is threatened with extinction by an alien invasion of cannibalistic parasites. The creatures penetrate the body through the ears or nose and live off the brain. With human form they live among us, plotting murder and destruction. When high school student Shinichi is attacked, he is able to fight off the parasite before it takes over his brain but not before his right hand is inhabited. He and the parasite, nicknamed Migi (Righty) develop an unusual friendship and together try to save the human race. The new film from the director of The Eternal Zero is a big-budget sci-fi thriller with a healthy dose of humour, an all-star cast and some mind-blowing special effects.
