Cure is a 1997 psychological thriller/horror directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and starring Koji Yakusho and Masato Hagiwara. Police detective Kenichi Takabe is investigating a series of bizarre murders. Though each victim is killed the same way, with an X mark carved into their chests, the perpetrator seems to be different every time. In every case the murderer is caught close to the scene of the crime, and though they readily confess to committing the murder, they often have no motive and cannot adequately explain what drove them to kill. Read more…
Shall We Dance? is an immensely popular 1996 movie starring Kôji Yakusho & Tamiyo Kusakari and directed by Masayuki Suo.
The film begins with a close-up of the inscription above the stage in the ballroom of the Blackpool Tower: “Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear”, from the poem Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare. As the camera pans around the ballroom giving a view of the dancers, a voice-over explains that in Japan, ballroom dancing is treated with suspicion. Read more…
Retribution is a 2006 J-horror movie directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and starring Kôji Yakusho and Manami Konishi. Yoshioka, an experienced police detective, investigates the murder of an unknown woman in a red dress. She was drowned on the Tokyo waterfront, in a pool of muddy water, but an autopsy reveals that her belly is full of seawater. Read more…
Koheita (Koji Yakusho) is a samurai with such a reputation for debauchery that his nickname is “Dora-Heita” (Alley Cat), so his appointment as magistrate of the most corrupt township in all of Japan raises a few eyebrows on both sides of the law… But little does everyone know that it’s all a carefully constructed front to outwit the criminals and outfight the righteous samurai who think he’s too disgraceful to live!
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