Films with: Kishi, Keiko

I will buy you

Masaki Kobayashi's pitiless take on Japan's professional baseball industry is unlike any other sports film ever made. A condemnation of the inhumanity bred by a mercenary, bribery-fueled business, it follows the sharklike maneuvers of a scout dead set on signing a promising player to the team for the Toyo Flowers.

DVD 9648

Inheritance

On his deathbed, a wealthy businessman announces that his fortune is to be split equally among his three illegitimate children, whose whereabouts are unknown. A bevy of lawyers and associates begin machinations to procure the money for themselves, resorting to the use of impostors and blackmail. Yet all are outwitted by the cunning of the man's secretary, in this entertaining condemnation of unchecked greed.

DVD 9650

Kaidan

Consists of four stories of the supernatural based on Japanese folk material. In The black hair, a poor young samurai leaves his first wife to marry a rich woman. When he is unhappy in his second marriage, he returns to his first wife, who at first appears unchanged from when he last saw her. In The woman of the snow, a woodcutter is spared by a mysterious ghost-like woman in the snow, but must promise never to tell anyone what he has seen. In Hoichi, the earless, a blind musician-monk named Hoichi is commanded by a gathering of ghosts to sing the saga of their ancient deeds. The head monk paints Hoichi's body with prayer verses to protect him, but unfortunately overlooks Hoichi's ears. In In a cup of tea, a writer wonders what would happen to a person who drinks another's soul and finds out.

DVD 7590

Sasameyuki The Makioka sisters /

Japan, 1938. War is looming on the horizon, but the Makioka sisters are far more concerned with their domestic troubles. The sisters have taken over their family's kimono manufacturing business in Osaka, and are well off, traveling together to view the changing of the seasons--cherry blossoms in Kyoto, brilliant leaves in the fall. Tsuruko and Sachiko, the older two, have been married for quite some time. Tradition demands that they marry in order of their birth, but marrying off the shy, conservative Yukiko is proving difficult. These challenges have been particularly frustrating for youngest sister Taeko, who is eager to marry and move on with her life. A graceful study of a family at a turning point in history, and a poignant evocation of changing times and fading customs.

DVD 10890

Sōshun

A salaryman in postwar Tokyo has an illicit affair with an officemate in this sensitive portrait of a fragile marriage.

DVD 12788

Thick-walled room

Among the first Japanese films to deal directly with the scars of World War II, this drama about a group of rank-and file Japanese soldiers jailed for crimes against humanity was adapted by Abe Kōbō from the diaries of real prisoners.

DVD 9647