Movies: Ryo Ishibashi

A live-action adaptation of Osamu Tezuka’s mature manga masterpiece MW (pronounced “moo,” like a cow), created to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Tezuka. When a top secret chemical compound called MW infects an island near Okinawa, the military is ...

Based on the true story of former professional boxer Iwao Hakamada who has spent over 40 years incarcerated on death row. Iwao Hakamada was arrested for the June 10, 1966 murder of a family in Shizuoka . Iwao Hakamada has always insisted on his innoc...

A ruthless pack of thugs force mild-mannered, caught-in-the-middle-of-something-bigger Nami to murder her fiance's sister, decidedly ruining her pending marriage and landing the poor girl in the most brutal women's prison ever seen. Inside the hellbl...

A young ad executive's life has been turned upside down when a vicious client ruins his three billion yen project. Through his chance meeting with the disgruntled daughter of his enemy, he plans a vengeance scheme. The young woman agrees to play the ...

In 2011, top-secret data on nuclear power is stolen from a university facility. At the same time, leaked information comes in about enriched uranium from the Korean peninsula. Sumimoto of the external affairs fourth division suspects that a conspirac...

An ex-cop finds himself caught up in a battle between Japanese mobsters and local gangland thugs and discovers that he was framed for wrong-doings by a corrupt cop....

Rachi has aspirations of becoming a punk rocker. But his tendency towards self-sabotage and a budding sexual addiction makes matters increasingly difficult for him and his band mates to make it big....

A homeless man suffering from memory loss is unbeatable in a fight. He becomes involved with the Yakuza. It is based on a manga by Carib Marley....

Based on the book of the same name by Rieko Matsuura, the film depicts an ultimate love between two women....

An unknown future. A boy confesses to the murder of another in an all-boy juvenile detention facility. More an exercise in style than storytelling, the story follows two detectives trying to uncover the case. Homosexual tension and explosive violence...

A Japanese salaryman in Shanghai falls in love with two women, one of whom is terminally ill....

Erika Ichinose, a clinical psychologist, is recruited by the National Police Agency in an attempt to stay one step ahead of a bomb terrorist....

The writer and college professor, Alexandre Fayard, researches and gives lectures about the gruesome literary work of the mysterious Japanese writer Shundei Oe, considered by him to be the master of manipulation....

Set on a quiet ranch in Hokkaido. One day, a colt is born from a legendary bloodline. It is given the name Oracion or "prayer". When Oracion is grown, a factory owner buys the horse. Will he be the key to solving the man's problems? Based on the nove...

A Japanese Anthology...

Betrayed and disgraced, big-city reporter Kazuya Mizuno is banished to a desk at Kaname's boring little town newspaper. But Kaname isn't as boring as it seems on the surface. Not with characters around like Shimeko, a girl genius with a childlike lac...

Hitomi, a former orphan who is trying to leave behind her delinquent ways, one day agrees to tutor a wealthy young boy who has just become an orphan himself…...

The movie is absurd, and a thoroughly original take on the morale in Japanese society. The images are beautiful, and the people are as cold as the snow that surrounds them. The take on Melville's "Samoraï" from -67 is obvious, but Kobayashi turns the...

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Mitsuko is 24, heavily pregnant and estranged from the American father of her child. Her parents believe she is happy and successful in America and are unaware that she has secretly returned to Tokyo. Making the biggest decisions on the slightest whi...