The best Alvin Ing’s movies

Literature professor Jim Bennett leads a secret life as a high-stakes gambler. Always a risk-taker, Bennett bets it all when he borrows from a gangster and offers his own life as collateral. Staying one step ahead, he pits his creditor against the operator of an illicit gambling ring while garnering the attention of Frank, a paternalistic loan shark. As his relationship with a student deepens, Bennett must risk everything for a second chance.

During routine manoeuvres near Hawaii in 1980, the aircraft-carrier USS Nimitz is caught in a strange vortex-like storm, throwing the ship back in time to 1941—mere hours before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

A group of careless and unlucky drivers are sentenced to attend traffic school to keep their records clean.

A Japanese Yakuza gangster’s deadly existence in his homeland gets him exiled to Los Angeles, where he is taken in by his little brother and his brother’s gang.

Pacific Overtures is a musical written by Stephen Sondheim and John Weidman. The show is set in Japan beginning in 1853 and follows the difficult westernization of Japan, told from the point of view of the Japanese. In particular, the story focuses on the lives of two friends caught in the change. The original Broadway production of Pacific Overtures in 1976 was staged in Kabuki style, with men playing women's parts and set changes made in full view of the audience by black-clad stagehands. It opened to mixed reviews and closed after six months, despite being nominated for ten Tony Awards. Set in 1853 Japan, Pacific Overtures follows the Westernization of Japan, mainly through the story of Kayama, a samurai, and Manjiro, a fisherman. The lives of both men are radically changed by the coming of American ships to Japan.