The best Kōjirō Kusanagi’s movies
We present our ranking of the best Kōjirō Kusanagi’s movies. Do you love cinema? Or are you looking for a movie of your favorite actor to watch tonight? Surely you have some to see or that you did not know yet about Kōjirō Kusanagi.
Madadayo
7.3/10
This film tells the story of professor Uehida Hyakken-sama (1889-1971), in Gotemba, around the forties. He was a university professor until an air raid, when he left to become a writer and has to live in a hut. His mood has hardly changed, not by the change nor by time.
Zatoichi Challenged
7.4/10
Ichi is staying at an inn when a woman dies. Her dying wish is that Ichi take her son to his father, an artist living in a nearby town. After arriving in the town, Ichi finds out that the father has been forced by a local boss to create illegal pornography to pay off his gambling debts. Ichi makes it his mission to save tha man and reunite the family, even though it brings him into conflict with a samurai he sort of befriended on his way to the town.
Woman in a Box: Virgin Sacrifice
5.3/10
1985 Roman Porno released under the "Roman X" imprint. A young virgin is captured by an abnormal couple. The girl is kept locked in a wooden box, and subjected to sexual torture and abuse. Loosely inspired by the real-life case of Colleen Stan.
Akitsu Springs
7.2/10
Yoshida’s first big-budget production and colour film is a haunting tale of unrequited love and postwar disillusion. The story of the fatal attraction between a spineless intellectual and a strong woman is conventional, but its enactment is radically new.
A Colt Is My Passport
7.4/10
A gang lord hires Kamimura, a hit man, to take out a rival boss who's gotten greedy.
The Man Who Stole the Sun
7.5/10
A high school science teacher is the butt of all his students' jokes, until their bus is hijacked on a school trip. But something more sinister lurks beneath the surface: he's building an atomic bomb in his apartment.
The Execution Game
6.4/10
The third movie in Tôru Murakawa's Game trilogy about a hitman. Narumi is set up by a mysterious woman. Abducted and tortured, Narumi is forced to take on a difficult job. The target is a veteran killer as good as him.
XX: Beautiful Target
6.3/10
When beautiful forensic scientist Kyoko and her colleagues fail to uncover clues to the identity of a man who brutally attacks and kills women, she agrees to become the bait to lure the killer into a police snare. But as the murderer remains frustratingly aloof, Kyoko discovers that she will have to risk everything in order to apprehend him. Naosuke Kurosawa directs this steamy thriller.
The Deep Red
6.5/10
Shinku is a compelling drama that focuses on the strange relationship that develops between two people who find their lives irrevocably changed as a result of a horrible multiple homicide. The first person traumatized is the lone survivor of the terrible family bloodbath, a girl who grows up to be a pretty college student. The second person affected by this heinous crime is the daughter of the murderer, a young girl who ends up becoming a tattooed bartender. A full decade after the crime, the killer is finally going to be executed, and the surviving member of the massacre decides to reach out and befriend the murderer's daughter. A tentative, odd sort of friendship blossoms between these two people, both of whom seem to have little in common personally, and every reason in the world for not wanting to meet. Yet they do, but not without reservations. And really, is this friendship quite what it seems? Or is it all part of some twisted plan for vengeance?
The Tragedy of "W"
7.2/10
A young girl is striving for stardom. In order to get a lead role in a new production, she agrees to stand-in for a famous star whose rich patron died in her arms one night. The real-life drama gradually comes to mirror the story of the play being performed by her.
Nomugi Pass
7.3/10
The story of the silk industry and the young girls who worked as silk spinners in the early 1900s in Japan. The silk mills were located in Okaya which lies just beyond the Nomugi Pass. The women and girls worked in a hot, humid atmosphere without rest, and endured those conditions and sexual harassment to earn money for their poor families. Across the ocean, it was the great depression in America.
Disciples of Hippocrates
6.6/10
The story revolves around Ogino, who is in the last year of his medical studies. Between lectures, exams, on field training, his commitment as a pro-reformist militant and his girlfriend, Ogino is starting to wonder if he's really cut out to be a doctor.
The Warped Ones
6.9/10
A juvenile delinquent gets out of the pen and immediately embarks on a rampage of untethered anger, most of it directed at the girlfriend of the journalist who helped send him up.
The Sleeping Beast Within
6.7/10
When a middle aged salaryman is unknowingly used by drug traffickers he is dishonored and fires back at the Yakuza bosses, with destructive consequences.
Lost Love
6.7/10
At a seaside city somewhere in the Tohoku area, the corpses of Nozomi, daughter of an affluent family, and Yamazaki, son of an engineer at the local nuclear power-plant, are found tied-to on a beach, as if they intended to commit double suicide. Nogami, a reporter, begins to investigate.
The Beast to Die
6.7/10
A policeman is murdered and his gun, stolen, used to commit the next crime. Detective Kashiwagi, who is leading the investigation, learns that the author of the killings “walks like a dead man”. Kashiwagi runs into Date, a former correspondent in the Vietnam War. There, Date discovered hell and something snapped in his mind.
Be-Bop High School: A Delinquent Student March
5.8/10
A sly prep school thug uses his girlfriend to lure Hiroshi and Toru to a fight, but the scheme escalates to an all-out war between everyone involved.
The Adulteress
7.2/10
When a married woman has an affair with a young musician, feudal Japanese law requires that both offenders pay with their lives. However, the woman's husband blames himself for his wife's straying and attempts to thwart the law demanding capital punishment.
The Gentlemen’s Alliance
5.2/10
Etsuko, a female college student, tries to beat the con artists at their own game after she gets scammed one after another.
I Am Waiting
7/10
A former boxer gets involved with a club hostess trying to escape the clutches of her gangster employer.
