The best Renji Ishibashi’s comedy movies
If you love cinema, you will share this ranking of the best Renji Ishibashi’s movies, although you may have ordered them differently. In any case, we hope you love it and with a little luck discovering a movie that you still don’t know about Renji Ishibashi.
Tokyo!
7/10
An anthology of three short films by Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Bong Joon-ho, each of whom offers an imaginative and trans-/super-natural glimpse into the Tokyo Megalopolis.
Gozu
6.9/10
Minami mistakenly kills a gangster associate of his named Brother. Almost as soon as the murder takes place, the body of the deceased man is gone, prompting Minami to conduct a search. While looking, he finds a mysterious isolated hotel where he decides to take a rest. Not only are the front desk clerks a bit strange, but even the ambiance feels unusual. Minami soon realizes he may have gotten more than he bargained for.
The Ramen Girl
6.3/10
An American woman is stranded in Tokyo after breaking up with her boyfriend. Searching for direction in life, she trains to be a râmen chef under a tyrannical Japanese master.
Sukiyaki Western Django
6.1/10
Several hundred years after the Battle of Dannoura, the Genji and Heike clans face off again in a poor mountain town with a buried treasure legend. A revolver-wielding stranger, a lone gunman, burdened with emotional scars and blessed with incredible skill, drifts into town and crosses paths with two warring clans who are both on the hunt for a hidden treasure in a remote western town. Knowing his services are valuable to either side, he offers himself to the clan who will offer up the largest share of the wealth. Yoshitsune commands his Genji gang in white while Kiyomori leads his Heike gang in red. Expectations collide as the key players wonder which gang the gunman will join. Dirty tricks, betrayal, desire and finally, love, get jumbled together, as the situation erupts into a showdown.
The Woman with Red Hair
5.7/10
Kozo and his colleague rape their boss's daughter and have sex with an unnamed woman.
Tales of the Unusual
6.7/10
A four-part anthology in the spirit of The Twilight Zone, this film starts off with a group of commuters stranded at a train station in the rain, listening to stories told by one of the group. These include tales of a group stranded in the mountains and haunted by guilt over a death they inadvertantly caused, an emotionally broken chessmaster pressed into playing a real-life game for an eccentric millionaire, a wandering medieval samurai who finds a modern-day cell phone on the ground and a person on the other end asking questions about the past, and a young couple who agree to try a computer simulation of what their future as husband and wife would be like.
The Great Yokai War
6.4/10
A young boy with a troubled home life becomes "chosen," and he stumbles into the middle of a great war of yōkai (a class of mythological creatures), where he meets a group of friendly yōkai who become his companions through his journey. Now he must fight to protect his friends and free the world of the yōkai from oppression. The yōkai originate in Japanese folklore and range from the cute and silly to the disturbing.
Samurai Hustle Returns
5.5/10
Masaatsu Naito (Kuranosuke Sasaki) successfully completes Sankin-kotai (required ritual to visit the shogun). On his way home, he hears that an insurrection by peasants has taken place in his hometown of Yunagaya. Masaatsu Naito knows that it is a counterattack by Matsudaira. He returns to Yunagaya, but finds that his castle is gone.
Bungakusho satsujin jiken: Oinaru jyoso
6.4/10
A young doujinshi writer doesn't win the literary prize award, and ends up killing the selection committee.
Dora-heita
6.7/10
A new magistrate in the town of Horisoto—widely reputed to be the most lawless township in Japan, uses guile and his opponents' own misperceptions and prejudices to defeat his enemies and uproot corruption.
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 Have Never Shot Anyone
6.1/10
Renji Ishibashi, starring in the movie for the first time in 18 years, plays a hero with two faces, a dull novelist and a legendary killer. Susumu Ichikawa, an obsolete writer with no manuscript at all, had another face - a legendary hitman. But the truth of the matter is... he had never shot a person. One day, he receives a murder request from a friend. Seeing this as an opportunity to achieve the ideal hard-boiled novel, he decides to hire a real hitman and demands that he report to him the assassination situation as it was.
Cats in Park Avenue
6.4/10
A story about the lives of young aspiring dancers who strive to create their own musical about stray cats.
Kamogawa Horumo: Battle League in Kyoto
5.9/10
The story is about a group of university students who inevitably gets involved in playing a game of "Horumo" - a combat match where each person manipulates 100 spirits (referred to as "oni") to fight the opponent. Akira Abe, a freshman at Kyoto University student falls for his classmate Kyoko, and soon ends up at a mysterious club called “Kyoto University Azure Dragon” which turns out to be one of the Horumo teams, playing the mysterious (and somewhat absurd) game which started over 1,000 years ago in the Heian period.The heat rises as you see the 2,000 CGI created spirits wage fierce battles against the backdrop of breathtaking beautiful city of Kyoto. Let the battle begin!
When My Mom Died, I Wanted to Eat Her Ashes
6/10
When Satoshi was little, his mother Akiko always took good care of him. She was gentle, but mentally strong. However, two years ago she was diagnosed with cancer and now it's Satoshi's turn to comfort and care for her. However, despite his best efforts, she passes away. A year after Akiko's passing, Satoshi, his father Toshiaki and his older brother Yuichi start new lives. Around that time, Satoshi receives a present from his mother.
Chateau de la Reine
4.6/10
The hotel Chateau de la Reine is located in Paris, France and it is considered the finest hotel there. The hotel has been in existence for 300 years. Tourists from all around the world want to stay at the Chateau de la Reine. A travel agency, which is teetering on bankruptcy, devises a plan to revive their company. They want to offer suite rooms at the Chateau de la Reine for night and day periods. The plan appears perfect, but the tourists who made reservations have tempers.
T.R.Y.
5.4/10
At the turn of the 20th Century amongst tension between China and Japan, a Japanese swindler in Shanghai plans to profit by selling weapons. He steals arms from the Japanese military and sells them to the rich Chinese.
Playtime Never Ends
7.5/10
Remade in Korea as Going by the Book.
Samurai Hustle
6.2/10
During the reign of the eighth shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Yunagaya Domain in the Tohoku region is a small han. But at the han, there is a gold mine. Suddenly, Masaatsu Naito of Yunagaya Domain receives an order to perform Sankin-kotai within 5 days. Sankin-kotai is a custom that requires the daimyo to visit the shogun in Edo. Unfortunately, the time needed to visit the shogun in Edo for Masaatsu Naito is 8 days. Masaatsu Naito also learns he received the order because a high ranking government official wants the gold mine. Also, the expense for Sankin-kotai is high and the Yunagaya Domain is such a small han that it seems impossible to complete. Nevertheless, Masaatsu Naito begins an unexpected operation to complete Sankin-kotai in 5 days.
The Projects
6.4/10
Whether it's someone mixing burnables and recyclables or noise from a neighbor's domestic spat, there's always something occupying the residents of a housing project in the suburbs of Osaka. However Hinako (Naomi Fujiyama) and Seiji (Ittoku Kishibe) couldn't care less. Having moved in just six months ago after the closure of their herbal medicine shop, the old couple is reluctantly putting their life back together. But when Seiji disappears, the apartment rumor mill churns: divorce, murder, dismemberment? As the story spins out of control, and a mysterious man with a parasol puts in a tall order of natural remedies, the truth turns out to be even more fantastic than gossip. Ranging from incisive comedy of errors to absurdist adventure to moving late life romance, "The Projects" is one of the biggest surprises of the year.
