The best Ryō Iwamatsu’s drama movies

The story of a teenage boy named Yu, who falls for Yoko, a girl he runs into while working as an "up-skirt" photographer in an offshoot of the porn industry. His attempts to woo her are complicated by a spot of cross-dressing - which convinces Yoko that she is lesbian - dalliances with kung-fu and crime, and a constant struggle with the guilt that's a legacy of his Catholic upbringing.

A Tokyo college student is attacked by a ghoul, a super-powered human who feeds on human flesh. He survives, but has become part ghoul and becomes a fugitive on the run.

A detective probes the brutal murder of a woman in a red light district while a housewife hides her double life as a prostitute from her husband.

A story of yakuza family from 1999 to 2019. Kenji Yamamoto’s (Gou Ayano) father died from using a stimulant drug. His life fell into desperation. Kenji Yamamoto then joined a crime syndicate. There, he meets the gang's boss Hiroshi Shibasaki (Hiroshi Tachi). Hiroshi Shibasaki reaches out to Kenji Yamamoto and they developed a relationship like father and son. As time passes, Kenji Yamamoto has his own family.

A life-size, inflatable sex doll suddenly comes to life one day. Without her owner knowing, she goes for a walk around town and falls in love with Junichi. She starts to date Junichi and gets a job at the same store where he works. Everything seems to be going perfect for her until something unexpected happens.

Rei Kiriyama is a 17-years-old shogi (Japanese chess) player. He debuted as a professional shogi player when he was in middle school. He lives by himself in Tokyo, because his parents and younger sister died in an traffic accident when he was little. One day, Rei Kiriyama meets three sisters who are his neighbors. The three sisters are Akari Kawamoto, Hinata Kawamoto and Momo Kawamoto. This is his first meeting with someone outside of the shogi world in many years. Having meals with the Kawamoto family brings warm feelings to Rei Kiriyama. As Rei Kiriyama continues his shogi career, his interactions with his neighbors allows him to grow as a shogi player and as a person.

The time spent between professional Shogi player Kiriyama and his three stories helps to heal his wounds. As he prepares to secure another win in an upcoming tournament, the father who left the three sisters appears and disturbs the peace.

The life of a student named Kanou is transformed when a tiny man informs him that Earth will soon be annihilated. Kanou decides to do just as he pleases with the time he has left, leading to strange adventures that could be real -- or just a dream.

Hiroshi (Yojiro Noda) has given up on his dreams of becoming a painter and works part-time cleaning office windows. He learns that he has only 3 months left to live. During his last summer, high school student Mai (Hana Sugisaki) appears. Hiroshi becomes attracted to her.

The movie begins in the year 1995 where there were 5 peculiar murder cases. The murderer would always get someone close to the victim to witness how he would strangle the victim from behind with a rope but he would let the witnesses go and speak to the media on how the murders happened. Ito plays the role of Makimura, the police detective who was in charge of investigating the serial murders but failed to catch the cunning murderer and his respected superior ended up being killed as well. 22 years later in 2017 when the case is nearing its statute of limitations, a man named Sonezaki claims to be the culprit for the 1995 murders and even publishes a book titled "Watashi ga satsujinhan desu" to talk about the cases. Despite the disgust towards Sonezaki's actions, the intensive attention showered on him via the media and SNS makes him become the talk of town.

Laid-back baby boomer Yuichi (Ryo Iwamatsu) is a middle-aged manga artist and singer-songwriter when he isn't at his salaryman day job or watching out for his elderly mother. Suffering from increasing dementia since her husband's death, Mitsue (Harue Akagi) is a constant source of comic energy or annoyance for Yuichi, and he and his son must soon decide if they should put her in a home for the elderly. Jumping back in time, we see how Mitsue (played by Kiwako Harada) tracked the tumult of the latter half of the 20th century, being raised as one of 10 brothers and sisters, surviving the war, and having to push her alcoholic husband (Ryo Kase) along in life. "Pecoross" is directed by the oldest active film director in Japan, Azuma Morisaki, who creates an emotionally complex work that is only the more profound and life-affirming for its cartoonish portrayal.

Shunzo is a popular greengrocer in a town near Tokyo. His life, and the lives of his wife Michi, and their two children, undergoes a dramatic change when he encounters Li, a poor college student from China.

Four strangers (a verbose romantic, a human lie detector, an expert pickpocket, and a woman with a preternaturally precise sense of time) are brought together by chance when they inadvertently team up to thwart a bank robbery. Recognizing the potential of their combined talents, they decide to form a bank-robbing gang themselves, just for the fun and romance of it. Their heists are played out swiftly and coolly, less like robberies than performance art. Eventually, the foursome's good-natured crime streak is interrupted when a man from one of their pasts creates a whirlwind of extortion and double crossing.

Domestic drama focusing on a soon to be retired train driver and his wife.

Adapted from the bestselling Japanese autobiography of the same title, this gentle coming-of-age drama concerns an adolescent boy, Boku - Masaya, torn between the inherited recklessness of his father Oton and the inherited responsibility, wisdom and emotional strength of his mother Okan. Following a period of intensely rebellious behavior, Boku learns that his mom has contracted cancer; suddenly, his mother comes to live with him in Tokyo the entire emotional landscape of his life is altered.

A 20 something girl Yoshiko is having sex with her boyfriend when a shocking telephone call arrives - grandpa has passed away. The lightning from clear sky doesnt derail only the life of Yoshiko but summons the rest of the dysfunctional Haruno family to the ancenstral country house to pay their respects to the deceased - and unleash their quarrels between themselves and with the world at large.

A free-spirited psychiatrist exudes a magnetic attraction for patients with out-of-the-ordinary neuroses and odd conditions brought about by stress.