The best Ryu Morioka’s comedy movies

An outrageous collection of surreal, short attention span non-sequiturs largely revolving around Guitar Brother, his randy older sibling, and the pair's portly Caucasian brother.

Co-pilot Kazuhiro is up for promotion, but before he can get his captain's wings he has to get through a flight evaluation, and things aren't exactly going his way. He just crashed and burned on a simulated flight test, and his friendly examiner has been replaced with the tough-as-nails Harada. On the same plane is cabin attendant Etsuko who's flying her first international flight and trying hard to not mess up. Elsewhere in the Happy Flight universe, staff are bustling back and forth with various problems and gripes - all to make this ordinary yet fateful flight a safe and happy one.

Settle into your chair and be transported to a place both familiar and alien; where a giant shop-girl can barely fit in her store, there's a weird green pod in every bedroom, and terrifying wood nymphs provide a heartbroken woman with the anatomically correct fruit everyone seems to covet. In the end we are left, like Alice, with the Red King's conundrum: are we dreaming them or are they dreaming us?

After 5 years in Tokyo, 5 part-time jobs, 5 boyfriends, Sawako's life is going nowhere. When her father gets seriously ill, she has to take over his struggling factory. Gradually she becomes the decider of her own life.

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 whim, she moves back into the tenement street where she lived as a child. The move changes lives, reignites old romances and creates a supportive circle of love that may be exactly what Mitsuko needs.

An elementary student named Junichi is having trouble returning an eraser he borrowed from his secret crush, Maeda. With the support and encouragement of rookie teacher Anna-sensei, Junichi gets over his shyness and starts a band with his classmates.

Protagonist Katsutoshi leaves town after a fight at work, and seeks refuge at a salon run by Seikichi, his Tokyo-based old friend, called "Tokyo Playboy Club." Meanwhile Eriko, the girlfriend of a waiter at the salon, finds herself forced to work there as a hostess after he gets into a bit of trouble. Then one day Katsutoshi brawls with a lowly neighborhood gangster, beating him to a pulp. The incident causes him, Seikichi, and Eriko to become embroiled in an even graver situation....

Up-and-coming manzai stand-up comedy duo Emi-Abi has lost consummate funny man Unno (a surprisingly touching Tomoya Maeno) to an accident, leaving conceited straight man Jitsudo (Ryu Morioka) to contend with his diminished career prospects as a bland, pretty face entertainer. Guided by his manager Natsumi (Haru Kuroki), who demonstrates stronger comedy chops than her own star, Jitsudo comes to learn the circumstances of his friend's passing, as well as the life-and-death stakes of a career in comedy. Demonstrating a careful balance of tone across tragedy and deadpan and gross-out humor, writer/director Kensaku Watanabe expands "Emi-Abi"'s hilarious premise into a strikingly assured meditation on artistic rivalry and self-actualization.

A Man With Style is a bittersweet family drama which has at its centre two fifty-something school friends – widower Junichi Miyata, a blue-collar worker and Sanada. Both are rather ordinary middle-aged men, far removed from any association with ‘style.’ Junichi Miyata is the more cantankerous and frustrated of the two in Ishii’s oeuvre. His wife died of cancer ten years ago, leaving him with an overriding memory of a silly but hilariously acted children’s song of bunnies she used to sing and two children who now, aged 18 and 19, hardly engage with him and are keen to move to university in Tokyo. He is short-tempered with them and nags them endlessly to no avail.

Enokida Trading Post is a second-hand shop run by Yojiro Enokida , whose personal mantra is, "Anything but garbage. We take it all." The shop serves as a gathering place for employees and regular customers, who come with troubles in hand. One summer day, part of the shop's sign falls down. Yojiro thinks this is a sign that something spectacular is about to happen, and indeed their problems take on lives of their own from that day onward.