"Actor: Masahiro Motoki"

• Tekkonkinkreet | DVD | (24/09/2007) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  From the creators of Animatrix comes this visually-stunning new anime film based on a popular Japanese manga written by Taiyo Matsumoto. In Treasure Town where the moon smiles and young boys can fly life can be both gentle and brutal. This is never truer than for our heroes Black and White two street urchins who watch over the city doing battle with an array of old-world Yakuza and alien assassins vying to rule the decaying metropolis. Tekkonkinkreet is a dynamic tale of brotherh

• Tekkonkinkreet | Blu Ray | (07/01/2008) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Tekkonkinkreet is a landmark in the increasing cross-pollination between Japanese and American animation: Based on a manga by Taiyo Matsumoto, the film was made in Japan at Studio 4C, but directed by American Michael Arrias. The story unfolds in Treasure Town, a scabrous metropolitan slum so gritty it makes the viewer want to clean under his fingernails. Orphans White and Black share an existence at the fringes of an already marginalized subculture. White seems naive, if not learning disabled: at 11, he can't tie his shoes or dress himself. But he has an uncanny sixth sense about what's happening in Treasure Town. Older, streetwise Black looks after White and receives the emotional support he needs in return: they're two halves of a damaged whole. The arrival of a murderous yakuza boss who wants to demolish Treasure Town and build an amusement park draws Black and White into an escalating spiral of physical and emotional violence. Although the ending of Tekkonkinkreet feels needlessly obscure, it's a striking and often powerful film from a first-time director. (Contains violence, grotesque imagery, brief nudity, alcohol and tobacco use) --Charles Solomon, Amazon.com

• Departures | DVD | (10/05/2010) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £17.99

  A delightful and sensitive journey into the heartland of Japan and an astonishingly beautiful look at a sacred part of Japan's cultural heritage Departures tells the story of Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Matoki) a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved who now finds himself without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled 'Departures' thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a 'Nokanshi' or 'encoffineer ' a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of 'Nokanshi ' acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder joy and meaning of life and living.

• Departures | DVD | (06/11/2017) from £10.98   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A newly unemployed cellist takes a job preparing the dead for funerals.

• Departures | Blu Ray | (10/05/2010) from £13.48   |  Saving you £9.51 (41.40%)   |  RRP £22.99

  A delightful and sensitive journey into the heartland of Japan and an astonishingly beautiful look at a sacred part of Japan's cultural heritage Departures tells the story of Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Matoki) a devoted cellist in an orchestra that has just been dissolved who now finds himself without a job. Daigo decides to move back to his old hometown with his wife to look for work and start over. He answers a classified ad entitled 'Departures' thinking it is an advertisement for a travel agency only to discover that the job is actually for a 'Nokanshi' or 'encoffineer ' a funeral professional who prepares deceased bodies for burial and entry into the next life. While his wife and others despise the job Daigo takes a certain pride in his work and begins to perfect the art of 'Nokanshi ' acting as a gentle gatekeeper between life and death between the departed and the family of the departed. The film follows his profound and sometimes comical journey with death as he uncovers the wonder joy and meaning of life and living.

• Gonin | DVD | (27/12/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Takashi Ishii's visually sumptuous gangster movie Gonin ("The Five") is fascinating in its violence, its perversity and its quirkiness, even though its basic plot premise is fairly standard. Disco owner Bandai (Kouichi Sato) owes money to the yakuza boss Ogoshi and decides to rob him rather than pay him--the first part of the film shows him recruiting a crew of the damaged and despairing to help with the job, and disaster follows. Ogoshi hires the more or less unstoppable one-eyed hit man Kyoya ("Beat" Takeshi) and everyone ends up dead--robbers, gangsters and assassins--in an escalating sequence of reprisals. What is different about the film is the odd tangents the plot shoots off at--the sudden sexual attraction between Bandai and the con-man Mitsuya, the truth about the phone calls the desperate sacked salary man Ogiwara keeps making to his family--and its strong visual style. Crucial events take place in the background of shots, the sudden shift from neon-lit back al! leys to sunlight in the last sequence hits you like a blow in the face. Terrifying in its casual violence and impressive in its bleak nihilism, Gonin is one of the most interesting genre films of the 1990s.--Roz Kaveney

• Departures | Blu Ray | (06/11/2017) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £N/A

  A newly unemployed cellist takes a job preparing the dead for funerals.

• Tokyo Bullet Reloaded - Black Angel / Score / Gonin | DVD | (01/02/2004) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £19.99

  The Black Angel: Ddirector Takashi Ishii continues to explore his distinct vision of Tokyo as a dark forbidding Technopolis a city of faceless chrome and marble structures cold lights and deep shadows. The Black Angel stars Riona Hazuki as Ikko the most powerful female action heroine ever to hit celluloid. At age 6 Ikko was safely put on a plane to Los Angeles by hitman Mayo but not before seeing her Yakuza boss father and mistress mother killed before her eyes. Flash forward 14 years. Ikko returns to Tokyo seeking revenge for the killings. She too calls herself the Black Angel styling herself after Mayo whom she remembers as a towering almost superhuman figure. When her target realises that she is after him and his gang he enlists the original Black Angel to wipe out Ikko and the stage is set for a violent reunion... (Dir. Takashi Ishii 1997) Gonin: Japanese Director Takashi Ishii's brutal hyperstylish hallucinogenic "" roller coaster"" of a movie takes a group of five desperate men through the robbery of a Yakuza gangster and the bloody revenge that follows. Ishii has assembled a cast of Japan's coolest actors including Naoto Takenaka (""Shall We Dance"") and the legendary 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano and his fluid sensual camera work creates sequences of unrivalled ballistic bloodshed. But what really raises this movie to a different level is the off-beat characters: 'Beat' Takeshi's sadistic portrayal of the one-eyed hitman gay hustlers and downtrodden ex-cops give 'Gonin' an eccentric film noir atmosphere that will blow you away. (Dir. Takashi Ishii 1995) Score: A gang of thieves come together for a jewellery heist one which they naturally carry out in their finest Reservoir Dogs outfits. All goes pretty much according to plan until a pair of psychotic highway robbers follow them to their hideout and attempt to part the gang from their loot... (Dir. Atsushi Muroga 1995)