Yasuharu Hasebe‘s spinoff to the hugely successful “Aibo” detective drama and 2008 feature film. The new film revolves around forensics expert Mamoru Yonezawa (Seiji Rokkaku) as he uses his skill set to solve a terrorist bombing case along with his detective partner played by Masato Hagiwara. Slated for release in 2009.

Official website

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An ordinary salaryman (Arata Furuta) gets fed up with people walking all over him and becomes a deadly vigilante only to have a group of fans start to follow his work. For the first teaser, see this link.

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In 1971 Toho Studios tried its hand at the yakuza chivalry (ninkyo) genre with Hideo Gosha’s The Wolves. For the better part of a decade ninkyo had been dominated by rival studio Toei, which had created a niche with films that often starred Ken Takakura as an honorable yakuza who rigidly sticks to the old-fashioned yakuza code even when surrounded by corruption and ruthless violence. Gosha’s offering, starring Tatsuya Nakadai, doesn’t attempt to stray from this established formula—quite the opposite, in fact—but it does offer a surprising level of character depth and gritty realism that should appeal to fans of yakuza eiga as well as cinema fans in general.

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Iwahashi (Tatsuya Nakadai), a member of the Enoki-ya gang, was recently released early from a 10-year prison sentence for killing the boss of rival Kan’non-gumi. However, he returns to find Kan’non-gumi and Enoki-ya finalizing the process of merging under the careful orchestration of a manipulative politician (Tetsuro Tamba). Iwahashi tries to be as supportive of the new changes as possible, even when he’s passed over as new boss, but when a pattern of corruption and assassination is slowly revealed he can no longer sit back and let it continue.

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The official website for Shimako Sato‘s K-20: Kaijin Niju Menso Den added a trailer within the past few hours. Thankfully it’s the real deal, not just a teaser. The movie is based on a So Kitamura novel which itself was inspired by Edogawa Rampo’s original source material.

The story is set in 1949 in the fictional capital city of Teito, where aristocrats monopolize most of the wealth. K-20, a mysterious man with the ability to change his appearance frequently targets the rich for his theft. One day he manages to trick police into thinking a circus acrobat named Heikichi Endo (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is the real criminal, leaving it up to Endo to escape jail and prove his innocence.

Meanwhile K-20 targets his next victim, Yoko Hashiba (Takako Matsu)—an heiress whose fiancé is Kogoro Akechi (Toru Nakamura), the famous detective who arrested Endo. But Endo still has a score to settle, and picks a fight with K-20.

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