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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Director Shinobu Yaguchi must have a really good therapist, because over the span of his 15-year career his films have been getting progressively more upbeat and, dare I say it; downright bubbly. Falling in line with that logic—but in reverse—is his debut effort Down the Drain (Hadashi no Picnic), the story of a typical teenage girl named Junco (Saori Serikawa) who commits a fairly innocuous crime only to see her life spiral out of control with one unbelievable chain of bad luck after another. Who knew the guy that brought us Waterboys and Swing Girls could have such a mean streak?

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Scheduled for release on January 17, 2009, Pandemic involves large-scale virus that infects 25 million people. Satoshi Tsumabuki plays a doctor working to save lives at a field hospital and Rei Dan plays a medical officer from the World Health Organization. For the first teaser, see this link. For full trailers, see this link and this link.

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A year and a half after winning the Grand prix at Cannes with what can only be described as a filmgasm for critics, “The Mourning Forest”, Naomi Kawase will attempt to follow up that massive success with Seven Nights (Nana yo Machi); a relatively simple story about a woman who gets lost in Thailand and ends up “finding herself” through the art of traditional Thai massage.

The trailer is pretty self-explanatory but the basic premise is that the woman named Ayako (… or Saiko?), played by Kyoko Hasegawa (Love Never to End, The Sword of Alexander), has a some sort of miscommunication with her taxi driver while in Thailand and ends up getting dropped off with a Thai woman and a French tourist (Grégoire Colin). Over the course of her 7 nights stuck there she gradually makes the transition from a stressed-out ball of rage to completely mellow and friendly, largely due to the therapeutic effect of Thai massage, but also because of her relationship with Colin’s character.

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If David Fincher’s “Fight Club” extolled the virtues of the anti-establishment way of life with its unbridled machismo and nonstop assault on commercialism, Sang-Il Lee’s Scrap Heaven takes the road less poignant; the result being a movie that, while sufficiently entertaining as the arthouse equivalent of a popcorn flick, lacks the cleverness and clarity of intent that could have put it over the top.

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