Leglessbird Movie Guide

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1286537/
A revealing documentary about the food supply in the States (perhaps soon elsewhere too), highly concentrated food supply, genetically modified crops, hormone assisted growth in packed farm, the truth about processed food, packaged food on the shelves of Supermarket, control of seed supply.

Very disturbing and scary truth indeed, we should all be more careful with our choice of food and sure hope people will value the importance of natural rather than man-made!

SciFi, Thriller, USA, 2009
Chris Carmack ... Sam Reide
Rachel Miner ... Jenna Reide
Melissa Jones ... Vicki
Kevin Yon ... Harry Goldburg

Story line:
Sam has the ability to time travel and he can alter the course of events. While trying to solve the mystery of his girlfriend's death, he messed up, the more he tried to find out the more women became victims. Would he ever find the truth?

My review:
This is the 3rd of the butterfly effect series, I must say I still like the 1st one most, this one is pretty good also. The story is full of twists and turns and always keep you guessing...

我的機械人女友 / Boku no kanojo wa saib?gu
http://cyborg.gyao.jp/

Japan 2008
Director Jae-young Kwak
Haruka Ayase ... Cyborg
Keisuke Koide ... Jiro Kitamura
A sci-fi romantic comedy, of a man in his old age and close to his dying years made a human-like robot in the form of a beautiful young girl and send her back in time to meet his younger self, to save him from a series of fatal disaster and to save innocent people from crime and accidents. He fell in love with the robot but does the robot love him back? What sort of disasters await him? Will she be able to save him every time?

I like this movie a lot, it is a fun comedy. Haruka Ayase played a very cute robot. The story is also touching and there was an interesting twist in the end. But I won't spoil it for you.

Japan 2007
A 3-episode romantic cartoon about a boy an a girl in their teens who were best friends and went to the same school got separated when the girl moved to a new school. Their love for each other suvive the long distance and they were long to see each other. Their brief reunion made their love grew stronger but is it enough to last?

A very high quality cartoon with beautiful graphics and a lovely story.

Horror, Thriller, Japan 2008
Director: Hideo Nakata

Cast
Kenichi Matsuyama - L
Shunji Fujimura - Watari
Mayuko Fukuda - Maki
Sei Hiraizumi - Dr. Koichi Matsudo
Renji Ishibashi - Shin Kagami
Yuta Kanai - Tamotsu Yoshizawa
Youki Kudoh - Dr. Kujo
Bokuzo Masana - Asao Konishi
Kiyotaka Nanbara
Megumi Sato - Hatsune Misawa
Masanobu Takashima

L saves the world again on a separate mission...

Building on the Character "L" from Death Note, this is a story about the last 23 days of L since he signed his own death warrant by writing his name into the "Death note".

Director: Masayuki Suzuki
Drama, Japan, 2007
Cast: Takuya Kimura, Takako Matsu, Hiroshi Abe, Haruka Ayase, Takuzo Kadono, Teruyuki Kagawa, Masanobu Katsumura, Ittoku Kishibe, Kiyoshi Kodama

Story:
This is a popular Japanese TV drama turned movie.
Takuya Kimura played an unconventional prosecutor with strong determination to seek nothing but the truth, and he will get to the bottom of it no matter how hard it is. He has no fear for whoever he is up against, be it big politicians or high-power lawyer. As a result he has an unusually strong inspiring effect on people that he works with and even the criminal that he is prosecuting. People around him will find the extra energy to achieve the goal of seeking the truth. Even the opposing lawyer respects him greatly.

In this movie, he takes over from his colleague, a reckless murder case of what started as a harmless incident of two strangers running into each other. The case become complicated when the defendant is also the sole witness of an alibi of a high-power politician on a corruption charge. Suddenly Kimura finds himself up against the best defending lawyer in town on this murder case. He also has a very bad history with this politician. If Kimura doesn't win his case, it will mean the politician will get away on the corruption case.

My review:
I enjoyed watching this film very much as I have also watched the TV-series before. The determination of the prosecution team to convict the bad guy and give him the punishment that he deserves is quite touching. Splendid performance by Takuya Kimura.

Romantic comedy, France 2007
Director: Emmanuel Mouret

Virginie Ledoyen ... Judith
Emmanuel Mouret ... Nicolas
Julie Gayet ... ?milie

Micha?l Cohen ... Gabriel
Fr?d?rique Bel ... Caline
Stefano Accorsi ... Claudio

Story: Emilie was out of her home town and met a stranger Gabriel who gave her a lift. They ended up spending the day together and had dinner together, just when they were going to part and say goodbye for the night, Gabriel tried to kiss her and she resisted. She then tried to explain to Gabriel how something that happened to her friends made her very hesitant in kissing him. She told him the story of her friends - it was about Nicolas and Judith who started off as just very good friends and how a bizarre request of Nicolas has set them onto a dangerous emotional/physical journey, it has something to do with a certain kiss between them ...

My review:
We were given free tickets of this movie at the premier of the Hong Kong international film festival in March 2008. Tickets were provided by French Tourism board to French alumni association of Hong Kong. The director/leading actor Emmanuel Mouret was there too.

A nice and wonderful comedy that makes fun of friendship, love, husband, wife, lovers, kisses and sex. Sounds like all the good ingredients for a romantic comedy. There were no shortage of funny situation and carefully crafted script

The Professor and His Beloved Equation (buy from Amazon)
Drama, Japan, 2006
Actors/Actresses
Akira Terao ... Professor
Eri Fukatsu ... Kyoko
Takanari Saito ... Root - young
Hidetaka Yoshioka ... Root
Ruriko Asaoka ... Professor's sister-in-law

This movie is about mathematics, I quite like this nice movie about a mathematics professor who had an accident and he cannot remember anything longer than 80 minutes. His way of communicating with people is always related to mathematics. The story starts when the professor is having a new maid helping his house work. The new maid has a 10-year old son, and the professor called the boy "Square root" because it is a nice "operator" that is genorous and kind to all numbers. The three of them spend a lot of time together even though the professor will always repeat himself because he cannot remember new things. The kid learned a lot from the professor and when he grows up and become a mathematics teacher himself, he tells his student about the story of the professor and how he learned about perfect numbers (like 6, 28), prime numbers (like 2,3, 5, 7), natural number (e), imaginery number (i) and pi etc. What I really like is the friendly couple numbers (220 and 284), these are called amicable numbers, such a nice story.

I would recommend this nice little story to anyone who was once or still is smitten by mathematics. I certainly enjoyed this movie.

Drama, Japanese 2006
Director: Y?ji YamadaDirector: Nobuhiro Doi

My rating: 3
Key actors/actresses:
Takuya Kimura ... Shinnojo Mimura
Rei Dan ... Kayo Mimura
Mitsugoro Bando ... Toya Shimada

Story:
Shinnojo Mimura is a low ranking samurai whose job is to taste/test the food prepared for the Lord for poison. During one tasting, the ill-prepared seafood become poisonous and as a result, Mimura becomes blind. Life becomes very hard for the blind samurai and his wife Kayo was cheated by the chief of staff who pretends that he would help Mimura to secure his stipend despite his blindness. When Mimura found out about this, he decided he should defend his own name by challenging the chief of staff who is a well trained swordsman.

My review:
This is the last of the samurai trilogy by the great director Yoji Yamada, the other two films being The Hidden Blade and the Twilight Samurai. Yamada likes to portray samurai as a down to earth person who has many real things to worry about in life and the fact that they have a family and problems of their own just like everyone else. This is very different from most other films where the samurai somehow has unlimited money, meals are always cooked for, ends are always met and so they do extraordinary things.

Though all 3 samurai movies are well made (just as you would expect from Yamada), it is getting a bit plain watching the same ideas again. Nonetheless, this is still a good movie to watch and especially, we don't get to see Takuya Kimura acting in an ancient setting.

The Hidden Blade (buy from Amazon)

The Twilight Samurai (buy from Amazon)

Type, Country, Year: Romance, Drama, Japan, 2006

Director: Nobuhiro Doi

My rating: 4
Key actors/actresses:
Satoshi Tsumabuki ... Yotaro Shingaki
Masami Nagasawa ... Kaoru Shingaki
Kumiko Aso ... Keiko Inamine

Story:
In Okinawa, when Yotaro was a little boy, he promised his dying mother to take care of his young step-sister Kaoru, Karou's father was a singer in a band, he married Yotaro's mother and soon left them and Kaoru behind.

Life was tough for Yotaro and Kaoru after Yotaro's mother died. Kaoru went to live with Yotaro's grandma in another city. A few years later, Yotaro has become a young man who wanted to open his small restaurant and Kaoru is moving back to live with Yotaro and continues her secondary education. Unfortunately, Yotaro has been cheated by someone, he lost all his saving and is deep in debt, which completely shattered his dream of opening his restaurant. Karou stands by her brother and try to give him all her support.

Brother and sister only in name but with no blood tie and living under the same roof, their love and emotion for each other is also the strongest force pulling them apart, sacrificing oneself to help the other is too much to bear for the other party. Soon, Karou is going to University and decides to move out to live on her own, how would things evolve between them?

My review:
I can't really say I like the ending much, but the plot from the beginning up till the ending is pretty good. Satoshi and Masami play their roles very well. It is a pretty touching stories. "Tears for you" broke box office record in Japan in 2006.