Under his stage name "Beat" Takeshi, middle-aged Japanese superstar Kitano plays Yamamoto, one of his typical tough guy characters, a Yakuza warmonger who is forced to flee Japan after a Yakuza alliance decides he's better off dead. So where else should he go but Los Angeles, where his younger half-brother (Claude Maki) has adopted hip hop style and deals drugs… read more!

Shot before Kitano's most recently released feature (his lively Zatoichi remake), Dolls is an extremely slow, quiet drama that weaves together three tragic tales of love and loss. The central story is about a young man who abandons his girlfriend in order to marry his boss's daughter. Upon hearing that his girlfriend has attempted suicide, he leaves his bride at… read more!

We non-Japanese probably can't fully understand what it means for Takeshi Kitano to make a Zatoichi movie. Here's the best comparison I can come up with: Imagine if Sean Connery had starred in all the James Bond films, and then years after the series ended, Clint Eastwood decided to portray 007 himself in his own Bond flick. The "official" Zatoichi… read more!