Mr. Baseball (1992)
He's the biggest thing to hit Japan since Godzilla!
Genre : Comedy
Runtime : 1H 48M
Director : Fred Schepisi
Writer : Gary Ross, Kevin Wade, Monte Merrick
Synopsis
Jack Elliot, a one-time MVP for the New York Yankees is now on the down side of his baseball career. With a falling batting average, does he have one good year left and can the manager of the Chunichi Dragons, a Japanese Central baseball league find it in him?
Set during World War II, the film follows a young brother and sister as they attempt to survive the aftermath of the firebombing of Kobe City.
Following some trauma in her past that has since been repressed, a young woman is trying to recover her memories with the help of a psychiatrist. During her hypnosis sessions, she repeats the name "Tomie" but is unable to recall where she knows it from. Meanwhile, a police detective is investigating a string of brutal murders, where he also runs across the name "Tomie." How are the two connected?
An Okinawan translator introduces U.S. occupation forces to the joys of local life.
While pursuing his dream of having car sex, a goofy middle-aged man makes all the wrong moves and ends up enrolling in a number of crazy escapades.
After being used and betrayed by the detective she had fallen in love with, young Matsu is sent to a female prison full of sadistic guards and disobedient prisoners.
Originally released in Japan as "The Return of Godzilla" in 1984, this is the heavily re-edited, re-titled "Godzilla 1985". Adding in new footage of Raymond Burr, this 16th Godzilla film ignores all previous sequels and serves as a direct follow-up to the 1956 "Godzilla King of the Monsters", which also featured scenes with Burr edited into 1954's "Godzilla". This film restores the darker tone of the original, as we witness the nuclear destruction of giant lizard terrorizing Japan.
Inventor Goro Ibuki creates a humanoid robot named Jet Jaguar. It is soon seized by an undersea race of people called the Seatopians. Using Jet Jaguar as a guide, the Seatopians send Megalon as vengeance for the nuclear tests that have devastated their society.
Rick, a down-and-out American boxer, is hired to transport a sword to Japan, unaware that the whole thing is a set up in a bitter blood-feud between two brothers, one who follows the traditional path of the samurai and the other a businessman. At the behest of the businessman, Rick undertakes samurai training from the other brother, but joins his cause. He also becomes romantically involved with the samurai's daughter.
In late 1941, with no hope of relief or re-supply, a small band of United States Marines tries to keep the Japanese Navy from capturing their island base.
Twin brothers, Tatsuya and Kazuya, grew up with their next door neighbor Minami like siblings. Minami's dream is that her school's baseball team will participate in the national Koshien High School Baseball Tournament. The twin brothers make a pact that they will take Minami to the tournament.
An ever evolving alien life-form arrives on a comet from the Dark Gaseous Nebula and proceeds to consume pollution. Spewing mists of sulfuric acid and corrosive sludge, neither humanity nor Godzilla may be able to defeat this toxic menace.
Volunteering as a "comfort woman" on the Manchurian front, where she is expected to service hundreds of soldiers, Harumi is commandeered by the brutal Lieutenant Narita but falls for the sensitive Mikami, Narita's direct subordinate. Seijun Suzuki's Story of a Prostitute is a tragic love story as well as a rule-bending take on a popular Taijiro Tamura novel, challenging military and fraternal codes of honor, as seen through Harumi's eyes.
In 1701, Lord Takuminokami Asano has a feud with Lord Kira and he tries to kill Kira in the corridors of the Shogun's palace. The Shogun sentences Lord Asano to commit suppuku and deprives the palace and lands from his clan, but does not punish Lord Kira. Lord Asano's vassals leave the land and his samurais become ronin and want to seek revenge against the dishonor of their Lord. But their leader Kuranosuke Oishi asks the Shogun to restore the Asano clan with his brother Daigaku Asano. One year later, the Shogun refuses his request and Oishi and forty-six ronin revenge their Lord.
Shinnosuke is introduced to Shizu as a prospective marriage partner, but he falls in love with her widowed sister Oyu. Convention forbids Oyu to marry because she has to raise her son as the head of her husband's family. Oyu convinces Shinnosuke and Shizu to marry so that she can remain close to Shinnosuke.
Nuclear tests create a radioactive man who can turn people into slime.
The story of Jerome "Dizzy" Dean, a major-league baseball pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs in the 1930s and 1940s.
Infected with Tomie's blood, a surgeon disappears, leaving his daughter, Yumi, to try to discover Tomie's identity and to solve the mystery of her father's disappearance.
The moment he's released from prison, the honorable gangster Miyamoto recovers the stolen diamonds he had stashed before getting pinched. When he returns to his haunt to make good by friend who took a bullet for him, he is diverted by the greedy boss Oyane and his insatiable taste for Miyamoto's precious stones. Replete with film noir style, "Underworld Beauty" is one of Suzuki's best nods to the American gangster genre.
The story of Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane's successful attempt to put together a baseball team on a budget, by employing computer-generated analysis to draft his players.
In 1965, the space station JSS-3 is destroyed by a fleet of UFOs, which then begin a global siege on Earth, using rays to manipulate gravity and control the minds of men. In response, a global council meeting is held to determine the source of the attacks and prepare a rocket ship armada for a counter-attack, a true battle in outer space. . . The film is a sequel of sorts to Toho's THE MYSTERIANS in the reprise of the Etsuko Shiraishi character of that film as its heroine. It was edited to 74 minutes for its American release.