New Japanese film reviews appear every last Friday of the month.

Vibrator ****

Director Ryuichi Hiroki has done some interesting movies in the past (including the wonderful erotic farce "I Am an SM Writer"), and proves again that he's a talented director with this adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Mari Akasaka. An intimate two hander set in the driver's cabin of a truck as it covers the length and breadth of Japan, this is a terrific little movie. It starts out as a surprisingly erotic road movie, as a rather desperate woman writer impulsively hitches a ride with a cute blonde-haired trucker she meets at a convenience store. Hiroki intercuts intimate sex and conversational scenes in the cabin with exhilarating trucking sequences, as the truck careers around Japan to an acoustic rock soundtrack. What really makes the movie special, however, is a breakthrough performance as the damaged girl by stage actress Shinobu Terajima, and an equally intriguing performance by Nao Omori ("Ichi the Killer") as the trucker with a dangerous past.

2LDK *

A short feature (75 minutes) that feels like a TV skit stretched way beyond its limit, 2DLK is an extremely unpleasant visit with two female roommates from hell. This is part of the DUEL project, with two male directors (Kitamura and Tsutsumi) tackling two-handers in one set. Yukihiko Tsutsumi has done similar before, with the extremely boring Chinese Dinner from a few years ago. Here he goes at it again, in what was billed as a "battle of the buxom babes" but fails to generate any kind of tension. Bland Maho Nonami and pneumatic pin-up Eiko Koike (in a most unflattering sweat suit) start off insulting each other and end up waving chainsaws around in this tiresome, over-extended catfight. Neither actress is up to the challenge, and the thin premise way overstays its welcome. What might have worked as a 30-minute late-night TV show fails miserably as a feature film.

Aragami ***

In this companion piece to 2LDK, cool splatter action specialist Ryuhei Kitamura (he made his name with the cult hit VERSUS) directs Takao Osawa and Masaya Kato in a two-hander about a mountain goblin and a samurai. Essentially an extended duel, both verbal and physical, between two mysterious, it was reportedly shot in 10 days from a treatment. It's a surprisingly inventive and humorous short feature, with a well-developed first half that slowly fills in details on the aragami and the samurai's previous history. Takao Osawa plays the samurai with courage and determination, but it's Masaya Kato who makes the biggest impression with his playfully decadent goblin. The "choose your weapons" scene, where a beautiful temple novice lays out an array of baroque scimitars and blunderbusses, is great. The final duel, thirty minutes of high-speed wire action swordplay, is well choreographed and imaginately shot.

Onmyoji 2 *

Director Yojiro Takita returns to direct the sequel to 2001's ultra-successful period sorcery epic "Onmyouji" ("The Ying-Yang Master"). The wonderful Mansai Nomura is back as the Kyoto court magician Seimei, wooden Hideaki Ito returns as his stupid sidekick, and Kiichi Nakai makes his debut as the evilly cackling adversary. This one is a yawn, however, as even more tacky CG effects take over the story. It comes over as a series of overwrought, theatrical tableaux, in the 1980s style of Fukasaku's druggy, epic fantasies. Obviously most of the budget went on the stagey sets, museum-quality costumes and nonstop magical CGs. Nakai takes over the evil magician role this time, and unlike Hiroyuki Sanada in number one, he resorts to scenery-chewing, hamming and much evil guffawing to show how damn nasty he is. Nomura's Seimei is as charismatic as ever, as he delivers his campy lines with a raised eyebrow, but the climactic showdown plays out like a quasi-religious scene, all glowing lights and beatific Japanese mystic goddesses smiling.

Ganryujima *

Another version of the Musashi Miyamoto legend, this time with Masahiro Motoki (Gemini) in the lead role. This one concentrates on the mysterious period in the swordsman's life on the remote island of Ganryujima and his confrontation with Kojiro Sasaki. Motoki plays Musashi as a caveman, a wild ruffian who slashes men and rapes women without compunction. It's Musashi's meeting with the blunt end of a timid fisherman's oar that changes his life. Atsushi Tamura, from the London Boots comic duo, plays the fisherman in this slapstick actioner. Financed by NTV, but shot on film, this has a small-screen TV feel to it, despite the director's trickery with the editing, split-screen effects and rock music score.

Doppelganger **

Best known for his creepy horror movies Cure, Charisma and Pulse, Kiyoshi Kurosawa returns with the eagerly awaited Doppeganger and stirs anticipation for a return to his most successful genre. It starts well, with Kurosawa's alter ego Koji Yakusho playing a genius inventor perfecting a robot-chair for the disabled. The inventor starts seeing his doppelganger, however, and then meets the doll-like Hiromi Nakasaku and hears that she's worried by the re-appearance of her dead brother's doppelganger. Just when you think this is going to be a spooky thriller, Kurosawa abandons the scare tactics and goes for existential slapstick. Yakusho's doppelganger is nothing more than his unbridled id - and it's hard not to see in the film an autobiographical confession from Kurosawa. Wouldn't it be great if the feted, angsty, intellectual director had a doppelganger who could go around and be boarish, violent and crass?

Koufuku no Kane *

Like a slowed down version of all his other films, director Sabu's "Blessing Bell" is yet another episodic baton-race of a movie, flitting among characters in search of a story. This time unfortunately, the pace is much slower. Susumu Terajima plays a mute factory laborer who strolls around town after he's laid off. That's it. On the way he finds a dying yakuza, a dying old fogey (played by cult director Seijun Suzuki), a dead old woman who's just won a fortune, and a man in a bar dying of cancer, etc. Terajima responds to all these situations with a blank stare. In "Drive" and "Monday", Sabu's racing tempo kept you from noticing the spotty narrative. In this film, the plodding pace has you shifting in your seat for the duration. The resolution, wherein the whole movie is revealed to have been little more than an interminable shaggy dog story, will have you demanding your money back.

Ogon no Hou *

Bizarre religious animation financed by a publishing company that specializes in new-age books, "The Golden Ark" aka "The Golden Laws" is a piece of feel-good, glowing golden propaganda. The audience for this sci-fi animation therefore was surprisingly silver in hair color, and not a fashionable ash-grey either. The 2D style animation looks extremely classical now, and the story has two future teens from Atlantis time-traveling back to various ancient lands to meet Buddha, Jesus Christ, Moses, etc., who all turn out to be reincarnations of the Greek mythic god Hermes!? Big choral score and a lot of golden light bathing the screen at key moments. Very strange. Strictly for the faithful.