Fujioka, Hiroshi

K2

Michael Biehn plays a Seattle attorney who talks his friend, a physics instructor (Matt Craven), into joining a party with plans to climb the tallest and least accessible mountain in the world, K-2. Biehn's arrogant character immediately bumps noggins with the tour's leader (Raymond J. Barry) and the latter's strong-willed girlfriend (Patricia Charbonneau). But when various disasters begin to strike at the group, cooperation ensues, followed by assorted acts of heroism, friendship, and self-sacrifice under almost unimaginable conditions of lethal distress. Based on a play that examined the view on human values from a perch far above the world most of us know, K-2 surrounds that essential drama with extraordinary location footage. Director Franc Roddam (Quadrophenia) succeeds very well at turning a thoughtful piece into a fine action movie--and vice versa. --Tom Keogh

Black Jack

This baroque melodrama is based on a manga by Osamu Tezuka that ran in various magazines from 1973 to 1983. With his facial scar, cape, and mop of black and white hair, Kuro Hazama, a.k.a. Black Jack, resembles a cross between Cruella DeVil and Captain Harlock. He's an unlicensed doctor of staggering abilities and even more staggering fees. Black Jack is called in to develop a cure for a mysterious disease that's ravaging "Super Humans"--people of no discernible ability who suddenly burst onto the scene as stars in sports or the arts. The key to the emergence of the Super Humans and the disease is pharmaceutical heiress and surgeon Jo Carol. Sometimes as allies, sometimes as enemies, Black Jack and Jo Carol uncover the nature of the disease--and the program of human experimentation that produced it. Although Tezuka's many fans will want this adventure, it doesn't represent his best work. The script is needlessly talky, and Black Jack is saved not by his abilities, but by the deus ex machina of a tribe of desert nomads. In an era of revelations about government-sanctioned medical experiments, Tezuka's story takes on a disturbing resonance, but director Osamu Dezaki squanders much of the material's potential impact. Unrated ("parental discretion advised"); suitable for ages 16 and up for violence and often grotesque medical imagery. --Charles Solomon

Black Jack is a master surgeon who possesses impeccable skills, enabling him to perform operations that are impossible for even the finest surgeons. He now is faced with his most difficult task to date and must challenge the limits of medical science...before it's too late.! An extraordinary number of intellectual and athletic "Superhumans" have the world in awe. These "Superhumans" far exceed the framework of common sense and possess the ability to outperform all of their rivals...but how did they get this way? Little does anyone know about the hideous conspiracy lurking behind this strange genetic phenomenon. Black Jack discovers the truth behind this unusual occurrence and uncovers the dark secret of a super-drug, which causes a lethal virus, that is about to endanger the existence al all mankind.

K2 [Region 2]

Michael Biehn plays a Seattle attorney who talks his friend, a physics instructor (Matt Craven), into joining a party with plans to climb the tallest and least accessible mountain in the world, K-2. Biehn's arrogant character immediately bumps noggins with the tour's leader (Raymond J. Barry) and the latter's strong-willed girlfriend (Patricia Charbonneau). But when various disasters begin to strike at the group, cooperation ensues, followed by assorted acts of heroism, friendship, and self-sacrifice under almost unimaginable conditions of lethal distress. Based on a play that examined the view on human values from a perch far above the world most of us know, K-2 surrounds that essential drama with extraordinary location footage. Director Franc Roddam (Quadrophenia) succeeds very well at turning a thoughtful piece into a fine action movie--and vice versa. --Tom Keogh

In the Line of Duty III

Orochi: The Eight-Headed Dragon

Arcade Gamer Fabuki

In the Line of Duty III

K2 [Region 2]

Michael Biehn plays a Seattle attorney who talks his friend, a physics instructor (Matt Craven), into joining a party with plans to climb the tallest and least accessible mountain in the world, K-2. Biehn's arrogant character immediately bumps noggins with the tour's leader (Raymond J. Barry) and the latter's strong-willed girlfriend (Patricia Charbonneau). But when various disasters begin to strike at the group, cooperation ensues, followed by assorted acts of heroism, friendship, and self-sacrifice under almost unimaginable conditions of lethal distress. Based on a play that examined the view on human values from a perch far above the world most of us know, K-2 surrounds that essential drama with extraordinary location footage. Director Franc Roddam (Quadrophenia) succeeds very well at turning a thoughtful piece into a fine action movie--and vice versa. --Tom Keogh