A BOY AND HIS SAMURAI (Japan, 2010)
Directed by: Yoshihiro Nakamura
Starring: Ryo Nishikido, Fuku Suzuki, Hiroki Konno, Hitomi Sato

Director Yoshihiro Nakamura blew audiences away in 2009 with his “punk rock saves the world” movie FISH STORY and then, last year, he made the ultimate conspiracy thriller, GOLDEN SLUMBER. Now he takes a radical turn and brings us….a family film? You may already be turning the page, but wait! Because if you know anything about Nakamura you know that his family film is going to be stranger and more immediate than any other, and that’s the case with A BOY AND HIS SAMURAI, the tale of a boy, a samurai, time travel, pastries, chef vs. yakuza battles, absent fathers and single mothers.

Yusa is is raising her son, Tomoya, on her own. Every day it’s a battle to wake up, get Tomoya off to school, hold two jobs and still find time to microwave dinner and maintain some semblance of normal family life. The last thing she needs is a time traveling samurai, but that’s exactly what she gets when Kajima (played by popular TV idol, Ryo Nishikido) winds up stranded in her apartment complex after being inexplicably plucked from the Edo Period. Not knowing what to do, she invites him to stay and soon she starts to use him as a babysitter and then as a cook and housekeeper, even though he’s still terrified of the ringing phone. And that’s when Kajima realizes that he didn’t really like being a samurai. Rather than hack people up in duels over honor and respect, he’d rather make pastries. Maybe even turn pro.

Gentle, sly and always pulling a laugh from where you least expected it, this is a comedy that’s so warm it’ll thaw even the hardest heart. Based on a popular manga by Gen Araki, A BOY AND HIS SAMURAI is a single-mom fantasy about finding the perfect man, a male weepie about father-son, samurai-schoolboy bonding and, ultimately, a movie about time travel. Because the real star of the movie is Tomoya, Yusa’s son, whose growing up is perfectly captured onscreen. And isn’t growing up, after all, a kind of one way time travel that leaves all of us stranded in the future?