Need a Job?('Tokyo Sonata' and 'The Great Buck Howard')(Movie review)

There is no saying what manner of movies will be bred by the economic slump. If "Tokyo Sonata," directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, is anything to go by, we could be in for some unnatural spawnings, for this is a most peculiar hybrid. Our hero is Ryuhei Sasaki (Teruyuki Kagawa), although any heroic status is swiftly peeled off him, layer by layer. He is the director of administration at a health-care-equipment company, a post which we see him lose almost at once. What stays with you from that early scene, though, is not just Sasaki's passivity as his fate is decreed but the physical backdrop--the blinds of his office bright with sunshine yet quaking with the gusts of a coming ...