Tales of the Unusual

The film is made of four separate stories, held together by passengers stranded at a train station in the rain. One of them begins to tell. In the first, a group stranded in the mountains struggles with guilt over a death they caused without meaning to. In the second, a chess master who has broken down is pressed into a game an eccentric rich man plays out in real life. In the third, a wandering medieval samurai finds a mobile phone on the ground and speaks with a voice asking about the past. In the fourth, a young couple agree to try a computer simulation of what their life as husband and wife would be. The account draws its fear less from the supernatural than from strangeness. The hundred and twenty six minute Japanese film by Hisao Ogura, Masayuki Ochiai, Masayuki Suzuki and Mamoru Hoshi was completed in 2000.