怪物 (かいふつ) (Monster) (2023)

Hirokazu Kore-eda's drama, again just a smidge too twee, is about people, very young or old, who either throw themselves outside Japan's strict parameters of social propriety or else find themselves pushed outside those lines by circumstance or by others, and billed as a thriller, Kore-eda's movie will keep you guessing who - an arsonist, a drunk, a bully, a domestic abuser, a liar, or a strange elvin sociopath - the real kaibutsu (monster) of the title is, and it could be any number of dead-in-the-eye non-humans who are, the story shows by changing perspectives round and round, so misunderstood and sadly beautiful.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEW

The Third Murder (三度目の殺人) (Sandome no Satsujin) (2017)

Where his past films have been about family (shinkansen umbilical cords, absent mothers and fathers, and crime-family surrogates) Director Hirokazu Kore-eda surprises here, turning his attention to a legal procedural, but as the murder trial progresses and as lawyer Shigemori works hard to get at the truth behind his murder suspect client's lies, issues of familial connection again come to the fore as Shigemori's relationship with his daughter, a murder victim's relationship with his daughter, and a suspect's relationship with his daughter all speak to what's inside, if anything, the relationship Japan's hulking, self-interested and image-conscious legal system has with those caught up in it.

★★★★☆

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The Truth (La Vérité) (2019)

Individual moments are joys in themselves - Catherine Deneuve in a leopard-skin print and Audrey Hepburn sunglasses walking her dog down a tree-lined Paris street - but add the rustle of leaves in the trees, a dance of notes on a piccolo or a tinkle of piano keys and you'll feel like you are watching a Japanese anime of impossibly beautiful, painstakingly constructed handpainted images, and like the great animated dramas of Japan - the AMSR-inducing The Wind Rises, Grave of the Fireflies, and many, any others - this latest film from Kore-eda Hirokazu skips so lightly, so gracefully though its family drama, you can thoroughly enjoy it purely on a surface-level of image and sound without stopping to think about its deeply moving themes of truth, lies, story-telling, memory, childhood, motherhood, blame and forgiveness - the truth of this multi-layered delightful dance is that you can decide what you want to hear and enjoy!

★★★★★

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Shoplifters (Manbiki Kazoku) (万引き家族) (2018)

This is a really thought-provoking, deeply, deeply affecting crime drama that opens with a darkly comic scene of a man and a boy shopstealing and from there becomes a cleverly constructed treatise on familial and extrafamilial influences upon the making of men (or snowmen) set against a backdrop of an underemployed but resilient, poverty-stricken but emotionally rich, broken and lonely but warm Japanese society, and don't be fooled by the pace - director Hirokazu Kore-eda's drama will hit you for six.

★★★★★

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After the Storm (海よりもまだ深く) (2016)

In English, Kore-eda Hirokazu's emotional and funny and perhaps slightly more twee than usual drama is called "After the Storm" but the typhoon takes place in the film's latter scenes with more time spent before the storm looking at main character, Ryota Shinoda, who is living a life he never intended - he is a hard-up one-time award-winning novelist now not making ends meet as a private detective and scamster, and it will take a thorough shake-up for him to wake up to his responsibilities to his ageing mother (Kirin Kiki - take tissues), his ex-wife and boy.

★★★★☆

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Nobody Knows (Dare Mo Shirenai) (誰も知らない) (2004)

A mother abandons her children for long periods with instructions that all but the eldest boy are to remain unseen and unheard inside her apartment, in Hirokazu Kore-eda's sanitised account of an actual 1988 news story; some of the blame for the tragedy that follows surely rests on the film's disconnected, apathetic Tokyo.

★★★★☆

CINECAL: ONE SENTENCE REVIEWS

Kiseki (I Wish) (奇跡) (2011)

The connection between two boys, brothers separated by their parents' divorce, is cleverly represented by the Sakura Shinkansen in this gentle Japanese drama, director Hirokazu Kore-eda's metaphor about familial connections in a world of pressures, unfulfilled hopes, and worry.

★★★★☆

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