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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An (aka Sweet Bean) (あん) (2016)

This moving Japanese drama shamelessly plays every emotional trick telling the story of gentle soul Tokue who at seventy-something years of age is an unlikely candidate for the kitchenhand position in Sentaro's struggling dorayaki shop - she goofily waves at trees, narrates the poetic letters she writes as montages of cherry blossoms play on screen, reinvigorates a remote teen, and it all starts to feel like a community service announcement once the truth of her situation is revealed and the success she has brought the business starts to falter, but with a movie as pure-hearted as this, you can't gripe - just let the tears flow!

★★★★☆ 

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