Popular reviews

• 

  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★★ 1

  Kurosawa translates his expertise in horror to the family drama, revealing that there truly isn't anything scarier than success being defined by domestic rituals we can no longer afford to maintain financially or emotionally.

• 

  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★ 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

• 

  Review by Ayush ★★★★★ 29

  On your marks, get set, go! The race begins. Throughout school and college education, the race continues to quicken in pace and get tougher; a competition to earn a high standing in society. Success is achieved: a respectable job, a family, a house; the hallmarks of a society too busy working to realise the fragility of this social standing based solely on professional wins and losses. The race comes to a screeching halt. A dead end occurs. The fragile nature of it all reveals itself without a moment's notice. It all comes crumbling down, and that's where Tokyo Sonata begins.

  A sea of people laid off; many of them not being able to be honest about their new social standing…

• 

  Review by Pablo Honey ★★★★½

  "How wonderful it would be if my whole life so far turns out to have been a dream, and suddenly I wake up and I'm someone else entirely." Kiyoshi Kurosawa is so real for this. I totally get it.

• 

  Review by KYK ★★★★ 5

  male pride is a toxic thing
  god that last scene made me weep

  35mm. FSLC.

• 

  Review by Branson Reese

  Around twenty or thirty minutes in Teruyuki Kagawa does the worst pour of beer I've ever seen in my life. Then he does it again.

  What a picture.

• 

  Review by YI JIAN ★★★★★

  Always finding alternative ways to induce a panic attack and effortlessly succeeding, I believe this is Kiyoshi Kurosawa at his most well-behaved yet merciless form. It's a weird parallel to draw (probably due to clair de lune?) but it felt like something Shunji Iwai would make if he was more aggressive and also best buds with Koji Yakusho. The ending caught me by surprise, it's unusual to see Kurosawa himself go out of his way to comfort us, like having a distant father pat our backs, it's a strange feeling. I'd say I want more of it, but it's just not worth the breakdown I've suffered through the film. Still, it was nothing short of a sublime experience.

• 

  Review by Lee Does Not Exist सब्बे सत्ता सुखी होन्तु ★★★★★

  in the right emotional state where this film simultaneously makes me want to throw myself under a bus, and keep on living

• 

  Review by Arsaib Gilbert ★★★★★ 5

  Not unlike the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Great Recession of the past few years have prompted a number of enterprising filmmakers to try to deal with the harsh realities of the world around them. While there have been no lack of films on this topic, few that have been convincing to me on both the micro and macro levels include Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience (2009), Johnnie To's Life Without Principle (2011), and Kurosawa Kiyoshi's masterful Tokyo Sonata (both the title and the film echo Ozu's 1931 Tokyo Chorus).

  Kurosawa, who is best known for his horror films, has always managed to integrate topical concerns seamlessly into his work. Here, along with the grave and pertinent issue of…

• 

  Review by Shea ★★★★★ 5

  It hasn't even been two days since I watched this and already I am tempted to call it life-changing.

• 

  Review by Cormac 👑 ★★★★★ 11

  Kurosawa’s scariest yet and the green-eyed monster is capitalism, baby. Or is it the bruised ego? Most masterful in how it gradually pulls away layers of each of the family members’ second lives until all that remains is a mountain's worth of skeletons tumbling out of the closet to knock you for a synchronous six, Tokyo Sonata manages to feel akin to a personal attack from four separate angles. By honing in on our most painful, brutally societal fears, we’re one open volley away from this slow-burn exercise in creeping straight for our collective wounds and weak spots.

  An inability to look a loved one in the eye in admission of the guilt from the weakening shoulders upon which your…

• 

  Review by Ben ★★★★★ 4

  Japanuary 2022: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

  Many of our goals feel predetermined for us. Get good grades in high school to get into a well-regarded university; Do well in university to earn a degree and get a respectable job; Follow orders and do as told at work to get a raise or move up the corporate ladder. The powers that be planned our lives out for us before we could ever decide what any of us wanted for ourselves. It is as if we are cogs in a machine, doing the heavy lifting that adds value to organizations that could not value our well-being in the slightest.

  Many of us have roles we feel pressured to fulfill and actions we feel compelled…