Departures is not just a well-made film, but also a cinematic vehicle to help break down the social prejudice that many morticians still face in Japan.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 9, 2024

A charming, winning piece of filmmaking that, while in no way deserving of the title of Best Foreign Language film of this or any year, is a heartwarming and bittersweet tale that hits all the right notes.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 5, 2019

In "Departures, life and death are two expressive movements of one musical" piece. Neither is taken as a polar opposite of the other; they dance rhythmically, like the ebb and flow of the ocean tide.

| May 1, 2019

All three actors are skilled in communicating difficult emotions just with their faces and in bringing to life the gentle humor that leavens this very affecting movie about death and letting go.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 6, 2018

The encoffination ritual has a subtlety and grace that's lacking in Takita's direction, which lays down the narrative with slow, heavy brushstrokes of lacquered whimsy.

| Jan 2, 2018

The laughter and family fights that break out at funerals might be part of this movie's rural, working-class eye. Departures favors farmland and old-fashioned wood-fired bathhouses over the Tokyo mania. It celebrates old-style, hands-on craft.

| Original Score: 4/5 stars | Sep 18, 2014

The scripting of Departures (by Kundo Koyama, the one-man 온라인카지노추천-drama writing factory who nurtured such delights as Iron Chef) is embarrassingly clunky and obvious: the movie's essential hollowness reveals itself with unusual starkness.

| Nov 17, 2013

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 17, 2011

No doubt the best movie you'll see this year about the Japanese traditional funeral business.

| Aug 26, 2011

Death is normal, and so are responsibilities, reconciliations and retreats from what we think are our dreams. In a resolution about identifying ourselves, and loved ones, in life and death, "Departures" shows some people must be left just as they went.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Sep 25, 2010

Lead Masahiro Motoki apprenticed with real nakanshi for the role, and you become entranced by his performance, and the gentle clash of ritual and grief, custom and modernity.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 4, 2010

like the unfolding of a Mozart concerto

| Original Score: A- | Feb 24, 2010

This Japanese film's receipt of the award for best foreign-language picture at this year's Oscars was a case of the Academy favouring bland sentimentality.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 11, 2009

The film, mostly set in a wintry landscape surrounded by snow-capped mountains, is fastidiously composed.

| Dec 11, 2009

This heartfelt, unpretentious, slyly funny Japanese film is worth waiting for.

| Dec 11, 2009

Director Yojiro Takita and writer Kundo Kayama ... aren't afraid to give you an emotional punch as well as a punchline.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Dec 7, 2009

Heart-warming, funny, wise and profound. Not to be missed.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Dec 4, 2009

The movie gestures towards deep emotions, but an abiding soft-grained superficiality effectively insulates us from the piercing realities of grief.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 4, 2009

Doesn't quite justify the enormous plaudits heaped upon its shoulders, but a warm-hearted comedy-drama with its own likeably odd sensibility.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 4, 2009

Fascinating, witty and heartfelt.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 4, 2009