[Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa] embeds astute social commentary in narrative details, as he does exceptionally well in "Bright Future".

| Dec 30, 2020

Alienated youth is one of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's favorite themes. Bright Future is an alternately comic and macabre portrait of a deranged friendship.

| Sep 29, 2017

Kurosawa's weird look at the empty lives of modern youth is mysteriously eye-catching but nothing deeper.

| Original Score: B | Sep 17, 2009

a genre that's starting to get overplayed

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 8, 2005

Gradually establishes a sense of foreboding that is hard to shake, though it's not without its darkly humorous moments.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 28, 2005

Kurosawa's mysterious film about Japan's disaffected and alienated youth.

| Original Score: B- | Jan 27, 2005

No stranger to the bizarro social metaphor, [Kurosawa] somehow paints the film's title as honestly optimistic, winkingly ironic, and completely doom-laden at the same time.

| Jan 27, 2005

The movie has a curious and cumulative power.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 14, 2005

It's a haunting, spooky journey into a world that embraces trippy ambiguity.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 10, 2004

The most spellbinding aspect of Bright Future is that the surrealism sustains its own squiddish logic, concluding with one of the most breathtaking film finales of the year.

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 17, 2004

More high -- but strangely touching -- weirdness from acclaimed Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 12, 2004

Pretty to look at, but it's a slow-moving, meandering work that isn't as complex or mysterious as it appears.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 12, 2004

...an enchantingly cryptic, ethereally photographed slice of somber surrealism that should definitely appeal to fans of David Lynch and Luis Buuel.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 12, 2004

Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a prolific and sui generis talent from Japan, this quietly creepy film contains a hint of politics and a wealth of shivers.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 11, 2004

The writer-director's story sense is far too distracted, clouding the film's themes and even its basic plotline and allowing only the most glancing insights into its characters.

| Nov 11, 2004

Bright Future can be off-putting -- neither of the two protagonists attempt to engage the camera, and more woe is expended on mourning Mamoru than considering his victims.

Full Review | Nov 9, 2004

That the film succeeds on the level of a thriller as well as of a philosophical reflection is a proof of Kurosawa as perhaps the best Japanese filmmaker of his generation.

| Oct 27, 2004

Though admirers of the director's eerie, elegant horror tales Pulse and Cure will find Bright Future rather more lugubrious, Kurosawa's latest turns out to have a surprising emotional pull and a truly transcendent final shot.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 31, 2004

Kurosawa strains to find a parallel between jellyfish and his characters' disaffections.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 30, 2004

A remarkable companion piece to Gus Van Sant's similarly haunted, lyrical, allegorical Elephant.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 20, 2003