Every time I watch a Kore-eda film, it feels like a good therapy session. At the end of his films we feel like we have grown alongside these characters.

| Oct 7, 2024

The overall message (don’t work so much and fly a kite with your kid) isn’t that far off from the usual Hollywood family film guilt-tripping of absent fathers.

| Jan 25, 2023

It seems Kore-eda Hirokazu is incapable of making bad movies. The babies-switched-at-birth premise in films is nothing new. But he just makes it so darn affecting and poignant, avoiding all the clichés that go with this kind of blurry-eyed family drama.

| Feb 24, 2021

Beautiful and heartbreaking, from the masterful Hirokazu Koreeda.

| Oct 7, 2020

Koreeda deftly examines a quietly moving nature vs. nurture sequence of events that manages to be generously moving despite feeling familiar when compared to other entries within Koreeda's impressive oeuvre.

| Aug 12, 2019

Each of the characters are sharply developed, but the narrative balance inevitably tips toward towards the emotionally challenged architect, deftly played by Japanese pop star Masahuru Fukuyama.

| Aug 7, 2019

No one is better suited to tell this tale than Hirokazu, who directs with such delicacy that the result is something extraordinarily moving.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 7, 2019

Like Father, Like Son's simplistic handling of such a morally complex situation just looks lazy.

| Original Score: 5.8/10 | Jun 26, 2019

Along with an authentically great performance from child actor Keita Ninomiya, this film is packaged to perfection.

| Mar 1, 2019

Like Father has some of the striking Koreeda trademarks: the extraordinary acting from the children.

| Aug 7, 2018

... injects real humanity into a familiar scenario.

| Feb 17, 2018

Like Father, Like Son explores the meaning of parenthood in a most unique way, taking a deeply thoughtful approach to a hypothetical and following its unknown paths in an organic manner.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 4, 2017

Always gentle, always composed, the films of Hirokazu Kore-eda also register quiet devastation, often within the family. The stirring -- the earthquake, even -- usually happens beneath the surface of calm.

| May 10, 2016

[Hirokazu Kore-eda] uses an attractive and talented cast to find a fresh take on a subject that has been mined by television movies and series ad infinitum.

| Mar 22, 2016

Completely realistic because it is in keeping with the reserved temperament of the culture.

| Original Score: 84/100 | Jul 16, 2014

Powerful Japanese film about children switched at birth who challenge the love and hope of their rediscovered parents six years later. Beautiful and heartbreaking, from the masterful Hirokazu Koreeda.

| May 5, 2014

Japanese director Hirokazu Koreeda delivers a quiet, beautifully modulated, touching drama.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 2, 2014

There are times when the script seems just too schematic - as if Kore-eda has decided that we should all sit still while he lays out the nature versus nurture debate. Then the small truths which enrich each scene take over.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 2, 2014

Cultures collide oh so gently in Hirokazu Kore-eda's Like Father Like Son, a Japanese drama that examines its cavernous, local class divide thoughtfully and tenderly, much like Iran's A Separation before it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 30, 2014

The performances seem to me impeccable. Kore-eda is one of a host of Japanese filmmakers who never cease to enchant me.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 18, 2014