[A] psychosexual undercurrent bubbles furiously throughout Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, deepening its (already poignant) lamentations about war’s humanity-stripping effect and the self-imposed prisons that are honor and shame.

| Sep 23, 2023

Acquires depth and emotional scope the more you dwell on it.

| Original Score: A | Aug 29, 2023

Nothing but electric...

| Jun 2, 2023

...instead of seeing one-dimensional automatons, we get to enjoy multifaceted characters who interact with each other in interesting ways, and the overall experience is better for it.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Dec 31, 2022

When Merry Christmas works, it’s subtle and intelligent.

| Aug 19, 2022

A strange, striking film that features a mercurial performance from David Bowie ...

| Aug 18, 2022

An affecting, strange, often beautiful experience about finding common ground in the most unlikely of places.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 28, 2020

His film, like John Wayne's, is neither realistic nor ambiguous, but it is a fascinating essay that finds revolutionary discourse in masculinity subversion. [Full Review in Spanish]

| Mar 26, 2020

If you can excuse the sight of the then 35-year-old David Bowie in a school uniform, this will prove most rewarding.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 11, 2017

The films attention is split fairly evenly across the major characters, and their interactions are consistently fascinating in the way they illustrate both the cultural divide and the halting attempts to somehow bridge it.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 12, 2010

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 2, 2010

It's relentlessly grim, constantly off-balance, occasionally moving, and often striking.

| Oct 1, 2010

The Merry Christmas catalogue of atrocities finally becomes numbing, even ludicrous.

| Dec 10, 2008

From Oshima's later career... most notable is this bilingual, end-of-WWII tearjerker about forgiveness and understanding between cultures, which could have been dubbed The Man Who Fell to Java.

| Oct 2, 2008

David Bowie is outstanding as the defiant British prisoner whose erotic appeal undoes the Japanese commandant, played by Sakamoto, who was at the height of his fame as a musical icon in Japan

| May 1, 2008

For all the praise heaped upon Oshima's admittedly ambitious film about East-West relations in the microcosm of a Japanese PoW camp during World War II, it's far less satisfactory than most of his earlier work.

| Jun 24, 2006

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 14, 2005

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 26, 2004

Here's a movie that is even stranger than it was intended to be.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 23, 2004

Mr. Oshima has staged the film in a spacious tropical setting and filled it with a great number of extras. Even so, Mr. Bowie always stands out from the crowd.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 30, 2004