Wim Wenders' Oscar-nominated film takes us to a unique and rarely seen part of Tokyo.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 17, 2024

Yakusho’s astonishing performance in that one scene alone is all you need to see to understand...

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 22, 2024

It's almost like mindfulness, as a movie.

| Mar 6, 2024

Wenders’ obvious affection for Tokyo itself, his keen feel for texture and neat avoidance of cliché all suggest Perfect Days is likely to age well as a portrait of a great city’s everyday side.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 29, 2024

Perhaps, in its polite and unassuming way, the film advocates not just a new way of looking, but also a new way of living.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 28, 2024

Zen and the art of toilet cleaning? You'd better believe it. This is as gentle as it gets — a humble little film, maybe, but an enriching one. It's a soul-cleanse.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 26, 2024

Jonathan Livingstone Lavatory Cleaner. Zen and the Art of Lavatory Maintenance. But better than that. Sharper, less sentimental, less aphoristic. A film to live your life by.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 23, 2024

It is compelling and while I felt I should have been bored, I never was. Plus I’m still marvelling at the toilets.

| Feb 22, 2024

It’s not a perfect movie but it comes pretty close.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 22, 2024

A poetic, beautifully balanced character study.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 22, 2024

In Wim Wenders’ quietly profound “Perfect Days,” all of life’s beauty is found in the eyes of a man looking up at the first gasps of a Tokyo morning as he sets out on his day.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 22, 2024

An outstanding dramatic film that is accompanied not only by its merit of being nominated for an Oscar... rather, it also represents the true creative resurrection its illustrious German director, Wim Wenders.[Full review in Spanish]

| Feb 21, 2024

...unsentimental portrait of a man with a rigid routine but no agenda.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 18, 2024

Wenders is setting the pace, fine-tuning our expectations. This is the kind of movie where you’re going to watch a guy brush his teeth more than once. And you’re going to like it.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 15, 2024

Part of the reason this deceptively simple story works is Wenders’ commitment to transform ordinary occurrences into extraordinary ones filled with grace and beauty. The other is Kôji Yakusho’s transcendent performance as Hirayama.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 15, 2024

Perfect Days shares the poetic, contemplative rhythms of Ozu at his most lyrical; even Wenders’s squared-off frame evokes a quieter, more harmonious era.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 14, 2024

The story relies on Yakusho to carry this movie, and that he does.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 14, 2024

The fact that Wenders is consciously working in the spirit of the great Yasujiro Ozu... makes me even more of a sucker for a spare late-inning masterwork such as this.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 14, 2024

Though Perfect Days never reveals the specific details of Hirayama beyond what happens in the few days we spend in his company, by the end of the film, a full portrait of a life is beautifully realized.

| Original Score: B+ | Feb 9, 2024

A beautifully observed paean to caretaking — both physical and philosophical — the movie is led, with sublime joy, by the great Japanese actor Koji Yakusho.

| Feb 9, 2024