A film that just grows and grows and grows. It seems very quiet, but you are absolutely hooked.

| Sep 13, 2019

[Shoplifters] is a film edged by despair, and yet is life-affirming. Families may disintegrate, but love keeps us ticking over.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 11, 2019

Writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda fills the film with grace notes, humor and fine observations, circling and filling out each character while leaning more on innocence than corruption.

| Jan 4, 2019

It's the perfect depiction of the line between being a good person and being law-abiding, and how that's not a border, but a Venn diagram.

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

Kore-eda marshals his considerable talents to tell what initially appears to be another story of family love and perseverance in the margins of society.

| Dec 21, 2018

This kind of subtle richness is not new for Kore-Eda, though it's as satisfying here as it's ever been.

| Dec 21, 2018

Kore-eda is at his best when he's suppressing his sentimentality, not when he's indulging it, but like his characters, fans of this inspired filmmaker must learn to take the good with the bad.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 21, 2018

It's all beautifully done, if seemingly aimless; for most of its two-hour runtime, the joy of the movie lies mostly in watching these fine actors build their beautifully flawed and lived-in characters.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 21, 2018

Shoplifters is littered with wry humor and is refreshingly free of judgment.

| Dec 21, 2018

At once charming and heart-wrenching, this exquisitely performed film will steal the hearts of both art-house and mainstream audiences.

| Dec 21, 2018

Shoplifters achieves that ultimate goal of art as expressed by the artist Robert Filliou: It's art that makes life more interesting than art.

| Dec 21, 2018

There are numerous tender, affecting moments en route to the finale's tearjerker overdrive, many of them productively tangential to the overarching idea of choosing one's own family.

| Original Score: B+ | Dec 21, 2018

A moving meditation on what truly constitutes the meaning of family.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 20, 2018

A story whose ethical quandaries are presented with equal parts compassion and toughness.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Dec 12, 2018

Every one of master Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda's movies breaks your heart in a different way.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Dec 11, 2018

In a great film, Kore-eda's thesis would be the starting point, not its culmination... But in the end, Kore-eda, for all the cooked-up moments in Shoplifters, knows where the heart of his story is.

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 30, 2018

It's in theory the worst family movie of 2018 - and in practice one of the year's best films.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 29, 2018

What makes it such an enrapturing experience is the tenderness, humour and detail [director Hirokazu] Kore-eda brings to his material.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 29, 2018

The spirits of the old masters pervade this disquieting but deeply moving drama. But Kore-eda stands alone as the chronicler of family life in a country facing an identity crisis.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 28, 2018

Delicately observed and perfectly played, it's consummate, flawless film-making.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 27, 2018