The film showcases Kore-eda's skillful sense of characterization and ethical inquiry, asking viewers to think long and hard about the meaning of justice.

| Jan 17, 2019

"The Third Murder" features a handful of compelling performances, but winds up tied in knots.

| Original Score: C+ | Oct 12, 2018

Murder is endlessly fascinating, as the vast crime-fiction industry would indicate, and this one is no different.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Aug 22, 2018

The Third Murder is at its best in its understated moments... [are] about rehabilitation and the death penalty. That's why the piano score by Ludovico Einaudi never quite meshes, sometimes teetering over the line into melodramatic.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 16, 2018

"The Third Murder" is an intriguing investigation into truth and the nature of justice. Those two aren't necessarily in sync.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 4, 2018

The Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda has a quietly seductive way of finding the sublime in the mundane.

| Aug 3, 2018

Kore-eda is too polished a filmmaker for "The Third Murder" not to be of interest, but its focus is finally too fuzzy to compel the way the best of the director's work does.

| Aug 2, 2018

Despite some tense dramatic moments and some revealing views of Japan's legal system, the movie feels plotted rather than experienced.

| Jul 23, 2018

For Kore-eda, an essential truth about life lies in the accumulation of unexplainable incidents and facts.

| Jul 21, 2018

The film essentially disintegrates before your eyes, with Koreeda displaying little of the quiet elegance he's built his entire career upon.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jul 20, 2018

The film's fourth murder involves the slow asphyxiation of the viewer's patience.

| Original Score: C | Jul 19, 2018

The back and forths between accused and lawyer are among the movie's most enthralling scenes, largely because the soft-featured Mr. Yakusho - lips lightly curling - can make a nice smile seem positively terrifying.

| Jul 19, 2018

Look closer, and despite the curveball content, the film teases out relationships just as carefully and patiently as the director's earlier, gentler films.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 2, 2018

The Japanese maestro Hirokazu Kore-eda takes the narrative ambiguities of his previous movies (After the Storm, Nobody Knows) and pushes them to breaking point and beyond in this beguiling, disquieting courtroom drama.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 23, 2018

There's plenty to chew on as Koreeda picks apart ideas of morality, law and justice.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 22, 2018

The visual style is sober noir. The plot is wannabe Dostoevsky. But somehow the film never quite enthrals.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 21, 2018

Compelling enough while you're watching it, frustrating then forgettable once it ends, this is a work that wouldn't command much attention if it came from any other director.

| Jan 17, 2018

An artful addition to the canon of modern-day crime drama, one whose core mysteries encompass more than just the case at hand.

| Sep 25, 2017

It will likely fall through the cracks a bit between After the Storm and Shoplifters, but it's worth the time for fans of Kore-eda.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 22, 2017

It's beautifully acted and trembles with truth, but it never gives us enough information to arrive at those conclusions on her own or deepen our belief in them.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 15, 2017