[H]ere, perhaps more urgently than ever before, it's about what happens when people confront the world outside, and what new, fragile connections they might begin to forge.

| Oct 20, 2014

The movie slides into a kind of bizarre hyperreality that makes its desperation slightly hallucinatory but, paradoxically, more moving.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Though far from flawless, it's an adventurous work that is both disturbing and ultimately moving.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 14, 2010

Kurosawa is the rare director who simply lets his film dissolve into music, allowing the plot to take the film naturally to a musical conclusion.

| Jul 17, 2009

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa cut his teeth on horror movies, and his flattened, formal style mines the horror in everyday urban life.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 9, 2009

Kurosawa's first domestic drama is music to general audience's ears.

Full Review | Jun 26, 2009

A skilful and continually surprising drama, Tokyo Sonata depicts the gradual deterioration of an ordinary Japanese family after its breadwinner loses his job owing to corporate downsizing.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jun 26, 2009

The film transcends conventions of genre and cultural boundaries, and turns out to be one of the most compelling, finely orchestrated and oddly enchanting films of the year so far.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 25, 2009

Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to the master) is best known for his up-market horror films (Cure, Retribution, and many others.) Here he is dealing with a horror of a different sort: the meltdown of the Japanese economy and the collapse of the soc

| Jun 13, 2009

Tokyo Sonata, in so many senses, is about an allergic reaction to the very idea of what it means to be Japanese. The characters misplace their belief in etiquette, politesse, dignity, and propriety -- or they struggle to maintain it.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 7, 2009

An extraordinary work in three movements about the Sasakis, a seemingly ordinary family. In this unpredictable work, the clan implodes, explodes, and glues itself back together.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 1, 2009

Kiyoshi Kurosawa switches gears from supernatural horror to poignant social satire.

| Apr 17, 2009

The true excellence of the film stems from how clearly Kurosawa makes us see something of ourselves in these characters.

| Apr 14, 2009

Each performance in this plaintive work is superb, but Kyoko Koizumi's gently melancholy portrait of the businessman's wife keeps Tokyo Sonata true and affecting.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 9, 2009

We believe we know where Tokyo Sonata is going. We are wrong.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 9, 2009

So strong a director is Kurosawa that he not only can get away with piling on disasters but makes his picture all the more powerful as a result.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Mar 27, 2009

Tokyo Sonata is a bit overwrought, especially in the final act, but it is beautifully shot, features moving performances by the well-chosen cast and has the unity of vision that is the hallmark of an auteur.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Mar 27, 2009

The elements sound borrowed from American suburban melodrama, but the tone is cool and measured, with the distanced fascination of a nature show.

| Original Score: B | Mar 26, 2009

A goofy and remarkably topical comedy-drama.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 26, 2009

Known for distinctive horror movies like Cure and Pulse, inventive Japanese filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa finds just the right melancholy tone to suit a new and all too familiar kind of horror: economic downsizing.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 18, 2009