It is a gentle work, filled with warmth and nicely observed human behaviours.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Feb 21, 2025

...a work of considerable restraint.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Feb 20, 2024

Ozu is obsessed with film's possibility of reporting the poetic truth of the actual. He is reality's artisan, and its connoisseur.

| Jan 22, 2024

... a resolutely modern portrait of post-war Japan, where western fashion defines the business culture and traditional dress is reserved for home, and careers and success increasingly dominate the lives of the rising generation.

| Dec 17, 2022

'Tokyo Story' is over 50 years old, depicts a foreign land and culture, and yet continues to resonate with audiences far and wide.

| Original Score: 5/5 | May 25, 2021

This is one of the best Ozu films I have ever seen, a very powerful shomin-geki oeuvre about the decomposition of the family in postwar Japan westernized society. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 8/10 | Oct 2, 2020

Ozu's film is a beautiful piece of art and cinema.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 14, 2020

A nuanced tale of family ties and growing apart.

| Jun 15, 2020

Ozu counters the interiority of the drama with just enough hints of the outside world to reflect the irreparable passing of time which is so crucial to the film's sentiment.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 27, 2020

If everyone in the world took the time to watch Tokyo Story, there would be no more wars, negativity or Twitter. There would only be love, life and lots of sake.

| Apr 5, 2020

After seeing so many busy, ostentatious films with histrionic, even hysterical, direction, it is a relief to see one that is quiet and composed and tells its story in the most unobtrusive manner possible.

| Jan 6, 2020

It's not until the heartbreaking denouement you realise how immersive Tokyo Story is, and how it snuck up on you and worked its way into your heart.

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

It's entirely possible that Tokyo Story isn't the best movie ever made. But I suspect that it might be the most perfect.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Apr 7, 2015

[VIDEO ESSAY] Yasujirô Ozu's beloved masterpiece of postwar Japanese cinema speaks to audiences from all backgrounds because of the cross-generational familial truths that the prolific director/co-writer lovingly metes out.

| Original Score: A+ | Apr 6, 2015

It soon becomes clear that they have planned their trip at a bad time; it is equally clear that every time is a bad time.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Dec 19, 2013

With its debt to Leo McCarey's 'Make Way for Tomorrow,' Yasujiro Ozu's 'Tokyo Story' is no less true, shattering, and not for viewers fretting about unsympathetic grown-up children.

| Jul 19, 2012

In this exquisite merging of specific and universal, infinite and infinitesimal, Tokyo Story perhaps most clearly illuminates that Ozu is not the most Japanese of filmmakers, but the most human.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Nov 24, 2010

Ozu's long shots, knee-high camera placement, and collapsed perspective -- as gorgeous and unsettling as a Cézanne -- gather power over the duration, but time itself is the master's most potent weapon.

| Nov 23, 2010

These characters never surprise us with anything showy, lurid, or sensational. They're ordinary human beings, treated with fierce attention that feels like deep respect.

| Original Score: 9.5/10 | May 18, 2010

This remains one of the most approachable and moving of all cinema's masterpieces.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 5, 2010