Too many fans seem to be blown away

the audience applauded

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Almost always when seeing oriental movies, I find myself in front of the cultural abyss that separates us. I see the characters almost as if they were from another dimension, making strange gestures, eating strange things and saying strange things. This film is no exception. But in that very strangeness, the director manages to tell a daily and customary story as simple and direct as the title of the film. That is what the film is, no more and no less: a family in Tokyo. Although at the beginning it becomes very heavy, then picks up a lot and I could enjoy a mundane story and nothing flashy but somehow therein lies its value as a movie. In the normality, the wonder of family relationships appears. And in this case, we can be dragged to the parallel universe of life and Japanese culture, in which we find extremely different but also tremendously universal things. I think the movie does not "pass", but worth it for the "Japan-curious". The screenplay delivers an everyday, simple story. The are A LOT of actors, but a special mention for Yoshiyuki (the grandmother) and Yu Aoi (Noriko, the girlfriend of Shuji).

A remake of Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (1953), which is widely regarded as one of the finest films ever made. Director Yoji Yamada follows the plot of the earlier film closely (though he doesn't borrow Ozu's stylistic touches; thus, this is necessarily a more conventional movie).There are also changes in some of the characters. The youngest children, Kyoko and Keizo, do not exist in this version. Noriko here is not the widowed wife of their fallen son in the war, but the girlfriend of their son Shoji (who is alive here, and works as a theater decorator). Noriko is played by Yu Aoi, who is pretty and charming, though she lacks the screen charisma Setsuko Hara has in the original version (she is given less screen time, also). Also, I notice that in this version the elder children and the grandchildren are less rude to the elder couple. For instance, the eldest daughter Shige, as played as Tomoko Nakajima, is not as mean and bitchy as Haruko Sugimura was in the original. And the grandfather Shukichi, is less nice here than in the original version. He openly questions his children, especially Shoji, which in the original only did obliquely.Obviously, this film is not up to the level of the original, but it is a well made, pleasant movie to watch.

This film is a 2013 color re-make of Yasujiro Ozu's 1953 "Tokyo Story," that was voted the #1 film by directors in the 2012 Sight and Sound poll. The plot lines and characters are very similar with some distinct differences; even some lines of dialogue are the same or very similar. The biggest difference is that while Noriko in the 1953 film is the daughter-in-law of the elderly couple, whose son was killed in WWII, Noriko in the 2013 film is the future daughter-in-law engaged to the elderly second couple's son (much more developed in this film, not in a flattering way). In addition, the incomparable Setsuko Hara, known as the Japanese Garbo, played Noriko in the 1953 film and brought to the role a transcendent luminosity of compassion and wisdom. Secondly, while Ozu had a distinct cinematographic style of usually having the camera directly in front of the characters while they spoke, we see this much less frequently in the 2013 film. These are just a few of the differences. Overall, it is an interesting re-make, but Ozu's "Tokyo Story" is still one of the greatest films ever made.

Saw this at the Berlinale 2013 film festival. It is an "update" on the famous original Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953), but I learned that only afterwards. I did not see the original before this one, so I cannot compare.An elderly couple who have lived in a remote village for many years already, bring a visit to their three grown children in the big city of Tokyo. The first half hour shows a lot of chit-chat between family members without really communicating with each other. It may be normal on such an occasion, when family members have no real common topics apart from ancient memories. Yet it leaves on me a depressing view on family relationships. I would not be surprised when this afterthought is deliberate, and as such intended by the film makers.The older son (doctor) is very occupied with his patients, and the daughter (beauty parlor) is very busy with her daily tasks. And the younger son who is not taken very seriously by the other family members, has decided to live his own life and moved out. Older son and daughter conspire to move the elderly couple from place to place, making their parents feeling lonely and deserted. Later on the parents are even shifted to a hotel, and a lot of arguments pass by why this is only for their own good (we know better than that).The story becomes interesting when mother and father follow a different route during one night. The mother meets the girl friend of the younger son, and there is an immediate "click". She even entrusts the girl friend with her savings, to use in case of an emergency, rather than giving it to her son, because the mother knows about his impulsive buying pattern. The father drinks too much in a bar, and arrives in the morning in a grumpy state. But (!) he immediately sees that his wife returned in a happy mood from whatever she did that night. What the latter was precisely, he would never know due to her sudden heart failure later that day.Sitting and waiting in the hospital brings the whole family together physically (but still not mentally), until the dreaded moment that the mother is declared dead. Eventually they all travel to the village where father and mother used to live, to attend the funeral rites. Of course, the older brother and sister cannot wait to return to their duties after the funeral, and only the younger son and his girl friend stay for a few extra days. When they are about to leave, we see a crucial scene when the father and the girl friend have a real talk together. Suddenly, we see the father figure in a very different light, before that time always seeming a father-knows-best figure, but after that scene we stand corrected.All in all, this microscopic study on family relationships proved very interesting, visualized very well, thereby portraying each family member in his/her own merits. There is no ending to spoil, and there is no real plot either. It is something that should be watched as it passes by on the screen. The actors perform very well in their respective roles, perfectly outlining each ones good and bad features. There are no bad guys in this movie, however, each pulls his weight in the busy ways of living and coping nowadays.