CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Janae Milner Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

gonijohn I don't have words to describe or criticize it. 99.99% movies based on novels are failures, but this one... It's not fair to give 10 stars. Every moment of this movie worth its own star.

karmaswimswami Tran Anh Hung wrote the screen adaptation of Murakami's great, numinal novel (my signed galley proof of which will have to be prised from my cold dead hands), and slightly reapportions the themes and mood to great effect so that they work on the screen.Japanese cinema has motifs of servicing and venerating the dead to the extent that it consumes the living: see, for example, Ichikawa's masterpiece "The Burmese Harp." We know Naoko will die: the longueur, the moments in which she stares at the camera slightly too long hint at "Ugetsu monogotari" and convey to us that functionally she is no longer among the living. Her sojourn at a mountain retreat telegraphs the coming of her death as mountains do in "Ballad of Narayama."Toru can either go with life and time moving ahead, with the lively extrovert Midori, and wallow among death, the past, confusion and guilt. We have intimations of what he'll choose, though his process of getting there endears.Ably lensed, nicely scored, tenderly directed. Renki Kikuchi is quite brilliant, and Kiko Mizuhara in her first screen outing exudes promise.

IrohaUta Disappointing... Tran Anh Hung took off all the lightness and funny parts of the book (Reiko is so plain, guitar playing scene made cheesy), only to illustrate the angst of the characters, i.e, with looong shots of them yelling, drooling, crying over beautiful landscapes sceneries. And had I not read the book, the story would have seem to me like a classic cliché three-sided love with dull soppy moments (The amount of "I love you" scenes) . Plus, for once, Hung focused too much on the sexual aspect of the relationships, the scenes are indeed sensual, but it gets tiring after a while. Tran Anh Hung's hand immediately recognizable and what bothers me is that it seems to be exaggerated on purpose. "Let's make him cry with some flashbacks of her, and let's put long shots of waves crushing rocks to show the internal turmoil inside him, in case the yelling/drooling/unshaved look wasn't enough". Beautiful, subtle, yeah. Shallow, over-melodramatic, vapid and gloomy, hell yeah !

tha-13 This pretentious movie is beyond art-house-cinema at its worst, because it isn't art. Because it has no touch what so ever with human emotions it is unbearable to watch, and you cannot help feeling, that it must all of sudden turn into a comedy - but unfortunately it does not. It wants to be a movie about sexuality and loss, but since it is made by the mind of a materialist it looks and feels like a series of scenes with abused young actors in a bad commercial for a dress-label and a Russian vodka. It wants to show off and take an existential view on the important and always vivid subject of coming-of-age, but the level of wisdom and spiritual depth is perhaps the most shallow, I have seen since "plan 9 from outer space". Watch Bille August "Zappa" or Jacob Aron Estes' "Mean creek" instead.