|
Cannes 2023 :: Killers of the Flower Moon :: Martin Scorsese’s Bitterest Crime Epic Martin Scorsese triumphs yet again. A story about greed, corruption, and the mottled soul of a country that was born from the belief that it belonged to anyone callous enough to take it.. |
|
Berlinale 2023 :: Full Winners List This year’s jury, headed by Kristen Stewart, gave
the Golden Bear award to the French documentary “On the Adamant..” The Silver Bear for
Best Lead Performance notably went to child star Sofia Otero for “20,000 Species of Bees.”
Philippe Garrel's “The Plough” was.. |
|
BAFTA 2023 :: ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’
Dominates BAFTA Awards With Seven Wins “All Quiet on the Western Front” dominated the BAFTA Awards in London on
Sunday night with a record-breaking seven wins for a film not in the English languag,
including for Best Director.. |
|
Berlinale 2023 :: Golshifteh Farahani :: Talks Role Of
Art In Iran “In A Dictatorship Like
Iran, Art Is Essential, It’s Like Oxygen.” Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, who is at the
Berlin Film Festival as a member of Kristen Stewart’s jury, has talked passionately about the
importance of art.. |
|
SIFF 2023 :: Shirin Ebadi :: Until We Are Free
This is the amazing, at times harrowing,
simply astonishing story of a woman who would never give up, no matter the risks. The first
Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi has inspired millions around
the globe.. |
|
IFFR 2023 Awards :: 'Le spectre de Boko Haram' and
'Endless Borders' are the victors Cyrielle Raingou’s documentary took home the Tiger Award, whilst Abbas
Amini’s feature won the VPRO Big Screen Award, as the Dutch gathering celebrated its in-
person comeback.. |
|
Winners of the 2022 ‘Sepanta Awards’ :: 15th Annual
Iranian Film Festival This year, the
festival presented 50 films from Iran, USA, Italy, France, Luxembourg, Greece, UK, Canada,
Australia, and Denmark…, ranging from fiction, documentary, short, animation…. to the
music video.. |
|
Opinion :: Will Venice Protests Help or Hurt filmmakers
in Iran? As the Venice Film Festival
celebrates Iranian cinema — with four Iranian films screening at the 79th Biennale — back
home in Tehran, Iranian filmmakers and artists are facing the harshest crackdown in
decades.. |
|
Biennale Cinema 2022 :: Awards Ceremony
Official Awards of the 79th Venice Film Festival.
Announced by the five international Juries, chaired by Julianne Moore, during the Awards
Ceremony that was held on Saturday 10th September at 7:00 pm..
|
|
Coming: 15th Annual Iranian Film Festival! : San
Francisco: Sep. 17-18 This year, the
festival presents 50 films from Iran, USA, Italy, France, Luxembourg, Greece, UK, Canada,
Australia, and Denmark…, ranging from fiction, documentary, short, animation…. to the
music video. We are happy and proud to.. |
|
Welcome to Online Film Home! |
|
|
|
Shoplifters (2018) • Movie
Review Kore-eda At His
Best
Brian Tallerico, rogerebert.com November 23,
2018
Understated yet ultimately deeply affecting, Shoplifters
adds another powerful chapter to director Hirokazu Koreeda's richly humanistic
filmography. --Rotton Tomatoes
Kore-eda is at
his best when he's suppressing his sentimentality, not when he's indulging it,
but like his characters, fans of this inspired filmmaker must learn to take the
good with the bad. --Chicago Reader
Hirokazu
Kore-eda’s Palme d’Or-winning “Shoplifters” opens with a perfectly calibrated
scene that sets the table for what’s to come. A man and a boy are in a store.
They keep making eye contact, moving slowly through the aisles.
They clearly have a level
of non-verbal communication that feels like a ritual. They’ve done this before.
They will do this again. And doing this brings them somewhat closer to each
other, even if it’s illegal. Of course, what they’re doing
is shoplifting, but we instantly get the feeling that they’re doing it to
survive. They’re getting food for their family, not taking trinkets from a fancy
store.
On the way home that night, just after commenting on how
it's too cold to go back and get some forgotten shampoo, the man and boy see a
girl on a balcony. We get the impression they’ve seen her before. Despite their
obvious need, the man offers the girl a croquette, and she ends up coming home
with them. We learn that the man is named Osamu (Lily Franky) and the boy is named
Shota (Jyo Kairi).
At home, there are other mouths to feed.
We meet the mother named
Nobuyo (Ando
Sakura), another woman named Aki (Matsuoka Mayu) and a grandmother (Kiki Kilin). And now there’s a new mouth with a
girl named Juri. When Osamu and
Nobuyo go to take the girl back that night, they hear a violent
scuffle between parents who likely haven’t even noticed their daughter is gone.
Nobuyo just holds Juri a little tighter and we
know they’re not giving her back.
Nobuyo and
Osamu justify their action by saying it’s not a kidnapping if
you don’t ask for a ransom. It’s similar logic to how Osamu
justifies stealing to Shota—telling him it’s OK if it’s not
someone else’s property and items in a store don’t belong to anyone yet. It’s OK
as long as the store doesn’t go bankrupt.
“Shoplifters” is full
of these gray areas. What exactly does family mean? Does giving birth to someone
automatically make you a mother? Kore-eda
has confronted the definition of family before in films like “Like
Father, Like Son” and “Nobody
Knows,” but this is one of his most nuanced, layered examinations
of the concept. Nobuyo and Osamu shelter,
feed, dress, and care for Juri more than her biological parents
and yet they are not her "family."
For the bulk of
“Shoplifters,” Kore-eda
works in a beautiful register that feels both detailed and genuine at the same
time. We get to know these characters so deeply, watching them all at their
jobs. Osamu is a day laborer until he gets into an accident.
Nobuyo works a laundry shift, from which she takes trinkets
left in clothes. Aki is a “companion,” someone
who does sex shows but longs for a deeper connection with one of her clients.
There are hints of greater secrets and a more complex past than you might first
think in the Shibatas, but there are also numerous scenes of
average domesticity.
And then Kore-eda drops the floor out from under
the Shibatas, revealing there are a lot of things we don’t know
about this makeshift family. The final half-hour of “Shoplifters” is some of the most emotional,
powerful filmmaking of the year, and it’s thanks to how delicately Kore-eda
has drawn these characters over the 90 preceding minutes. They feel as
three-dimensional as any this year, thanks to Kore-eda’s
humanist storytelling but also his expert direction of a truly amazing cast.
Lily Franky is
fantastic, but Ando Sakura is the
stand-out—the way she conveys her character’s deep well of conflicted emotions
in the final scenes is breathtaking. It’s one of the best performances of the
year, a stand-out in an incredibly pure ensemble.
In many ways,
“Shoplifters” feels like a natural
extension of themes that Kore-eda
has been exploring his entire career regarding family, inequity, and the unseen
residents of a crowded city like Tokyo.
With this movie especially, his characters and their predicament
are not merely mouthpieces for the issues that interest him but fully-realized
people who feel like they existed before the film started and will go on after
it ends.
The final shots of "Shoplifters" haunt me—two kids, one looking back
and one looking out, both changed forever.
|
|
|
|
Choose an item to go there!
|
| |
|
|
| | | |