SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

This review is dedicated to Chris Marker who passed away earlier today, the man who showed so little of himself because he was busy showing so much of everything. RIP.Good film, a good life in general, is not just about a view of the ocean, that may be beautiful one day but stormy the next. Good film is reflections on the waters of the moon that adjusts the tides. This is a recurrent insight of Zen among other things, and you can't be a Japanese filmmaker and not respond to the conundrum posed by Zen, even if it means outright rejection (as many Japanese New Wave-ers did). So it is not just a view, life isn't, it is both reflection and mechanisms that control the view, and these mechanisms entail motion and flow, and that flow is only near the surface the everyday narrative of life. The conundrum? You have to express complicated in-sight with a simple view.This guy, Koreeda, is still in his early steps here, but wants the adventure. In Maborosi, he chiseled a bit at the transcendent flow, even if it came across as a simple homage to Ozu it was good work. This time he challenges himself with layered narrative.He's still in his early steps means, in our case, that the mechanisms are entirely movielike, usually they are. The premise is that a group of people die and come to a house where each one will have to settle on a single memory to carry with them to eternity, this is the part that references old Hollywood fantasy (A Matter of Life and Death, the Capra Christmas staple also referenced in the title).The French touch (most notably Resnais and Marker): each memory is going to be made into a film, and films are going to be screened for the audience in a way that they grant transcendence. Each film poses a challenge to the crew, so the filmmakers have to seriously puzzle: how to film a flight on ground level, the sound of darkness, or the simplest thing, the feel of a summer breeze. Another problem is that others won't or can't even choose their film.In new Hollywood hands, say Jonze's, this would be done with an abundance of quirks and forced cleverness. One or the other from the usual group of selfaware actors - Julianne Moore, Seymour Hoffman, Malkovich - would be likely brought around to be the center of multiple overlapping vision. We'd get a big, complex synecdoche of the various threads, that is in line with the Western understanding of life as a complicated narrative.But, this is Japanese and derives all its power from subtle flow in the view: one aspect of this, is that we never see the actual transcendent films except a few glimpses, and only glimpses of them being put together, usually involving camera set-up and rehearsals from memory. The action often takes place in some blurred foreground. See, it was never about the actual films as vaguely artistic tokens. It was about sculpting a feel that guides you back to the light, and that is left entirely in our sphere of having discovered our cherished moment, and rehearsed that moment as the film provides the framework of cinematic space around it. It is pure Zen: cultivating the air you breathe.The other aspect is that we have actual people reminiscing. Oh, some of it was staged, some of it real, but you can't know most of the time and there's no point to that. It matters that all of it impresses as a seamless flow of graceful reminiscence.I'd have liked less obviously scripted romance and more of these people and filming the air, which is one of the coveted memories anyway, but Koreeda probably needed a safe anchor he could control using ordinary - dramatic - means. That should be his next adventure.I recently discovered a wonderful Russian film a bit like this, that one a documentary, this one ostensibly a drama, but the boundaries are slippery, about aged ballet dancers in their 80's and 90's conducting between them a wonderful ballet of remembrance. It felt graceful because the people telling their story were, and each breath from that story infused the cinematic air, and so it is here, except in a much more quietly ordinary way, since the people are ordinary.Chris Marker would have liked both, I like to think. He did his own film about a Russian filmmaker reminiscing on a journey of staged dreams and fleeting memories. It's called The Last Bolshevik, the Russian documentary is Ballets Russes. You should look them up.And so it comes full circle.

A run down school, a seemingly random group of people conducting awkward interviews with new arrivals seems an odd way to look at the afterlife, but Kore-eda has created something really special with this film. He somehow makes an enormously unlikely scenario for purgatory - where the dead are asked to select the memory they wish to hold onto forever, and (most unlikely!), this is recreated by a ramshackle low budget film crew, and turns it into something profound and beautiful. The film is a truly remarkable ensemble effort - there are no real stars in this film (despite a beautiful minor part from that truly great actress, Kyoko Kagawa), even the most minor characters (including an adorable old lady in the throes of a mercifully pleasant dementia) are given their own time and space and are depicted wonderfully. Dull looking salarimen who struggle to find memories that are worth keeping are shown to have lives of real depth and quality. A schoolgirl is dissuaded from a clichéd remembrance of a nice day in Disneyland, and instead remembers a beautiful moment with her mother. A mouthy, sex obsessed older man is shown to be boastful simply as a way of hiding the real love he has for his daughter. The film is obviously open to all sorts of interpretations, but for what its worth it seems to me to be about the importance of those small moments of joy, of grace, that make life worth living. Interestingly, he implies that those moments don't necessarily have to have really happened - it is the memory that is important, not the reality. Just one moment of ecstasy is maybe just enough for a life worth living.The film sounds quirky and slow, and it is paced at the speed of life - slow, but all too fast at the end. But it is never less than engrossing and in the end, beautiful and moving. Kore- edas films are not disposable entertainment, they are real art of the type that will stay with you forever if you allow them to wash over you. Try it, you won't regret it.

Alright, I seem to be more excited about the reviews than the actual movie. So many people seem to have gotten so much out of this film and that is wonderful. Often our perspective is a reflection on where we are in life. I initially went online to understand what the was the point of the movie because I was confused. It was the highest rated film that I had watched in a while. Unfortunately, I am not one to give up on things, but I was in pain for it to end. I had hoped it would have some redeeming quality.The premise of the film is certainly a novel thought as far as movie plots go. I have often found foreign film plots to have more substance and reality than many of the American films. The plot reminds me of someone who is going to have Alzheimer's except they can retain one memory. To me, Alzheimer's is s very disturbing form of existence. Basically our hereafter is a loss of memory with only one thought in tack. The other reviews that I read tend to avoid this literal interpretation and speak of increasing our own perspective of life and I can see that. I thank them for sharing their interpretation. Some of the things we attach ourselves are trivial in scheme of things and this is a great awareness, I just didn't get that from the movie. I guess, I have more of a question about our perspectives than the movie. How is it that we can watch the same movie and range from excitement to sheer boredom. I do love the diversity of this world, so for those who get indignant when someone doesn't agree, just let it go.I suppose I was looking for meaning in the movie and only found a greater meaning in the reviews. I did get a kick out of some of the poor reviews because those folks had a great sense of humor. Let's agree to disagree. Just don't invite me over for another viewing.

Some might find the premise of this movie to be ridiculous, but the premise isn't the main part of this movie although it seems like it was trying to take itself seriously. The premise is about a normal looking building where dead people gather and alive in spirit and there is counselors and trainee that will help the people that died choose one memory that they will take with them for all of eternity. So basically the dead spirits are in a hotel until they pick a memory and move on. Also the memory is shown to the spirits through videotapes. I found it sort of humorous that the dead people in this are all Japanese with Japanese counselors and trainee and they all only speak Japanese and where clothes that look like it's from the 80's although there is a reason behind the way they are dressed, but like I said the premise is part of it, a lot of it but still part of it. The movie sort of feels like a documentary with interviews of the dead during part of the after life although the premise is ridiculous and also since there is almost no music it plays a big factor in it. This movie has it's target audience, mainly because of it's artsy style but isn't for everyone. I sort of found this movie to be a bit tedious at times and although the life stories of the dead people was believable for the most part but it was boring to listen to. It's like your when your on a bus, train or even on a plane where some old people constantly ramble on and on and just won't stop talking about their past. In fact in the movie "Airplane!" the people that hear the protagonist's story killed themselves out of boredom. I wouldn't go that extreme but it was boring to watch these interviews, plus the protagonist's life story in "Airplane!" had some humor in it. Don't get me wrong I enjoy watching artsy films that isn't really for the mainstream, however I didn't enjoy this movie all that much. Perhaps I am missing something because despite the positive reviews this movie has been getting, I didn't think it was that great. On a positive note this movie does somewhat makes you reflect on certain parts of your life and the humanistic aspects is done pretty well. The movie moves very slowly but sometimes it can be slightly absorbing, but the only thing that kept me watching was to find out the ending and that was the main reason. This film has some good elements but it just isn't utilized that well, I probably won't be seeing this movie again seeing how I struggled while watching it the first time. But like I said this movie has it's target audience, I just wasn't really one of them.6.5/10