It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Viewed at CineMatsuri 2015. Director Yoshihiro Nakamura utilizes a murder mystery plot device as a vehicle to explore troubling facets of modern Japanese society. This is a clever , original, but also somewhat derivative photo play. The Director simultaneously exploits an on-screen mash up of multiple contemporary communication media to tell his tale. Pictorial presentation of the flow of instant messaging is especially well done. Nakamura also shows a subculture seldom (if ever) seen by those living on the outside. It is the working environment of female office clerks and low-level salary women. And the explosive impact that seemingly trivial matters can have by engendering mental illness and murder. The shallow nature and undue influence of 7/24 social media on those who follow and engage in these communication channels is repeatedly underlined. There is an abundance of red herring and misinformation as well as subtitle cues as to the identity of the murder. Nakamura uses the common murder mystery mechanism (especially on TV) of repeating the same scene over and over again, each time from a different character's point of view to slowly remove question marks on viewers' collective foreheads and unmask the culprit. The film is much too long and padded with mostly irrelevant childhood experiences apparently to add depth to character development (and to further engage the viewer using cute child actors?). The closing scenes are clearly contrived (one gets the feeling that multiple endings may have been shot and someone other than the Director picked this one). Cinematography (1.78 aspect ratio, color) and lighting are excellent. Set decoration seems a bit inconsistent. Music fits in well with other film components. Subtitles are fine. However, only above-the-line names are translated in the credits. Highly recommended. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

This crime suspense is definitely worth your money since it includes so many elements: apart from the usual murder suspense and guess who is the killer, weaved into the mystery is the role of twitter and gossip-style TV programmes. Also, buried into the core of the murder of the beautiful snow white office lady Noriko Miki (Nanao) is the fundamental belief/myth that beauty is often associated with a positive personality. Added to all these is how we choose/reconstruct our memory and express ourselves.With such a rich plot the script and direction has to be systematically laid out and they do. The audience can easily be sucked into the story from the beginning when TV crew Yuji Akahoshi (Go Ayano) goes to a friend Risako Karino (Misako Renbutsu)'s house to be informed of a murder in her company.The movie opens well and creates an impression that the beautiful Noriko (Snow White) is nice and kind and innocent. As the story slowly unfolds, we discover that she is not as perfect as she appears to be and our main suspect, her co-worker Miki Shirono (Mao Inoue) is not as bad as she seems. The way the movie lays out testimonials from different people who talk about their selected reality or even lie about it is very enticing. It is sort of like Rashomon but despite all these different versions there is got to be only one reality. Therefore it becomes very interesting deducing each witness' different motives and whether they are lying. It is extremely intriguing to see how colleagues and coworkers perceive the same person and recount their experience with that person differently. What is most interesting is that their evidence do not add up because it is not a conventional/professional police investigation which supposedly cross-examines different witnesses and irons out conflicting facts. Instead, it is from the point of view of data collection for a juicy talk show and a personal twitter of one of the TV crew. I am not familiar with Japanese justice system but this type of talk show, going on air while police is still investigating the case, could easily cause the TV station to be committing contempt of court. Other than exposing how human selectively remember/recount their experience, these interviews are also done in absolute free flow. In order words, there are no follow up questions for verification or triangulation of the evidence. Ditto the twitters of the crew. With the explosion of information and democratic use of social media, everyone can act like a journalist or columnist but that might not necessarily lead to fairness or justice. With an unsophisticated audience, the public can easily be misled and even a police investigation could easily be skewed. The situation almost steer into online bully and media trial which is grossly unfair to the people involved. I wish the script could explore more on this aspect. In a way, there are probably too many characters involved too. Therefore, it may be difficult to depict the main storyline deep enough or the motive plausible enough. The movie seems to lose momentum after the TV crew goes to the suspect's hometown and the audience learn more about the early years of some of the main characters. The ending was somehow weak and meek compared with the enticing beginning and smooth development. I quite enjoyed the same author Kanae Minato's previous work Confession. But this story is a little overbuilt with a weak end. In terms of crime thriller, I think it is not as good as Gone Girl, although both were written by a female author depicting a female killer. However, the Snow White Murder Case is quite worth watching as it makes you wonder what lies behind each person's façade, regardless of their beauty, their name and their position.

The film starts with Noriko, a tall, young and attractive office lady of a cosmetics company that specializes in making 'Snow White' soap who was brutally stabbed several times and then burned in a national park. When a temporary news director, Akahoshi, who works at a news company hears some insider information from a friend, who works the same company as the victim, he decided to seize the opportunity to find the suspected killer and reveal these details to the public before the police. Akahoshi reveals his investigation online and soon, news spreads across the social media like wildfire.Adapted from a best-selling Japanese novel by Kanae Minato, The Snow White Murder Case is a well-written, nicely executed and well-acted drama thriller that tells a gripping story with enough twists and turns to sustain viewer's interest along the way. First and foremost, the film pays not much attention to the actual police investigation for the crime, but choose to focus on the public and the people who are connected to the victim or prime suspect instead. It's a modern cautionary tale about the destructive power of social media, how it can twist the fabric of truth. It examines closely how misunderstandings or misinterpretation of a person's character can potentially ruin a person's life.The film also exposes the judgmental nature of the public in the wake of accessible information online. Throughout the film, you get to see different versions of the same events, as told from different points of view and perspectives from many people, as each person perceives and remembers things differently. However, there are also a few who chose to tell their own version of the events that happened just to get some media attention, effectively blinding the public from the truth. It's actually quite interesting to watch the details of events shift as the film progresses. The film tries to show the audience that things aren't always what they seem to be on the outside. There are so many intricacies of human actions, emotions and intentions that we always fail to perceive, no matter how smart, intelligent or clever we are. Moreover, the film also tries to show that first impressions can be misleading and appearances can be deceiving. Beautiful women are often invisible to the naked eye. We're always so bedazzled by the outside that we tend to fail to look on the inside. The film slowly takes us deeper into the goings-on in the workplace of the soap company and gives us a brief general look at the fierce competition between women in the workplace and in society. One of the most fascinating aspects of the film is that the viewer's perspective of a certain character changes as the film progresses and we start to empathize her once the truth is slowly revealed through flashbacks which provide an emotional backstory for the main lead. Mao Inoue and Nanao both provide convincing performances in their respective roles, successfully display the multiple facets of their characters well.The Snow White Murder Case impresses me a lot. It's actually quite rare for a crime drama thriller that has a carefully structured premise with so many ideas to convey. It's one of the most compelling, thought-provoking crime drama thrillers this year. Highly recommended.Rating: 8.5/10http://yjcool.blogspot.com/2014/10/movie-review-snow-white-murder- case.html

This is what I love about Japanese cinema. It is not all the time that I could catch a story as gripping as this one. I'm a fan of crime mysteries and this one is a treat! I have "Confessions", a Japanese film, in my mind during my first watch of TSWMC. Although it is not as psychological and as dark as the earlier film, there was still the trademark of the wonderful skill of plot construction of its writer. (Both films are based on her novels) I liked this film even more because of the appearances of Mao Inoue and Mitsuki Tanimura, and also because the theme of the use of social network inappropriately at times is timely and significant. Direction was okay, it did not feel forced and I liked it that way. Actors did really well. Not much of violence were shown. You'll like this even more if you're a fan of plot twists in movies. Personally this is the best Japanese film (if not the best film at all) I've seen this year so far. (Review previously posted on my Letterboxd account.) I recommend this crime mystery/drama.