- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
100The movie is uncommonly absorbing.
-
100Heart-warming, funny, wise and profound. Not to be missed.
-
90On its own terms, Departures is a thing of rare and remarkable beauty.
-
The film manages to be anything but dark; whimsy and sweet irony are laced throughout, a warmhearted blend that turned it into the surprise winner of 2008's Oscar for foreign-language film.
-
90Beautiful moments abound. In Departures, the contemplation of death prepares the way for an appreciation of life.
-
88Though events unravel predictably, the film is profoundly affecting, thanks to a well-written story, rich characters and superlative acting.
-
88A surprisingly uplifting examination of life and loss.
-
Yojiro Takita, who directed enduring commercial hits like "The Ying Yang Master" and "The Yen Family," has made a popular gem -- thematically respectable, technically hard to fault, artfully scripted to entertain and touch.
-
80It will absolutely delight the art-house crowd. Multiplexes will be crowded with noisy summer films, after all, from which Departures will represent a sophisticated and elegant departure.
-
Departures is built for simplicity, and, if nothing else, the appeal to decency and integrity of this sweetly old-fashioned tale make it a must for Bernie Madoff's prison Netflix queue.
-
78Gentle and comedically nuanced exercise in mourning.
-
75Yojiro Takita's movie simultaneously tickles tears of mourning as it wrings laughs about the meaning of life.
-
75The film is far from perfect but has enough going on to compensate for its excessive length and some sentimentality.
-
75The fascination, humor and poignancy of Departures, this year's winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, rests in the Japanese ceremony of preparing bodies for their caskets.
-
75Sometimes macabre and sometimes manipulative, but the way it speaks to the spirit is miraculous.
-
70TV scribe Kundo Koyama's first bigscreen script peppers the proceedings with rich character detail and near-screwball interludes that shouldn't fit but somehow do.
-
70It is as polished as it is heavy-handed, and it leaves one under a spell.
-
70Director Yojiro Takita uses the changing seasons to echo the characters' moods; the score by Joe Hisaishi (Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle) has a suitably majestic sweep.
-
67Departures is tender and, at times, rather squishy. It's sure to squeeze the tear ducts of anyone who has lost a parent.
-
63This is the kind of tastefully poignant drama that asks its audience to confront taboos and then pats them on the back for doing so.
-
58Departures is sappy and wacky – not the best combination.
-
50The acting is quite deft, if extremely broad, but screenwriter Kundo Koyama seesaws uncertainly between jokes and grief.
-
50Takita could easily trim 30 minutes of flab and oceans of tears from Departures. It still wouldn't merit an Oscar, but it would be a lot more watchable.
-
Departures is, well … a nice film. It breaks no new ground, offers no audacious insights or rude revelations.
-
50It will resonate with anyone who has ever buried a loved one and struggled to reconcile the myriad emotions--grief, anger, helplessness. Which is to say, everyone. And yet out of this premise comes glop. Departures needed a little more work in the morgue--like cutting to the bone.
-
50Overlong, predictable in its plotting and utterly banal in its blending of comic whimsy and melodramatic pathos.
-
42Here's a great way to start savoring life: Don't waste it on pat manipulations like this.