Tokyo Story
New Yorker Films | Release Date: March 13, 1972 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
100
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
18
Mixed:
0
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
BBCJamie Russell
Hardly anything actually happens, and yet it's one of the most emotionally involving dramas ever made. Read full review
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Tokyo Story moves quite slowly by our Western standards, and requires more patience at first than some moviegoers may be willing to supply. Its effect is cumulative, however; the pace comes to seem perfectly suited to the material. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
[Hara's] sad dignity and emotional generosity are compelling. Read full review
100
The IndependentAnthony Quinn
Yasujiro Ozu's portrait of familial relations, first seen in 1953, is marked by an indefinable melancholy that settles on the frame as softly as snow. Read full review
100
The New York TimesRoger Greenspun
Even on the basis of a limited exposure to his work, the story seems archetypal Ozu. Read full review
100
Slant MagazineChristine Blauvelt
In this exquisite merging of specific and universal, infinite and infinitesimal, Tokyo Story perhaps most clearly illuminates that Ozu is not the most Japanese of filmmakers, but the most human. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubScott Tobias
Above all, Hara's smile and Ryu's sigh are a touching show of good faith and the genuine pleasure they take in each other's company–which, of course, makes their response to life's disappointments all the more poignant. Read full review
100
ColliderAdam Grinwald
Tokyo Story, Ozu’s 1953 magnum opus, has frequently been acclaimed by filmmakers and critics alike as the greatest film ever made, and it very arguably could be. Regardless of where you’d place it on the hierarchy of the “best ever’s", Tokyo Story is certainly the ultimate family film—that is, the ultimate film about family and what family actually means. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesJustin Chang
The movie...remains perhaps the wisest of family dramas, an experience as wrenching as it is restorative. Read full review
100
The Observer (UK)Philip French
This 1953 classic is one of the cinema's most profound and moving studies of married love, ageing and the relations between parents and children. It is flawless and rewards numerous viewings. Read full review
100
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Tokyo Story is as much a journey of discovery as it is an opportunity to reflect. The characters populating this film aren’t strangers. They are our parents, our children, ourselves. Read full review
100
The TelegraphTim Robey
Ozu may have made subtler films, but the clarity of his social critique here is wrenching and unassailable. Read full review
100
Time OutWally Hammond
Often topping lists of the best films of all time, and a great influence on many great directors of the last half century, not least for its purity of expression, this remains one of the most approachable and moving of all cinema’s masterpieces. Read full review
100
Village VoiceEric Hynes
Protracted sequences make you impatient for forward motion, but then, in an instant, you’re left to mourn beauties hastened away. Read full review
100
Total FilmStaff (Not Credited)
Ozu's is a cinema of distillation: no jagged cuts and tracks, just a serenely still camera allowing a purity of emotion to trickle free. The result is a quiet, devastating poignancy that gently envelops you en route to an absolute tear-streamer of an ending. Read full review
100
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
A masterpiece, minimalist cinema at its finest and most complex. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
Acted with transparent subtlety and grace, brilliantly written and beautifully shot from Ozu's customary low camera angles, this superb film is one of cinema history's now universally accepted masterpieces. [14 Jan 2005, p.C6]
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
Delicately constructed and deliberately leisurely, TOKYO STORY allows its dramatic content and thematic concerns to envelop an audience the way social mores envelop the films' characters. Read full review
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