Product: Tokyo Sonata (2008)
Rating: 3.0
The same tired cliches and obligatory scenes
The previous reviews did an exemplary job of summarizing the film, so I'll be brief and simply say that while the first half of the film was stunning -- a cinematic left hook to the bland sterility of post-modern culture -- I found that the movie fell into the same cliché-ridden traps and seemingly mandatory scenes that plague so much of Japanese cinema: the boob-grab scene, the sexual assault scene in which the female invariably comes to enjoy things, the junior-is-a-prodigy character, and the ending scene whereby life may not be all peaches 'n cream but at least it's livable. I had great, great hopes for this film -- from the time I first read its review in the New York Times until it was at last available for purchase -- but the best I can give it is a weak 3 stars. It SHOULD have been a 5-star film -- the potential was there and the first half of the movie was outstanding, but I can't overlook the rest of it. I wish that I could, but I can't.