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Reviews
Kudakechiru tokoro o misete ageru (2020)
Unexpected gem
I went into this film blind without knowing anything more than its bizarre and inscrutable title.
Right off the bat, excellent cinematography. An early scene follows the young Kiyozumi running into and through his high school which superbly captures the frantic moment in what seems like real time, with a camera that shares our early confusion. At one point Kiyozumi drops his gear at his desk and then dashes out an out-of-sight second door, and the camera is apparently just as surprised as I am as it pans back out the first door to keep track. Now it's only five minutes in and I'm fully engaged.
I'm not going to say anything more about the characters or the plot except that (as became clear from the early scene described above) it unwaveringly follows Kiyozumi. If you connect well with him and his motivations (and I did, despite taking exception to a rather dubious and unexplained decision made by him about 2/3s in) you'll love this movie.
I was extremely satisfied with the ending.
Mr. Nobody (2009)
Celebrating ambiguity
This remarkable film celebrates the ambiguity of life. What-if questions are answered in ways that are visually stunning and emotionally touching.
Have you ever been through an emotional, traumatic, or difficult situation and wanted to just be able to detach yourself from the situation? Maybe to see it from the third person, and imagine the confluence of an immense multitude of events that got you there. Or to wonder how any number of otherwise completely insignificant changes would have taken you elsewhere yet rendering you none the wiser. Perhaps a clearly life-altering choice is materializing before your very eyes.
Mr. Nobody will, in one way or another, visualize all these perspectives. You will enjoy its interleaving of romanticism and harsh reality, in a way that makes it feel very genuine and real in spite of its sci-fi undertones. In this respect, its mixed timeline of emotion, romance, and regret are quite reminiscent of Makoto Shinkai's "5 Centimeters Per Second", and is equally touching.