"Shoplifters" film - highly recommended!

Has anyone else seen the film “Shoplifters”? It’s available on the free service Kanopy, which you can access with a library card in a lot of parts of the US.

I watched it the other night and am still thinking about it. One warning if you haven’t seen it - it’s extremely sad, so don’t watch if you are not up for being brought down.

At the same time, it’s a beautiful movie and all the dialogue is in plain Tokyo dialect. It’s a great film to practice your listening skills on, since most of the conversations are pretty natural and simple.

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I just watched it the other day! Sad but also sweet. I wonder how many people in Japan live like that, invisible to the system until something happens. It reminded me of Nobody Knows, but that one was way sadder.

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Possibly because they’re both directed by Koreeda Hirokazu :wink:
I also liked Like Father, Like Son (そして父になる) by him, but I haven’t seen Shoplifters yet.

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I just saw that it is also available on Hulu so I’ll get my tissues ready and watch later today. Thanks for the recommendation.

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As sad as Grave of the Fireflies?

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It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. Absolutely wonderful film. I really love it and highly recommend. I’ve not seen it for a while so I wonder if I would be able to catch more of the dialogue now. My listening skills are still really absent to be honest so I need to work on it but I do notice myself recognising more and more as I go.

No, that is one of the most depressing films ever! (Excellent though) :disappointed_relieved: :sweat_smile: Not nearly as bad as that I don’t think.

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Definitely not that sad, not even close. The overall tone wasn’t all that sad really, there were many lighthearted moments, but the truth of their circumstances certainly was.

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It’s 万引き家族, right? I watched it on a plane some years ago and thought it wasn’t that great. Couldn’t relate to any of the characters and thought there was little development.

I’ve seen it and it was a fantastic film.

At first I thought it was a bit like a collection of mostly inconsequential events. However as I kept watching I was eventually able to make sense of the previous events as you’re slowly fed more and more context and information about the characters. By the end I thought it was quite deep and well-paced. It’s a movie I kept thinking about for a long time after I saw it.

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Yes, at a film festival. I loved it :blush:

I watched it for my Japanese class when it came out during the film festival! I’m glad you brought it back up, I had completely forgotten it! Time to check it out on kanopy

I very much recommend exploring Koreeda’s other movies. I Wish and Still Walking are two good options to start with. :+1:

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“Shoplifters” was great.
So was Tokyo Sonata, Tokyo Story, Departures, Nobody Knows, Soshite Chichi ni Naru, Densha Otoko, Kaseifu no Mita, Tokyo Tower (TV Series), Asa ga Kita (TV Series). The last one made me emotional, pretty much every episode.

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I just watched The Third Murder by the same director, and I must say it left me very confused. I think it was because a lot of nuance was lost in subtitles - definitely not ready to watch without subtitles yet, so I might revisit it in a year or two if I get the chance.

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Watched “Our Little Sister” (海街diary) by the same director last night - I think out of all his movies I’ve watched so far, this may be my favourite. It was very sweet (without being saccharine), very atmospheric, and while there was drama it wasn’t excessive. A very down-to-earth, heartwarming movie full of likeable characters (and beautiful Kamakura scenes). Hirokazu Koreeda really shines at portraying unconventional families, something which was also evident in Shoplifters. Apparently the movie is an adaptation of a manga of the same name.

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