Sheep in the Box

The most beautiful thing in this film needs to be felt with the heart through Kore-eda’s augmented visuals, sound, and use of metaphors. It seems like love is the one element that could tie a family together in the director’s films.

What [Kore-eda] offers is a new way to rethink holding our grief, and the end result is a slight and wistful poem of a movie.

There is life in this film, even if it is buried under a very woolly coat.

For a film that should be touching the rawest of nerves, the death of a child, Sheep in the Box is oddly restrained, making one wonder exactly what there is left for the Kotomes to heal.

Kore-eda Hirokazu is most committed to a New Age-y transcendence that finds its fullest expression in a mawkish finale.

He’s a director who has successfully made us face up to unimaginable darkness, but here seems to evade exploring it himself. It’s an unsatisfying misfire.

Frustratingly limited and unfortunately banal, it’s one of the prolific filmmaker’s most disappointing efforts to date and feels desperately in need of an updated operating system as regards its narrative reach.