Shoplifters

A film that just grows and grows and grows. It seems very quiet, but you are absolutely hooked.

[Shoplifters] is a film edged by despair, and yet is life-affirming. Families may disintegrate, but love keeps us ticking over.

Writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda fills the film with grace notes, humor and fine observations, circling and filling out each character while leaning more on innocence than corruption.

It's the perfect depiction of the line between being a good person and being law-abiding, and how that's not a border, but a Venn diagram.

Kore-eda marshals his considerable talents to tell what initially appears to be another story of family love and perseverance in the margins of society.

This kind of subtle richness is not new for Kore-Eda, though it's as satisfying here as it's ever been.

The actors, young or old, transform themselves fully to make what some may regard as their “unexamined lives” worth living, worth recounting, and for observers, worth admiring for their internal fortitude, honesty, and resulting sagacity.

Hirokazu Kore-eda is one of my favorite directors working today and he did not disappoint with Shoplifters.

You feel like you’re watching the lives of real people as the story grows and sprouts. It makes the smaller moments of bonding, such as a trip to the beach, all the more charming. Yet it also makes the eventual truths all the more shocking.

The best movies teach you something you may not have already considered, and Shoplifters might do just that for many people, especially families.