Asian Cinema

After Life

This unpretentious, endearing film is a modest triumph. Based on interviews with more than 500 people about the one memory they would choose to take with them to heaven, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-Eda has modeled a unique blend of documentary and fiction that addresses the vagaries of memory but also what it means to make films. After Life transpires in a sort of way station where the dead must select one memory to be re-created on film and taken on with them forever, relinquishing everything else. Over the span of a week, a dedicated group of caseworkers tease out self-deceptions as well as real epiphanies from 22 different lives. An old woman remembers reuniting with her husband on a crowded bridge after World War II; a man recollects the breeze felt on a tram ride the day before summer vacation; a successful man faces his own treachery. Remembering becomes a courageous act in the casual exposition of this lovely film. --Fionn Meade

Fireworks

A superstar and cultural icon in his native Japan, Takeshi "Beat" Kitano has conquered more than one medium, but he is best known in the West for his remarkable films. Among those, Fireworks is the clear favorite, a taut and enigmatic noir that fluctuates between perfect stillness and savage eruptions of violence.

Kitano plays a cop named Nishi, a determinedly impassive man whose face occasionally ripples with an involuntary tic, hinting at the explosive but contained forces within. Nishi's wife (Kayato Kishimoto) is dying of leukemia, a disease that already killed their child, and he cares for her with a shattering tenderness. While on a stakeout, Nishi takes a break to check in on her, and while he's gone his partner is crippled and another officer is killed. With death hovering at home and a score to settle outside, Kitano's hero sets off on an isolated course to seek justice.

Few filmmakers have understood as well as Kitano has here the irresistible draw of a thriller told with a moody calmness, with an eye toward graceful construction and rigorous composition. The careful, unhurried dispensing of story information also helps keep the focus on Nishi's warrior soul, on his mysterious capacity for the extremes of gentleness and brutality. The story here is the way one man can be the sum of such bold contradictions, and a great story it is. --Tom Keogh

Chunhyang

Maborosi

Hirokazu Kore-eda's haunting, graceful Japanese film features a concentrated and powerfully reserved performance by Makiko Esumi as Yumiko, a young woman whose life is defined by the death and disappearance of her loved ones. As a child, she witnessed her grandmother's walking away from her family; as an adult, she must face the fact that her husband has committed suicide.

Impeccably lit and framed, this self-consciously classical first feature blends characteristics of two of the great Japanese masters: a sensitive portrait of a woman's suffering is reminiscent of Mikio Naruse and a serene, minimalist style is suggestive of Yasujiro Ozu. At times, Kore-eda seems to be trudging too dutifully in the path of his illustrious predecessors, and there is little in the film that could be qualified as original. Yet Maborosi remains convincing in its subtle, sustained moods and the quiet confidence of its approach. --Dave Kehr