Rental Family

As someone less familiar with Japanese filmography beyond a watch of the recent hit, Shogun, this was refreshingly different, but not in an unapproachable way; the friendly face of Brendan Fraser provides an instant point of recognition for westerners such as myself. Throughout this two-hour journey, the audience are given insight into the many joys and throws of modern Japanese culture, whether it comes from cleverly written emotional dialogue or visual cues such as the Monster Cat Festival - yet the film is far from an oversimplification of modern Japan - as Takehiro Hira says in an opening sequence, you could live in Tokyo for 100s of years and still not uncover all of its secrets. Director Hikari builds upon this cultural foundation with a poignant and hilarious emotional odyssey, featuring gut-wrenching moments of pain juxtaposed by much needed comedic relief. Neither sides are done cheaply - although the plot is generally predictable, it does not need to be complex; the writing is intelligent enough by itself. I thoroughly look forward to the film's general release, when I will be attending again for a second viewing!

Saw this film at the Virginia Film Festival, and it such a beatifully done film. The touching theme of connections between people and those who are missing something.

Brendan Fraser's performance was masterful that only he could have brought to this project.

Hikari brings together the beauty of human connection and Tokyo in such an amazing way in this film.

I've been curious about this film for a while and it had such an interesting premise to me that I had to see this one. I think this film is absolutely heart wrenching and just throws so much emotional moments towards you that it gets you really close to crying or crying already. Brendan Fraser is just absolutely phenomenal and truly delivered yet another absolutely remarkable performance and the moments between Mia and Kikuo had me absolutely so emotional and really just elevated this film even more for me. The story here is absolutely beautiful and it's really a fresh concept which has you really thinking about the storyline going here and how Hikari truly had a brilliant idea with a beautiful work of cinematography and visuals to deliver this film which elevates it even higher for me. I really love the film delves the audience into more about the Japanese culture as that's something I'm not too knowledge about and I love how the film portrays the culture of Japan and all the beauty's and how you can't uncover all of its secrets even if you lived there for 100 years like the film states. I really love the score for the film as well and there's such beautiful moments when the film relies on the score to help bring out more emotional moments with beautiful and astonishing visuals. I feel like the film was a little predictable but that's not anything bad about the film though I feel like sometimes I could just see where things were headed pretty easily I feel like I didn't mind that due to this incredible and emotional story that were following throughout the movie. It's so emotional and wholesome seeing Brendan Fraser's character of Phillip and how he's trying to just help these people if he can possibly can and how he's going out of his way to make sure these people can have memories that can change them for the better. I honestly just think this movie was absolutely fantastic and it had me balling my eyes out near the end of the film due to how beautiful this story truly was and hats off to Brendan Fraser for another incredible performance. This is definitely worth watching in my opinion for sure.

We saw this at TIFF, including a great Q&A with the director afterward. Brendan Fraser is fantastic, as are several of the Japanese actors. The basic premise - that people can be rented to act as substitute friends or family - was shocking to us but is evidently a real part of Japanese culture. While there are numerous minor story arcs, two main ones are each quite compelling; one involving a fatherless girl, and another a fading old man. Their stories will make you both smile and weep.

Almost a perfect movie, I absolutely loved it. I knew nothing about the movie going in, and it was so much fun thinking about the moral implications of what was going on, and thinking about the choices the characters make and about how things would unfold over the course of the movie. The movie has no weak spots in my eyes, I would have changed almost nothing about the film, and I don't want to give anything away so I wont mention what I would have changed but the movie is still a wow from me and wholly earns a 10/10 score.