Over the Fence

First Nobuhiro Yamashita I've seen and I already feel like this will shape up to be an interesting body of work. At times it almost feels unsympathetic to the stragglers of society that it's depicting, but that could also be part of the self-loathing that everyone's working through. Joe Odagiri works the deadbeat dad angle as good as anyone.

This I did not understand. The camerawork is nice and the film has a wonderful atmosphere but all the human interaction just feels off. Perhaps something is lost in translation here because I felt like I was watching someone's first movie where they aren't quite sure how to pace a conversation or an emotional moment. The female lead seems like she was tasked to read up on bipolar disorder and decided to just riff off of the name itself. If anything, this made me appreciate Koreeda more deeply.

a little simple and weird (Aoi Yu as the bipolar wench? come on) but still charming