Average Rating: 6.4/10
Reviews Counted: 89
Fresh: 60 | Rotten: 29
An emotional film where Toni Collette gets to show her impressive range.
Average Rating: 6.5/10
Critic Reviews: 30
Fresh: 21 | Rotten: 9
An emotional film where Toni Collette gets to show her impressive range.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 5,157
Following their feature debut, Road to Nhill, in 1997, screenwriter Alison Tilson and director Sue Brooks team up again for the Australian drama Japanese Story. Toni Collette stars as Sandy Edwards, an ambitious geologist who is most comfortable when working alone. She also runs a software design company with a business partner, Bill Baird (Matthew Dyktynski), and she doesn't get along very well with her mother (Lynette Curran). While trying to sell their software products, Bill asks for her
Dec 31, 2003 Limited
May 11, 2004
$0.2M
Samuel Goldwyn Films
All Critics (97) | Top Critics (31) | Fresh (66) | Rotten (30) | DVD (15)
An underdeveloped film that requires all of [Collette's] ample skills merely to rise to the mediocre.
Lots of pictures begin strongly only to lose their focus; this one gains momentum with every sequence -- ambivalent at first, we're firmly hooked by the final frame.
Tsunashima gives a deft performance in a role that starts out as caricature but becomes full-bodied. Collette commands the screen virtually the entire time.
Starts off promisingly. Eventually, though, it collapses into melodrama.
Fails to engage us in the lives of its characters because it never really introduces them.
A mediocre, self-consciously arty story.
Yet another addition to the renaissance in women-focused movies, that engages the viewer with fresh perspectives on emotion and desire.
A film so impressive that it belongs in the top-ten lists of hopeless romantics everywhere.
Despite an uninspiring first half, the film delivers a strong emotional impact in its final reels.**
A heartbreaking and complex film about human relationships.
Mixing cultural comedy, survival tension, unlikely romance and an extreme about turn, it's a moving and unusual film.
A raw emotional journey in which character is everything -- although the scenery is spectacular.
It's powerful, but fatally contrived
Japanese Story gives Australian actress Toni Collette a chance to demonstrate the full range of her acting skills in a cross-cultural tale filled with many surprises.
Toni Collette is one of those hot old chicks that I can't say no to. The movie was fun, I like Aussie stuff. She makes a good Aussie with her bad teeth and leathery skin. Moral of the story: don't go swimming in Australia?
November 19, 2007Super Reviewer
It's a very nice movie to get if you're in a foreign romance movie kinda mood. I didn't think the story in itself was amazing but it was worth the watch.
May 16, 2007Super Reviewer
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