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      Dolls

      2002, Drama/Romance, 1h 53m

      41 Reviews 10,000+ Ratings

      What to know

      Critics Consensus

      Dolls doesn't offer easy answers, but for audiences attuned to its beguiling wavelength, writer-director Takeshi Kitano's work offers rich, distinctive rewards. Read critic reviews

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      Movie Info

      In this visually stunning drama, three romantic tales are told using elements of Japanese Bunraku puppet theater. In the first, Sawako (Miho Kanno) becomes suicidal when her fiancé, Matsumoto (Hidetoshi Nishijima), leaves her to marry the boss's daughter. Next, an obsessed fan, Nukui (Tsutomu Takeshige), expresses his love for pop singer Haruna (Kyoko Fukada) in a highly violent manner. Then, aging gangster Hiro (Tatsuya Mihashi) attempts to reconnect with an old flame (Chieko Matsubara).

      • Genre: Drama, Romance

      • Original Language: Japanese

      • Director: Takeshi Kitano

      • Producer: Masayuki Mori, Takio Yoshida

      • Writer: Takeshi Kitano

      • Release Date (Theaters):  original

      • Release Date (Streaming):

      • Box Office (Gross USA): $4.1K

      • Runtime:

      • Distributor: Palm Pictures

      • Production Co: TV Tokyo, Bandai Visual Co. Ltd., Office Kitano

      • Sound Mix: Surround, Dolby Digital

      Cast & Crew

      Tatsuya Mihashi
      Chieko Matsubara
      Kyoko Fukada
      Tsutomu Takeshige
      Joe Hisaishi
      Katsumi Yanagijima
      Takeshi Kitano
      Norihiro Isoda
      Yohji Yamamoto

      Critic Reviews for Dolls

      Audience Reviews for Dolls

      • Mar 25, 2011
        I nearly stopped watching this in the first ten minutes, but luckily once the Japanese dolls were put away, it became more of a Kitano film. Three stories about love, though you'd have to be Pollyanna to find much goodness in the co-dependent relationships of the three couples who are melancholic or just plain irritating, depending on your POV. Watch with caution if you're suffering unrequited love. It might give you all sorts of ideas. <img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2418/2018201330_07cdab0fc8.jpg">
        Super Reviewer
      • Mar 03, 2011
        When I viewed Takeshi Kitano's "Dolls" I was told I would either love or hate the film. In retrospect, neither of those emotions crossed my mind. I merely though the film was OK. I certainly enjoyed piecing together the three stories and dissecting the themes, symbolism and being taken under it's visual spell- but I couldn't help being reminded by so many other, better films. The film is about obsession (clearly taken from "Vertigo"), it deals with relationships where the couples are imploding but bound together (clearly taken from "Eyes Wide Shut"- with the same use of color and music), and it's about the emotional violence men can inflict on weak woman (clearly taken from "In the Company of Men"; "Dolls" also adopts, without the grace Neil Labute's film had, the idea that ALL women are weak, pitiful messes). "Dolls" just seemed like a rehash of better and more interesting films- granted, it has beautiful imagery, but that alone does not make a great.
        Super Reviewer
      • Jan 24, 2010
        Extraordinarily beautiful, with bittersweet stories and lovely art direction.
        Super Reviewer
      • Nov 19, 2009
        You know usually I'm very open towards these kinds of films, what I mean by that is that I'm usually open when filmmakers try new things, to broaden their horizons, to just make a different film than what people are used to seeing from you. It's something that, I'm sure, filmmakers take great pleasure in doing as it keeps their careers from feeling stale. With that said, but I was just really bored by this movie. Plus it didn't exactly fit in with the theme of today's marathon, well it had SOME of it in there but like I said, this movie is the odd one out of the movies I picked for the marathon. But yea, I was just bored by this movie, there's like literally next-to-nothing going on here. The storylines, while interesting on paper, just don't come across that well on screen. They're not fully developed and they just come up falling short. Like what was the point of the pop-star and the blind man in the movie, it just seemed really pointless. The only real interesting story was the yakuza boss one and that had an anticlimatic ending, which makes sense considering the Boss' profession, but still anticlimactic (same as the pop-star/blind man ending). Also the fact of the matter is that the main story line, of the couple bound together was just a pace killer, literally every time they came on I would just shrug because it would literally detach me from everything else that was going on in the movie and I just couldn't care any less for these two. Sure the movie's cinematography is really impressive, but it really isn't enough to make the movie good, it's really just average at best. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't encourage Takeshi Kitano to do more movies like these, just to make sure they're interesting, because filmmakers nowadays need to take risks even if they fail, it might help revitalize their careers.
        jesse o Super Reviewer

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