Where can I read Japanese film reviews of "Letters from Iwo Jima?"?

Question

I just saw the film and enjoyed it, but had a few questions and reservations (e.g., only the most American-influenced Japanese soldiers seemed capable of mercy or compassion).

I'd like to know how Japanese film critics have received the film. I know it's playing in Shibuya, for example, and was a box office hit in its first weekend, but can't find any reviews online.

I am especially interested in finding professionally published film reviews on the film, available online, from Japanese media, i.e. newspapers, magazines, TV broadcasts.

I'm posting this question here instead of under "film" in hopes of reaching more people who are in Japan, or who have more access than I do to Japanese media sources.

Answer 1

Like Alex says there are few actual film critics in Japan. Basically, a film critic's job in Japan is to get people to watch movies. Therefore being critical is not part of the job description. Typical Japanese "film critics" always find something nice to say about even the lamest flicks-"action fans will enjoy this one", or fans of so and so won't want to miss it.

A film that is actually really good often just gets described with superlatives, not with any real description of why it's so good. Or else the reviewer just says he found the movie heartwarming or inspiring or something subjective like that. Thus all movies are above average in Japan according to the critics.

Answer 2

There aren't nearly as many "pro" film reviewers in Japan as there are in English-speaking countries. For one thing, watching movies in theaters is a much smaller business in Japan, at least in part because the regular price of a movie ticket is 1800yen (about $15). For another thing, big media outlets tend not to do things that might insult advertisers, such as a potentially negative review. As such, there are very few online film review sites on the scale of something like rottentomatoes.com.

Doing a search, I found a lot of amateur reviews; on Yahoo Movies, for example, the average user rating (from 1722 users) is 4.19 stars out of 5. Hope that helps some.

Answer 3

These are the two sites I usually go to when I want to read movie reviews.

Hope that helps.

English reviews:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498380/

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809425051/info

Japanese reviews:
http://moviessearch.yahoo.co.jp/detail/tymv/id324563/