Sick Product of a Sick System

Highly Overrated But Still Good

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

A genre that seems only to work coming out of Japan. The magical fantasy is better known in the US thru Miyazaki's animations such as "My Neighbor Totoro" or "Sprited Away". The subject is usually ordinary people encountering wondrous happenings that have a deeper spiritual meaning. This film is a live action entry in the genre and it succeeds for the most part. American equivalents are films like "Magnolia" or "Big Fish".In a small town dead people start to reappear just as they were right before they died minus any disfigurement that may have been a result of the circumstances of their death. A young bureaucrat is sent to investigate. By coincidence he grew up in the town and he meets his childhood friend, a woman who married his best male friend. Several families who have dead loved ones return are featured in the drama. The actors are almost all very good and they put across the emotional turmoil caused by the reappearance of their loved ones. The movie moves forward in a deliberate yet sometimes non-linear manner. The photography is excellent and very natural. I would have given the movie 9 stars if not for something that ruined the mood for me. For such a well written and sincere film, I wonder who came up with the idea of creating a pop group for the film and centering the climax around a concert. Nothing in the film has anything to do with a concert. As soon as the concert starts the drama film turns into a concert film. One song was passable, two songs is an understandable mistake, three songs ruined it for me. The excuse for having the group in the film is flimsy at best. If you like J-Pop perhaps your opinion will be different, I just wished I could have seen a version of this film without the concert.Excellent fantasy, heed my warning about the concert but watch it anyway.

I bought the DVD of Yomigaeri entirely because of Takeuchi Yuko ("Be with you", "Heaven's bookstore"), whose smile is guaranteed to brighten up any miserable day. I then discovered that the director is Shiota Akihiko, who made the controversial but most interesting Moonlight Whisper. Yomigaeri is not in the least controversial, but equally interesting.The title "Resurrection" tells a little, but not everything, about the movie – a scary ghost tale? a clever hoax? a science fiction yarn? Interesting that the genre in which IMDb placed this movie is "Fantasy". If I were to choose, I would say "romance".The movie starts with a bit of a red herring, with the first two resurrection scenes (the pop musician couple and the little boy) looking like the beginning of scary ghost stories. The mood soon shifts to science fiction, with an investigation team showing up and cases becoming commonplace. Before we get to the middle of the movie, however, we realize that the focus is really on the human stories, with human dramas unfolding.The resurrections are on deaths ranging from a long time ago to very recent. On the one hand, we see the little kid coming back to a mother who is now over 80, a mother coming back to a daughter who is now about her own age (i.e. when she died of childbirth) and a teenager coming back to an adult younger brother. On the other hand, we have a husband who died only three years ago, and even a high school student walking right into his own funeral.As we follow these various stories, we see that it is not all rejoices, as people, both those coming back from death and their beloved ones and friends, find it awkward, and even painful, to cope with the change. There is also a clever twist, about two third into the movie, which you would recognize as soon as you see it.The movie is beautifully shot, both in the literal visual sense and in its being tender and touching. The premises are interesting, and quite well tackled even though not in great depth. As there are quite a few stories and many characters, the stars Takeuchi Yuko and Kusanagi Tsuyoshi (of SMAP, Japan's most popular boy-band) do not get the screen time all to themselves. Still, we see a reasonable amount of them, and they are beautiful, individually as well as together.

Maybe it was the physical situation I was in, strapped into a bucking 'plane, on my way from my loving family to a family reunion, but this made me cry non-stop. I watched this in total darkness, straining to read the subtitles off a tiny in 'plane "entertainment unit". My brother, sitting next to me, without any of the emotional baggage (his "family" is less "loving" than mine!) kept asking me what was the matter! The twists and turns in the storyline should reward the most demanding mystery fan. The power and passion in the love story should satisfy the most romantic. I watched this three times in four flights, and it gave me everything I needed, every time I watched it. Now I've just got to convince a local company to provide me with a DVD!!

The dead were here because they wanted to let the alive know the meaning of their lives. When they went away, everyone found themselves a new way to live on. Yomigaeri just shows these all.The child lost in the wood, the wife died from pregnancy, the school student who suicided himself......those we missed so much suddenly came in reality. They dug out the emotion that we didn't pay attention to or were ashamed to express, and the feeling was so precious now.The flame of love between the leading actor and actress finally appeared. If they didn't experience this event, they probably lost each other. Love is of great power, especially in front of death. Although the time to be with each other was short and farewell was at hand, it was enough.