Reviews

This film is based on a true story in which a guy named Saroo who gets lost in his childhood and lives far away from his family for a long time, finds out his home and family using Google map. The last part of this film portrays his adventure to find his home and that makes me exiting because I expected that finding home far away from where he lives now using his childhood memories are almost impossible but he makes it. In that process, there are lot of dramas which make me moved as well, such as family problem and his relationship with his girlfriend. Although I loved those parts of this film but the one I loved the most is the last shot which tells the reason why this film is named LION. That is quite surprising ending and makes audience be moved I believe.

Exciting adventure plus, Surprising hear warming ending, wonderful!

This is about a teen drum player and his coach at his music college. The guy is picked up as core player in the coach's jazz band, but he struggles with tough practice. One word which describes this movie would be "emotional" I think. Overall, both the lead character and the coach tell their emotion clearly through words, facial expression or choice they make. Sometimes, it is aggressive, but it shows how they both are serious about playing jazz which makes me be moved. The part I love in this movie the most is the last ten minutes. In that scene, the lead character plays the drum solo and the coach conducts it. Although there is no dialogue, I think that it tells everything in the movie and I lobe the ending with this wonderful scene.

The Crush portrays a boy's love to his teacher in elementary school. He finds himself he loves his teacher but at the same time he knows she has a fiancé. Then the boy comes up with a strategy to take her from her fiancé. In the first half of the story, the boy's purity is portraited well through their dialog. Since the teacher does not take a propose from the boy seriously, the audience might estimate that the story will go that the boy will feel bitter when he grows up and knows it is almost impossible to date with his elementary school teacher in the end of the story. However, through one scene, in which the boy is seriously watching the gun which his father hides it, it gets nervous by making them think that he might kill the fiancé with the gun and makes them surprised because it might be different from the general expectation the audience might have. Although there is no dialogue in that scene, audience can see the scenario. In this sense, I think that this film betrays the expectation on the scenario in a good way and use visual telling effectively.

Lynne, 8-9 year - old girl goes to a Christmas party with her father and brother. At the party, she notices that another girl treats his father as if he is her real father and get jealous and learns something surprising then. Although the story turns out to be not that complicated, I love this movie because it has a nice structure. While I am watching this film, it leaves many questions to my mind, for example, "Why mother does not go to the party?" "Why are there only father and their children in that party?" or "Why the girl is so familiar to Lynne's father even though she is supposed that they are stranger?" and all those questions are answered at the end of the film. I thought that this structure makes the movie interesting and the audience satisfied.

Father and Daughter is an 8 minutes short animation film which portraits the story of a father and a daughter. One day, the father leaves from his daughter by boat. Although she was waiting for his return duriduring her whole life, he never came back until she plows through the grass to see him. I found this film very heartwarming since I could see the deep love between the father and the daughter. Camera work and the tone of the animation are quite simple and their facial expressions are not drawn specifically or even hard to see. However, these elements work to leave the sense of purity and nostalgia in to this story, and portrait the daughter's emotion indirectly. The background music was amazing as well. The mood of the song and tempo change several times according to the phase of the daughter's life, and it can be interpreted as a reflection of her feeling. Music in this film includes the sense of enjoyment in her life, at the same time it tells her reluctance and sadness and a little hope to the situation she is in. Also, because of the absence of dialogue unintentionally think the daughter's emotion or feeling. That led me to rethink about the relationship between myself and father or other family members as well. well.

A moment is a short film portraying four people's struggle for separation from their loved ones and their encounter by coincidence on March 11th, 2012 at the exact time the Great East Japan Earthquake happened which caused tremendous damage and tsunami to east Japan exactly one year earlier. Although there is not any dialogue in this film, the people's mind and message are well illustrated which made me be moved. Besides the absence of the dialogue, I found that the way to approach to the end and convey the message this film uses was very interesting. In the first half of this film, only each situation in which the four people were struggling for losing their loved ones was illustrated and I could not see the reason for it. In the last half of this film, the camera zoomed the screen of the guy's smartphone and it said March 11th, 2012. At this point, I found that those four people were those who lost someone because of the Great East Japan Earthquake and I could see the reason for what they struggled for. Through this structure of this film, I was fascinated at seeing the end and since I firstly saw how people suffer from separation because of 3.11, I could feel deeper meaning and background behind people's praying appeared in the last part of the film. Also, after knowing it is about 3.11 I could get the whole picture of this film and I felt amazing as if I read a mystery novel in which the mystery was getting solved and I could see the relation of each small piece of information.