Director-writer-editor Hirokazu Kore-eda (“Still Walking,” “After Life”) crafts another humanist narrative about family. The young first-time actors are adorable, unaffected and not at all Disney-like. “I Wish” (“Kiseki”) is lighter than “Nobody Knows,” his 2004 film based on 1988 news accounts of a twelve-year-old boy caring for his three younger siblings in a Tokyo apartment for months on their own. “I Wish” relates how a twelve-year-old boy living with his divorced mother in Kagoshima reconnects with his younger brother living with their father in Hakata. When a new bullet train line opens, the resourceful kids scheme to buy tickets to the town where trains pass. There is already lore that wishes made at that precise moment will come true. School will be skipped as sixth graders and fourth-graders converge with their various yearnings. It all makes for a touching adventure that never over-sweetens its tone. With Koki Maeda, Ohshirô Maeda, Ryôga Hayashi, Nene Ohtsuka, Jo Odagiri, Yui Natsukawa, Masami Nagasawa, Hiroshi Abe, Yoshio Harada, Kirin Kiki, Isao Hashizume. 128m. (Bill Stamets)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s film critic and a contributing editor to Filmmaker magazine.
His multimedia history of Chicago “Ghost Signs” will be published soon. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram as Ghost Signs Chicago. More photography on Instagram.
Seeing The Elephant: A Review Of Babylon The boisterous, brawling yet melancholy "Babylon," is a variation on film history, but more drawing for drama. It's gaudy and mean, celebratory and sorrowful.
Heart: A Review of Soul The real world is soulful, too, in Pixar's bountiful life of the mind.
Uncanny Ally: A Review Of M3GAN "M3GAN" sells itself in its first handful of seconds in how it introduces the handiwork of roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams, "Get Out") and her present product, PurrPetual Petz from Funki.
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