Noutions Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Kien Navarro Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

p.newhouse@talk21.com This is less the story of the twins' eighth year, and more an intertwined set of narratives on Japanese cultural attitudes towards conformity, the state of immediately post-WWII Japanese society, and the spiritual freedom that the twins experienced, and how all these contributed to the twins becoming artists. There are some minor errors in the subtitling, but an intelligent viewer will eventually resolve these in their own mind. Yes, this film is a representation of events in their eighth year, but it is an exhibition of influences rather than a story. All the more charming for it. This full of realism linked with child-like fancy, fantasy, and whimsy.

dmuel This is a truly marvelous little film. The world as seen through the eyes of young Japanese twin boys in a post-war rural village. Full of drama and humor, as well as magical criticism from a trio of old women. Not only an intimate look at childhood but at Japanese life as well. An excellent film.

Dilip Barman This is a film about two (very naughty but cute!) twins growing up in the post-World War II Japan countryside. The brothers grow up to become artists, one in Kyoto and the other in Tokyo, and the film is their reflection back on their early school days growing up, around ages 8-10 and living in a sylvan country village. I didn't find the film (which I just saw on video) to be captivating, but it was perhaps worth watching to enjoy a bit of local color and get a sense of what late 1940s rural Japan might have been like. --Dilip 12/30/2001

florian_schulz "E no naka no boku no mura" is a really astonishing film absolutely deserving the silver bear from the Berlinale 1996 for Yoichi Higashi. A film about two japanese painters telling the story of their childhood on the japanese countryside this film creates a striking picture of japanese country life in 1948.