The Third Murder

Released 23 MARCH

n his more recent work, writer/director Hirokazu Kore-eda, the reigning genius of Japanese observational cinema, has come down with a serious case of the warm and fuzzies. In 2011’s , a pair of plucky, adorable youngsters run away from home to see the bullet, three women find themselves caring for their plucky, adorable sibling. Even his last film, the comparatively downbeat post-marital drama , keeps the plucky, adorable child of divorce firmly in the centre of the frame. None of which is remotely intended as criticism: Koreeda deals with childhood more convincingly than any director this side of Shane Meadows, and is one of the most emotionally intelligent and intensely moving films of the past decade.