Sheep in the Box

Joe A

Unfortunately the second best sheep titled movie to come out this year, not sure if it’s even close either.

davidehrlich3.0

A master sentimentalist like Hirokazu Koreeda riffing on a movie as soul-obliterating as Steven Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” sounds like a surefire recipe for the tear-jerker of the year, so I was surprised to discover that “Sheep in the Box” is one of the most emotionally stunted dramas the “Monster” auteur has ever made. To some extent, that’s by design, as the original script’s two major human characters — a fortysomething married couple in sunny near-future Kamakura — start to lose their place in the grieving process after they adopt an AI-powered humanoid modeled after their dead seven-year-old son. But unlike “After Life,” in which Koreeda previously explored the lingering effects of memory, or the under-seen “Air Doll,” in which he contemplated the potential consciousness of an inflatable sex toy, or even “Like Father, Like Son,” in which he detailed the complications of exchanging one child for another, “Sheep in the Box” is less concerned with feelings than it is with our impulse to elide them. ~this review continues on IndieWire~

Amanda the Jedi

This didn’t make me cry one time which Kore-eda is usually fantastic at making me do. So emotionally stunted for a movie involving a couple trying to replace their dead kid with a robot. I get that some of that is intentional but, it just felt fake inauthentic at times?I didn’t dislike the viewing experience but by the end it felt too shallow in how it explored themes.Just made me want to watch After Yang again, maybe I’m just depressed.