Dolls 2002

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: A work both rigorously stylized and deeply personal. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: Devoted fans of Kitano will want to see Dolls. Others may be put off by the dirgelike pace (Kitano takes full credit for the editing) and a ghastly, mood-destroying pop-music number performed by Fukada. Read more

G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle: The cinematography is colorful and sweeping, the editing and storytelling simple and pure. Read more

AV Club: Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: It's all as passionate, refined, and insistently sad as Bunraku puppetry itself. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: The movie's pace is appropriate to its mood, which is crisp, melancholy and gently cruel. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: Love and faith, Takeshi Kitano suggests in his lyrical and typically original film, can coexist with impossibility and loss. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Though Kitano has called Dolls 'a puppet show with human characters,' there's nothing stiff or unreal about its intensity of feeling. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: Kitano always delivers movies that, however mixed in quality, make you stare at them intently. And almost always, you feel as though the movies are staring right back at you. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Studied and stately, and restrained to the point of stasis, Dolls isn't for everyone. But it will provide loyal fans of Kitano, and Japanese art, a decided pleasure. Read more

Robert Dominguez, New York Daily News: Rife with beautiful imagery and loads of symbolism, though none of the stories is particularly compelling on its own. Read more

Stephen Holden, New York Times: Takeshi Kitano's melancholy allegory is a meditation on the heavy ties that bind, of which love is merely one and not necessarily the strongest. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: Dolls isn't a film for everybody, especially the impatient, but Kitano does succeed, I think, in drawing us into his tempo and his world, and slowing us down into the sadness of his characters. Read more

Time Out: Read more

David Rooney, Variety: While the drama's emotional observations could have been brought together more cohesively, its sorrowful mood resonates beyond the end credits, allowing key themes to continue to gel. Read more

Michael Atkinson, Village Voice: Dolls risks the bank on symbology as gaudy as teen anime and as heavy as a stone temple. Read more