living 2023 movie review

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Bill Nighy is a fun, uninhibited actor, but there's an abashed, melancholy quality to him that hasn't been fully explored until "Living," a drama about a senior citizen reckoning with his life. 

Nighy became an unlikely star playing a dissolute, clownish old rocker in "Love, Actually," and he's been aces in a series of character parts and second leads ever since. You never find unnecessary or inorganic flourishes in his acting: he's a pro who goes in and gets it done, whatever the role's parameters. He's an active listener whose characters seem to be having their own thoughts on everything happening. His unassuming presence makes you feel at least some affection for whomever he's playing, even if they're coded as unsympathetic. 

The post-World War II London drama "Living" puts Nighy at the center of a story: he plays Williams, the head of the Public Works Department, who receives a terminal health diagnosis and, after a period of shock, begins taking stock in his life and essentially trying to be the best person he can before he goes. It's a role that calls for subtlety, and director Oliver Hermanus has the right leading man.

Williams is an archetypal figure: a bowler-hatted functionary for the state who's been doing the same thing and living the same life forever. Nighy is 73, old enough to have grandparents who were adults in the 19th century. He seems to understand from firsthand observations that people of different centuries (or parts of centuries) had different energies and ways of comporting themselves than those born 50 or 100 years later. You can picture Williams as someone for whom automobiles and planes were staggering new developments and who has seen so much change in his life that stability has become increasingly important. 

He's a creature of habit. He takes the train into the city, works, takes the train back home, goes to bed, and repeats. His new boss is ineffective, and the department is largely indifferent to the needs of its employees (a group of female workers is making no headway getting a small playground constructed, and Williams notices but doesn't intervene). The character has been on rails his whole life. The only female employee of his department, Margaret ( Aimee Lou Wood ), calls him "Mr. Zombie." When his doctor tells him he has only a few more months to live, his response is an unwitting parody of stiff-upper-lip comportment: "Quite." 

"Living" is a loose adaptation/remake of Akira Kurosawa's " Ikiru " (aka " To Live "), a post-World War II drama about a Tokyo bureaucrat who goes on a similar journey after a terminal diagnosis of gastric cancer. "Living" isn't a great movie—it's a little too subdued at times and has a tendency to fixate on Williams' mostly unarticulated sadness—but it's consistently involving. 

And Nighy's performance is such a marvel of quiet strength and internalized complexity that, even though you're never in doubt as to how Williams will rise to the occasion of his tragic news (a pub crawl, a relationship with a woman that looks like love to outsiders, a decision to intervene to help others make things happen) the events still feel spontaneous rather than telegraphed. 

With its theme of a repressed Englishman deciding to finally let go and live a bit, the movie feels like a holdover from that great run of Merchant-Ivory movies art-house films about repression and roads not taken that became both critical and box-office hits in the 1980s and '90s: " A Room with a View ," " Maurice ," " Howards End ," and "Remains of the Day." The latter was based on a novel by Kazuo Ishiguro , who has long cited "Ikiru" as a primary influence on his writing, and whose stories of repressed white English people of earlier eras channeled and stood proudly alongside the works of E.M. Forster—and suggested a strange continuity between the ritualized English and Japanese ways of dealing with intense emotion (as well as the mandate to keep sadness to oneself). Ishiguro wrote the screenplay for "Living." 

The result feels like a bridging work between certain types of novels and movies, and two cultures, in much the same way that Kurosawa's remakes of Shakespeare and other nations' directors' remakes of Kurosawa (such as "A Fistful of Dollars") did so long ago. When people in show business say that cinema speaks a universal language, they're often pumping themselves up or selling something. But under the right circumstances, the truth of the assertion is undeniable, and movies like this are an example. 

Now playing in theaters. 

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Living (2022)

Rated PG-13 for some suggestive material and smoking.

102 minutes

Bill Nighy as Mr Williams

Aimee Lou Wood as Margaret

Alex Sharp as Mr Wakeling

Tom Burke as Mr Sutherland

Adrian Rawlins as Middleton

Oliver Chris as Hart

Michael Cochrane as Sir James

Zoe Boyle as Mrs McMasters

Lia Williams as Mrs Smith

Richard Cunningham as Harvey

• Oliver Hermanus

Writer (original screenplay)

• Akira Kurosawa
• Kazuo Ishiguro

Cinematographer

• Jamie Ramsay
• Chris Wyatt
• Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch

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‘Living’: Finding out what lasts, before it’s too late

Bill nighy anchors screenwriter kazuo ishiguro’s elegant adaptation of the 1952 kurosawa film ‘ikiru’.

The central character in “Living” is nearly always addressed formally, as Mr. Williams. A longtime functionary in the public works department of the London County Council — played with masterful subtlety by Bill Nighy, who evinces hints of deep feeling beneath an outward frostiness — he is sometimes informally called Williams, but only behind his back. And he’s Dad to the stuffy son and daughter-in-law (Barney Fishwick and Patsy Ferran) who share a suburban house with the widowed paper pusher. (Perhaps stonewaller would be a more apt job description. Most days, Williams’s duties appear to include polite obstructionism for citizens petitioning for assistance from a giant municipal agency that seems designed to thwart anything that might actually benefit the public.)

But it’s his secret office nickname, discovered by Williams in this achingly poignant drama of regret, that best characterizes the film’s theme of carpe diem: Mr. Zombie. That succinct evocation of Williams’s condition — not quite alive, not quite dead — is the unkind but not inaccurate moniker that Williams learns a young co-worker (Aimee Lou Wood) had been calling him, before she quit — and before she develops the touching, outside-the-office friendship with her old boss that forms the emotional heart of the film. Her confession coincides with an announcement by Williams that he is gravely ill. It’s a bit of news that has forced him to reconcile two seemingly irreconcilable things: He wants to live a little with the time he has left, yet he doesn’t remotely know how.

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Set in 1953, and directed by Oliver Hermanus from a screenplay Kazuo Ishiguro adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film “Ikiru,” “Living” is a quiet, nearly weightless story, well suited to Ishiguro’s elegant, almost restrained storytelling style. That style was showcased to great effect in “ The Remains of the Day ,” the 1993 film version 0f Ishiguro’s book, in which Anthony Hopkins delivered a memorable performance as a butler whose romantic reticence prevented him from being happy. Here, it is Nighy who gently guides a similar story of inertia, without sentimentality, ultimately delivering a message about what lasts, and what one loses when one waits too long to wake up.

“Living” mostly avoids sappiness. And it shows an actor at the peak of his powers.

Wood, a relative newcomer to film who first made her mark in the Netflix series “ Sex Education ,” is a perfect foil to Nighy. Her character Margaret’s appetite for living, as Williams calls it, gradually inspires him to try to make a small dent in the world — specifically, in the form of a tiny urban playground that three women have been asking for, but that has become encumbered by red tape. Wood’s warm and easily moved character makes for a lovely counterpoint to the passivity of the public works staff.

Other performances also leave an impression: Tom Burke (“ Mank ”), as the writer Williams meets while skiving (playing hooky) from work, and who shows the old man how to let loose a little, and Alex Sharp (“ How to Talk to Girls at Parties ”) as the new hire in Williams’s office, and from whose point of view the story is told.

But it is the memory of the unexpected and tender platonic friendship that grows between Williams and Margaret that lingers after the closing credits. And it is the chemistry between Nighy and Wood that makes this otherwise slightly chilly story glow from within.

PG-13. At area theaters. Contains some suggestive material and smoking. 102 minutes.

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Movie Reviews

Sleekly sentimental, 'living' plays like an 'afterschool special' for grownups.

John Powers

Bill Nighy plays a bottled-up bureaucrat who embarks on a quest for meaning in Living . Sony Pictures hide caption

Bill Nighy plays a bottled-up bureaucrat who embarks on a quest for meaning in Living .

When historians look back on the COVID-19 years, they'll be struck by how those many months of anxiety and social distancing led countless people to ask themselves big existential questions: Have I been doing the work I really want to do? Have I been living the way I really want to live? Or have I been simply coasting as my life passes by?

These questions lie at the heart of Oliver Hermanus' Living , a sleekly sentimental new British drama adapted by Kazuo Ishiguro from Akira Kurosawa's classic 1952 film Ikiru , which means "to live" in Japanese. Starring the great Bill Nighy , it tells the story of a bottled-up bureaucrat in 1950s London who's led to examine the way he's spent the last 30 years of his life.

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Nighy plays Mr. Williams, a widower in charge of a local government department that approves public projects like parks for children, a Kafkaesque system in which nothing ever gets done. Trapped in bowler-hatted, besuited monotony, the all-but silent Mr. Williams is sleepwalking through life until, one day, his doctor gives him a death sentence. This rouses him from his lethargy, and sends him off on a quest for meaning.

Actor Bill Nighy on the movie 'Living'

At a seaside resort he meets a local novelist — that's Tom Burke, of Strike fame — who takes him out carousing. But that's not what he needs. Then he grows obsessed with his only female employee — played by chipper Aimee Lou Wood — whose appeal is not her sexuality but an effortless, upbeat vitality that's a counterpoint to his quietness. Her nickname for Mr. Williams is "Mr. Zombie," a moniker whose justice he doesn't deny. Her embrace of life inspires him to redeem his remaining days by doing good works. Everybody in the theater can predict whether or not he'll succeed — we've seen this story before, indeed Ikiru set the template — yet his fate is touching, anyway.

Now, there's a lot of skill on display in Living . From Mr. Williams' suits, to the nifty décor, to the font in the credits, 1950s London is lovingly recreated in a way that had my screening companions cooing with delight. And who doesn't love Nighy? Although he's better, I think, when he's more fun, his quiet, deeply internal performance captures a man who, with grace and bone-dry humor, peels off his mummy's bandages and comes alive.

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Kazuo ishiguro wins nobel prize in literature.

So given all this, why do I find the film disappointing? It's not simply that it's a remake and I'm a stickler for originality. Heck, Ikiru itself was inspired by Tolstoy's great 1886 novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich .

But when Kurosawa made his film, he didn't tell exactly the same story as Tolstoy and didn't simply move it from 1880s St Petersburg to 1880s Tokyo. He reconceived the plot and set the action at the time he was living, a 1950s Tokyo still ravaged by World War II. Though it tells a universal story about finding meaning in the face of death, Kurosawa's film crackles with the urgency of its historical moment, which in Japan's era of rebuilding, had a desperate need to believe that even the most ordinary person — a paper-pusher — had the capacity for heroism and nobility.

Alas, Ishiguro's adaptation lacks the same inventiveness and urgency. It seems more like a deftly edited transposition than the artistic rethinking I expected from a Nobel prize winner whose fiction I admire. Rather than retool things for the present, the film sinks into Britain's boundless obsession with its past.

Dwelling on period details, Living feels distant from the textures of today's fast-paced, Brexit -battered, multicultural London where a 2022 Mr. Williams might well be of East Asian or Caribbean descent. The messiness of life never busts in. As with too many British dramas, the action takes place in a safely-stylized England, a museum diorama in which even life and death can't really touch us. Low-key and muted, Hermanus' direction doesn't catch the desperation and sadness that gave Kurosawa's original film its emotional power, especially in its transcendent finale set in the snow, one of the most beautiful and moving climaxes in movie history.

Rather than shake us to our core like Ikiru , Living teaches us a life lesson we can all agree on. It's like an Afterschool Special for grownups — a very good one, mind you. But still.

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‘Living’ Review: Losing His Inhibition

Bill Nighy stars as a buttoned-up bureaucrat transformed by a grim diagnosis in this drama by the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, adapted from an Akira Kurosawa movie.

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By Beatrice Loayza

There is a coziness to “Living,” despite the fact that it revolves around death. It’s not a holiday movie, at least not explicitly, but like “A Christmas Carol” and other Yuletide ghost stories, it’s a film that steps back to consider the rituals and routines we perpetuate, the ways we’ve changed since the last break. And the ways we haven’t.

“Living,” directed by Oliver Hermanus from a screenplay by the novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, is an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa’s drama “Ikiru” (or “To Live”). That Japanese classic from 1952 stars the great Takashi Shimura as a drab Tokyo functionary who learns he is terminally ill and begins to question his life.

Ishiguro has called “Ikiru” a formative work for him. His books (which include “Never Let Me Go” and “The Remains of the Day”) limn the crisis of confronting one’s own life with newfound clarity, of perceiving the ways in which it is fraught and one’s complicity in its corruption. With “Living,” Ishiguro — a British writer whose parents moved the family from Nagasaki to Surrey when he was five — infuses his beloved parable with nostalgia closer to home.

“Living” transposes “Ikiru” to a gloomy postwar London filled with buttoned-up men of dignity; bowler-hat-wearing worker bees who commute in and out of the city with the solemn demeanor of churchgoers. One of them is Williams (Bill Nighy), a cadaverous bureaucrat and the intimidatingly austere head of the Public Works Department. The film opens on a new hire’s first day, but the young man’s illusions are quickly dashed when his new boss, a total gentleman at first glance, proves to be an inert leader. A group of women with a petition asking for the construction of a new playground are kicked around the building — this is under that department’s jurisdiction, no, that one — because no one wants the hassle.

Thinking of Nighy and holiday releases, Williams is the total inverse of Billy Mack, the washed-up rocker whom Nighy played in “Love Actually.” Where Mack is lovably sleazy, the creaky Williams is inhibition personified. The chipper Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood), the sole female employee of Williams’s wing, calls him “Mr. Zombie.”

When Williams’s doctor tells him he only has a few months to live, his subdued response is both devastating and absurd: “Quite,” he mutters.

As with the protagonist of “Ikiru,” Williams is transformed by the news. First, he turns to a local bohemian, Sutherland (Tom Burke), for a boozy tour of the city’s nightlife. Then he spends time with Margaret, a lively companion who gets him in trouble with his son and daughter-in-law, who are convinced the old man is having an affair. Eventually, he finds something to believe in, and alters his legacy in the process.

At its worst, “Living” wallows generically, employing an overbearing piano score as the camera repeatedly sits with Williams’s sadness to diminishing effect. Though, captured by the cinematographer Jamie D. Ramsay, there’s also a warmth and twinkle to Williams’s existential plight; as in a David Lean movie, passion mingles elegantly with repression, and Williams emerges as a kind of romantic figure, a man shocked, then delighted, by the thrill of finding himself.

Living Rated PG-13 for morbidity and scenes of drunken revelry. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters.

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Living review – Bill Nighy tackles life and death in exquisitely sad drama

A gentle and poignant Kazuo Ishiguro-scripted remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru about a man dealing with a terminal diagnosis

T he terrible conversation in the hospital consulting room – that final rite of passage – is the starting point for this deeply felt, beautifully acted movie from screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro and director Oliver Hermanus: a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru, or To Live.

A buttoned-up civil servant works joylessly in the town planning department; he is a lonely widower estranged from his grasping son and daughter-in-law. In the original, he was Mr Watanabe, played by Takashi Shimura. Now he is Mr Williams, played by Bill Nighy .

Approaching retirement, his supposed reward for a life of pointless tedium, Mr Williams receives a stomach-cancer diagnosis with one year to live. And now he realises that he has been dead until this moment. After a mad and undignified attempt at boozy debauchery in the company of a louche writer (Tom Burke), Mr Williams realises there is one thing he might still achieve: forcing the city authorities to build the modest little children’s playground for which local mothers have been desperately petitioning and which he and his colleagues have been smugly preventing with their bureaucratic inertia.

Through sheer force of will, and astonishing his co-workers with his deeply unbecoming new urgency and baffling desire to help people, Mr Williams is determined to get the playground built before death closes in.

When Kurosawa’s film came out, it was set in the present day: a fiercely contemporary work about modern Japan and very different from his period dramas. Hermanus and Ishiguro have taken the decision to set it in the 1950s as well, and so ingeniously recasting it as a historical piece: Nighy’s melancholy functionary works in the postwar London county council. He is ramrod straight in his pinstripe suit and bowler, an English gentleman through and through, whereas Shimura’s Mr Watanabe in Tokyo was doubled over with the pain of stomach cancer, in a parodic and deepening bow of Japanese respect.

Nighy is heartbreakingly shy and sensitive, his refined, almost birdlike profile presented to the camera in occasional stark and enigmatic closeups. This is a man who has had to suppress a natural wit and affectionate raillery all his life in the service of a dull job which meant nothing. His poignantly damaged rebirth has been caused by his diagnosis, and also his platonic yet nonetheless scandalous infatuation with a female junior: the innocently flirtatious Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood), who entrances him, perhaps chiefly because she is quitting this dull office and trying something new. Meanwhile, a young man just starting there, played by Alex Sharp, intuits Mr Williams’s pain and sees how he himself might wind up the same way, out of unexamined loyalty to this older generation’s self-sacrificial woes.

Ishiguro has jettisoned the enigmatic, almost Capraesque voiceover from Kurosawa’s film, lost also the local gangsters that Watanabe faces down with his new, reckless courage of cancer. Maybe they seemed too Greeneian in 50s Britain. He has found a sweeter, more positive interpretation of the film’s final scenes, and a redemptive love affair among the younger generation, but kept the central structural coup in Ikiru, positioning the moment of the civil servant’s death so that we see all the besuited functionaries bickering and posturing after Mr Williams is gone, like Ivan Ilych’s colleagues in Tolstoy’s story or the people divvying up Scrooge’s bed linen in A Christmas Carol.

I was sorry that Ishiguro removed my favourite moment from Ikiru, when the civil servant, in a flash of existential panic, realises that he cannot think of any specific thing that has happened in his 30 years’ employment. It has all passed like a swift, featureless dream. But Ishiguro makes an inspired adjustment to the children’s playground itself – with Mr Williams noting that though some children are badly behaved and tantrum-prone when they are called away by their mothers, that is better than being one of those children who just hopelessly wait for playtime to end. In Living, the playground is not simply the widow’s-mite gift the civil servant has poignantly handed over to the community before his death. With its humble little swing set and roundabout, it is a symbol of everyone’s brief attempt at living.

This is a film which resonated in my mind, with its perennial question: isn’t it possible to achieve Mr Williams’s passionate dedication without the terminal illness? After all, haven’t we all got that same mortal prognosis? Or is the terrible paradox that you need to be told what you know already but were trying not to think about? A gentle, exquisitely sad film.

Living screened at the Sundance film festival and is released in the UK on 4 November.

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Review: If you doubted the greatness of Bill Nighy, a moving new drama offers ‘Living’ proof

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Not long into “Living,” Mr. Williams learns that he has not long to live. The news doesn’t come as a huge shock, but even if it did, you gather, nothing about this man — not his stiff posture, his calmly appraising gaze or his thin, flat line of a mouth — would betray anything resembling devastation or even surprise. We are in 1950s London, and Mr. Williams, who’s spent more than two decades toiling away in the county hall’s Public Works department, has encased himself in a shell of propriety, receiving every new document and file with unfailing politeness and unflappable calm. Why should his response to his own demise — in six months to a year, max — be any different?

Here it should be noted that Mr. Williams is played by Bill Nighy, for whom a show of restraint is never just a show of restraint. Within emotional parameters that other actors might have found gloomily constricting, Nighy coaxes forth a tour de force of understatement, suffused with an almost musical melancholy. His performance, which won a lead acting prize from the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. earlier this month, is a gorgeous minor-key symphony of downcast gazes and soft-spoken pronouncements, lightened occasionally by a faint little ghost of a smile. There’s a whisper of humor to Mr. Williams, a sense of irony about a death sentence that he keeps secret from all but a trusted few. In the movie’s best moments, Nighy lures you into the impression that he’s sharing a private joke with you, a glimmer of comic insight into an unbearably sad situation.

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At one point you might flash back to “Love Actually,” specifically a line from one of Nighy’s funniest, most famous performances : “And now I’m left with no one, wrinkled and alone!” But Mr. Williams is not one for flamboyant self-pity, and “Living,” thankfully, will never be mistaken for “Life Actually.” Exquisitely directed by Oliver Hermanus from a spare, elegant script by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, the movie is a faithful English-language reimagining of “Ikiru,” Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film about a Tokyo widower who receives a terminal stomach-cancer diagnosis and turns over a startling new leaf.

An emotional epic situated between more sweeping Kurosawa classics (it was made after “Rashomon” and right before “Seven Samurai” ), “Ikiru” remains sufficiently revered that the mere thought of a remake might draw cries of sacrilege. But it is also, like so many of Kurosawa’s films, a culturally permeable, infinitely adaptable story. (“Ikiru” itself was loosely drawn from Leo Tolstoy’s novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.”) Its lessons about the finity of existence and the beauty of living for the good of others are nothing if not universally applicable, something that could also be said of its withering indictment of government bureaucracy.

In “Living,” that bureaucracy has been transplanted to postwar London and visualized as a sea of gray pinstripe suits and bowler hats, flowing through wood-paneled offices and up and down marbled stairwells. It’s an almost distractingly beautiful vision of workplace tedium, thanks to the impeccable cut of Sandy Powell’s costumes, the polish of Helen Scott’s production design and the deep colors and sharply planed images of Jamie Ramsay’s cinematography. Our first impressions of the place, and of Mr. Williams himself, come by way of a new Public Works hire, Peter Wakeling (an excellent Alex Sharp). His cheery disposition and idealistic spirit are swiftly tempered by the realization of what their work, if that’s the word, entails.

The building is a well-ordered monument to inefficiency, where papers are duly stored and shuffled around, and anyone in need of personal assistance is immediately referred to the next department over. The satire of public administration is much the same as it was in “Ikiru,” down to the series of wipes used here (by editor Chris Wyatt) to follow a group of women on their fruitless, frustrating quest to convert a bomb site into a children’s playground. But Ishiguro has also streamlined the material and sanded down some of its rougher edges, in keeping with a sensibility that feels governed by a quintessentially (or perhaps just stereotypically) English reserve. In “Ikiru,” a doctor lies to his terminally ill patients, claiming they only have an ulcer; in “Living,” bad news is delivered and processed with the stiffest of upper lips.

That makes for a trimmer narrative (40 minutes shorter than the original), if also one that, for those who’ve seen “Ikiru,” might feel a touch muffled and overly circumscribed as it sends Mr. Williams off in search of existential answers. Away he goes from the office where he has never missed a day’s work until now, with nary a word to his colleagues or to his unsuspecting, self-absorbed son (Barney Fishwick) and daughter-in-law (Patsy Ferran). His chance encounter with a worldly pleasure seeker (Tom Burke) is diverting enough, though their guided tour of arcades and nightclubs has been conspicuously denuded of suspense or menace. More affecting are Mr. Williams’ moments with a soon-to-be-former colleague, Margaret Harris (a delightful Aimee Lou Wood), whose warmth and good humor make her an ideal if accidental confidant.

Their tender rapport is one of the story’s pleasures — a reminder that the gradual forging of a bond between near-strangers, truthful and unhurried, can be one of the simplest and most powerful things to witness in a movie. Their meetings also never rise above a polite simmer, which is true of nearly everything that transpires in “Living,” death included. In “Ikiru,” the great Takashi Shimura externalized his character’s desperation with enormous, wide-open eyes and a drooping stare. Nighy forges something more mysterious, almost subterranean, from Mr. Williams’ crisis and sudden reawakening.

That might make the movie sound more anemic than it plays, as if it were a story about the meaning of life with barely enough life surging through its own veins. But if “Living” never matches — or tries to match — the grit and density of Kurosawa’s masterpiece, it knows that detachment can be deceptive, that it can conceal profound and resonant depths of feeling. Ishiguro, who knows a thing or two about the subtle braiding of Japanese and English sensibilities, has mastered the art of such concealment in his own fiction, notably his famously filmed novel “The Remains of the Day.” Hermanus, a South African filmmaker known for his tense and powerful dramas of gay desire (“Beauty,” “Moffie” ), has similar form when it comes to dramatizing repression.

Their economy comes to fruition in the third act of “Living,” which shrewdly restructures the story’s closing scenes with no loss of impact, and with an assertion of its own singular identity. That’s to the good of a movie that knows Mr. Williams’ example is somehow both admirable and inimitable, that the difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary one can only be measured within a set of specific, unrepeatable circumstances. It’s only human to pretend we would behave as our heroes would, and no less human to long to see and hear their stories retold.

Rated: PG-13, for some suggestive material and smoking Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 23 at Laemmle Royal, West Los Angeles

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‘Living’ Review: Bill Nighy Stars in a Sleepy British Remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Greatest Film

David ehrlich.

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Editor’s note: This review was originally published at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. Sony Pictures Classics releases the film in select theaters on Friday, December 23.

Akira Kurosawa’s impact on modern cinema has been so complete that it can feel like semantics to distinguish the fistful of direct remakes that have been made of his films (e.g. “The Magnificent Seven,” “Last Man Standing”) from the endless list of movies that have been more broadly inspired by them (e.g. “Star Wars,” Johnnie To’s “Throw Down”). The worldwide reach of the Japanese auteur’s legacy — which continues to endure more than two decades after Kurosawa’s death, and a full nine years since Zack Snyder first threatened to set a version of “Seven Samurai” in a galaxy far, far away — is a testament to both the clarity of his storytelling and the internationality of his influences.

At a time when nationalism was seen as a moral imperative, Kurosawa forged samurai epics that interpolated John Ford, spun jidaigeki out of William Shakespeare, and smelted desolate Shōwa melodramas from the stuff of Fyodor Dostoevsky. If the borderlessness of Kurosawa’s imagination led to accusations that he was “less Japanese” than contemporaries like Ozu and Mizoguchi, the universality of his films ensured that nothing about them got lost in translation. Kurosawa’s storytelling has always traveled so well that even his least famous movies seem to exert a strong influence on Western cinema in the 21st century (one favorite example: the nuclear paranoia of 1955’s “I Live in Fear” percolating beneath the prepper mania of Jeff Nichols’ “Take Shelter”).

All of which is to say that it shouldn’t be so uncanny to see Bill Nighy star in a sleepy British remake of Kurosawa’s greatest film, but “Ikiru” has always been a different beast. Whereas the director’s most frequently cited films tend to be period tales that are rooted in the legible grammar of their respective genres, this contemplative 1952 fable draws from the rich traditions of Russian literature and Hollywood melodrama without feeling like it belongs to either one of them. A simple yet knotted story about a zombie-like Tokyo bureaucrat named Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) who finds new purpose to his time on Earth after being diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, “Ikiru” exudes a plaintive emotional power that’s as profound as it is fleeting, and as impossible to replicate as the magic of first snow. It reminds me of “It’s a Wonderful Life” in that way, another gut-punch of a classic that has only been remade as a sad parade of TV movies that all disappeared into oblivion on the same night they were broadcast.

And yet, it’s hard to fault “ Living ” director Oliver Hermanus (“Moffie”) for hoping that the same bolt of lightning might strike twice halfway around the world and 68 years apart. For starters, he came to the table with a few legitimate aces up his sleeve. They include an assist from the great novelist Kazuo Ishigiruo (whose lean screenplay is suitably repressive, if also faithful to a fault), an evocative historical backdrop courtesy of London County Hall, and a cast punctuated with rising talents like Tom Burke and “Sex Education” star Aimee Lou Wood.

Even more crucially, Hermanus understood that while “Ikiru” might be the most timeless of Kurosawa’s films, that doesn’t mean it was built to last. The image of Watanabe singing to himself on that moonlit swing set (if you know you know) isn’t so indelible because it inspires you to go “fall in love before the crimson bloom fades from your lips,” but rather because it knows that his message will fade into the light of day and the chaotic bustle that comes with it. In other words, “Ikiru” is a movie that demands to be remade because it was built to be forgotten. The trouble with this new telling is that it’s never all that memorable in the first place.

For his part, Nighy is predictably affecting in the lead role of Mr. Williams, a widowed civil servant so calcified by grief that his younger employees assume that he’s actually incapable of human feeling; if they’re terrified of him in a way that no one ever was of Shimura’s version, it might be owed to the fact that Williams already speaks in the ghoulish whisper of a spirit communicating from beyond the grave (Nighy is almost 20 years older than Shimura was at the time). Every morning he boards the train into London (his underlings ride on a separate car in their own sea of pinstripes and bowler hats, all of them looking the part in Sandy Powell’s period-appropriate costumes), every day he sits perched between the paper skyscrapers in his office like a bureaucratic gargoyle, ready to pass the buck whenever a gaggle of housewives come to petition his office to turn a slum into a playground, and every night he sits alone in the dark of his son’s living room, where he’s very much an unwanted guest.

Williams’ existence is sustained by the sheer inertia of that routine, a cycle enlivened only by Jamie Ramsay’s transportively velvet cinematography. Millions of people died in the war for this. If Williams were capable of laughing, he’d probably let out a hearty chortle upon hearing the office’s newest hire (Alex Sharp) announce that he “hopes to make a difference.”

What does make a difference — at least to our dormant hero — is the news that his stomach pains are far more serious than he thought. Channeling Williams’ poker-faced restraint in a way that makes Kurosawa seem like Michael Bay by comparison, Hermanus  opts against using the original’s famous X-ray shot to reveal the diagnosis, accurately teeing up an adaptation of this story in which it’s much harder to see under the protagonist’s skin. Whereas Watanabe’s mouth hung open as if to show that his soul had already been hollowed out, Williams’ upper lip is stiffer than the drink that anyone else would reach for in this situation. When he doesn’t show up for work the next day, his absence is greeted by an even mix of confusion and relief. Only Margaret (Wood), the lone woman in the office, appears concerned — she needs Williams to write her a reference letter so that she might go somewhere else.

From there, “Living” arranges itself into a parable-like portrait of personal awakening, as Williams does his best to look the part of someone who’s making the most of his time on Earth. A chance encounter with a local dilettante (Burke) leads to a rowdy night on the town, but Williams is haunted by the reflection he finds at the bottom of every bottle.  Likewise, a run-in with Margaret sparks an unexpected friendship, but neither of them are honest about what they hope to gain from it. At one point, Shimura’s buzz-killing performance of the Japanese ballad “Gondola no Uta” is swapped out for Nighy’s rendition of the Scottish folk tune “Oh Rowan Tree,” a fittingly melancholic replacement that nevertheless makes it seem as if Williams is trying something he once saw in a movie. That beat is typical of a remake that’s stuck between a rock and hard place; many of the notes that Hermanus copies from Kurosawa sound like echoes, while the ones he omits (the “Happy Birthday” scene!) are all sorely missed in a remake that runs 40 minutes shorter than the original while feeling almost twice as long.

That CliffsNotes-like economy doesn’t serve this retelling of a story that relied on its length and unexpected shape in equal measure. True to “Ikiru,” this is a low-key tale that hinges on a humble act, and “Living” honors the sense of discovery engendered by its structure — as in the script Kurosawa co-wrote with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni, Ishiguro’s screenplay drops a bombshell around the halfway mark, and spends the rest of its runtime trying to make sense of the fallout. The longer “Ikiru” went on — stretching the mystery of Watanabe’s enigmatic final days into a film that nearly runs two full “Rashomons” long — the narrower its focus became on the almost imperceptible choice at its core.

“Ikiru” draws its inestimable power from the tension between the vastness of life and the smallness of what we choose to do with it (or is it the other way around?), while “Living” cuts too many corners to highlight any such disparity. The moral of this story is supposed to be shrugged off despite its overwhelming honesty, but “Living” downplays its drama to such an extent that it can feel as if Hermanus and Ishiguro lacked the nerve to attempt the same trick.

Their film — despite a cast of self-possessed actors capable of infusing fresh life into even the most undead scenes — simply nips any hints of sentimentality in the bud, denying itself even “Brief Encounter” levels of expression. There’s a different kind of tragedy to conveying the protagonist in that way, but the fact that he’s destined to be forgotten is supposed to be incidental rather than by design; Williams’ death needs to have an immediate impact before it can meaningfully fail to have a lasting one. That Kurosawa’s version gets that so devastatingly right is the reason why people remember it to this day. Of course, just because “Living” is unlikely to enjoy a similar legacy doesn’t mean that it wasn’t worth trying.

“Living” premiered at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival.

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Bill Nighy plays a dying council worker looking for meaning in Living, which reaches for profundity but ultimately rings hollow

Akira Kurosawa has provided the basis for so much of contemporary film that remakes of the Japanese director's work could sustain their own film festival – or at least an entire Wikipedia page . It's a list that traverses borders of both genre and country; an encyclopedia of cinema in miniature.

There are the time-honoured spaghetti westerns, A Fistful of Dollars and Django, released just a couple of years apart in the 60s and both modelled on Kurosawa's samurai epic Yojimbo.

There are the zany trivia answers: Did you know that A Bug's Life – yes, the 1998 Pixar animation about politicking ants – is functionally the same film as Seven Samurai?

And there are, of course, bucketloads of flotsam, best jettisoned to the annals of history.

Living, the latest addition to this canon, reaches for glory – but finds itself firmly in the final category.

It's an adaptation of Ikiru (literally, 'To Live'), the 1952 drama widely considered one of Kurosawa's best and most intimate films, which sheds the thrills and chills of his best-known works in favour of a graceful dissertation on that knottiest of existential quandaries: the meaning of life.

In Ikiru, the Japanese screen legend Takashi Shimura stars as Mr Watanabe, a joyless bureaucrat. In Living, he becomes Mr Williams, played in an Oscar-nominated turn by Bill Nighy.

With a screenplay by Japanese British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, Living transposes Kurosawa's Tokyo setting to a storybook version of mid-century London: a swarm of bowler hats and black cabs hurrying down cobblestoned streets pockmarked with reminders of the war.

The film's opening credits even come complete with an anachronistic film grain and an ornate title treatment bearing the serif swishes of yore.

It's a meticulous re-creation, though the effect is strangely eerie.

Where Ikiru delivered a sobering critique of Kurosawa's contemporary society, Living shoehorns us back into a version of the past so romanticised it's almost sickly.

The film's period setting aims for the rose-tinted glow of memory, but it comes across as uncanny – like an AI reconstruction of a bygone era or, worse, the fetishistic nostalgia of a Renaissance fair.

It's a strange choice, especially because Living and Ikiru share a cynicism about the drudgery of our lives.

Mr Williams, like his Japanese forebear, is a widower and council worker; he leads a small office in London's Public Works department, whiling away his hours shuffling and reshuffling the same stack of papers at his desk, and rarely uttering more than a sentence most days.

There's a militaristic rigidity to it all. When a new hire, Mr Wakeling (Alex Sharp), dares disrupt the ritual during a morning commute, his co-workers impress on him the rules of the routine: Respect the silence of the train station and always stay a few steps behind Mr Williams to allow him his priceless solitude.

That routine extends to the workplace, where any deviation from the norm is quickly subsumed by a perfect storm of bureaucracy.

Case in point: A trio of women who have arrived on Mr Wakeling's first day to submit a petition for a new playground are bandied from department to department until they're right back where they started, with little to show for their daylong escapade. Kafka would be proud.

Wakeling's dejection – having witnessed firsthand these tortuous office politics – is matched only by Williams's sheer indifference, any glimmer of tenderness long ago eroded by a career in the public service.

(Not to belabour the point, but the stultifying hamster wheel of work chafes hilariously and surely unintentionally against the exquisite production design of the county hall, with its mahogany finishings and the soft beams of sunlight that filter in through its arched windows.)

As Williams, Nighy betrays precious little – even as he receives the diagnosis that instigates his path to redemption.

His doctor tells him the grim news: cancer, terminal. Six months to live; nine at a stretch.

He parses the information with the same stony expression he wears in the office, mouth locked in a permanent hyphen.

And so begins his odyssey for something, anything to hold onto; for the faintest flicker of substance in a life so far defined by austerity.

There is some charm to this quest. See, for example, the burgeoning friendship he shares with a much younger employee, the ebullient Miss Harris (Aimee Lou Wood in fine form, brimming with the same guileless magnetism that made her a star in Sex Education) – an innocent pairing that sparks malicious gossip from onlookers.

Or the rakish layabout (Tom Burke) whom Williams meets in a seaside cafe and, on a whim, decides to follow around for a not-quite-debaucherous evening that ends in a circus tent.

These threads are enjoyable diversions in Living's search for meaning. But too often, like Williams himself, you might find yourself longing for more.

Nighy's character here is the exact inverse of his breakout role in Love Actually: Billy Mack, the rabble-rousing rockstar, complete with silver chain and popped collar.

Williams might do well to absorb some of Mack's spirited mouthiness. He remains altogether too restrained, too prim, even as he resolves to free himself of the inhibitive values that have imprisoned him for decades.

Living comes weighted with a pedigree of repression: Director Oliver Hermanus (Moffie) made his name on queer films where desire always necessitates a degree of stealth; screenwriter Ishiguro, too, is a master of furtive glances and long-held secrets, his characters wielding silence as a weapon.

It makes sense, then, that Williams is frustratingly buttoned-up, refusing to indulge in any of the earthly pleasures you might associate with someone living out their final months.

But unlike either Hermanus's or Ishiguro's previous work – where repression eventually gives way to sweet release – there is no catharsis to be found in Living.

When, in flashes of lucidity, Williams manages to shake off his shackles – during a late night conversation with Miss Harris, or a suddenly invigorated crusade to build the damn playground that's been languishing in his in-tray for yonks – the screenplay veers towards the mawkish.

After so much equivocation, all we get is a few Hallmark-card truisms about happiness and living life to the fullest.

There's a scene where Miss Harris reveals to Williams her secret nickname for him, inspired by his overbearing restraint: Mr. Zombie.

We might say the same of Living and its hollow, dead-eyed swing at profundity.

Living is in cinemas now.

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• DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

In Theaters

• December 23, 2022
• Bill Nighy as Mr. Williams; Aimee Lou Wood as Miss Margaret Harris; Alex Sharp as Mr. Peter Wakeling; Tom Burke as Mr. Sutherland; Adrian Rawlins as Mr. Middleton; Hubert Burton as Mr. Rusbridger; Oliver Chris as Mr. Hart; Michael Cochrane as Sir James; Patsy Ferran as Fiona Williams; Barney Fishwick as Michael Williams

Home Release Date

• March 3, 2023
• Oliver Hermanus

Distributor

• Sony Pictures Classic

Movie Review

To live a life, and live it well … how does one do such a thing?

Perhaps Mr. Williams should’ve asked the question long before.

Mr. Williams— always Mr. Williams—has lived his life (the last few decades of it, at any rate) with absolute respectability. It’s what is expected of him. Indeed, it’s what he expects of himself.

He is, after all, a man of some import. As the manager of the Public Works Department in London’s County Hall, he wears a black suit and bowler hat, as is expected. He’s never late and works a full day, as expected. People come asking for the Public Works department to do—well, works for the public, as expected.

And as expected, Mr. Williams rarely says yes. He rarely says no, either. He is, after all, an integral part of a bureaucracy . Papers are shuffled upstairs or down, sent across the hall or across the road. And often, they simply sit in the stacks of papers at Public Works for a few weeks, until the matter either disappears or a new request is filed.

“There’s no harm,” Mr. Williams will say.

That gentle statement about grinding government delay, too, is expected of him. He has done little else for lo these many years.

But then something unexpected happens to Mr. Williams. An incurable cancer has been submitted, and death is seeking admittance. He can file it away six months, perhaps nine at the most. But then, death will come through his door and take him away, not even bothering with the requisite triplicate forms. Nothing can stop his shadowed scythe. Not even British bureaucracy.

When Mr. Williams doesn’t go to work the day after he finds out, it’s as if Big Ben itself skipped a toll. He instead goes to a seaside town and confesses his predicament to a free-spirited playwright he meets in a café. Mr. Williams tells the man (Mr. Sutherland) that he came to town hoping to shed his rigid, aged Britishness and, for once, live a little.

But now that he’s there, with a willing spirit and spending money to spare, Mr. Williams realizes something rather sad.

“I don’t know how,” he confesses.

To live a life well? To do that, given the unforgivable timetable Mr. Williams has been given, is all-but-impossible. But to live well? Perhaps there’s still time for that.

[ Note: Spoilers are contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

Mr. Sutherland, the playwright whom Mr. Williams meets, is certainly eager to show Mr. Williams the pleasures that perhaps he so long ignored. But Mr. Williams isn’t really interested in wiling away the days he has left on tawdry pastimes. He’s after something more elusive, something with more meaning.

He sees a glint of that in Miss Harris, a young lady who worked for him briefly at Public Works. She’s young and spirited, and Mr. Williams begins to spend what time he can with her—hoping, he confesses later, that she might somehow teach him to live more fully. But that, too, while helpful, is a dead end.

No, he ultimately finds meaning by going back to work , of all things. But instead of shuffling papers to other departments or letting them sit in his baskets, he takes on particular request on. He uses whatever means he has at his disposal to shepherd the project through County Hall’s byzantine system and work-averse managers, showing a stunning understanding of what method of persuasion might work for each. He even begs essentially the manager of the entire bureaucracy—a titled noble to whom Mr. Williams has long literally bowed in deference—to consider his petition.

In so doing, Mr. Williams does something practically unprecedented: He gets something done. And by the time he’s done, he’s inspired others to do the same.

Spiritual Elements

Mr. Williams seems to be a nominally religious man. He talks about returning to “his Maker” and compares the process of dying to that of children being called home by their mothers after a day of play. His funeral is conducted in a traditional church adorned by stained glass windows.

Someone quips that laughter is frowned upon early in the morning,  “rather like church.” Miss Harris has made up nicknames of most of the people she works with in County Hall, and her nickname for Mr. Williams is “Mr. Zombie,” explaining that zombies are like Egyptian mummies that are dead but continue to walk around.

Sexual Content

Mr. Sutherland, the playwright, comes across as sort of a intellectual hedonist. He talks to the café’s proprietor, Mrs. Blake, about his latest play, “Shocking Stockings.” He tells Mrs. Blake that she’d likely think it “smutty and trivial,” but he assures her that the play’s reception, and her own reaction, would be much different in Paris.

When Sutherland learns of Mr. Williams’ plight, he takes him out to many of the grimy hotspots he frequents. The last turns out to be a 1950s strip joint, of sorts: The crowd is entertained by a buxom woman in rather revealing garb (think something like a beefy bikini) dancing on stage. At one point, we see that the woman has removed her top, but we see her only from the back. Other women there reveal a bit of cleavage.

Mr. Williams’ and Miss Harris’s relationship is absolutely innocent. But they do meet on a couple of occasions, and they’re spotted by a local busybody who assumes they are having an affair and stirs up rumors to that effect.

Miss Harris is also sensitive about how these outings might look. “Someone might suppose that you’re becoming infatuated.” Mr. Williams admits there’s truth to that, but “not quite as some might suppose.”

We see a man and a woman embrace in an alleyway.

Violent Content

When Mr. Sutherland (the playwright) complains of not being able to sleep, Mr. Williams pulls out several vials of what must be sleeping agent that he’s carrying with him. Both understand that Mr. Williams had considered killing himself by taking them.

Mr. Williams suffers acute pain in his side at times, obviously from the cancer. At one juncture, he takes a handkerchief away from his mouth, and it seems to be stained with blood. We learn that Mr. Williams’ wife died some time before.

Crude or Profane Language

We hear one use of the British profanity “bugger.”

Drug and Alcohol Content

Several people smoke cigarettes throughout the film—in keeping with its 1950s setting, but also enough to earn a PG-13 rating.

Both Mr. Sutherland and Mr. Williams drink heavily when Sutherland takes his new friend out on the town. At one point, when Mr. Williams staggers over to sing a Scottish folk tune, he tells the crowd that he has a little Scotch in his family. “It looks like you’ve got a bit of Scotch in you now, mate!” someone shouts. Later, Mr. Williams seems as though he’s almost passed out on some woman’s shoulder.

In a flashback, we see someone, perhaps Mr. Williams’ father, drink a beer. Mr. Williams asks Miss Harris to go out for a drink with him—an invitation that she grudgingly accepts. (He seems to have an alcoholic beverage, but Miss Harris appears to be just drinking water.)

Other Negative Elements

A vacant, rubble-strewn lot (the wreckage probably still lingering from World War II) is muddy with what someone calls sewage water.

Mr. Williams and his son seem to regard each other well, but they’re not what you’d call “close.” Indeed, the senior Mr. Williams never tells his son that he’s dying. (Indeed, he only tells two people: Miss Harris and Mr. Sutherland.)

When his father does, indeed, die, the younger Mr. Williams is filled with remorse—feeling terrible that he died in “all that cold.” Mr. Williams was indeed out in the cold weather toward the end, but it’s likely that his son was talking not about the weather outside, but the atmosphere in the flat that they all shared.

Living is aptly titled.

It’s a deceptively simple, even nondescript name, to be sure—easily forgotten and, perhaps, easily overlooked.

But as the movie tells us, so is living itself. We all, by the nature of reading this review, are alive. But how many of us know how to live?

A lot of us—even many of us Christians—don’t quite know what to do with our days on earth until they’re almost gone. And then we remember all the places we wanted to see and the things we hoped to do. We regret the time we spent killing it and wish we had more time to do the things we really valued. We think about how to repair relationships or somehow, in some way, get a little closer to the person that God wanted us to be this whole time.

But what sort of person does God want us to be?

For Mr. Williams, the answer is one we’d do well to at least think about (even if Mr. Williams would likely not bring God into the conversation at all): It’s a person who does his best. Who makes a difference. A person who doesn’t just check boxes and shuffle papers, but works to make life a little better for those around him.

I love the fact that Mr. Williams didn’t punt his life for a few months of fun or frivolity. He didn’t spend it trying to recapture the joy of youth. He didn’t, ultimately, leave who he was and who he’d been all these years. He just became a better version of that person—making a difference as just a regular ol’ bureaucrat.

Living has a nice pedigree. It’s an adaptation of the Japanese film Ikiru by the legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, which was in turn inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s classic novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

And it, also like its predecessors, plays it pretty straight and pretty clean. The content is surprisingly mild for a PG-13 film: We see the interior of a rather naughty tent, and we hear one British-centric profanity. Smoking is fairly pervasive. But that’s it. It’s almost clean enough to be cleared for broadcast on the 1953 version of the BBC.

Of course, this film isn’t for kids. But for adults who like to chew on bigger themes without gagging on content problems, and for those who like to see some very fine performances (lead Bill Nighy is rightly getting some Oscar attention), Living fills out the form for “good movie” and files it in triplicate.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Living Communes with the Past to Honor a Kurosawa Classic

When it was properly released in the U.S. in 1960, eight years after it had opened in Japan, Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru was sometimes marketed with the image of a half-naked dancer who appeared briefly in the film – quite a bait-and-switch for a somber, nearly two-and-a-half hour drama about an elderly Japanese bureaucrat dying of cancer. That infamous marketing campaign has gone down in history as a prime example of the flamboyant dishonesty of American film distributors in the 1950s and 60s. But it was also an understandable bit of chicanery. “Come watch an old man die!” wasn’t much of a tagline then, nor is it now.

Oliver Hermanus’s new drama Living , a rather faithful British remake of Ikiru set in 1950s London, has a similar challenge; we like to think we live in more sophisticated times, but we’re probably no more likely to go see such a seemingly morbid story any more than those earlier audiences were. So, it may come as a bit of a surprise when Living starts and we are immediately jolted by…color. Maybe not technically Technicolor, but something similarly saturated and rich. The film’s shimmering images, with their deep shadows and symmetric elegance, framed carefully in a classic Academy aspect ratio, create an effect reminiscent of something from the very period in which the movie is set.   Living doesn’t try to reinvent or reimagine Ikiru so much as transport it, as if to speculate what Kurosawa’s masterpiece might have looked like had it been produced in the British film industry, in color, at around the same time.

In many of its details, the new movie, written by Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, adheres closely to the original. Our hero, Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy), is a stuffed-shirt functionary who, upon learning that he’s got only a few months left to live, struggles to find meaning and joy. Then he realizes that, as a lifelong civil servant who understands the levers of power in the paralyzing bureaucracy in which he works, he can make a difference by simply helping build a modest children’s playground in a neglected corner of the city.

It would be incorrect, however, to call Hermanus and Ishiguro’s approach a replication, or imitation. The music and the cutting, or for that matter the performances, aren’t in themselves what you’d find in a ‘50s film. This is not campy cosplay, but a kind of communion with the spirit and simplicity of the past. Because there’s something ingenious about the film’s style. Living traffics in relatively basic ideas. The repression and conformity of stuffy middle-class jobs, the need to look up from a life lived within the tight parameters of society and to seize the moment – these are rudimentary, even corny themes at this point, worked over in novels and films for decades. How, then, to revitalize them for today’s audience? Well, maybe by evoking the textures of a film made in the 1950s, to help bridge the cognitive gap. A more modern approach might seem impoverished, shallow, lacking in complexity. Now, cloaked in the trappings of a film from 70 years ago, it feels like a message relayed from a hazy past to our smug present.

Like Ikiru , Living locks us into the central character’s despair. Grief and mortality transform this shadow-figure into an avatar of the human condition; we know just enough about him to let our imaginations race, and not much more. Lanky and prim, the always-excellent Nighy portrays Williams with an aristocratic reserve. We slowly learn that for him, this veneer of calm and muted confidence is an existential ambition; he’s spent his life aspiring to be a gentleman. This actually stands in marked contrast to Ikiru ’s Takashi Shimura, one of Japan’s greatest and most versatile actors, who brought to that film’s protagonist Watanabe a broad, almost theatrical anguish. Suffer in silence or rage at the snuffing of one’s light; either approach works. We all die in our own way.

Moving and engaging and visually splendid in equal measure, Living makes for a surprisingly pleasant cinematic journey, but Ikiru is a 142-minute machine designed to crush your heart into a million pieces. New Yorkers can actually see Kurosawa’s film in all its 35mm glory at the Metrograph starting next week; for everybody else, there’s Criterion or HBO Max . If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should. While its canonic status is secure, Ikiru is one Kurosawa classic that sometimes gets ignored because it’s not a crime picture or a Samurai epic. But it remains a marvelous showcase for the director’s humanity, and for his ability to strip his characters of their illusions and biases, layer by layer, until all that remains is something raw, real, and beautiful. (It should come as no surprise that the team that created this movie immediately went and made Seven Samurai .) When Watanabe, in Ikiru ’s most indelible scene, finds himself all alone one night on a swing in the playground he made possible, it feels like we’re seeing this character in full for the first time, his upright past and his sorrowful present (for he has no future) collapsing into one devastating frame, an old man singing a song from his childhood to himself in the snow.

Both Ikiru and Living are set in the years following World War II, and while the war is mentioned briefly, one does wonder how much the destructive uncertainty of those years (not to mention the global depression that preceded them) played into Williams and Watanabe’s respective desires to put their heads down and work their uneventful jobs. Monotony and constancy gain their own kind of luster when the world is going mad. Yes, Kurosawa saw a stifling, repressive complacency in the workaday bureaucrats of post-war Japan, and there are passages of Ikiru where he skewers them mightily. But he also saw their humanity, their buried striving. The highest compliment I can pay Living is that it takes those dusty ideas and makes them resonate once more. Not unlike remembering an old, familiar song, and understanding it for the first time.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Living’ on Netflix, a Lovely Late-Career Highlight for the Stalwart Bill Nighy

Where to stream:.

• Living (2022)

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Stalwart thespian Bill Nighy earned a well-deserved 2023 Oscar nomination for Living (now on Netflix), the British remake of Akira Kurosawa’s humanist masterpiece Ikiru , which was itself based on Leo Tolstoy’s novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich . Perhaps surprisingly, it was Nighy’s first Oscar nod of a lengthy career ranging from playing villains in Underworld and Pirates of the Caribbean movies to ensemble roles in the Exotic Marigold Hotel films to being part of director Richard Curtis’ stable of actors (Nighy was in About Time and won a BAFTA for his role in Love Actually ). In Living he plays a lifelong bureaucrat going through an existential crisis after being diagnosed with terminal illness; although he experiences some regret about the way he lives his life, you’re not likely to feel the same about watching this moving drama.  

LIVING : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We need an outsider perspective first, and it belongs to Mr. Peter Wakeling (Alex Sharp), the fresh new hire at a London governmental office that’s stuffed to the brim with people shuffling papers. He meets his buttoned-up coworkers on the commuter train platform, and is advised to stay a few steps behind their boss, Mr. Williams (Nighy), who carries with him an air of authority and superiority. Mr. Williams isn’t THE boss though, as he bows to the Chairman on his way to his desk, at the head of a group of workers best described as administrators, because it’s a vague term that could mean anything, and it’s not quite clear exactly what they do all day, but it’s definitely busy work. Mr. Wakeling – this being Britain in 1953, everybody is referred to by their honorifics – meets his coworker Miss Margaret Harris (Aimee Lou Wood of Sex Education ), and she half-jokes that if he maintains a tower of papers on his desk, nobody will even notice he’s there. 

We see an example of what happens in this office when three women arrive with a petition. They’d like the city to convert a bombed-out chunk of sewage-ridden concrete into a playground for children, which requires this approval from that department and that permit from this department, and Mr. Wakeling learns a valuable first-day-on-the-job lesson as he leads them up one flight of stairs and through this corridor and into that room and down another flight of stairs and through that corridor and into this room and everyone they meet refers them to a different department and they end up right back where they began, at Mr. Williams’ desk, where he calmly takes their petition and adds it to a pile of paperwork, perhaps to be seen only after civilization collapses and archaeologists of the future dig through the rubble and attempt to piece together how the long-dead bureaucracy functioned, and the thought of them trying to figure it out is deeply funny and ironic, because I’m not sure anyone here in the present moment of this playground petition truly knows how all of this works.

This hapless endeavor has been the whole of Mr. Williams’ life to this point, and to judge his inexpressive face, he never questioned it until now, because he just found out he has six months to live. He takes the diagnosis home and sits in the dark and when his son and daughter-in-law come home, he urges them to sit with him and they decline, oblivious to the fact that something’s clearly wrong. Read into that as you may. He procures many bottles of pills, empties half of his bank account and – what exactly does he intend to do with that? Well, it doesn’t happen. He meets Mr. Sutherland (Tom Burke), a struggling writer, who takes Mr. Williams out, to live a little at clubs and pubs, and he ends up singing a sad, sad song. He then serendipitously meets Miss Harris, who asks him to sign a reference letter for her new job – and they become unlikely friends. A wall or two falls down as they share a bit about themselves, including how she referred to him as “Mr. Zombie” because he was “not dead, but not alive either.” Meanwhile, it’s been weeks since Mr. Williams last showed up at the office; perhaps he no longer lives to work like he did for so, so very long.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s easy to draw a few parallels between Living and the far less-subtle Tom Hanks vehicle A Man Called Otto : Protagonists preoccupied with niggling details in day-to-day routines, contemplating suicide and making platonic friends with younger women who help them establish fresh perspectives on life.

Performance Worth Watching: We’ve seen Nighy be funny and over the top many times before (especially as franchise bad guys), but Living is the exact opposite of those performances, a quiet, stately and mannered characterization colored in shades of longing and regret. It’s easily the most accomplished and thoughtful performance of his long, diverse career.

Memorable Dialogue: “I have a little Scotch in me.” – Mr. Williams drops a double-entendre when he steps up to sing an old Scottish song

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Director Oliver Hermanus and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro (author of the novels Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day ) shifts the setting of Ikiru to postwar London so they may couch the story within 1,000 microvariations of mannerly British politeness, including those that seem polite but aren’t very polite at all. It’s an inspired choice, and Living comes off as a classical parable in a vein similar to Ebenezer Scrooge’s existential crisis of conscience. On its face, the film is emotionally stripped down, even sentimental at times, but the richness and clarity of Nighy’s performance prompts us to read into the character, to ponder how and why he got to this place of profound detachment. His professional subordinates stay a few steps behind him on the sidewalk; the citizens requesting his assistance get the runaround; he’s emotionally estranged from his son even though they live in the same house. 

How did Mr. Williams get this way? That’s when conjecture finds root and blooms. I see a willful devotion to conformity and propriety. I see a workaholic who committed himself to the least important things in life. I see a rigid man who can only be shaken from routine by tragedy. I see a long-delayed expansion of self-awareness. I see someone who needs to look outside his tiny sphere for a second chance – and thankfully finds some kindness, in Mr. Sutherland and especially Miss Harris. When Nighy and Wood share the screen – they share a wonderful, natural chemistry – nothing seems too late, or hopeless. 

There’s a kind of bleak comedy embedded in Living ’s depiction of the Establishment, its inefficiency and emotional detachment. It seems to have swallowed our protagonist, who perhaps allowed it to happen willingly; emotions are messy and chaotic, and at least the workday brings the illusion of order to the world. And yet, that structure has enslaved him. There’s nothing quite so heartbreaking as hearing Mr. Williams confess to a stranger that his plan to have fun, to “live a little,” fails because he simply doesn’t know how. A simple moment like that might seem trite and sentimental in another context, one less committed to the suggestive details of setting and nonverbal expression. Hermanus, Ishiguro, Nighy and Wood together find a richly exquisite intersection of time and place and character, and the result is quietly profound.

Our Call: Living yields a late-career peak for Nighy, and a moving experience for the rest of us. STREAM IT. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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‘Living’: Bill Nighy keeps it low-key in precise ’50s period piece

The reliably graceful actor plays a bureaucrat in a bowler hat, changing up his robotic life when he learns he has six months to live..

A civil servant in London (Bill Nighy) leads a life of restraint in “Living.”

Sony Pictures Classics

If the wonderful Bill Nighy were a poker player, you’d get the sense he’d never make huge bluffs or needle his opponents, and if he were to suffer a bad beat, he would shrug and say something along the lines of, “Well, that’s the way the cards fall sometimes, right?” even as something more intense might be dancing in his eyes. He is an actor of grace whether he’s hitting notes large or small, and it is never not a pleasure to watch him execute his craft, whether he’s taking a big bite out of the screen in “Love, Actually” and the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies or tackling more serious fare in films such as “Notes on a Scandal” and “Sometimes Always Never.”

Nighy’s skill set is perfectly tailored to the lead role in “Living,” a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” that keeps the 1950s time period and stays true to the most important plot points but shifts the story from Tokyo to London. From the opening credits that look exactly like movies from the 1950s through the meticulously crafted costumes and production design, “Living” instantly immerses us in a post-war London populated by men in suits and bowler hats, and women in simple dresses and pearls, a place of order and restraint — which suits Nighy’s Mr. Williams just fine.

As the head of the Public Works Department, which prides itself on shuffling paperwork and creating the illusion of being busy while getting very little done, the widowed Mr. Williams is so aloof and robotic one of his underlings has given him the nickname of “Mr. Zombie.” He spends his days overseeing his small staff in a room practically bursting with silence, then heads to the home he shares with his bumbling son Michael (Barney Fishwick) and Michael’s wife Fiona (Patsy Ferran), who is cold and rude to Mr. Williams and wishes he would just die and leave them the house and his money.

Not much of a life — but when Mr. Williams is told he has only about six months to live, he begins to make some major changes, albeit with his signature low-key persona. He simply stops going to work for a long stretch of time. He withdraws a large sum of cash from his bank account and befriends a charming rogue named Mr. Sutherland (Tom Burke), who offers to show Mr. Williams a good time, involving drinks and songs and women. He strikes up a platonic relationship with Miss Margaret Harris (a delightful Aimee Lou Wood), a former employee now working at a pub.

And when he returns to work, he makes it his mission to complete a long-delayed project: converting a wartime bombing site into a children’s playground. (A scene in which Mr. Williams goes about a room, personally shaking hands with every bureaucrat in a different department who might help him, is tender and dignified and moving and just great.)

About two-thirds of the way through the film, “Living” takes such an abrupt turn that it almost feels as if several key scenes had been inadvertently excised — but then we wind back in time, and all is answered. Throughout, Bill Nighy carries the film effortlessly on his slender shoulders, reminding us of why he’s an international treasure.

‘Living’ Review: Less Is More in This Exceptionally Understated Turn From Bill Nighy

The charismatic English actor dials it back in this remake of Akira Kurosawa’s meaning-of-life classic 'Ikiru,' adapted by Kazuo Ishiguro.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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“What would you do if you had six months left to live?” asks the doctor who diagnoses a do-nothing bureaucrat with terminal cancer in “Ikiru,” a 1952 masterpiece I suspect precious few of those who see its English-language remake, “ Living ,” will recall. Quite unlike anything else in Akira Kurosawa’s career, “Ikiru” ranks among the Japanese director’s best: With no samurai battles or set-pieces, the low-key contemporary melodrama raises profound questions about how we choose to spend the limited time we’re afforded, focusing on a stoic functionary about whom even the narrator apologizes, “He might as well be a corpse.”

Nighy’s career has enjoyed an almost two-decade second act, and it’s possible to imagine the BAFTA winner scooping up a fresh shelf of trophies for this performance. “Living” is undeniably moving, although perhaps not to the same degree that Kurosawa achieved, in part because Ishiguro is so committed to the British art of biting one’s tongue and swallowing one’s emotions. That is to say, Ishiguro has aligned “Ikiru” with his best-known work, “The Remains of the Day.” That book — whose title alludes to what time we have left — concerned a butler so committed to his post that he allowed the love of his life to slip him by.

“Living” introduces Mr. Williams through the eyes of a new hire, Peter Wakeling (Alex Sharp), as yet uncorrupted by the office’s practiced art of dodging responsibility. With their neatly tailored suits and matching bowler hats, the paper pushers in Public Works seem to have realized that sticking their necks out is the surest way to lose their heads — initiative endangers their jobs — and so, they spend their days referring cases to other departments. The goal, while hardly Hippocratic, is to “do no harm.” The result is that they do no good either.

In Peter, Mr. Williams recognizes a younger version of himself. This character, invented by Ishiguro, lends a Dickensian dimension to the retelling: Mr. Williams is hardly as selfish as Ebenezer Scrooge, but like the old miser of “A Christmas Carol,” he’s squandered his days. Too oblivious to know what he doesn’t know, Peter provides Mr. Williams with a unique opportunity to pass on what he realized too late. Similarly, a young employee who’d left the office before it could crush her, Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood), suggests the kind of woman he probably ought to have married.

Mr. Williams does have a son, Michael (Barney Fishwick), but he can’t bring himself to tell the lad about his diagnosis — and besides, he and his girlfriend Fiona (Patsy Ferran) act as if he’s already dead. They’re already making plans for their inheritance. But who can blame them? As Margaret points out, Mr. Williams goes through life like a zombie. And so the dying man keeps the news to himself, withdrawing half his savings and heading to the seaside, where he intends to cram some fun into his final days. In what could easily be the film’s most pathetic line, Mr. Williams winces when a stranger (Tom Burke) tells him to “live a little,” confessing, “I don’t know how.”

Building a playground won’t change the world. But it will change Mr. Williams. When he dies (surprisingly early in the film), his family and co-workers are left to wonder why this project should have meant so much to him. We know more than they do, of course. Though it stacks endings upon endings in an effort to wring tears, the film is wise to leave some things unanswered. “Living” isn’t nearly as subtle as it purports to be, although it can feel that way, considering how much these characters hold back — and this, one supposes, is what audiences want from an Ishiguro script.

Reviewed online, Sundance Film Festival (Premieres), Jan. 21, 2022. Running time: 102 MIN.

• Production: (U.K.) A Film 4, County Hall Arts presentation, in association with Lip Sync, Rocket Science, Kurosawa Prod. of a Woolley/Karlsen, Number 9 Films production, in co-production with Filmgate Films, Film i Väst. (World sales: Rocket Science, London; CAA Media Finance, Los Angeles.) Producers: Stephen Woolley, Elizabeth Karlsen. Executive producers: Norman Merry, Peter Hampden, Sean Wheelan, Thorsten Schumacher, Emma Berkofsky, Ko Kurosawa, Ollie Madden, Daniel Battsek, Kazuo Ishiguro, Nik Powell, Kenzo Okamoto, Ian Prior. Co-executive producer: Kristina Börjenson. Co-producer: Jane Hooks.
• Crew: Director: Oliver Hermanus. Screenplay: Kazuo Ishiguro, based on Akira Kurosawa’s film “Ikiru,” written by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni. Camera: Jamie D. Ramsay. Editor: Chris Wyatt. Music: Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch.
• With: Bill Nighy, Aimee Lou Wood, Alex Sharp, Tom Burke, Adrian Rawlins, Oliver Chris, Hubert Burton, Zoe Boyle, Barney Fishwick, Patsy Ferran, Michael Cochrane, Lia Williams.

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• Cast & crew
• User reviews

In 1950s London, a humorless bureaucrat decides to take time off work to experience life after receiving a grim diagnosis. In 1950s London, a humorless bureaucrat decides to take time off work to experience life after receiving a grim diagnosis. In 1950s London, a humorless bureaucrat decides to take time off work to experience life after receiving a grim diagnosis.

• Oliver Hermanus
• Kazuo Ishiguro
• Akira Kurosawa
• Shinobu Hashimoto
• Aimee Lou Wood
• 224 User reviews
• 176 Critic reviews
• 81 Metascore
• 10 wins & 48 nominations total

• Margaret Harris

• Peter Wakeling

• Mrs McMasters

• (as John MacKay)

• Mrs Matthews

• Doctor Matthews

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

More like this

Did you know

• Trivia The production designers went to a great deal of trouble to make this film look like it was made in the era it was set, including avoiding quick edits, softening the colour palette and using a relevant font for the film credits.
• Goofs If you leave Waterloo Station to walk to the Greater London County Council (GLCC) you don't walk across Westminster bridge. They're on the same side South Bank.

Williams : I don't have time to get angry.

• Connections Featured in EE BAFTA Film Awards (2023)
• Soundtracks Tempo di Valse Written by Antonín Dvorák Performed by Berliner Philharmoniker , Herbert von Karajan Courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH Under licence from Universal Music Operations Ltd

User reviews 224

• Mar 3, 2023
• How long is Living? Powered by Alexa
• November 4, 2022 (United Kingdom)
• United Kingdom
• County Hall (United Kingdom)
• Film i Väst (Sweden)
• Worthing, West Sussex, England, UK (conversation in the Lido Cafe between Mr. Williams and Sutherland)
• County Hall
• Lipsync Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Dec 25, 2022
• $12,377,310

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 42 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Common sense media reviewers.

Inspiring British drama reflects on meaning of life.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Make the most of your life, ensuring your days are

Mr. Williams is initially a reserved man who does

Central character Mr. Williams is an aging White m

The notion of death runs throughout, though there'

Characters visit a nightclub that features a belly

Two characters go out for an expensive lunch. Ment

Characters are seen smoking at work, in bars, in r

Parents need to know that Living is a tender British drama that's about a man with a terminal illness but remains wholly uplifting in its own, subtle way. When Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy) is told he has less than a year to live, he begins to look back on his life and consider what he can do in the time he has…

Positive Messages

Make the most of your life, ensuring your days are full of purpose. It's never too late to change for the better. Helping others is something to be proud of. Perseverance is often required to achieve worthwhile accomplishments.

Positive Role Models

Mr. Williams is initially a reserved man who does little more than work and travel to and from his office. But when he is told he has less than a year to live, he finds solace and inspiration in his friendship with Margaret. She unwittingly encourages him to live the remainder of his life to its fullest.

Diverse Representations

Central character Mr. Williams is an aging White male dying of cancer. Very minor ethnic diversity in supporting roles. Lead female character, Margaret, is fully rounded and serves a profound purpose on both Williams and subsequently on the narrative. Given the setting -- 1950s England -- the workplace is male dominated. But many women stick up for themselves and refuse to be ignored.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

The notion of death runs throughout, though there's no violence of note. A character produces a number of jars of sleeping pills, suggestion being that they were considering taking their own life. A character is diagnosed with a terminal illness. A bloody tissue; coughing up blood. A funeral takes place; passing reference to a dead spouse.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Characters visit a nightclub that features a belly dancer who removes their bikini top to the applauding audience -- no nudity as it's shot from behind. As characters walk through an alleyway, a couple are briefly seen kissing.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Two characters go out for an expensive lunch. Mention of life savings, half of which is briefly shown.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Characters are seen smoking at work, in bars, in restaurants. Characters drink, too; in one sequence two characters get very drunk. A character gives another some sleeping pills after they complain they can't sleep.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Living is a tender British drama that's about a man with a terminal illness but remains wholly uplifting in its own, subtle way. When Mr. Williams ( Bill Nighy ) is told he has less than a year to live, he begins to look back on his life and consider what he can do in the time he has left. As he reflects on and regrets letting life pass him by, Williams develops an unlikely friendship with his younger ex-colleague Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood), who inspires him to seize the day. Set in 1950s England, Williams' office is largely male dominated, and characters are seen smoking at work and at pubs. There is also drinking, mostly in moderation, although in one scene, two men get very drunk. There is a non-explicit conversation where a character suggests they considered ending their own life by taking sleeping pills. A funeral takes place, and there is a brief reference to a dead spouse, but there is no violence or strong language to speak of. The film is a remake of acclaimed Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa 's Ikiru . To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (1)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Beautiful British film

What's the story.

LIVING is the story of Mr. Williams ( Bill Nighy ), a man who has become trapped in the monotonous clockwork of everyday life, lacking inspiration in a postwar world. When he discovers he is terminally ill, he confronts his past and seeks to salvage what he has left of his future. He befriends his ex-colleague Margaret (Aimee Lou Wood), and her youthful vibrancy and zest for life rubs off on him. He realizes that before he dies, he wants to do something meaningful, something he can be remembered for.

Is It Any Good?

This moving British drama is standing on the shoulders of cinematic royalty, as an English-language remake of Akira Kurosawa 's critically acclaimed Ikiru . Thankfully Living more than holds its own. Put together in the most beautiful way by South African filmmaker Oliver Hermanus , the director captures the clockwork synchrony of everyday life, and yet does so with such passion. The lighting, the tonality -- it's truly sumptuous cinema, and manages to be so beautiful despite the mundaneness it depicts. But then that's the point and the takeaway message: that we should all try to find the beauty in the monotony of our lives, as our hero, Nighy's Mr. Williams, tries to do as he approaches the end of his life.

What transpires is a tender film, a warm production that manages to stay on the right side of sentimentality throughout. What helps is the absorbing central performance from Nighy. In what's arguably a career-best performance from him, he's matched at every turn by the charming Wood as Margaret, Williams' ex-colleague and the film's inspiration.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about what Living had to say about life. What lessons did Mr. Williams learn? What did he do with these lessons? What did you take away from the film? How to talk to kids about difficult subjects.

Discuss the character of Margaret. How did she inspire Mr. Williams? Would you describe her as a positive role model ? What makes a good role model?

How were drinking and smoking depicted in the film? Were they glamorized? How has our behavior when it comes to drinking and smoking changed from when the movie was set?

Living is an English-language remake of a Japanese film. What other remakes have you seen? How did they compare?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 23, 2022
• On DVD or streaming : April 11, 2023
• Cast : Bill Nighy , Aimee Lou Wood , Alex Sharp
• Director : Oliver Hermanus
• Inclusion Information : Black directors, Female actors, Asian writers
• Studio : Sony Pictures Classics
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Friendship , History
• Character Strengths : Curiosity
• Run time : 102 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : some suggestive material and smoking
• Award : Common Sense Selection
• Last updated : June 5, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Where to Watch 'Living' Starring Bill Nighy: Showtimes and Streaming Status

Here's where you can see Bill Nighy in his Oscar-nominated role.

The Oscar nominees are in and among the prestigious selection within the Best Actor category is none other than first-time contender Bill Nighy for his lead role in Living . The film is an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa 's drama, Ikiru , and derived from Leo Tolstoy 's novel entitled The Death of Ivan Ilyich . In it, Nighy plays a civil servant that is forced to reevaluate his life choices after receiving a terminal prognosis in 1950s Britain. Similarly to the postwar reconstruction that took place during the period depicted in this film, the protagonist undergoes a moment of personal growth as he strives to do something great with nearly no time left on the biological clock. Its deeply moving storyline and acting have allowed Living to continue winning audiences over for practically a year. This extended-release circuit has allowed the film to remain a sought-after watch for moviegoers that are also interested in the awards season. If you are looking to watch this Academy Award nominee before the ceremony takes place, then here is a guide to help you know when and where you can see this existentialist masterpiece.

Related: 'Living’ Ending Explained and How It Compares to the Original 'Ikiru'

What Was the Release Date for Living?

Living originally came out during the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, garnering critical acclaim. In a review for Collider , Maggie Lovitt shared that

" Living is ultimately a very somber film that requires its audience to look inward and reflect on the legacy they will one day leave behind. It’s beautiful, haunting, and Nighy gives a tremendously moving performance as he grapples with regrets for a life well spent, but not spent well enough."

The feature film had its release in the UK theaters later in the year on November 4 and Sony Pictures Classics enabled US audiences to watch it on the big screen for a limited run. Its premiere in America was on December 23, 2022.

Is Living Still in Theaters?

As mentioned before, this adaptation has had an extended theatrical rollout. This means that you may still be able to watch Living in the movie theaters. To check the showtimes and tickets, you can use the following links:

• Sony Pictures

Is Living Coming to Streaming?

Given that the film is still in theaters, there isn't any confirmation about it landing on streaming anytime soon. However, if it does get picked up by a streaming service, the most probable option would be Netflix. After all, Sony Pictures Entertainment made a first pay window licensing deal with Netflix back in April 2021, allowing the service to have exclusive rights to SPE films that come out as of 2022. Since Living fits the time frame of this deal, there are high chances that it could be eligible to stream on the platform.

Watch the Living Trailer

The trailer begins with a train sequence, introducing Mr. Williams (played by Nighy) in his composed, aristocratic posture. As he walks into his workplace, viewers can tell that he is out of touch with his colleagues and is always spotted alone. The character is described in further detail a few seconds into the trailer as a person that is "not much fun and laughter". Given the repetition of scenes that showcase the protagonist taking off his hat, going up the staircase to his job, and completing all his everyday tasks, you can tell that Mr. Williams has a very monotonous lifestyle. That is until he finally realizes what he has become and decides to fully experience life in the limited time frame that he has before reaching the final stage of his terminal illness. Finding out that there is much more to do other than the daily routine allows the character to let loose, arrive to work late, go out for drinks, and attend a movie theater screening alongside one of his employees (played by Aimee Lou Wood ). This change is for the better because the protagonist understands that life is too short to not be appreciated.

In a recent episode of Variety's Awards Circuit Podcast , Nighy expanded on why audiences are resonating with his latest film.

“It touches people. It discusses a couple of universal themes, one of which is mortality, and the other is procrastination. It’s about a guy who works in an institution dedicated to making sure that things don’t happen for most of his life, and then is given a diagnosis which triggers a huge transformation.”

What Oscar Nominations Did Living Receive?

Living received two Oscar Nominations at the 95th Academy Awards, those being Best Actor for Bill Nighy and Best Adapted Screenplay by Kazuo Ishiguro .

Related: This Year's Oscar Nominations Feature Five First-Time Nominees for Best Actor

Movies Like Living

It isn't hard to find movies that tackle terminal illnesses and the fear of missing out. However, if you are looking for recommendations that have the uplifting feel that Living has, here are two options that match the criteria.

My Life Without Me (2003) - Sarah Polley may have received a lot of praise for her recently nominated film, Women Talking , but back in the day she starred in a heartfelt project about a young mother trying her best to check off all the boxes before it's too late. In this film, she plays Ann, a woman facing terminal ovarian cancer, who makes a "to do" list of things she would like to experience before death. As she seeks to show love to her two daughters, find a wife for her husband, and ignite a new romantic relationship, Ann is able to attain the short-lived happiness she longs for.

The Bucket List (2007) - In this film, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman play Edward and Carter, two men with distinct backgrounds who suffer from a terminal cancer diagnosis. One is wise but never had the financial means to pursue a different career path other than being a mechanic, while the other is a rich patient in a hospital that he owns. Similar to Ann in My Life Without Me , Carter has a bucket list of tasks to accomplish before his passing. In order to grant Carter's wishes, Edward decides to spend his wealth on the numerous activities that are on his list. Eventually, the two embark on a three-month journey together in the hopes of enjoying life to the max despite its imminent expiration. Like Living , this story focuses on the characters' drive for closure instead of them just waiting for the worst to happen.

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New Life – Movie Review (4/5)

Posted by Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard | Apr 29, 2024 | 3 minutes

NEW LIFE is a horror thriller with a simple plot. Fortunately, it works surprisingly well thanks to a strong cast. It’s a story that could easily have evolved into an apocalyptic event. Read our full  New Life  movie review here!

NEW LIFE is a horror thriller with a drama edge as it’s quite slow-burn. It’s essentially a virus-thriller where we see the effects of the disease and they’re looking mighty zombie-like. Someone mentions the word “Ebola”, but clearly something else is going on.

Despite a very simple plot and a runtime of just 1 hour and 25 minutes, it’s a movie that packs a real punch. The strong cast and efficient storytelling must get deserved credit for this experience.

Continue reading our New Life  movie review below. Find it in US theaters and On Demand from May 3, 2024.

A woman on the run, but why?

When we meet Jess in the opening scene, she’s already a woman on the run. We just don’t know why exactly, but then neither does she. All she does know is that someone is after her, so she’s desperate to cross the Canadian border to escape them.

On a solo mission, to get closer to her than the clumsy men, who look straight out of Men in Black or something, is a woman. He name is Elsa, and she’s quite a resourceful agent. When we meet her, we discover that she’s recently been given a life-altering diagnosis, which is catching up on her health. Fast!

Both Jess and Elsa end up in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, which is where Elsa discovers exactly how dangerous Jess is. Also, she finds out why she’s been given this extremely important mission. If she fails, it could cost millions of people their lives.

Also, it isn’t until the end of the movie that Jess finally discovers why she is being hunted down.

Film festival darling

We’ve had our eyes on New Life for some time as it has been playing at film festivals like FrightFest and Fantasia . In fact, it’s been quite the film festival darling, which is almost always a sign that you have a real treat in store.

Now, we finally had the chance to watch it, and it’s easy to see why it’s been such a darling. Both to audiences and critics.

The story is strong in all its simplicity, so even if I found a few of the story coincidences a bit heavy-handed, it wasn’t so much that I wasn’t still completely enthralled.

Also, with Hayley Erin ( The Young and the Restless , Pretty Little Liars ) and the always wonderful Sonya Walger ( For All Mankind , Lost ) in the two lead roles, it’s a treat for all genre fans.

Watch  New Life in Theaters or On Demand

This horror thriller is the directorial debut of John Rosman. It’s a critically acclaimed debut at that and when you watch this movie, you’ll understand why. There’s a depth and intensity to it that works remarkably well.

John Rosman is the director and writer of  New Life , so this is very much his brainchild. Now I’m just hoping he will continue working on genre movies so we can see more from this filmmaker. He even won the 2023 Audience Choice Award for Horror at the Heartland International Film Festival, which speaks volumes to me.

A movie like  One Cut of the Dead also won audience awards at film festivals, and that’s why we watched it. If you’ve watched that particular movie, you’ll know it begins as such a weird experience that you want to give up on it. However, when I found out it was an Audience Award winner, I knew I was in safe hands. We ended up giving it a top rating!

For  New Life , we didn’t quite reach that elusive top rating. Still, I can imagine future projects from John Rosman could get us there!

New Life is out in US Theaters and On Demand from May 3, 2024. Also, it will be available in the UK on Digital from June 3, 2024.

Director & Writer: John Rosman Cast: Sonya Walger, Hayley Erin, Tony Amendola, Nick George, Ayanna Berkshire, Blaine Palmer, Betty Moyer

A mysterious woman on the run, and the resourceful fixer assigned to bring her in. Their two unique stories inextricably link, as the stakes of the pursuit rise to apocalyptic proportions.

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About The Author

Karina "ScreamQueen" Adelgaard

I write reviews and recaps on Heaven of Horror. And yes, it does happen that I find myself screaming, when watching a good horror movie. I love psychological horror, survival horror and kick-ass women. Also, I have a huge soft spot for a good horror-comedy. Oh yeah, and I absolutely HATE when animals are harmed in movies, so I will immediately think less of any movie, where animals are harmed for entertainment (even if the animals are just really good actors). Fortunately, horror doesn't use this nearly as much as comedy. And people assume horror lovers are the messed up ones. Go figure!

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Review: If you doubted the greatness of Bill Nighy, a moving new drama offers ‘Living’ proof

Exquisitely directed by Oliver Hermanus from a script by Kazuo Ishiguro, this English-language remake of Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Ikiru’ finds fresh depths in a classic

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Not long into “Living,” Mr. Williams learns that he has not long to live. The news doesn’t come as a huge shock, but even if it did, you gather, nothing about this man — not his stiff posture, his calmly appraising gaze or his thin, flat line of a mouth — would betray anything resembling devastation or even surprise. We are in 1950s London, and Mr. Williams, who’s spent more than two decades toiling away in the county hall’s Public Works department, has encased himself in a shell of propriety, receiving every new document and file with unfailing politeness and unflappable calm. Why should his response to his own demise — in six months to a year, max — be any different?

Here it should be noted that Mr. Williams is played by Bill Nighy, for whom a show of restraint is never just a show of restraint. Within emotional parameters that other actors might have found gloomily constricting, Nighy coaxes forth a tour de force of understatement, suffused with an almost musical melancholy. His performance, which won a lead acting prize from the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. earlier this month, is a gorgeous minor-key symphony of downcast gazes and soft-spoken pronouncements, lightened occasionally by a faint little ghost of a smile. There’s a whisper of humor to Mr. Williams, a sense of irony about a death sentence that he keeps secret from all but a trusted few. In the movie’s best moments, Nighy lures you into the impression that he’s sharing a private joke with you, a glimmer of comic insight into an unbearably sad situation.

For your safety

The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the CDC and local health officials .

At one point you might flash back to “Love Actually,” specifically a line from one of Nighy’s funniest, most famous performances : “And now I’m left with no one, wrinkled and alone!” But Mr. Williams is not one for flamboyant self-pity, and “Living,” thankfully, will never be mistaken for “Life Actually.” Exquisitely directed by Oliver Hermanus from a spare, elegant script by the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, the movie is a faithful English-language reimagining of “Ikiru,” Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film about a Tokyo widower who receives a terminal stomach-cancer diagnosis and turns over a startling new leaf.

An emotional epic situated between more sweeping Kurosawa classics (it was made after “Rashomon” and right before “Seven Samurai” ), “Ikiru” remains sufficiently revered that the mere thought of a remake might draw cries of sacrilege. But it is also, like so many of Kurosawa’s films, a culturally permeable, infinitely adaptable story. (“Ikiru” itself was loosely drawn from Leo Tolstoy’s novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich.”) Its lessons about the finity of existence and the beauty of living for the good of others are nothing if not universally applicable, something that could also be said of its withering indictment of government bureaucracy.

In “Living,” that bureaucracy has been transplanted to postwar London and visualized as a sea of gray pinstripe suits and bowler hats, flowing through wood-paneled offices and up and down marbled stairwells. It’s an almost distractingly beautiful vision of workplace tedium, thanks to the impeccable cut of Sandy Powell’s costumes, the polish of Helen Scott’s production design and the deep colors and sharply planed images of Jamie Ramsay’s cinematography. Our first impressions of the place, and of Mr. Williams himself, come by way of a new Public Works hire, Peter Wakeling (an excellent Alex Sharp). His cheery disposition and idealistic spirit are swiftly tempered by the realization of what their work, if that’s the word, entails.

The building is a well-ordered monument to inefficiency, where papers are duly stored and shuffled around, and anyone in need of personal assistance is immediately referred to the next department over. The satire of public administration is much the same as it was in “Ikiru,” down to the series of wipes used here (by editor Chris Wyatt) to follow a group of women on their fruitless, frustrating quest to convert a bomb site into a children’s playground. But Ishiguro has also streamlined the material and sanded down some of its rougher edges, in keeping with a sensibility that feels governed by a quintessentially (or perhaps just stereotypically) English reserve. In “Ikiru,” a doctor lies to his terminally ill patients, claiming they only have an ulcer; in “Living,” bad news is delivered and processed with the stiffest of upper lips.

That makes for a trimmer narrative (40 minutes shorter than the original), if also one that, for those who’ve seen “Ikiru,” might feel a touch muffled and overly circumscribed as it sends Mr. Williams off in search of existential answers. Away he goes from the office where he has never missed a day’s work until now, with nary a word to his colleagues or to his unsuspecting, self-absorbed son (Barney Fishwick) and daughter-in-law (Patsy Ferran). His chance encounter with a worldly pleasure seeker (Tom Burke) is diverting enough, though their guided tour of arcades and nightclubs has been conspicuously denuded of suspense or menace. More affecting are Mr. Williams’ moments with a soon-to-be-former colleague, Margaret Harris (a delightful Aimee Lou Wood), whose warmth and good humor make her an ideal if accidental confidant.

Their tender rapport is one of the story’s pleasures — a reminder that the gradual forging of a bond between near-strangers, truthful and unhurried, can be one of the simplest and most powerful things to witness in a movie. Their meetings also never rise above a polite simmer, which is true of nearly everything that transpires in “Living,” death included. In “Ikiru,” the great Takashi Shimura externalized his character’s desperation with enormous, wide-open eyes and a drooping stare. Nighy forges something more mysterious, almost subterranean, from Mr. Williams’ crisis and sudden reawakening.

That might make the movie sound more anemic than it plays, as if it were a story about the meaning of life with barely enough life surging through its own veins. But if “Living” never matches — or tries to match — the grit and density of Kurosawa’s masterpiece, it knows that detachment can be deceptive, that it can conceal profound and resonant depths of feeling. Ishiguro, who knows a thing or two about the subtle braiding of Japanese and English sensibilities, has mastered the art of such concealment in his own fiction, notably his famously filmed novel “The Remains of the Day.” Hermanus, a South African filmmaker known for his tense and powerful dramas of gay desire (“Beauty,” “Moffie” ), has similar form when it comes to dramatizing repression.

Their economy comes to fruition in the third act of “Living,” which shrewdly restructures the story’s closing scenes with no loss of impact, and with an assertion of its own singular identity. That’s to the good of a movie that knows Mr. Williams’ example is somehow both admirable and inimitable, that the difference between an ordinary life and an extraordinary one can only be measured within a set of specific, unrepeatable circumstances. It’s only human to pretend we would behave as our heroes would, and no less human to long to see and hear their stories retold.

Rating: PG-13, for some suggestive material and smoking When: Opens Friday Where: AMC UTC, Angelika Carmel Mountain, Landmark Hillcrest Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

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The 30 Best Movies of 2023

Posted: April 12, 2024 | Last updated: April 12, 2024

2023 has been an amazing year for cinema, whether you’re watching at the theater or streaming from the couch. While last year’s film offerings focused on thoughtful takes on the world and society, this is the year for billion-dollar blockbusters and talented ensemble pieces, like Barbie , Oppenheimer , The Little Mermaid , and more. Ahead, here are 30 of the best movies this year.

Timothée Chalameet as a young Willy Wonka? Sign me up. The film chronicles how Wonka met the Oompa-Loompas ahead of his time at the chocolate factory and should be quite the nostalgic ride when it’s officially released on December 15.

C’mon, Barbie, let’s go party—but Greta Gerwig style. With Gerwig behind the lens and a cast consisting of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, alongside Will Ferrell, Emma Mackey , Hari Nef, Issa Rae, and America Ferrera, among many others, Barbie turned out to be the defining film of 2023. It’s a feminist take on girlhood, dreams, and gender roles that will surely be a sleepover classic for years to come.

3) Anyone but You

Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell made headlines earlier this year for reasons separate from their new rom-com, Anyone but You . Still, the tabloid firestorm worked as legitimate marketing for the film, which tells the story of a failed first date and an unexpected reunion at a destination wedding in … Australia?

4) Dicks: The Musical

Did you know Megan Thee Stallion was in a musical movie this year? A24’s first movie musical, Dicks , is a bizarre take on the classic Parent Trap story, in which two businessmen discover they’re long-lost twins and set out to reunite their parents. Megan Mullally, Nathan Lane, Bowen Yang, Nick Offerman, D’Arcy Carden— Dicks stars everyone!

Just a few years after the Academy Award–nominated Ford v Ferrari comes Ferrari , based on the 1991 biography of car titan Enzo Ferrari and the story of a fateful race along Italy’s Mille Miglia. Beyond the incredibly cool cars, though, is an equally cool cast: Adam Driver, Patrick Dempsey, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley—even Hugh Jackman and Noomi Rapace!

We’ll do just about anything to see both Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan onscreen together, and Foe is no exception. This haunting sci-fi drama sees a young couple in an alternate America torn apart when they meet a stranger who offers them a life-changing opportunity, which calls into question the very nature of humanity itself.

This Leonard Bernstein biopic has been a long time in the making, with Bradley Cooper attached as early as 2018, when Martin Scorsese was still set to direct. Instead, Cooper took the directorial reins, as well as the starring role as Bernstein. It will focus almost exclusively on the legendary composer’s relationship with wife, Felicia Montealegre, played by Carey Mulligan.

8) Past Lives

Writer-director Celine Song’s Past Lives opened to much acclaim (and more than a few tears) at this year’s Sundance festival, and has had audiences and critics talking ever since. (It opened in theaters across the country in June and is now available via video on demand.) You can chalk up its enduring appeal to Song’s ability to tap into a universal experience of love, longing, and wondering what could have been—all nestled in an intimate story about a Korean-American woman (Greta Lee) who rekindles a connection with her childhood crush (Teo Yoo) back in Korea.

9) May December

Todd Haynes’s latest flick will surely cause quite the splash when it lands on Netflix on December 1, after a limited theatrical run at the end of November. Natalie Portman stars opposite Julianne Moore, whose character is based on Mary Kay Letourneau, the high school teacher who caused a nationwide scandal for her exploitative sexual relationship with a sixth-grade student in the ’90s. The film is 20 years later, when the loosely inspired couple find themselves at odds over Portman’s character, an actor set to play the former teacher in an upcoming biopic about their lives.

10) Passages

Passages has lingered with me since I saw it. A startling work by director Ira Sachs, it is an odd tale of a gay couple whose marriage is torn apart by an affair with a woman. Adèle Exarchopoulos shines as Agathe, whose onscreen chemistry with Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski is the stuff of legend.

11) Priscilla

Sofia Coppola’s autobiographical film based on Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir Elvis and Me is an interesting foil to Baz Lurhmann’s own 2022 biopic Elvis , which famously featured that Austin Butler accent. Whereas Elvis was an almost mythological retelling of the King of Rock and Roll’s life story, Priscilla sticks much closer to the actual source material, and is sure to leave viewers questioning everything they knew about one of America’s most divisive rock stars.

12) Renaissance: A Film by Beyonce

The Renaissance World Tour changed my life—and about a million other lives—this year. As Taylor Swift’s own concert documentary did in October, Renaissance will land in theaters for a limited run this December. Featuring footage of the history-making world tour, and behind-the-scenes footage, this is the certifiable can’t-miss movie event of the year.

13) Saltburn

Saltburn is Jacob Elordi’s second appearance on this list, and for good reason. Critics have already issued rave reviews about this Alice in Wonderland –style romp through the world of a secretive, mysterious English family, which also stars Rosamund Pike, Carey Mulligan, and Barry Keoghan.

14) You Hurt My Feelings

Nicole Holofcener made one of my favorite rom-coms of the last 10 years, Enough Said , so it’s no surprise she and muse Julia Louis-Dreyfus hit it out of the park again with You Hurt My Feelings . When Louis-Dreyfus’s Beth, a novelist, overhears her husband’s critical opinion of her latest book by accident, the two begin to question all the little lies couples tell themselves, and others.

The French coming-of-age film that follows two 13-year-old best friends has been described as heartbreaking and tremendous. Its intimate portrayal of young male friendship is simply moving to witness.

16) Knock at the Cabin

M. Night Shyamalan, the filmmaker known for his twist endings, is back with a thriller about an existential threat that falls on a happy family of three when four strangers appear at their remote cabin. Based on author Paul Tremblay’s 2018 novel The Cabin at the End of the World , the nature of the threat and the decision the family—Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, and Kristen Cui—have to make remains a mystery as the strangers, played by Dave Bautista, Rupert Grint, Nikki Amuka-Bird, and Abby Quinn, upheave their vacation.

17) Killers of the Flower Moon

Based on the best-selling nonfiction book of the same name, this American western crime drama is directed by Martin Scorsese and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, and Brendan Fraser. The plot revolves around a series of murders that took place in 1920s Oklahoma after oil was discovered on Indian land.

18) Oppenheimer

Christopher Nolan’s first biopic is based on the life of the father of the atomic bomb, physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). Even if you know very little about the history of nuclear science, the cast is enough to want to tune in, with Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Rami Malek, Josh Peck, and Alex Wolff.

19) Cat Person

Based on the viral New Yorker short story by Kristen Roupenian, Cat Person premiered at Sundance ahead of its wide release in October. Starring Emilia Jones from CODA as Margot, the young college student who embarks on a relationship with Robert (Nicholas Braun), a 34-year-old who frequents the movie theater she works at, the story caused such a response based on its subtle accounting of power imbalances in relationships ahead of #MeToo.

20) Magic Mike’s Last Dance

The third and final Channing Tatum stripper movie arrived just in time for Valentine’s Day. Grab your people and watch the self-proclaimed “Super Bowl of Stripping” unfold.

21) Cocaine Bear

If you have questions (as did I) about why a movie called Cocaine Bear came out this year, you are not alone . About a bear that goes on a cocaine-induced killing rampage, this thriller—based loosely on the real story of a 175-pound black bear nicknamed “Pablo Eskobear,” who died after snorting a duffel bag full of cocaine in 1985—is an absurdly fun time.

Whether you saw the dancing killer doll that went viral on TikTok or the eight look-alikes that performed at the premiere, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the horror film M3GAN was a 2023 standout. M3GAN is an artificially intelligent, lifelike doll designed by roboticist Gemma (Allison Williams), who gifts her young niece with the prototype after becoming the girl’s primary caretaker. What follows is the stuff out of a Chucky movie, but with a little more flair.

23) When You Finish Saving the World

The first A24 film of the year focused on the complicated mother-son relationship between Evelyn (Julianne Moore) and Ziggy (Finn Wolfhard), set against the backdrop of the modern age and all the issues it entails, like streaming and social media. While the two struggle to connect, Ziggy pursues a politically active girl from his school and Evelyn connects with a young boy at the shelter where she works, making Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut an amusing and emotional film.

24) Asteroid City

Wes Anderson’s latest film is set to bring all his notable storytelling skills to the table, but this time at a Junior Stargazer convention in the desert. As with most of his movies, you don’t really know what Asteroid City is about until you’re done watching, which makes it beyond fun; and his ensemble casts only seem to get better and better, with this film starring Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Scarlett Johansson, Maya Hawke, Liev Schreiber, Jeff Goldblum, Rita Wilson, and Steve Carell.

25) The Color Purple

The musical adaption of Alice Walker’s classic novel, which premiered on Broadway in 2005, is coming to the big screen (again) and features an amazing cast at the hands of the director who helped with Beyoncé’s visual album Black Is King and Oprah Winfrey as one of the producers. Following protagonist Cellie (Fantasia) as she deals with growing up as a Black woman in the rural South in the early 1900s, the story introduces us to the many different women she encounters, like Sophia (Danielle Brooks), Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson), Mary “Squeak” Agnes (H.E.R.), and her sister Nettie (Halle Bailey/Ciara).

26) Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

Judy Blume’s amazing middle-school novel finally received a proper film adaption this year. Known for its frank discussion of religion, sex, and pondering female adolescence, the nostalgic film is an emotional ride. With Abby Ryder Fortson as Margaret, the movie rounds out its cast with Rachel McAdams and Benny Safdie playing her parents.

27) Scream VI

With the tagline “In a city of millions, no one hears you scream,” the latest Scream installment had thrills and frights in store that no one could be ready for. The film shows the survivors of the last movie—Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Jasmin Savoy Brown, and Mason Gooding—on a subway train in the city, where the next Ghostface runs rampant.

28) The Little Mermaid

The live-action adaption of The Little Mermaid far exceeded expectations. Halle Bailey soars as the beloved Ariel and effortlessly performs alongside a standout cast that includes Javier Bardem, Awkwafina, Melissa McCarthy, and more stars. It will make you believe mermaids really exist.

29) The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbird & Snakes

As someone who went to every midnight premiere of every original Hunger Games movie, I am beyond excited for the prequel to hit the big screens. Following a young Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) who mentors and develops feelings for the female District 12 tribute (Rachel Zegler) during the 10th Hunger Games, it will be a nostalgic venture back into the world created by Suzanne Collins. Plus, the cast also features Viola Davis, Peter Dinklage, and Hunter Schafer.

30) Bottoms

After Emma Seligman’s knockout directorial debut, Shiva Baby , she returned to the big screen with a movie about two unpopular queer girls in their senior year of high school, who start a fight club to try to impress and hook up with cheerleaders. Starring Rachel Sennott, Kaia Gerber, and Ayo Edebiri, Bottoms is the Gen Z comedy of the year.

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Music Review: Taylor Swift’s ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is great sad pop, meditative theater

Taylor Swift fans took over the Grove in Los Angeles on Tuesday to celebrate Swift’s upcoming album, “The Tortured Poets Department.” An installation organized by Spotify hid clues about lyrics contained on the record. (April 17)

This cover image released by Republic Records show “The Tortured Poets Department” by Taylor Swift. (Republic Records via AP)

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Who knew what Taylor Swift’s latest era would bring? Or even what it would sound like? Would it build off the moodiness of “Midnights” or the folk of “evermore” ? The country or the ‘80s pop of her latest re-records? Or its two predecessors in black-and-white covers: the revenge-pop of “Reputation” and the literary Americana of “folklore” ?

“The Tortured Poets Department,” here Friday, is an amalgamation of all of the above, reflecting the artist who — at the peak of her powers — has spent the last few years re-recording her life’s work and touring its material, filtered through synth-pop anthems, breakup ballads, provocative and matured considerations.

In moments, her 11th album feels like a bloodletting: A cathartic purge after a major heartbreak delivered through an ascendant vocal run, an elegiac verse, or mobile, synthesized productions that underscore the powers of Swift’s storytelling.

And there are surprises. The lead single and opener “Fortnight” is “1989” grown up — and features Post Malone . It might seem like a funny pairing, but it’s a long time coming: Since at least 2018, Swift’s fans have known of her love for Malone’s “Better Now.”

Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” is here.

• In her review, AP Music Writer Maria Sherman calls it “an amalgamation of an artist who has spent the last few years re-recording her life’s work and touring its material , filtered through synth-pop anthems, breakup ballads, provocative and matured subject matter.”
• Swift announced a surprise two hours after the album release: 15 additional tracks.
• The project is Swift’s first original album since her record-breaking Eras Tour kicked off last year.

“But Daddy I Love Him” is the return of country Taylor, in some ways — fairytale songwriting, a full band chorus, a plucky acoustic guitar riff, and a cheeky lyrical reversal: “But Daddy I love him / I’m having his baby / No, I’m not / But you should see your faces.” (Babies appear on “Florida!!!” and the bonus track “The Manuscript” as well.)

The fictitious “Fresh Out The Slammer” begins with a really pretty psych guitar tone that disappears beneath wind-blown production; the new wave-adjacent “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys” brings back “Barbie” : “I felt more when we played pretend than with all the Kens / ‘Cause he took me out of my box.”

Even before Florence Welch kicks off her verse in “Florida!!!,” the chorus’ explosive repetition of the song title hits hard with nostalgic 2010s indie rock, perhaps an alt-universe Swiftian take on Sufjan Stevens’ “Illinois.”

As another title states, “So Long, London,” indeed.

It would be a disservice to read Swift’s songs as purely diaristic, but that track — the fifth on this album, which her fans typically peg as the most devastating slot on each album — evokes striking parallels to her relationship with a certain English actor she split with in 2023. Place it next to a sleepy love ode like “The Alchemy,” with its references to “touchdown” and cutting someone “from the team” and well ... art imitates life .

Revenge is still a pervasive theme. But where the reprisal anthems on “Midnights” were vindictive, on “The Tortured Poets Department,” there are new complexities: “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” combines the musical ambitiousness of “evermore” and “folklore” — and adds a resounding bass on the bridge — with sensibilities ripped from the weapons-drawn, obstinate “Reputation.” But here, Swift mostly trades victimhood for self-assurance, warts and all.

“Who’s afraid of little old me?” she sings. “You should be,” she responds.

And yet, “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” may be her most biting song to date: “You didn’t measure up in any measure of a man,” she sings atop propulsive piano. “I’ll forget you, but I won’t ever forgive,” she describes her target, likely the same “tattooed golden retriever,” a jejune description, mentioned in the title track.

Missteps are few, found in other mawkish lyrics and songs like “Down Bad” and “Guilty as Sin?” that falter when placed next to the album’s more meditative pop moments.

Elsewhere, Swift holds up a mirror to her melodrama and melancholy — she’s crying at the gym, don’t tell her about “sad,” is she allowed to cry? She died inside, she thinks you might want her dead; she thinks she might just die. She listens to the voices that tell her “Lights, camera, bitch, smile / Even when you want to die,” as she sings on “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart,” a song about her own performances — onstage and as a public figure.

“I’m miserable and nobody even knows!” she laughs at the end of the song before sighing, “Try and come for my job.”

“Clara Bow” enters the pantheon of great final tracks on a Swift album. The title refers to the 1920s silent film star who burned fast and bright — an early “It girl” and Hollywood sex symbol subject to vitriolic gossip, a victim of easy, everyday misogyny amplified by celebrity. Once Bow’s harsh Brooklyn accent was heard in the talkies, it was rumored, her career was over.

A glimpse of Clara Bow’s life in photos

Actress Clara Bow shown on Sept. 3, 1932. (AP Photo, File)

This 1930 photo shows Clara Bow, the original “It” girl. (AP Photo, File)

This early 1930s file photo shows actress Clara Bow in New York. (AP Photo/File)

In life, Bow later attempted suicide and was sent to an asylum — the same institution that appears on “Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?” “Clara Bow” works as an allegory and a cautionary tale for Swift, the same way Stevie Nicks’ “Mabel Normand” — another tragic silent film star — functioned for the Fleetwood Mac star.

Nicks appears in “Clara Bow,” too: “You look like Stevie Nicks in ’75 / The hair and lips / Crowd goes wild.”

Later, Swift turns the camera inward, and the song ends with her singing, “You look like Taylor Swift in this light / We’re loving it / You’ve got edge / She never did.” The album ends there, on what could be read as self-deprecation but stings more like frustrating self-awareness.

Swift sings about a tortured poet, but she is one, too. And isn’t it great that she’s allowed herself the creative license?

YA «lyubila» muzha

Yuliya Aleksandrova (Evgeniya) Oleg Gaas (Kirill) Yuriy Itskov (Sergey Efimovich) Svetlana Khodchenkova (Kseniya) Veronika Mox (Olya) Pavel Vorozhtsov (Artyom) Aleksandr Yatsenko (Oleg) Aleksey Zolotovitskiy (Vedushchiy)

Yuliya Trofimova

Kseniya is an exemplary wife and mother. She obeys her greedy and ungrateful husband in everything, who takes Kseniya's veneration for granted. Upon learning of her husband's infidelity, Kseniya accidentally kills him during sex. Now the housewife has to hide the body, cover her tracks so as not to go to jail and leave the children orphans, and also find a way to earn a living, because Kseniya has no money of her own, and she cannot use her husband's accounts without his presence.

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