"I had never heard of this film—I only saw it recently. It’s truly brilliant. An old couple from a small town in Japan decide to visit their children in Tokyo, who disappointingly have little time to spend with them. It’s a film about the misunderstanding between generations and the end of one’s life. It’s romantic, realistic, and very poignant."

"I’ve had the advantage of seeing this movie at many different times in my life, and I don’t really know how it’s put together or why it works. Peter Bogdanovich captures the lives of real people using every aspect of filmmaking: casting, location, and period music whose static-y radio sound cuts against the desolate wind of a decaying small town."

"A masterpiece and one of the key achievements of 1970s New Hollywood—maybe only behind the Godfather films. Its mix of loving classicism, European influences, and ’70s permissiveness is jolting and desperately real. American small-town life has never been rendered with such empathy, unapologetic frankness, sadness, and despair. Timothy Bottoms’s performance is the most wrenching portrayal of male adolescence ever."