When preparing myself to see Drive My Car for the first time, I made sure to get to a cinema and allow myself to be captivated for the three-hour runtime.

Full Review | Mar 1, 2024

Drive My Car will not be for everyone, but for those willing, your patience will be rewarded in the purest form of empathy available for cinephiles this year.

Full Review | Feb 24, 2024

Misaki and Kafuku are surrounded by an incredible ensemble of characters with the capacity to astonish, but the central relationship that develops in Drive My Car fuels Hamaguchi’s examination of how people choose to process long-internalized feelings.

Full Review | Jul 28, 2023

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s three-hour drama of Chekov and the difficulties of human connection did not miss connecting with audiences and critics.

Full Review | Feb 22, 2023

It has been said it is not about the destination, it’s the journey. Writer-Director Hamaguchi understands and is ever mindful of that. Drive My Car is a perfectly paced journey that allows Yusuke to reach his final destination right on time.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 12, 2022

Could Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Murakami adaption be his best yet?

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 11, 2022

This film is complex and ambiguous, wordy, deliberate, character-driven and masterful. It earns every revelation, and it deserves every minute.

Full Review | Oct 4, 2022

I want to fall asleep while watching this film, I want to wake up and have it still be going, I want to simply exist with it at all times.

Full Review | Original Score: A+ | Sep 22, 2022

Drive My Car may be a bit too patiently paced for some, but others will appreciate its skillfully subtle storytelling and astute analysis of grief - as well as the poignant performances from Hidetoshi Nishijima and Toko Miura.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 1, 2022

Drive My Car is intimate and detailed about every element of its on-screen voyage and its character studies, and also a road map to soulful, relatable truths.

Full Review | Jun 25, 2022

A deliberate film with an abundance of stories, some unusual, some disruptive, but all break conventional schemes and produce a decelerated sensation against the rhythm of our everyday lives. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jun 21, 2022

"Drive My Car" is just as epic in its scope. Here, however, it's emotional scope, revealing the kind of feelings that may be small and personal at the start but widen to become vast and universal by the time the film reaches its powerful conclusion.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Jun 16, 2022

Hamaguchi turns a monotonous dialogue-heavy narrative into an explosion that carries us through the rest of the film. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jun 13, 2022

In its understated way, we're witnessing one of the most extraordinary and profound movies of recent cinema, in which a wordsmith filmmaker like Hamaguchi wins us over with the power of silence. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jun 8, 2022

A beautifully wrapped quiet work of art that hits you when you least expect it. It's a slow-burning arthouse vehicle about grief and love that unfolds over a three-hour run time.

Full Review | May 31, 2022

One of the most delicate and beautiful works of our time... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | May 25, 2022

Real cinema. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | May 16, 2022

Hamaguchi presents a film of amazing beauty that, with exquisite slowness, gains in detail and depth: in the style, yes, of Murakami, to make an automatic simile. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 100 | May 10, 2022

In times when there is a particular insistence on the explosiveness of emotions, when lukewarmness is criticized as a lack of affective (or political) commitment, Drive my Car is not only a good film, but an important one.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 14, 2022

Drive My Car is a dramatic, artful showcase of human grief, love, and loss with exceptional acting that culminates in transcendence and freedom.

Full Review | Apr 12, 2022