10 Awesome 90s Movies You've Probably Never Seen

Hirokazu Kore-eda may have just taken home the Palm d'Or at Cannes this year for Shoplifters, but he's also been directing masterpieces for 20 years. He often draws comparison to Yasujiro Ozu, one of Japan's greatest and most Japanese directors, both able to show depth of emotion through restraint and understatement.

After Life, written by Kore-eda as well, is an interesting mixture of the supernatural premise with humdrum, artificial, rather disappointing elements. The basic story is that when people die, they arrive at a facility where they're interviewed about their lives, until they and a counselor decide on one memory for them to relive for eternity.

Furthering this institutionalizing effect, the memory is not actually the memory itself, but a chintzy soundstage recreation, with a set and extras, an old man dressed up as his 21-year-old self. And everyone is perhaps too polite to speak of the elephant in the room.

Much of the plot unfolds like an Errol Morris documentary: a still camera facing an interviewee, with an off-camera interviewer interjecting at times. Other narrative moments seem to have been captured from real life as well, filmed handheld, and behind-the-scenes banal events like a "cast" lunch break.