"The best cinematic ride of the year."
— Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail
"The most entrancing film of the year."
— Nick Schager, The Daily Beast
"It's beautiful in every conceivable way."
— Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News
"Drive My Car is one of 2021's best films."
— Sara Michelle Fetters, MovieFreak.com
"A haunting masterpiece…glides by like a dream."
— Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times
"Extraordinary. An engrossing and exalting experience."
— Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
"Astonishing. 'Drive My Car' marks Hamaguchi’s deserved breakthrough."
— Carlos Aguilar, RogerEbert.com
"Allow me to make a radical suggestion: The one film that demands to be seen on a big screen this year is a tiny little three-hour Japanese drama about grief, love and Chekhov."
— Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail
"An ineffably beautiful, far-ranging meditation on language, art, theater, theatricality—the one doesn’t always follow the other—and the challenge of living a life of purpose without regret."
— Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
"What it is can be summed up in a word that’s often used loosely but fits the case here—a masterpiece, a mysteriously enthralling creation that keeps you guessing about where it’s going, then reveals its essence with astonishing clarity."
— Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal
"A quiet masterpiece from the Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi…A story about grief, love and work as well as the soul-sustaining, life-shaping power of art…Many movies offer pat life lessons; this one speaks about what it means to go on living."
— Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
"Here’s your chance to catch up with the best movie you never heard of, a flat-out masterpiece from Japan that’s a frontrunner to win the international Oscar and maybe pull a Parasite and compete for Best Picture. Why not? It’s enthralling from first scene to last."
— Peter Travers, ABC News
"For a century and more, film directors have explored crosscurrents between art and life, and how one informs the other. Hamaguchi makes that exploration a fully humanized one. His actors, one and all, are so good, you’re simply grateful for their screen company."
— Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune
"Despite what may initially seem to be a somewhat straightforward contemporary drama, Hamaguchi has crafted a rich, skilfully layered masterwork with flawless performances and a script that is a screenwriter’s holy grail. It sticks in your brain for days and nudges you to take it in again."
— Gregory Ellwood, The Playlist
"Nearly every scene of this richly novelistic movie — which won the festival’s screenplay prize — teems with ideas about grief and betrayal, the nature of acting, the possibility (and impossibility) of catharsis through art, and the simple bliss of watching lights and landscapes fly past your car window."
— Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times
"The film’s long running time doesn’t feel indulgent at all, but electrifyingly necessary, the only way to draw out the restrained sorrows of its insular ensemble. Few filmmakers can make simple conversation a blockbuster moment, but in Hamaguchi’s hands, the audience is hanging on every character’s next word."
— David Sims, The Atlantic
"It’s a graceful, aching film that sculpts and stretches Murakami’s story into an enchanting three-hour epic (my, do the minutes fly by) about trauma and mourning, shared solitude, and the possibility of moving on. The narrative also doubles as a lovely ode to the car itself, and the strange ways that people open up when cocooned inside them."
— Rory O'Connor, The Film Stage
