I just watched that Japanese movie, Departures. It was pretty famous a year or two ago when it came out, and it's definitely a polished, sentimental kind of drama. I have seen a lot of films like it already and will probably see more. It was okay, though. There are a few eye welling up moments - not necessarily because of how moving the actual story is, but just because of the subject matter and well used score - sentimental, but I didn't really mind in the context of death.
I had a few problems with it, but they are probably mostly cultural because it's that thing where Japanese people act inexplicably. The movie's protagonist is this guy who becomes an 'encoffiner' (some kind of funeral artist who gives the dead a nice send-off), and obviously working with the dead is going to raise the eyebrows of some people when they hear you do it but the reaction he gets from the other characters is extreme. One of his friends disowns him for a while and his wife flat out leaves him. I dunno! The scene with the wife pissed me off so much that I turned the film off for ten minutes before deciding to give it another chance. Although, that was just as much because she was saying that she had followed him 'with a smile, even though I was sad on the inside' up until the point he became an encoffiner...and that kind of set the whole tone of the movie off for me because for about half an hour I was just incredulous and angry at most of the people in the film. It's probably all cultural, and the thing comes back round in the end so it doesn't really matter but there are often things like this in Japanese media in general. These seemingly random taboos that I can't understand because they don't fit in a familiar spectrum of values - even watching Indian films, films from the Middle East, I feel like I've got some bearing on the values being presented (endorsed or not), but sometimes watching films like this I'm just shaking my head.
The more I think about the actual characters, the story and the filmic aspects the less I really like them. There are some boring and only functional emotional hooks used, the centerpiece of the film fell flat to me (i guess it's all just too high society for my brat brain), and I peaked in my investment about halfway through the movie. By the final scene I was feeling pretty detached. I was more interested in the idea that this job the main character, Daigo, is something that can really get under your skin, and I was getting fascinated with the whole process along with him in the earlier parts of the film. I was more moved by the funerals of the background characters than I was by any of the characters given much depth which is probably not a compliment to the film because it means I'm interested in the concept but found filling in the blanks myself more interesting than the detail the film was giving me.
Anyway, the movie was okay. If you've heard of it and haven't seen it, then you can probably figure out what to expect from this without having to read any thoughts about it. Your expectations are probably correct.