more recent commentators have been equally positive. on rotten tomatoes, the film has received a 100% approval rating based on 21 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.95/10. kurosawa biographer stuart galbraith iv, reviewing the criterion collection dvd, called the work "archetypal postwar ozu" and "a masterful distillation of themes its director would return to again and again... there are better ozu films, but "late spring" impressively boils the director's concerns down to their most basic elements." norman holland concludes that "ozu has created—in the best japanese manner—a film explicitly beautiful but rich in ambiguity and the unexpressed." dennis schwartz calls it "a beautiful drama," in which "there's nothing artificial, manipulative or sentimental."