Tokyo Godfathers

We saw Tokyo Godfathers today, and I'm still trying to recover from this movie... maybe there can be too much of a good thing after all!

This is the third movie from Satoshi Kon, and as he as already shown with Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress, he is pure genius.

Godfathers brings us into present-day post-bubble Tokyo on Christmas eve and the movie then shocks and amuses us with the tale of a dysfunctional homeless "family" and how they try to bring a found baby back to its mother.

It is a different kind of Christmas Story - gritty, snotty, bloody. We learn a lot about the unlikely heros in this movie and not all of it is likeable. They are real people, more real than would seem possible for animated characters.

And the movie is also a love letter to Satoshi Kon's Tokyo. He clearly loves this city and he is uniquely able to transform this concrete desert into a crystal lit from within, bringing out beautiful colors and bizarre reflections of its inhabitants.