Oh boy. Late getting here but Kitano is becoming one of my favorite directors. I love how many shots in Sonatine linger, run on…sometimes just a second or two longer than you expect. The whole thing laughs in the face of typical crime pacing. The delayed explosion segment...chefs kiss. The amount of time spent hanging out with characters in down time, dancing and fooling around, getting to know them by how they kill time and deal with their anxiety rising…

When he holds his uncle's hand, the pieces of my heart leapt from my chest, went sniffing around some piles of mysterious trash, and returned healed. On that note, Tati's dogs make me so happy. Tati makes me so happy. Being something of an aimless uncle myself, Mon Oncle grants me a specific comfort. The more obvious contrast of two types of settings in this one really gets at what I love about Tati. Tati was sincerely radical, radical not…

Had me smiling and crying and giggling and just generally beaming. What a perfect example of the potential for the documentary format to convey the emotions, the setting, and, in this case, the sounds of the subject(s) it is documenting with a level of art that stands on its own, adding-to instead of just showing-what.

The interviews are phenomenal. Superbly natural. The interviewees are given the freedom to ramble about their interests, crimes, and crafts while shots play of these…