Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Ogosmith Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Eric Stevenson This is a great movie and one of the best Christmas films of all time. I just now noticed that it seems like the IMDb is creating a new format for reviews and I personally don't care for it, but I will keep writing reviews anyway. So this movie features three homeless people who find an infant and try to find her parents. That's really all there is and all there needs to be. The weirdest thing is that I heard that Japan is actually the least religious country on Earth. Well, maybe not the least but two thirds of its population are not religious.It's not like this doesn't contain any references to the baby Jesus. It explicitly mentions him at the beginning of the story through a play. I think it's great that such a secular country can look into the religious themes of a holiday. I thought Christmas in Japan had something to do with KFC. Did I miss that in this movie? I am glad the movie was rated PG-13. There was a scene where a woman was breast feeding two babies at once. Another breastfeeding scene appeared later.You'd think with any bare breasts that much, a movie would be rated R. I'm glad the MPAA understood that breastfeeding is something perfectly natural. What's so beautiful about this film is the gorgeous animation. I think this might be the most realistic anime film I've ever seen. It may also be the only one that wasn't based on a manga or directed by Miyazaki. It's great that other artists are learning to create anime masterpieces. ****

popcorninhell I've had to work on Christmas day four times in five years. So you can imagine that while I'm totally and advocate for merriment and good will towards man, I do have a bit of a humbug up my butt when it comes to the season. Your memories of Christmas might entail opening presents by the tree, mine has to deal with you and your family in the afternoon, trying to find the best combination of food items that will keep your kids happy and your wallet full (can't happen by the way). Then as you leave, I have to clean up the mess. Yet "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is still a beautiful song and there are plenty of movies that warm the cockles of my heart when the holidays come around.I can go through the gambit of classic holiday films, each of which conjures memories. One of the few traditions my family had was watching A Christmas Story (1983) on Christmas Day. While many appreciate or rather celebrate holiday snark with neo-classics like Bad Santa (2003), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989) is still a staple of holiday cynicism for yours truly. And of course for unbridled Christmas spirit you can't go wrong with the occasionally corny Love Actually (2003) or the genuine Joyeux Noel (2005).I didn't think it would be possible to surprise when it came to Christmas films but I recently sat down to watch Tokyo Godfathers (2003) and had my inner pessimist silenced for a an hour an a half. The movie sets up our three protagonists: Gin, a cynical hard drinking loner, Hana, an interminably happy transvestite and Miyuki, a teenage runaway. All three live on the streets of Tokyo and scrounge up a living collecting bottles and making the rounds to the soup kitchens. On Christmas Eve while rummaging they find a baby in a garbage heap. Gin wants to go straight to the police while Hana wants to keep it. The three ultimately decide to find the parents and go on an adventure across the city involving crime syndicates, burlesque clubs and fateful coincidences.Throughout the night, we as the audience slowly discover the reasons for the trio's current state. They are lost souls redeemed by their mission and each must come face to face with their myriad of issues. We sympathize with their loneliness and revel in their joy when the mismatched heroes become a makeshift family. All while of course enjoying the arguments, the fights and the jests. It is after all an animated movie.The hand-drawn animation of Tokyo Godfathers is incredibly well detailed. The visage of a bustling city with so many moving parts is something to admire in a live action movie. In an animated movie, the detail is a downright miracle that likely took years, or an army of animators to make. The fact that principle story takes place in Tokyo's neon evenings creates a contemporary setting that is almost never seen in the works of Hayao Miyazaki who creates his own, new worlds instead of expanding the old. The effect is elating.In fact, outside of Hayao Miyazaki, I'm not too familiar with anime as a subgenre of animation. I am appreciative of their contributions to animation and storytelling in general and I applaud any cartoons that introduce adult themes. Still, the cultural differences are a bit to overcome when you consider Americans have a slightly different definition of spirits and a skewed impression of what's funny. Still there are very few anime movies or shows that I have seen and don't at least place value in.Tokyo Godfathers is in my opinion, a valuable cultural masterpiece. Despite adult subject matter, it is a luminous film for family audiences that has more to say about the good of human nature than say A Christmas Story, Bad Santa or even It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Unlike those films, which drown you in nostalgia or confounds with snark, Tokyo Godfather brings you into a bleak world to show you how much light there is if you only look.http://www.theyservepopcorninhell.blogspot.com

Jose Cruz Satoshi Kon was one of the most talented directors that ever worked on the medium of animation. Here we have another solid offering by the director. Perhaps not as great as Paprika, which was his film that impressed me the most, but still it was a stronger film than Perfect Blue for me.It is a very solid and well constructed drama/comedy that just happens to be animated. One of the main characteristics of this film is that it's pacing is much faster than most other films, perhaps the outcome of it being animated: since each second costs 12 frames of animation it makes sense to minimize the amount of "fat" in the film to reduce costs and thus make a less dragging film.Highly recommended.

Anzycpethian Usually (maybe if it was another film) I'd say that all those coincidences how the people meet and how all turns good during the whole film (It just happens a hundered times!) are SO KITCHY but no way! **ck it! It's GREAT! It's a pleasure to watch! It's **cking hilarious! I didn't think for one second that I was going to rate this one lower then 10/10 pancakes here.It's a masterpiece! Kitchy? No way, it's an x-mess film AND it makes us feel happy!Somehow totally reminded my of Night on Earth by Jim Jarmusch...What beautiful anime!If you're out for some VERY positive, funny, crazy film that has still an excellent feeling for serious drama (elements and bits) and a titanium solid story then your choice must be Tokyo Grandfathers!Description in one word: ENJOY!