watched sonatine. first thing that struck me was the way it was shot, something about it was jarring. forgive me for my shaky knowledge of actual cinematic vocabulary. came to notice a few things: a lot of close-up shots, people always occupied the frame (almost always in the dead center, never on those rule of thirds lines). very very few shots with no one in them, even shots of locations felt very up close and personal and populated. that is, in the city. the beach scenes mostly seemed to differ from this, more open air, more freedom. but i guess that there was something binding and constricting about it, ironically. whole movie has this rather nice faded look to it, the whole thing felt very dumbed down in the sort of purgatory