Paprika (2006) - Satoshi Kon

Whatever way you look at it I'm always behind when it comes to watching films. It can take me years to get around to watching something that I ordered with the express purpose of watching as soon as it landed on my doormat. Plus how on earth are you supposed to justify watching one film over another? Just what is the criteria for choosing a film to watch when you get in from work? There have been times when I have spent half a day wondering what to watch when I get in, only for me to change my mind as I'm about to put it in the DVD player and stick in a Laurel & Hardy film instead.

Anyway the point I'm trying to make here is that I love anime, Japanimation or whatever it is the hipsters are calling it this week. This was recommended to me years back by a friend who is up on all of this stuff (along with jungle/desert based action films), and here we are all this time later and I've only just watched it, and of course it was every bit as good as he said it was.

As per usual with this genre it's as mad as David Lynch and Terry Gilliam on hallucinogens, and then some. Marching frog band? Check. Wheelchair bound bloke moving around the room with plant roots instead of legs? Check. Nudity, but no sex organs? Double check. In a nut shell it's all about some little gizmo called a DC Mini, that allows you to share your dreams with friends. Now in time honoured tradition said gizmo is half inched by some wrong man mental, who wants to destroy the world/create a new world/or something, I didn't quite catch what his dastardly plan was in the end. So plenty of 'are we dreaming or aren't we?' shenanigans crop up along with some massively far out visuals. The weird thing for me is I was able to follow the plot without the slightest difficulty. I say weird since I find anime pretty hard to follow since I tend to allow it to wash over me and just sink into the glorious images. So much so that when something happens that needs my brain to be firing on all cylinders, I get caught out and feel more than a little stupid.

Now you know you are onto a winner with a film when it finishes and you wished you had the time to just put it back on and watch it again. Even better than that is when you're only half way through and you start to think about when you can squeeze another viewing in. That's exactly how I felt when watching this, and of course the only down side to this film was the fact that now there is another director on that already huge list of mine, whose films I need to see. Oh well, one door closes while another opens I guess.