This amazing anime film may have the greatest opening of any film i've ever seen when we, the viewers, are thrown into
a bewildering sequence. WTF is happening ? An action scene maybe, but with happenings that are slightly amorphous
and constantly change, and yes the middle-aged man in the main role is asleep. He's the police officer Captain Konakawa
and he's dreaming his ever occuring dream, but now he has got some help from the dream traveller Paprika, a young woman
assisting him and saving his life from a plethora of assailants.

Paprika in the real world is Dr. Atsuko Chiba and together with her team of scientists she has constructed a small gadget,
the DC Mini, a dream machine meant to be used in psychiatric treatment. They can travel into peoples dreams and also
film the events taking place there. But someone has stolen some of the dream machines and start to put unwanted crazy
demented dreams into peoples heads .... and, they fall into nightmarish comas. Who are the culprits and why?

Above: The Captain and Paprika

The Nightmare parade

Wow! Unforgettable, just unforgettable. That bizarre parade into madness and the haunting theme on the soundtrack will
surely stay forever in my mind. Great, No, über-great work from composer Susumu Hirasawa.

Atsuko/Paprika is a dream traveller and she jumps into peoples dreams using a gadget. Maybe this film, even though it's
based on Yasutaka Tsutsui's 1993 novel Paprika (Tsutsui who wrote the famous The Girl Who Lept Through Time in
1965 and which surely inspired the US film Groundhog Day) also could be inspired by one of my absolute favourite cult
movies - the 1984 Dreamscape directed by Joseph Ruben and with Dennis Quaid as the dream traveller, great film.
Even though Dr. Atsuko uses a dream machine gadget and Quaid just used his ESP powers to go into peoples heads.
The ending of Paprika isn't as great as the mindblowing opening, admitted, but how could it be? Impossible.

Anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1, japanese audio 5.1 with english or swedish subtitles (and an assortment of other subs).
Extras: A nice commentary track in japanese with english subtitles with director Satoshi Kon, music director Susumu
Hirasawa and associate producer Morishima, trailers