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Mind Game

Play trailer 1:41 Poster for Mind Game 2018 1h 43m Adventure Comedy Mystery & Thriller Play Trailer Watchlist
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100% Tomatometer 14 Reviews 92% Popcornmeter 2,500+ Ratings
Nishi travels to heaven and back.
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Mind Game

Critics Reviews

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Simon Abrams Village Voice 03/02/2018
Just relax, and let Yuasa take you wherever the hell he wants. Go to Full Review
Ronnie Scheib Variety 03/27/2009
With imaginative handling, this freewheeling juggernaut of a head-trip, its assorted visual treatments rendered in relative degrees of awkwardness and artfulness, could catch on with hip auds worldwide. Go to Full Review
David Jenkins Time Out 08/17/2006
A fantastically executed assemblage of animated flotsam punctuated with moments of dry humour and a heartbreaking final montage which gives the film its message - make every moment count. Go to Full Review
Seth Troyer PopMatters 10/03/2023
Watch Mind Game with your best friends. Eat lots of candy and drink too much coffee while it plays with your brain. Go to Full Review
Mariló Delgado Espinof 07/03/2023
3.5/5
The film is openly experimental and fearlessly mixes various types of animation (from a more "realistic" one to straight-up cartoon styles), allowing itself moments of delirious explorations... [Full review in Spanish] Go to Full Review
Carson Timar ButteredPopcorn 08/28/2022
A-
Even if the film fails to be extremely impactful, Mind Game is such a unique and memorable viewing experience that it has to be considered essential viewing for anyone who enjoys unique animation Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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Leprechaun K @LeprechaunKing 3d The most unique anime you'll ever see. It is a 103 minutes long dream sequence that is impossible to follow. The art direction is impressive but this should have been a 20 minutes short. Yuasa's more recent work such as Devilman Crybaby is a fitting match to his artistic style. See more Anijah S Nov 21 This has to be one of my top 3 movies! (slight SPOILERS) As someone who's recently had a near death experience, this movie was insanely moving for me. I feel I could relate heavily to the main character in the decisions he made and having a renewed sense of carpe diem. In addition to feeling stuck and left to alone mentally to decide what you want in life. I'm personally figuring it out, I know what. Now it's figuring out the how. "life is based on the decisions you make" I may watch it again tonight. ALSO AI COULD NEVER REPLICATE THE BEAUTY AND EMOTION THAT THIS MOVIE CONVEYED See more Nate J 07/18/2024 A beautiful and thought provoking anime film. It blew me away the first time I watched it. Highly recommended. See more Taylor L 02/14/2023 The main character escapes being held at gunpoint by clenching his buttcheeks around the barrel and tearing the gun away. That's a crucial plot point. It's tough to admit, but a lot of the movies that we watch (and a large proportion of the ones we enjoy) are not all that original. Reboots are all over the place, sure, but even 'new' films usually trade heavily on the influences of properties that came before. There's not much shame in it; familiarity is comfortable and movies are meant to be an enjoyable bit of escapism. But when something emerges out of nowhere that challenges those standards, you realize just how narrow your expectations for film are, and how rewarding it can be to test those boundaries. Mind Game gives you an opportunity to do exactly that. It's too free-form to be particularly character-driven, but it compensates by being full of unpredictable possibility. It's not just the narrative that's up for grabs, writer-director Masaaki Yuasa is incredibly free-form when it comes to his animation style, blending live action in with a variety of visual reskins to the same characters. Stylistic consistency is not only unnecessary, it flat-out wouldn't work with the story's exploration of the unpredictable, ever-changing, constantly ongoing nature of existence; it's a psychedelic trip but one worth sticking around for. One minor nitpick is the slight lull in pace in the middle of the film, which is really noticeable when you compare it to the frantic, almost manic beginning and ending scenes (apart from an exuberant, colorful, and wordless dance segment). But that's barely a concern when originality and kinetic energy are pumping through every pixel. (4.5/5) See more 09/19/2021 Its out of our normal bubble kind of space, takes you away of your confort zone and brings you through different reality's that you can actual feel and relate, the ending is just sublime See more 05/01/2021 Incomparable in its dynamism, profundity and its inexhaustible power to entertain. See more Read all reviews
Mind Game

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Movie Info

Synopsis Nishi travels to heaven and back.
Director
Masaaki Yuasa
Producer
Eiko Tanaka
Screenwriter
Robin Nishi, Masaaki Yuasa
Distributor
Sony Pictures Classics
Production Co
Asmik Ace Entertainment, Studio 4C
Genre
Adventure, Comedy, Mystery & Thriller
Original Language
Japanese
Release Date (Theaters)
Feb 16, 2018, Limited
Rerelease Date (Theaters)
May 24, 2024
Release Date (Streaming)
Aug 28, 2018
Box Office (Gross USA)
$5.6K
Runtime
1h 43m
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