Buckle in and prepare to surrender yourself to an exhilarating and wildly entertaining ride. Cult classic MIND GAME is an explosion of unconstrained expression – gloriously colorful mages ricochet in rapid fire associations, like Masaaki Yuasa’s brain splattered onto the screen in all its goopy glory. Audiences will begin to grasp what they are in for early on as loser Nishi, too wimpy to try to save his childhood sweetheart from gangsters, is shot in  the butt by a soccer-playing psychopath, projecting Nishi into the afterlife. In this limbo, God – shown as a series of rapidly changing characters – tells him to walk toward the light.  But Nishi runs like hell in the other direction and returns to Earth a changed man, driven to live each moment to the fullest.

“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.” (Variety)

“A sometimes enthralling, sometimes exhausting tour de force.” (New York Times)

“A virtuoso narrative loop-the-loop that travels through a phantasmagoric catalog of animation styles.” (Village Voice)

Sunday, April 29
Doors 9:00 pm | Movie 9:30 pm

Tickets $10 advance HERE | $12 at the door

Wednesday, May 2
Doors 8:45 pm | Movie 9:15 pm

Tickets $10 advance HERE | $12 at the door

*Minors OK in the balcony! Must be 19+ w/ID for bar service and main floor seating.
**Rio Theatre passes and Groupons and OK! Please redeem at the door.

MIND GAME (Masaaki Yuasa, Kôji Morimoto, 2004 / 103 mins / PG / Japanese with English subs) The film follows Nishi, a loser who has a crush on his childhood girlfriend. After an encounter with the Japanese mafia, the film follows Nishi as he journeys to heaven and back, and ends up trapped in an even more unlikely place.