Yuasa’s ‘Mind Game’ at Nuart

“Mind Game” (2004, 1 hour, 43 minutes) will be screened on Friday, Feb. 16, at 11:59 p.m. at the Nuart Theatre, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd. in West Los Angeles.

Buckle in and prepare to surrender yourself to an exhilarating and wildly entertaining ride. “Mind Game” is a psychedelic explosion of unconstrained animated expression —gloriously colorful images ricochet in a cacophony of rapid-fire associations that mimic the thought process, like writer/director 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 (voice of Kôji Imada), too wimpy to try to save his childhood sweetheart from gangsters, is shot in the butt by a soccer-playing psychopath. The bullet travels to his brain and beyond, 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, forestalling death and returning to Earth a changed man, driven to live each moment to the fullest.

The cast also includes Sayaka Maeda, Takashi Fujii, Seiko Takuma and Tomomitsu Yamaguchi.

Not rated. In Japanese with English subtitles. To see a trailer and for ticket information, go to: www.landmarktheatres.com/los-angeles/nuart-theatre?date=2018-02-16