Satoshi Kon's new animé plays like a head-on collision between Hello Kitty and Philip K. Dick. The plot starts with a machine that lets therapists enter patients' dreams: When it's stolen, all hell breaks loose, and only a woman therapist (nicknamed "Paprika") seems able to stop it. Kon is a brilliant director by any standard and as the characters shuttle from dream to dream, nightmare to nightmare, Paprika becomes a thrilling tour-de-force of visual invention-every frame is packed with imagination. This delightful movie is bursting with ideas about Japanese repression, multiple identities, collective dreams and the dark side of his countrymen's love of Cute.