Wow, wow, wow.

Based on a manga, DOROHEDRO is an anime series about two worlds connected by magic a big lug named Caiman who travels between the two, searching for the sorcerer who transformed his head into that of a lizard. It’s absolutely nuts, gory, and frequently hilarious, and I fell in love with it.

The story follows two major intersecting story lines, both of which are fantastic. In the human world, called the Hole, a giant city in the midst of collapse due to magic, Caiman and his female friend Nikaido hunt sorcerers who come there through magic doors to practice their magic on humans. In the sorcerer world, a corporate boss named En is similarly searching for Caiman, and we spend a lot of time with him and his charming and oddball crew of lackeys, which include two powerful assassins, a sorcerer with weak powers, and a compulsive girl.

The plot is intricate and often falls into rabbit holes, with little resolution at the end of the first season, but the plot kind of doesn’t matter. What’s fun about the series is how absolutely batshit it is. A baseball game with a giant shrieking cockroach named Johnson and a Frankenstein zombie, a magical attack that turns a city into mushrooms, sorcerers waving hi to demons flying overhead, and so on, there’s so much lore, bizarre culture, and odd events, the show is almost constantly titillating, fun, and laugh out loud funny.

This was a real gem for me, highly recommended. (Streaming on Netflix, Japanese but good dubbing)

I was recently happily surprised to see PI on Amazon Prime, and gave it a second watch after originally catching it in the theater in 1998. Written and directed by Darren Aronofsky of BLACK SWAN and MOTHER! fame, the film is a mind-bending exploration of numbers and how they underpin and characterize all existence, brilliant for its ideas spanning Pi, the Fibonacci constant, the game GO, mathematics history, and Kabbalah. I enjoyed it far more the second time around.

Shot in grainy black and white, the film follows Max, a mathematician obsessed with the idea that since all matter and activity can be expressed mathematically, there is an underlying pattern in even vastly chaotic and complex systems, which he aims to capture by trying to model the stock market. His research catches the attention of his mentor Saul, a mathematician who suffered a stroke after making a strange discovery, a shadowy Wall Street firm that wants to control the market, and a group of Hasidic Jews who believe the ultimate secret of the Torah is contained in a mathematical code within it.

Max discovers a strange number he initially dismisses as nonsense but may just be the key to understanding Creation. But this understanding, while a unique gift, is too much for the human brain to handle, and it carries an incredible cost.

Overall, this is simply a brilliant film for its interesting ideas. Recommended.

Written, produced, directed, co-scored, and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky (director of EL TOPO), THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973) is a cult classic and one of my film holy grails. I finally scored a copy, and wow, what a trip. The film is a psychedelic allegory of humanity’s search for meaning, distraction into materialism and extreme politics, and spiritual war to conquer oneself, and concludes with an admonition to live an authentic life free of artificial restraint.

The film begins with The Thief, who goes into the city to make money. Finding a mysterious tower where gold is lowered on a basket in exchange for food, he scales the tower to confront the Alchemist, who takes the Thief’s excrement and turns it into gold but promises that since the Thief himself is excrement, he too can be transformed. The Thief must choose gold or enlightenment, and he chooses to apprentice to the Alchemist, who gathers a group of highly successful people representing the worst traits astrologically associated with the nine planets. They destroy their wealth and travel to the Holy Mountain, where they will overturn the immortals who run the universe and take their place. Or so they’re told…

This movie is one hell of a trip. There’s very little dialogue, with an emphasis on the score and stunning, artistic sets, every piece of which is beautiful, provocative, and spiritually symbolic as related to the Tarot, astrology, or metaphysics. Thematically, you can’t get much higher with its spiritual journey and final message. Going into it, I wondered it would be pretentious, too artsy and slow, and incomprehensible. Instead, I was presented a beautiful exploration of metaphysical spirituality with mind-blowing sets, bizarre set pieces, and solid pacing.

I haven’t seen this film streaming anywhere, I had to score it on DVD. If you can get a copy, I highly recommend it, though it’s not for everyone.