Popular reviews

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★ 7

  What if we merged cybernetic brains in our militarized, techno-capitalist hellscape? 😳

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  Review by Awesome Welles ★★★★★ 4

  This cyberpunk classic was a huge influence on both The Matrix (1999) and The Fifth Element (1997), whilst in itself owing no small debt to Blade Runner (1982). Ghost in the Shell is an ode to technology, identity, collective vs. individual consciousness and boobs. Hardly surprising that it blew my mind when I was sixteen.

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  Review by k(arst)en

  midnight screening and was already sleepy so when the story started losing me it was game over. lovely animation and music :) excited to watch this a second time in like 8 months and pretend this review never happened

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  Review by YI JIAN ★★★★½ 13

  I shamefully admit that I don’t fully understand what was going on in this, it’s philosophy concerning the relationship between our soul, or ghost if you will, and our bodies (the shell of course), being conveyed through imagery and monologue, were a bit too mind-numbing for me.  

  On surface level though, this film is gorgeous, and proud of itself too. Halfway through the story the film even took a five minute detour to show us its Blade Runner-esque cityscape. I find it interesting that the film seems to be extremely fascinated with the human body and keeps forcing us to study it. Also noticable is the way Major Kusanagi, to be played by Scarlett Johansson in the American remake,…

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  Review by dash_cam ★★★★ 3

  I feel so fucking smart when I watch anime

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  Review by ♦️•Lily•💋 ★★★½ 4

  Really glad they never made a live action american adaptation of this that would be such a bad idea

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  Review by ScreeningNotes ★★★★ 11

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  "But now we must slip our bonds and shift to the higher structure."

  On the surface of Ghost in the Shell, it appears that the "ghost" is the soul in the "shell" of the human body, but there's another distinction to be made in this reading of the film. As much as the story is about Major Kusanagi transcending her physical form, it's also about her transcending the limits of a physical form which is specifically and explicitly defined as female.

  Ghost in the Shell opens with a scene of Major Kusanagi infiltrating a political target and then escaping by using her thermoptic camouflage—a method of invisibility which, among other things, requires her to be mostly naked. Stripped down to…

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  Review by sarah squirm ★★★★½ 2

  it’s called perfect music, ever heard of it???????

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  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🇵🇸 ★★½ 25

  It's been a fair while since I watched any anime - and perhaps Ghost In The Shell wasn't the film to re-enter the genre with.

  I did used to be a huge anime fan and while I still enjoy a lot of what the form has to offer, my tastes widened and as such I lost touch with having a wider knowledge of anime. So I opted for a shot at Ghost In The Shell, which I had been meaning to watch for 15 years anyway.

  Notoriously complex and hard to penetrate, I probably should have tried some Pokemon first. For all its stunning animation, magnificent soundtrack and genuinely interesting ideas, it felt to me as though little or no…

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★ 6

  77

  Ghost in the Shell understands the physicality, or sometimes the lack thereof, in science-fiction. How architecture renders space oppressive, how movement is slick and slippery due to the rain pouring down onto littered pathways, how chases and gunfights (reminiscent of cops/robber showcases or saloon scuffles) collapse into reckless, mangled twists of flesh and arteries; it's an extension of how even the most corporeal entities become lost to the labyrinth in which they're chasing, one which does not recognize the limitations of the somatic world. Both influenced and influential, Ghost in the Shell runs into the abyss with its concepts, retooling sci-fi history and bleeding a new brand of existential ambiguity out of its mutilated structure. Go ahead, chase the rabbit.

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  Review by Amy Andrews ★★★½ 2

  A collection of real time thoughts:

  ~ Doing the appropriate homework before seeing the remake tomorrow.
  ~ Cool fish tank.
  ~ YO HIS HEAD FULL ON EXPLODED.
  ~ This is some real trippy shit.
  ~ I've never seen so many cartoon nipples.
  ~ This score is really, really great.
  ~ I'm not going to pretend I have any fucking clue what these guys are talking about.
  ~ This is some deep shit.
  ~ My days I'm going to have to Wikipedia this plot afterwards.
  ~ This world building is pretty awesome.
  ~ Some hardcore invisibility cloak shit right here.
  ~ Am I supposed to understand what ghost hacking is at this point?
  ~ Is it just mind manipulation?
  ~ Oh…

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  Review by esther ★★ 8

  this is like half of a really good movie. sorry