Ghost in the Shell

Ghost in the Shell is a slick but plodding recycling of tired cyberpunk clichés that adds nothing new to the genre. Read full review

The ghost of anime can be seen here trying to dive into the shell of the movie mainstream. But this particular film is too complex and murky to reach a large audience, I suspect; it's not until the second hour that the story begins to reveal its meaning. But I enjoyed its visuals, its evocative soundtrack (including a suite for percussion and heavy breathing), and its ideas. Read full review

Mamoru Oshii's direction deftly merges gritty realism with a dreamlike quality. The only problem is that the characters reel off their existential speeches with such harried deadpan that it's hard to tell whether the angst is serious or tongue-in-cheek. Read full review

Less spectacular but more effectively atmospheric than Akira, Ghost in the Shell should gratify anime buffs and may well hook the uninitiated. Read full review

For a movie that’s so photo-realistic in its backgrounds and detailed in its character design, Ghost In The Shell is just as effective when it goes minimal, suggesting presence through absence. Read full review

The plot is impossibly dense and the characters – perhaps appropriately – feel like little more than cyphers, but for sheer mind-expanding sci-fi strangeness this is hard to beat. Read full review

It is a dizzying, headspinning film, replete with violence, alienation and tech-porn. I confess I find it too opaque to make the kind of investment that would qualify me as a real fan. But it should be seen. Read full review

There are gripping chases and balletic combat scenes, painstakingly realised by Oshii’s animators, but the mood is mostly cold and melancholic, as Kusanagi broods over the fleshly implications of living in a world of data Read full review

Most alluring are the crumbling neon cityscapes, real world/cyberspace fusion and the musings on identity. Read full review

From its baddie-eviscerating opening sequence through innumerable car chases, shoot outs and tongue-in-cheek dialogue exchanges, this is exactly the kind of film that James Cameron would make if they ever let him through the Disney front gates. Read full review

It's not the mega-tech or the shootouts that make Ghost in the Shell memorable, but the ghostliness of it, its ability to convince us that Kusangai - no less than Rutger Hauer's strangely noble android in "Blade Runner" - has a human's ability to conceptualize her own mortality. Nor does arid intellectual speculation make Ghost in the Shell what it is. [1 Mar 1996, p.29]

Technically, Ghost in the Shell is astonishing, not only for its smooth meld of cell animation and state-of-the-art computer animation, but also for its imaginative storytelling and mood-setting (thanks to an eerie, non-thumping score by Kenji Kawai). Read full review

Oshii is able to knit together action sequences with extraordinary power and conviction.... Ghost in the Shell is absolutely terrific. Read full review

The movie trades in familiar virtual realities. Yet as realized by the gifted director Mamoru Oshii, who imagines cityscapes melting into circuit boards, Ghost in the Shell is where virtual reality meets superrealism. [9 May 1996, p.C4]