30
Ghost in the Shell is a slick but plodding recycling of tired cyberpunk clichés that adds nothing new to the genre.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
80
Most alluring are the crumbling neon cityscapes, real world/cyberspace fusion and the musings on identity.
80
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.
80
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
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.
100
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
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
75
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
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.
80
Time Out London by Tom Huddleston
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.
Truly amazing and a lot more contemplative than I expected from the movie going in - both the action scenes and the moments in between are meditations on what constitutes an authentic existence in a mediated world - not just on the level of technology but also sexual difference and facts in political events.
One of my favorite films of all time. The gritty, yet slick world Oshii constructs is a testament to the cyberpunk genre, down to the smallest detail. I think constantly about invisibility cloaks and machine guns coming out of briefcases. Criminality and politics in Oshii's world intersect in a way few films, let alone science fiction ones, do. The philosophy of the film hits you like a truck - even though there's plenty of action the quieter moments where discussions of humanity, memory, embodiment and reality take place are the real "ghost" of the film.