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Reviews
Reminiscence (2021)
Gentle Sci-fi Noir, respectful of the genre.
This is a near-future Noir that's very true to it's Golden Age antecedents. If you like the genre, it's worthwhile. Not original by any means, but that's not the intention: the opposite. Noir has it's tested format and tropes to which the movie conforms faithfully, and it still works. The lonely, jaded detective; the femme fatale; the brutish yet somewhat sympathetic antagonist; the cynical but honest friend: all very well cast, particularly Thandiwe Newton who I found very reminiscent of a Thelma Ritter in this. What this captures of the old movies that many comparable films don't is the sentimentality, and I think it eventually succeeds in it's central aim of generating a wistful atmosphere, though it's no "Out of the Past".
I wanted to see what the director had done with a favourite genre, and I apreciated it - it was to my taste.
Ghost in the Shell (2017)
Just Watch Blade Runner and Black Rain
Could have been incredible, such a waste of the IP, but I remain hopeful someone will make a movie with the funkiness, eroticism and existential curiosity of the comic. SJ was miscast, and not only because she's (improbably) white. Wrong look. What this movie should have been IMO is a detective story with a philosophical dimension a la Blade Runner, but juxtaposed with vivid late eighties glamour, and mecha. Rewatching the Ridley Scott movies: Blade Runner and Black Rain gave me almost everything I would have wanted, and I feel took me close to where Oshii if not Shirow was actually coming from with his work.