Ghost in the Shell

In a future megacity that makes Blade Runner’s Los Angeles look like a ramshackle frontier town, a weaponized cyborg (Scarlett Johansson) pursues an elusive terrorist (Michael Carmen Pitt)—while being haunted by flashes of her forgotten life before she was repurposed by a sinister robotics corporation. Director Rupert Sanders and writers Jamie Moss, William Wheeler and Ehren Kruger remake Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 anime cult classic, shamelessly currying Asian audiences even as they recast many of the characters with Caucasians (Johansson, Pitt, Pilou Asbæk, Juliette Binoche, Peter Ferdinando), and needlessly complicating a straightforward story by gussying it up with dazzling CGI. It’s slick and entertaining, but time will tell if it stays in the mind the way Oshii’s original did; personally, I’m dubious. J.L.