Willy McBean and His Magic Machine (1965)
May 12, 2004Children's Time Travel Film
Likeable puppet animated film about a time-travelling boy and his monkey companion
Dentsu
Avalon (2001)
Jul 3, 2003Virtual Reality
Visually stunning live-action film from Mamoru Oshii, director of Ghost in the Shell, set in the beautifully stylised faded sepia tone world of a Virtual Reality game
Spirited Away (2001)
Apr 12, 2002Anime/Afterlife Bathhouse
One of the masterpieces of Hayao Miyazaki, a gentle, beautiful work of anime set in an afterlife bathhouse where Miyazaki's range of extraordinary creatures and quiet tenderness finds something that Western fantasy rarely ever comes near
One Missed Call (2003)
Jul 25, 2004Haunted Cellphone Calls
Cult director Takashi Miike jumps aboard the J-horror fad of the 2000s and makes a Ringu copy that substitutes haunted videos for haunted cellphone calls. Two sequels and an English-language remake followed
Howl’s Moving Castle (2004)
Jan 7, 2006Anime/Epic Fantasy
This Hayao Miyazaki film about a girl who becomes assistant to a mysterious magician is not quite in the same league as Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away but has the sublime beauty, eccentric characters and tender charms that all his work does
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)
Jul 24, 2005Cyberpunk Anime
Mamoru Oshii's follow-up to Ghost in the Shell where he makes a work that pushes both an artistic envelope at the same time as taking his philosophical fascination with the Cyberpunk world to a stunning level
Repo Men (2010)
Mar 21, 2010Future Organ Repossession
SF film set in a future where agents are sent to repossess artificial organs when the owner's fall behind on payments. Sort of Sicko by way of Logan's Run but lacking the necessary sense of black humour to work
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos (2011)
Jul 13, 2012Anime TV Series Spinoff/Magician Heroes
Film spinoff from the popular anime tv series that seems caught between a film and a tv episode. While the film reaches for epic scale, the usual run of power blasts, there is nothing that we haven't seen before
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013)
Oct 3, 2014Anime/Japanese Fairytale
Studio Ghibli adaptation of a classic Japanese folktale from Hayao Hiyazaki's mentor Isao Takahata. This is a slower, very different film than Hayao Miyazaki's, the animation designed like a traditional Japanese woodprint. Never quite soars like Miyazaki's films do but not without its charms
The Complex (2013)
Feb 7, 2017Japanese Ghost Story/Haunted Apartment
Hideo Nakata will always be known as the director of the original Ring. Here he revisits the kaidan eiga in the story of a haunted apartment but the show falls apart after a confusing Sixth Sense-type twist mid-film
Over Your Dead Body (2014)
Feb 20, 2017Roles From a Play Haunt Their Actors' Lives
The most sustained film Takashi Miike has made in some time. In this case, he adapts Yotsuya Kaidan, the most famous of all Japanese ghost stories, which has been filmed multiple times, but rather than offer a straight telling also adds a layer where the story comes to replay itself among the actors in the play
Ghost in the Shell: Arise (2013-2014)
Dec 22, 2014Cyberpunk Anime
Reboot of the Ghost in the Shell series in a quartet of prequel stories. This funnels the essence of Cyberpunk superbly, creating a dazzling world with cyborgised security services fighting terrorists hacking people's brains
Parasyte Part 1 (2014)
Feb 14, 2017Body-Snatching Shapeshifting Parasites
Live-action adaptation of a manga about the war between body-snatching parasites that are capable of rearranging their host's bodies. This plays out as a madcap version of The Thing relocated to a Japanese high school
Gintama (2017)
May 31, 2022Live-Action Anime Adaptation
The live-action adaptation of a popular anime and manga, this takes place in an alternate history version of Japan where samurai fight following an alien invasion
To the Solitary Me Who Loved You (2022)
Jul 3, 2025Multiverse Film/Anime
Multiverse films are all the in-thing in superhero films right now. This anime is a treatment of multiverse themes far away from superheroics that works beautifully in its sophistication of ideas