Ghost in the Shell

Major Motoko Kusanagi is a near-total cyborg working counter-terror in a wet, neon Japan. The case is a hacker called the Puppet Master who breaks into people's minds and rewrites their memories. The chase is mostly an excuse. What Oshii is really after is the question under it: if your body is manufactured and your memories can be edited, what part of you is the actual you. The film stops dead for long wordless stretches, a boat ride through a flooded city, rain on glass, and lets the dread settle. The animation, hand-drawn cells over early digital compositing, still looks better than most of what came after it.