title: Noir
'Black Lagoon': Boiled Harder June 10, 2019
The animated adaptation of Rei Hiroe's ferocious homage to '80s action and Hong Kong cinema has all the attitude and muscle of its source, and also all its soul and insight
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'Crazy Thunder Road': Wild To Be Wreckage Forever March 03, 2022
Never before available for English-speaking audiences, Gakuryū Ishii's raw and rousing micro-budget motorcycle mini-epic heralds what was to come in his future films
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'Tokyo Decadence': The Dark Age Of Love January 24, 2022
Ryū Murakami's adaptation of his own story about a Tokyo sex worker is noisome social commentary that won't reach anyone who hasn't already gotten the message
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'ODDTAXI': Drive, He Said January 20, 2022
This labyrinthine noir about a third shift cabbie grows in unexpected directions, becoming one of the best anime offerings in a long time
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'Project A-Ko': Girl Trouble January 10, 2022
Once thought lost, then found intact, this rapid-fire sendup of/homage to anime tropes is fitfully funny, but better in its pieces than across its whole
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'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within': Persistence Of Vision December 06, 2021
Critically maligned, a financial disaster, and dramatically murky -- but dazzling nonetheless, and as a milestone for how CGI functions as its own storytelling medium
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'How Do You Live?': Letters To A Young Wonderer November 29, 2021
Not some genteel life-lessons story, but the quiet plea of a man resisting the growing militarism and reactionary violence of his world
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Netflix's 'Cowboy Bebop': A New Jam Session November 22, 2021
Lopsided, but still very enjoyable; if this hasn't raised the upper bound for anime-to-live-action, it sure has raised the lower bound
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'Cop Craft': An Isekai Lethal Weapon November 15, 2021
Your standard cop-buddy story, made only slightly more interesting by having the buddy being a magic-wielding paladin
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'I Am A Cat': All Humans Are Gray In The Dark November 08, 2021
A scaled-down adaptation of Sōseki Natsume's dark comedy of human nature as seen through the eyes of a cat, but with all its cutting humor intact
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'The Castle Of Cagliostro': Thief Of Hearts November 02, 2021
Anyone curious about 'Lupin III' or Hayao Miyazaki's career, start here, as this is a grandly entertaining introduction to both at once
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