davidh's - Top 10 - Cyberpunk Films List
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Blade Runner 2049 (2017)Blade Runner 2
Thirty years after the events of the first film, a new blade runner, LAPD Officer K (Ryan Gosling), unearths a long-buried secret that has the potential to plunge what's left of society into chaos. K's discovery leads him on a quest to find Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a former LAPD blade runner who has been missing for 30 years. - Director:
- Denis Villeneuve
- Cast:
- Harrison Ford, Bernie Leinfelder, Ryan Gosling
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Blade Runner (1982)Blade Runner: The Final Cut / Dangerous Days / Bladerunner
Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) prowls the steel-and-microchip jungle of 21st century Los Angeles. He's a "Blade Runner" stalking genetically made criminal replicants. His assignment: kill them. Their crime: wanting to be human. A visual stunner, remastered for improved home presentation, director Ridley Scott's vision of this sci-fi cinema classic intriguingly differs from what 1982 moviegoers saw. This version omits Deckard's voiceover narration, develops in greater detail the romance between Deckard and Rachael (Sean Young) and removes the "uplifting" finale. Most intriguing of all is a newly included unicorn vision that suggests Deckard may be a humanoid. The result is a heightened emotional impact a great film made greater. - Director:
- Ridley Scott
- Cast:
- Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young
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Scarlett Johansson is terrific in the visually stunning 'Ghost in the Shell', an action-packed adventure set in a future world where people are enhanced with technology. Believing she was rescued from near death, Major (Johansson) becomes the first of her kind: a human mind inside an artificial body designed to fight the war against cyber crime. While investigating a dangerous criminal, Major makes a shocking discovery -the corporation that created her lied about her past life in order to control her. Unsure what to believe, Major will stop at nothing to unravel the mystery of her true identity and exact revenge against the corporation she was built to serve. - Director:
- Rupert Sanders
- Cast:
- Scarlett Johansson, Pilou Asbæk, Takeshi Kitano
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December 30th, 1999, is it the end of the world or the beginning of a new one. Lenny Nero (Ralph Feinnes) stalks the streets of Los Angeles, a street hustler, an ex-cop, a seller of stolen dreams. Lenny deals in "clips", digital recordings of real-life experiences packaged for a vicious thrill. He doesn't deal in "blackjacks" - recordings of death - but when a close associate is murdered by a ruthless killer, Lenny gets drawn into a sleazy and psychotic world of wealth, power and paranoia. Trying to protect his ex-love Faith (Juliette Lewis), Lenny is aided by the only two people he can trust, personal security expert Mace (Angela Bassett) and ex-cop and former colleague Max (Tom Sizemore), as he tries to stay alive to see the next millennium. - Director:
- Kathryn Bigelow
- Cast:
- Ralph Fiennes, Ron Young, Chris Douridas
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It's 2019, the world is on the brink of absolute destruction. Tokyo shimmers with tech-noir fetishism, gangs of cyber-punk bikers cruise the sprawl of the post-atomic city and rioting crowds surge under the neon-topped buildings looming a thousand storeys into the sky. Now, old gods return to do battle with Akira and something more than comic book ultra-violence is unleashed... - Director:
- Katsuhiro Ôtomo
- Cast:
- Nozomu Sasaki, Mami Koyama, Mitsuo Iwata
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Ghost in the Shell (1995)Kôkaku kidôtai / Armored Riot Police
The year is 2029, the world is made borderless by the net; augmented humans who live in virtual environments. Watched over by law enforcement that is able to download themselves into super-powered, crime busting mecha. The ultimate secret agent of the future is not human, has no physical body and can freely travel the information highways of the world. Hacking and manipulating whatever, whomever and whenever required.... - Director:
- Mamoru Oshii
- Cast:
- Atsuko Tanaka, Iemasa Kayumi, Akio Ôtsuka
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The 21st Century. Information is the ultimate commodity. The most valuable of information is transported in Mnemonic implants in the heads of professional couriers like Johnny (Keanu Reeves), who offer both security and confidentiality for the right price. But Johnny has paid a heavy price of his own - he's dumped his own memories to make room for the programmes he smuggles. To buy them back, he agrees to deliver priceless data, the most important data of the 21st Century, data that has already set an army of professional killers on his trail. But the massive upload is too much for his brain and Johnny must find the secret codes to download the information - or die. - Director:
- Robert Longo
- Cast:
- Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren, Dina Meyer
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Burst City (1982)Bakuretsu Toshi
"Burst City" is an explosive Molotov cocktail of dystopian sci-fi, 'Mad Max'-style biker wars against yakuza gangsters and the police, and riotous performances from members of the real-life Japanese punk bands 'The Stalin', 'The Roosters', 'The Rockers', and 'INU'. In a derelict industrial wasteland somewhere on the outskirts of Tokyo, two rival punk bands and their unruly mobs of fans gather for a Battle of the Bands-style protest against the construction of a nuclear power plant, bringing them head to head with the yakuza industrialists behind the development of their turf. - Director:
- Gakuryu Ishii
- Cast:
- Michirô Endô, Kansai Eto, Shigeru Izumiya
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Cypher (2002)Company Man
Morgan Sullivan (Jeremy Northam) is an out of work accountant, who dreams of swapping his dull suburban existence and loveless marriage for a life of freedom and excitement. Seeking an escape he decides to join the multi-national corporation Digicorp and become a company spy. Adopting a new identity, he is sent to spy on various trade conventions where he secretly records the proceedings and transmits them back to Ed Finster his ruthless, intimidating corporate boss. But when Sullivan meets the mysterious and beautiful Rita (Lucy Liu) he begins to realize that his job may not be what it seems, and he descends into a dark underworld of brainwashing, deception and murder. - Director:
- Vincenzo Natali
- Cast:
- Jeremy Northam, Lucy Liu, Nigel Bennett
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New Rose Hotel (1998)Sin escrúpulos
Abel Ferrara (Ms .45) directs cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson's neo-noir short story about industrial espionage. Two extraction specialists Fox (Christopher Walken) and X (Willem Dafoe) are hired to tempt the genius Hiroshi away from a rival company by using sexy call girl Sandii (Asia Argento). Featuring a variety of screens and footage, New Rose Hotel uses these mixed media formats to distance us from Hiroshi as an intractable presence that emphasises the lack of control experienced by Fox and X whilst also presenting a prescient view of our own engagement with screens and digital communications. Misunderstood upon release, Ferrara's feverish film has been reappraised in recent years and compared to David Lynch's exploration of perception and paranoia. - Director:
- Abel Ferrara
- Cast:
- Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Asia Argento
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