Film

Shin Kamen Rider

Takashi Okazaki's Shin Kamen Rider strips the tokusatsu franchise down to existential crisis and body horror. It's a furious, visually inventive film about what you lose when you're turned into a weapon, shot like a fever dream and powered by genuine philosophical unease. For people who want their action cinema to hurt.

TMDb rating3.5

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy superhero stories that treat the hero's wounded body and divided conscience as seriously as the set-piece brawls, and you don't mind a restless, kinetic style to get there.

Skip it if you want the classic show's cheerful monster-of-the-week fun, since this is grim, talky between the fights and sits in its own heavy seriousness across its two-hour runtime.

What it asks of you: Settle in for a long two hours with plenty of talk between the fights, and bring patience for the political and moral questions it keeps raising.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Upgrade2018

A man augmented against his will must confront what he's becoming while using his new powers to survive. Body horror, philosophical dread, and propulsive action all wrestle with each other in ways that feel urgent and strange.

But The body horror is genuinely grotesque at times, and the moral questions never resolve into comfort. It's bleak enough that some viewers find it exhausting rather than exhilarating.

Upgrade poster

Akira1988

Cyberpunk motorcycle nihilism meeting cosmic apocalypse. Visually dense, narratively fractured, and entirely committed to the idea that power corrupts and transforms you into something unrecognizable. A masterpiece of controlled visual chaos.

But It's deliberately opaque and doesn't explain itself. The pacing is frenetic rather than smooth, and you may need to watch it twice to grasp the full shape.

Akira poster

Blade Runner 20492017

A methodical exploration of identity and humanity through the eyes of a being designed to be inhuman. Visually sumptuous, philosophically patient, and genuinely moving beneath its cool surface. Denis Villeneuve at his most thoughtful.

But It moves deliberately rather than quickly, and some find it remote or cold. The plotting is secondary to the mood, which won't work for everyone.

Blade Runner 2049 poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Shin Kamen Rider

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Bourne Identity2002

Both are films about men forced into superhuman combat capabilities and the urgent need to recover something human beneath the augmentation. Takeshi searching for identity mirrors Bourne's amnesia and reconstruction.

Before it became a franchise, this was a phenomenological thriller about a man discovering he's been weaponized and stripped of his identity. Twitchy, visceral action that asks what remains when your body is all you've been given.

But It's shot with handheld cameras and rapid cutting that feels disorienting to some. The plot is deliberately sparse and the emotional beats are subdued.

The Bourne Identity poster
More like this (8)

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners2022

An anime about the cost of augmentation and the erasure of self in pursuit of power. Lucy and David's relationship burns against a neon-soaked dystopia where every upgrade takes something human away. Gorgeous and devastating.

But It ends with real tragedy rather than catharsis, and the violence and sexual content are explicit. Some viewers find the nihilism punishing rather than thought-provoking.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners poster

The Invisible Man2020

Leigh Whannell reframes the monster story as a philosophical nightmare about control and invisibility. Formal invention married to psychological terror, with a protagonist fighting an enemy that may no longer be human. Genuinely intelligent horror.

But It's more about mood and implication than action set-pieces. The pacing is deliberately glacial, which some find tedious.

The Invisible Man poster

Ghost in the Shell: SAC_20452020

Mamoru Oshii's meditation on what happens to identity when you can be copied, digitized, and reassembled. Motoko Kusanagi as the ultimate augmented being questioning her own humanity. Dense, philosophical, visually audacious.

But It's deliberately abstract and often impenetrable. The CGI is divisive, and the narrative refuses conventional shape or closure.

Ghost in the Shell: SAC_2045 poster

Neon Genesis Evangelion1995

Teenage pilots forced into giant robots they can't refuse, losing pieces of themselves with each deployment. Hideaki Anno's masterpiece about duty, trauma, and the violence of being conscripted into power. Formally experimental and psychologically brutal.

But It's genuinely disturbing and sometimes quite dark in its philosophy. The ending is deliberately oblique and unsatisfying in conventional terms.

Neon Genesis Evangelion poster

Chappie2015

Neill Blomkamp's film about an artificial consciousness forced to be a weapon explores what happens when power and innocence collide. It's genuinely weird and morally complicated, with real stakes beneath the spectacle.

But It's unevenly toned, and the plot is straightforward in ways that undercut its philosophical ambitions. Some find it frustratingly simple given its ideas.

Chappie poster

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story2016

A grittier, morally murkier Star Wars film about sacrifice and whether the cost of resistance can ever be worth the price. Tonally distinct from the main saga, with genuine weight and consequence.

But It ends bleakly for a Star Wars film, and the first act is overstuffed. It requires familiarity with the franchise to feel the full impact.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story poster

Caravaggio1986

Both use body horror and visual distortion to explore the transformation of a human into something else. Jarman's approach to Caravaggio's bodily degradation parallels Okazaki's treatment of Hongo's augmentation as spiritual and physical dislocation.

Derek Jarman's fever-dream biography of the painter who captured violence and transcendence. A Renaissance artist transformed by his visions into something barely human. Visually baroque, spiritually unhinged, unlike anything else.

But It's more visual poem than narrative film, with long static scenes and minimal dialogue. The eroticism is explicit, and the plot is secondary to the aesthetic experience.

Caravaggio poster

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade1999

Both center on a weaponized man learning that his augmentation makes him a tool for an organization's violence, and both explore whether love or connection can restore something of the person he was before.

A stunning hand-drawn anime about a soldier in an exoskeleton armor used for population control. Formally gorgeous, politically complex, genuinely tragic. Less action film than meditation on complicity and lost humanity.

But It's slow and contemplative rather than exciting. The plot takes a personal turn that some find incongruous with the political scope, and the ending is ambiguous.

Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade poster

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