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After nine years, acclaimed writer/director Mamoru Oshii follows up his cult hit "Ghost in the Shell"—one of the biggest animé successes of all time—with the long-awaited sequel "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence". It is the year 2032 and the line between humans and machines has been blurred almost beyond distinction. Humans have forgotten that they are human and those that are left coexist with cyborgs (human spirits inhabiting entirely mechanized bodies) and dolls (robots with no human elements at all). Batou is a cyborg. His body is artificial: the only remnants left of his humanity are traces of his brain…and the memories of a woman called The Major. A detective for the government's covert anti-terrorist unit, Public Security Section 9, Batou is investigating the case of a gynoid—a hyper-realistic female robot created specifically for sexual companionship—who malfunctions and slaughters her owner. As Batou delves deeper into the investigation, questions arise about humanity's need to immortalize its image in dolls. The answers to those questions lead to the shocking truth behind the crime...and quite possibly the very meaning of life.
Set in a world where a giant tree called Axis rises 100 miles above the planet surface, this is an adventure story about a spirited, young woman, Kaena (Kirsten Dunst), who leaves her tree village hoping to discover why the plant's sap is disappearing, thus threatening her people's way of life. Against the wishes of her village elders, she climbs down past the cloud level, and encounters the Selenites, a race that is trying to keep the tree from dying by enslaving another species. Richard Harris plays Opaz, an elderly sage, Anjelica Huston is the evil Queen of the Selenites, Keith David plays her second-in-command, while Greg Proops and Michael McShane are comic relief characters, the Worms.
Set in the ferocious Gobi Desert, the story follows two protagonists, Lieutenant Li (Jiang Wen) and Japanese emissary Lai Qi (Kiichi Nakai) - both first-class warriors and master swordsmen. After decades of service to the Chinese Emperor, Lai Qi longs to return to Japan, but is instead sent to the West to chase wanted criminals. His only passport back to Japan is to capture and execute Lieutenant Li, a renegade soldier wanted for leading a violent mutiny when he refused orders to kill female and child prisoners. Li and Lai Qi battle, but finally agree to delay their final personal fight until the caravan carrying Minzhu and a Buddhist monk is brought to safety. The monk, however, is carrying a sacred and powerful pagoda that attracts the attention of the region's ruthless overlord, Master An (Wang Xueqi). Lai Qi and Lt. Li, accompanied by Li's former posse of soldiers, who have forsaken their peaceful new lives to return to his side, must face the cruelty of the desert, the region's barbaric bandits and the brutality of the overlord's men before they can finally face one another.