One Hour Movie Reviews Presents Review #003: Blade Runner 2049

One Hour Movie Reviews Presents:

Review #003 – Blade Runner 2049

Released: October 6^th, 2017

Viewed: October 6^th, 2017 7:00 PM

Writing start time: October 6^th, 2017 11:07 PM

Blade Runner 2049 is the sequel to Ridley Scott's... masterpiece? Cult classic? science-fiction film Blade Runner. In it, Harrison Ford plays a titular Blade Runner, a cop tasked with hunting down replicants, illegal androids so human-like that it takes a detective to find one and “retire”. I thought the first movie had excellent world building, a unique aesthetic, great sound design and almost inscrutable characters and motivations. It left Blade Runner feeling like it was a beautiful mess and would certainly be a tough act to follow. For better or worse, Blade Runner 2049 does just that.

The movie begins with a screen's worth of text to cover the 30 year time gap between movies. In short, things have only gotten worse but different. Essentially the world's food supply is saved from ecological disasters by a super genius who then uses his new fortune to purchase what was left of the Tyrell Corporation, the inventors of replicants, to form a new company and create a new brand of replicants that are guaranteed to be loyal. To that end replicants have found many legitimate places to take root in society even if they aren't accepted.

That brings us to “K”, played by Ryan Gosling, who is this movie's Blade Runner and is also a replicant. K begins the movie being tasked with hunting down a new generation of illegal replicants. Remains found on the site of his first retirement leads K on a path to a much bigger case for a missing person who means a whole lot to a couple of powerful groups of people. Along the way Gosling walks with excellent posture through many sets reminiscent of the first movie and, other than a single shot at the opening, manages to give updated and original looks to the grungy, Used Future of the original Blade Runner.

K gains two primary allies in travels. First is Joi, played by the lovely Ana de Armas, who is a holographic housekeeper programmed to give her owner anything they want and that ends up being more than either of them bargained for. The second is Rick Deckard himself, returning from the first movie and played by an increasingly limping Harrison Ford. Deckard enters the picture when it turns out that he is a person of interest between the two competing factions.

I bring up these factions now because this is where the movie shows some serious cracks. One side is led by Jared Leto's Niander Wallace, who solved the food crisis and the other is led by a character who I'm not even sure got a name. Some motivations are spelled out, others are left a mystery and the paths to their success and their intentions with the important missing person are also unclear. It's possible that this was left in the dark because another sequel is going to give this movie greater meaning but in the meantime even Deckard asks a character “why” and he is answered with a shrug.

On top of this a couple of other basic decisions by the film makers lead to other problems. First, the text used for location transitions and the opening information crawl is so tiny that I had a hard time making it out from my third row seat. Second, the music which was scored as a clear homage to the original, fails to find any real melody or theme to counteract its bass heavy and screeching klaxon approach.

Theme is the major flaw of this movie. There is some good use of the idea of artificial beings yearning for more above their original programming and self-determinism but it doesn't have much to do with what exists of the plot. Plus all the future stuff is great to see as the technology has certainly improved during the 30 year time skip but nothing is made to reflect anything from modern day like its original did with its wall-to-wall advertisements.

In the end this is a movie that is all dressed up with nowhere to go. Even if the goal of this movie was to have a sequel that would have been fine if it had put a few more of its cards on the table. Still, with as much thought that went into the world building and a sex scene that probably uses more special effects than I've ever seen in a movie I appreciated the originality it had to offer, even if it didn't have enough to say. It's a low recommended movie at two and a half stars. You may enjoy the spectacle and some good ideas but I would be surprised if Blade Runner 2049 even has half the impact of its original.

One Hour Classic Movie Reviews Presents Review #001C: Blade Runner

One Hour Classic Movie Reviews Presents:

Review #001C – Blade Runner (2009 Final Cut)

Released: June 25^th, 1982

Viewed: October 4^th, 2017, 7:00 PM

Writing start time: October 4^th, 2017, 9:10 PM

I've been wanting to see Blade Runner for quite some time. It seems like one of those seminal science fiction movies that should have been part of my movie diet earlier on. Problem is that the movie predates me by two and a half years so by the time I would have been old enough to be allowed to see bare breasts, gaping gunshot wounds and speculative thoughts in my movies I would already be lamenting about how bad the Star Wars prequel trilogy was.

What I'm saying is that I think I missed the boat when it comes to Ridley Scott's much lauded Blade Runner. Now, I've done some studying on the history of the movie and have watched through a synopsis of the film and seen a couple of “did you know” videos online before watching this so the whole thing was thoroughly spoiled for me before going in. That goes against what One Hour Reviews are about as I really only want to know what the trailers have to say and that's it. For these “classic” reviews I'm going to have more knowledge and bias simply because a lot of these films have entered public lexicon by the time I get to writing a review of them for my puny Internet blog. I picked the 2009 Final Cut out of all seven available cuts simply because it's what I could rent off of YouTube and it's supposedly the only cut of the movie that was 100% under Ridley Scott's creative control. I know I lose out on some voice over and gain some scene which apparently provide clarity over other cuts but I'm going to just tell it to you straight: Blade Runner is kind of a mess.

For those that don't know it all by now I'll summarize the plot. Harrison Ford plays Rick Deckard, a Blade Runner. A Blade Runner is a detective meant to hunt down replicants, a brand of android slave labor now illegal on Earth, who are shot and killed, or “retired” once they are identified. Deckard is apparently the best Blade Runner in the business because he is pulled out of retirement in the opening scenes and then proceeds to have very basic facts spelled out to him, and therefore the audience. Maybe all the alcohol he imbibes throughout the movie implies that he has some memory problems due to previous drinking issues.

Deckard's task is to hunt down and retire four replicants who have returned to Earth for unknown reasons. The four are lead by Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty, a super combat model of replicant who seems to represent the Aryan ideal. It turns out that Roy and the other replicants are seeking their creator in an attempt to prolong their artificially short life and mostly want to stay under the radar while they complete their goal since their very existence is punishable by death. Too bad they keep racking up the body count to remain incognito.

This is all set against the backdrop of Los Angeles in the far flung future of 2019. The LA of this time is over crowded and almost always raining with neon being the lighting of choice and advertisements taking up space on any flat space big enough to support it. Looks like some things were predicted correctly. To my understanding Blade Runner's appeal was drawn largely from being one of the first realizations of the cyberpunk genre on film. The lighting is usually dim or doesn't work, the weather adds a layer of mist and obscurity to everything at street level and Chinese has taken over as an equal language to English. Oh, yeah, and flying cars.

I'm sure the spectacle and set dressing was set to impress back in the day but now that the Used Future setting has been seen so much that I think it doesn't hold up so well over time, especially not if the first viewing is done 35 years later. But that's not why the movie doesn't work for me. As far as the movie having some good ideas in its loose adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and being well-shot and lit all of the characters are a complete puzzle. None of the characters really act human. For the replicants that's understandable: they are so human but they aren't so their mannerisms falling into the uncanny valley makes sense. But all of the others who are beneath suspicion also either talk flatly, emote in only one way, or fail to react in any natural way. Added on top of this is some really choppy editing and occasionally jarring film composition and it feels like a lot of visual pieces that don't really connect. This left me feeling that everything was in a completely bizarre state of unreal.

Maybe that was the point. Much of the discussion of the film after the fact seems to regard “was X a replicant the whole time?” If everyone in the world acts strangely then anyone could be a robot! I don't think having hidden robots excuses questionable directing and acting. It feels like a lot of this discussion wallpapers over either a slight misfire from a younger Ridley Scott or a budget that couldn't support an ambitious film. In either case, it's a movie with a fair amount going on but in the 35 years that have passed since it can't possibly be top dog in the sci-fi world anymore.

I'll give it two and a half stars. There's a lot to talk about in this one but I can't say I completely enjoyed it.

One Hour Movie Reviews Presents Review #002: American Made

One Hour Movie Reviews Presents:

Review #002 – American Made

Released: September 29^th, 2017

Viewed: September 29^th, 2017 – 7:40 PM

Writing start time: September 29^th, 2017 – 9:54 PM

Tom Cruise has another vehicle but, spoilers, he doesn't run in this one.

Tom Cruise stars in American Made, a movie in which Cruise plays American pilot Barry Seal who is asked by the CIA to begin serving the USA by using his piloting skills to spy on Those Dirty Commies in 80's Central America. Cruise gets plenty of face time in the camera as he narrates to the audience in a framing device to make sure the audience doesn't fall too far behind, especially those who can watch R-rated movies but are too young to remember the Cold War. Even though the film is “tell” heavy with the narration there is plenty to show here and what is never shown is a good guy.

Like any good spy movie all of the players are shady or just looking out for number one and Cruise gets to bounce between them all in an upwards trajectory that takes him from an ordinary airline pilot to a fabulously wealthy smuggler. Instead of the cloak and dagger spyworks and heightened martial arts found in the recent also Cold War era Atomic Blonde we get a zoomed in focus of a profiteer in a whole different kind of battlefield. The movie is a period piece with many trappings of the late 70's and early 80's brought to life but this film exists primarily so Cruise can tell a story and it's a good one to hear.

Surrounding Cruise's character is his expanding family including his wife Lucy, played by Sarah Wright, and her brother JB, played by Caleb Landry Jones. Wright does a great job standing alongside Cruise and avoiding getting caught in his shadow. JB is effective as a Southern punk that presents some real complications for Cruise's character and raises the stakes of the plot considerably. Nobody is a hero here but the relationship between Cruise's and Wright's characters manages to give the audience a touchstone and gives us characters to root for among all of the scum and villainy.

The other standout note of this feature is the cinematography. Filming aerial scenes can't be easy but what little flight choreography and drama needs to exist the movie delivers with aplomb. Several takeoff and landing sequences also manage to deliver some genuine tension. I've seen enough planes dip below frame only to zoom at the camera with all of the important characters on board safely more times than I can count but we get some originality with the framing and you can really hear and feel planes getting pushed to their limits for our viewing pleasure. Great job.

This movie isn't one for this history books even though it is a history lesson. The pacing, acting, viewing and listening are all great and, hey, in these times seeing more jabs at our government is always an additional bonus. Three stars for American Made; it's a good story told well and I'll recommend it to you.

One Hour Movie Reviews Presents Review #001: Kingsman: The Golden Circle

One Hour Movie Reviews Presents:

Review #001 – Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Released: September 22, 2017

Viewed: September 23, 2017 7:10 PM

Writing start time: 10:30 PM

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is the sequel to 2014's Kingsman: The Secret Service, an action movie which surprised me with its originality and fun. I was excited to see that the universe of the Kingsmen would get revisited, and more importantly to me, expanded upon in its sequel.

The original movie featured the Kingsmen, a super spy organization that both winked at and embraced the absurdities of the Tuxedo and Martini spy flicks of old, not the least of which the James Bond franchise, which itself is acknowledged in-universe several times. It featured Taron Egerton as Eggsy, a lower class street tough with lots of potential, who is plucked from his situation by Galahad, played by Colin Firth, who owes a debt to Eggsy's family. The movie had a good theme of potential trumping social class with a scathing rebuke of the complacency of governments towards violence as a means to an end. It also has a scene where a multitude of heads explode in cadence to Pomp and Circumstance. No, really.

The marketing for the sequel promised a movie that carried the same beats as the first but expanded on its universe. In some ways this movie succeeds in fulfilling that promise but it does so with less confidence and finesse than the first. The Golden Circle introduces the Statesmen, an American counterpart spy agency that uses a laid back cowboy aesthetic as a foil to the stuffy British upper class motif of the Kingsmen. This gives us a new set of characters to explore but very little is done with them. It's nice to see Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry and even Channing Tatum as core members of this new group but none of their characters get a chance to exceed two dimensions.

Even the Kingsmen have a hard time achieving much depth. Eggsy himself completed his character arc in the first movie and is left to float along here. Galahad is back and he is given little to do except to provide callbacks to the first film. Mark Strong's character, Merlin, the tech wizard/drill sergeant of the Kingsmen, has character beats that fall flat and are completely unearned. The saving graces are the villain, Poppy, played by Julianne Moore, a drug cartel kingpin that wants to use capitalism to legalize her stake in the drug trade and an extended celebrity cameo that saying too much would give away the game.

Poppy's ambitions make a pretty big political statement, especially in the face of a certain government's response to it and, honestly, if this theme was properly explored it might have made for a more engaging conflict and a more interesting, but completely different, movie in its own right. Unfortunately, said evil plan imperils millions of lives so the heroes must step in to save the day and any potential there is lost.

Saving the day in a big way through awesome and sometimes hilarious set pieces was the major reason the first movie stood apart from its peers and happily some of that fun and ingenuity stays intact to its sequel. Deliberate attempts are made at recreating the magic of some of the original's big moments. Instead of inventing new ideas whole cloth, some twists to the original's are introduced and exploited but the feeling of deja vu can't be shaken. The big fights themselves are often inferior due to an increased use of confusing camera movements, shaky cam and less-than-perfect framing.

One non-action scene in particular is very troublesome. To inject some drama into Eggsy's relationship, he gets involved in a seduction scene that very much gives a counter argument to the “show, don't tell” adage. This is going to be the one scene of the movie that will make repeat viewings pretty tough and more should be written about it in a spoiler-filled article. From my understanding much is already being said.

Overall I got a movie that is a mixed bag. There is some fun to be had but there is also quite a bit of wasted potential and more and more questions and doubts are creeping into my head as I write this review. As it is, I am nearly at the end of my one hour writing allowance. More should be said about this movie, I think, as comparing the two Kingsman films would lead to excellent exercises in analyzing what does and does not work in writing screenplays.

Two and a half stars. Action fans ought to get a kick out of this but for more casual viewers I'll recommend the first movie any day of the week.