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Robots in disguise

Ridley Scott’s original sci-fi masterpiece Blade Runner came out in 1982—35 years ago. Scott has tooled with the cut of that movie numerous times, resulting in a final cut that was released about 10 years ago. While there was a lot of monkeying—in a good way—with the original, it didn’t seem there was much thought, or chance, for an actual sequel. The original was a box-office bomb and didn’t start gaining its classic status until a decade after its release. In fact, critics beat up on it a bit.

Here in 2017, we actually do get a sequel, this time directed by Denis Villeneuve, the visionary behind Enemy and Arrival. (Scott remains involved as a producer.) Harrison Ford, who has classically moaned about the original movie, has, nonetheless, returned to play blade runner Rick Deckard. Ryan Gosling steps into the starring role of K, a new blade runner tasked with “retiring” older model replicants, the synthetic humans originated by the likes of Rutger Hauer and Daryl Hannah in the original.

Other than the presence of Ford in the final act of the movie, and the vision of Pan Am and Atari logos still present in the Los Angeles skyline, there’s little to make this one feel like a standard sequel. 2049 goes off on many new tangents, bending the mind when it comes to topics like artificial intelligence, what really constitutes love, and determining what is “real” in this world. Villeneuve, along with writers Hampton Fancher and Michael Green, have concocted a whole new world, a realistic evolution of Scott’s.

The film opens with a scene actually meant for the original Blade Runner, one in which a farmer (Dave Bautista) is trying to live a peaceful life before being confronted by K. K finds things at the farmer’s homestead that trigger memories, and the excavation of a body at the site triggers more. At the behest of his boss (Robin Wright), K is off on a mission to find a lost child and, eventually, that old, cranky son of a bitch, Rick Deckard.

There are many twists and turns along the way, and there need to be, because the movie is almost three hours long. This is not a complaint. Cinematographer Roger Deakins puts pure art in motion with his camerawork, giving us a dirtier, gloomier, yet still beautiful Blade Runner. K’s travels take him to the ruins of major cities. Ruined cities have never looked this gorgeous.

As with the original, there are things in this movie you have never seen before. Amazing sequences include a battle between two men in an abandoned showroom. The showroom used to house a hologram show starring the likes of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, and that show gets started up again after somebody flips the switch. It’s one of the more surreal scenes you will see in any movie this year. The same can be said for a moment where K meets Dr. Ana Stelline (Carla Juri), who makes memories for replicants. Villeneuve crafts an eerily beautiful scene where K observes her creating a birthday party memory, which we see as a hologram. It’s one of those movie moments where you think, “Now, that’s some hardcore original shit, right there.”

Gosling is in top form as K, a confused member of a future society where one’s sense of identity can be a very confounding thing. His home companion is a very lifelike and cognizant hologram named Joi (Ana de Armas). Much credit goes to Armas for making Joi something far more than a glorified Siri/Alexa.

The film has a few flaws. Jared Leto, while not awful, pours it on too thick as Niander Wallace, creator of replicants. And while the film’s finale is fine, it doesn’t live up to the preceding excellence.

These are minor quibbles, because the wonders that Blade Runner 2049 delivers far outrun the missteps. Villeneuve has done the legacy of Blade Runner supreme justice with this offering. I actually doubt Ridley Scott could’ve directed this better. Ω

“i heard ryan Gosling said yes to Blade runner because he originally thought it was a movie about ice skating.”

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3American Made The messed-up life of pilot Barry Seal gets a movie that’s not messed up enough in American Made, an entertaining film that plays it a little too safe. Drug cartels and Iran-Contra are played for laughs in a story that probably shouldn’t have us giggling all that much. The movie winds up being moderately enjoyable thanks to Tom Cruise sweating it out in the lead role. Director Doug Liman, who teamed with Cruise on the sci-fi masterpiece Edge of Tomorrow, rips off Catch Me if You Can, The Wolf of Wall Street, Goodfellas, Blow and many more in telling the story of the notorious TWA pilot turned pawn for the CIA. Inspired by Seal’s true story—and some of the more outlandish stuff depicted in the film actually happened—the movie starts with him grinding out flights for TWA, smuggling the occasional box of Cuban cigars and trying to support a family that includes wife Lucy (Sarah Wright). He winds up taking a side gig for the CIA, taking reconnaissance photos, delivering arms to Central America. This eventually leads to smuggling drugs for Medellin cartel. The movie is a whirlwind of activity, but skimpy on some of the details that could make it more than just a silly blast. Honestly, this story might have played better as an HBO or Netflix miniseries than a big motion picture. It feels far too slick for the source material and needs some more meat on the bone. A 10-hour running time probably wouldn’t even be enough to cover everything Barry got himself into.

2Battle of the Sexes Usually reliable directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Farris (Little Miss Sunshine, Ruby Sparks) somehow manage to make this, the story of Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs’ infamous early ’70s tennis match, quite boring. King is played by Emma Stone, who brings a nice warmth to one of the great trailblazing athletes of the 20th century. Steve Carell labors a bit playing Riggs, the chauvinist pig who challenged the much younger King to a battle of the sexes, an exhibition tennis match to prove the superiority of the male athlete. The actual match happens in the film’s final half hour, and it’s an entertaining half hour that manages to incorporate real footage of Howard Cosell and a realistic depiction of the actual tennis play. The movie doesn’t have much of a pulse in the buildup, portraying King’s love life in a way that would seem too schmaltzy for your average soap opera. Surely, there must’ve been some fireworks when the married King started sleeping with her hairdresser on her tennis tour, but this movie goes a dull and sappy route. I expected to laugh more at this movie, but the film just sort of drags along until Stone and Carell pick up their rackets, which looked a lot like badminton racquets back in the ’70s. The movie also tries to make Riggs too likeable, and it probably would’ve been OK to make him a little nastier. No doubt, Billie Jean King is a legend. This movie doesn’t quite live up to that legend.

4Gerald’s Game Now Netflix chips in on the effort to make us all forget that filmed adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower with this latest King effort, a powerhouse acting job for both Carla Gugino and Bruce Greenwood. They play Jessie and Gerald, a married couple who have hit tough times. They attempt to rekindle their relationship on a holiday excursion, one that involves her getting handcuffed to the bed. Things go bad, like, really bad, and Jessie winds up in a truly precarious situation that involves starving, dehydrating and hallucinating. The original King novel, of course, finds a way for Gerald to stick around for the whole movie, even after a fatal heart attack, while flashbacks show us other traumas involving Jessie’s dad (Henry Thomas). The movie is, appropriately, hard to watch at times. This is a careerbest performance from Gugino, who carries most of the movie. Greenwood is allowed to get deranged in the role, and he does just that. Visits from a ghostly giant give the movie a supernatural twist, and are legitimately scary. (Available for streaming on Netflix.) 4 It The benefit of a movie like Andy Muschietti’s It is that the director and his writers can keep some core themes that worked in the novel but streamline the narrative to make the story work a bit better 30 years after it was written. In that respect, the new It is a triumph. While the 1990 TV miniseries dealt with both the young and older versions of The Loser’s Club, the posse of kids that stand up to evil, the new It stands as Part One, completely dividing the kid and adult stories. There’s also a major time change, with the kids’ story taking place in the late ’80s instead of the ’50s. Thank you, Stranger Things. The core story remains the same: Children in Derry, Maine, have been disappearing for many years, and the film starts with the sad case of Georgie (Jackson Robert Scott), a little boy in a yellow rain slicker who follows his paper boat to the sewer drain and makes an unfortunate acquaintance, Pennywise, the sewer-dwelling clown, played as a savage beast by Bill Skarsgard. The kids are great. The standout is Sophia Lillis as Beverly Marsh. Lillis has that kind of leading-lady-in-ateen-film commanding screen presence.

3Kingsman: The Golden Circle If you thought Kingsman: The Secret Service was a bit over-the-top, and you liked that aspect of it, you’ll be happy to know that things were just getting started with Matthew Vaughn’s adaptation of the Mark Millar/ Dave Gibbons graphic novel The Secret Service. Kingsman: The Golden Circle is an example of a sequel pulling out all of the stops, going into severe overkill mode, and holding together quite nicely. It’s too long at 141 minutes, and a pug dies, but the action snaps with expert precision, and the cast kicks ass. That cast includes Taron Egerton as Eggsy, Harry Hart’s (Colin Firth) young recruit from the first film. The Kingsman, an underground, sharply dressed spy agency in England, remains in operation. Eggsy has settled down with a royal girlfriend (Hanna Alstrom), and has segued into the life of a secret agent. Then, things start sucking badly as missiles destroy Kingsman headquarters and strongholds, leaving behind only Eggsy and techy Merlin (Mark Strong). Eggsy and Merlin wind up in America, where they meet the Statesman, secret agent allies doing a similar spying service for the U.S.A. The task force includes Tequila (Channing Tatum), Ginger (Halle Berry) and Champ (Jeff Bridges). Harry, despite apparently dying in the first film, makes a comeback, and the movie is better for it.

4Mother Writer-director Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, Mother!, is one helluva nutty movie. The film takes unabashedly nasty aim at relationships, the Bible, narcissism, celebrity, art, family, smoking and, oh, yeah, motherhood. By the time it’s over, you might not know exactly what went down, but you know that it landed on the side of cynicism. Jennifer Lawrence plays Mother, an apparently kindhearted partner to Him (Javier Bardem). They live in an old-style country house out in the middle of nowhere. Him is a writer, going through some major writer’s block. They live a quiet life in their little Eden, Mother preparing meals while Him tortures himself, unable to produce a single word for his next great work. Then, there’s a knock at the door. It’s Man (Ed Harris), soon to be followed by Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer), a strange couple who wind up houseguests thanks to Him’s hospitality, and much to the chagrin of Mother. Man and Woman invade Mother’s space, with Man huffing cigarettes and frequently vomiting from illness while Woman swills alcohol and asks Mother extremely personal questions. Later, after a rage-inspired sex session, Mother becomes pregnant, and Him is suddenly fertile with ideas. He writes his next big thing, and their home is besieged by agents, fans, religious zealots, paparazzi, former SNL cast members, policemen, soldiers, terrorists and fire. If there’s a takeaway from Mother!, it’s that Aronofsky doesn’t have the most pleasant attitudes toward celebrity and Sunday school.