What have you watched recently? 3D!

I am maybe going to face the wrath of Scifi fans, but I found the 2 Dune films bang average.

They were too long and too slow. Very unexciting. Yes they looked and sounded nice, but kinda boring.

The first one is pretty good IMO. It is slow, but its based off a vast book, but at least the world in that film seems totally believable and at the same time weird and alien, and the villain/antagonist element appears extremely hostile. The second part had the utensils to go all out even weirder but it just called back to other mainstream blockbusters from 30 years ago. I'm not being flippant when I say the second one is very similar to 'Robin Hood-Prince of Thieves', it literally has the same beats, almost like a soap opera. The second one wants to wrap it up as quick as it can, literally destroying the decent world building effort that was set up in the first one.

Watched The Coffee Table last night.

My god, what a brilliant and horrible watch, it's truly excruciating at points, you almost can't bring yourself to look at the screen.

I can't think of anything I've seen before that induces that kind of reaction except maybe Uncut Gems.

Best watched blind.

I watched Unfrosted this evening, which is basically Jerry Seinfeld expanding his Pop Tarts routine in to a movie. The premise is the battle between Kellogg's and Post to get their respective toaster pastries to market. Lots of visual puns and in-jokes, and all kinds of people pop up in cameos. Jon Hamm and John Slattery reprise their Mad Men characters, Peter Dinklage is the head of the milk mafia with Christian Slater as a milk man, and Bill Burr as JFK. Then there's Hugh Grant, whose character would take too long to explain … good fun for a windy Sunday evening.

Watched "Way of the Gun" the other evening. You can really see the seeds of Christopher McQuarrie's style beginning to bloom. The script is a little clunky and it gets a bit messy towards the end but the action scenes are great. He has a real eye for realism in action scenes which I suppose is why Mr. Cruise took a fancy to him. I can also see Benicio Del Toro taking a lot of his performance here and directly transferring it over to Sicario. 7/10

Watched MadS on Shudder - this one really impressed me, Zombie films are a well-flogged genre at this stage but this proves there's always room for innovative takes and approaches.

Whole movie is one-take so it's 90 minutes in real time of what an outbreak might look like from the POV of the first few people infected.

Top notch stuff, incredibly creepy in how it shows the gradual loss of control/sense of self.

Devil in a Blue Dress

I saw Devil in a Blue Dress on its release and was slightly disappointed with it as it was very well reviewed and hyped up but I didn’t like it as much as Carl Franklin’s previous film, the blistering One False Move.

Watching it again all these years later I can appreciate it now as a classic and a great example of a 90’s Neo-noir, of which there were many. The 90’s was kind of a golden age for crime cinema.

Based on a hardboiled detective novel, the plot is a bit convoluted but is tied up satisfyingly in the end. The cast are all great. Denzel Washington is typically charismatic, Tom Sizemore at his sleazy best and Don Cheadle is terrifying as Denzel’s psychopathic side kick who only comes into the movie half way through but leaves a huge impression.

1940’s post World War 2 Los Angeles is brought evocatively to life. Franklin directs with a lot of style. In an ideal world there would be a whole series of movies based on the books by Walter Mosley.

Disappointingly, Carl Franklin didn’t go on to have the career these early films promised though he still directs some great TV stuff.

Watched Azrael on Shudder. Simple enough premise - a woman tries to escape imprisonment by a religious mute cult in some kinda of post-rapture future.

The lack of dialogue is unique enough and didn't bother me necessarily, but there's nothing particularly great or original about the premises or how it's executed, it's fairly standard violent-chase fare you've seen countless times before.

Despite deliberately teasing it, there's also zero exposition on the rest of the world seemingly functioning somewhat normally outside of this localised medieval cult and demonic post-rapture future - I know sometimes people can be very frustrated at these lack of answers.

The ending is somewhat more solid, whatever value you take from it aside. Overall it's watchable enough but not much more.

A 5.5/10.

‘Blade Runner’

Ridley Scott’s classic (can we call this film a classic now?) sci-fi neo noir remains a thoroughly fascinating watch 32 years later and looks like it could have been made in the 2020’s. If we subtract the in movie date of November 2019 and ignore it completely, Scott’s vision (or rather Syd Mead’s) lends the film a completely believable future, even if that future is devoid of contemporary sights like touch screen tech, flat screen TVs and mobile phones.

In this future, Blade Runners are part of a police force (presumably on an international scale) who are specifically tasked with tracking down and “retiring” artificially created beings called Replicants whose presence on Earth is strictly forbidden, despite the fact that they are made here by the Tyrell Megacorporation. The reason for this being a mutiny that took place in which Replicants were responsible for the deaths of human beings and as a result they are primarily used as off-world slave labour, where their extra-human abilities can be exploited in colonies on different planets.

When several Replicants escape their confines and travel to Earth, an L.A. based Blade Runner called Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is pulled out of retirement and is tasked with tracking them down and…retiring them.

The world of ‘Blade Runner’ is meticulously created in loving detail and presents a wonderfully depressing landscape of a claustrophobic Los Angeles, depicting a city of perpetual rain and darkness where the crowded streets represent an Asian metropolis more so than an American one in a clear nod to the late 70’s/early 80’s fearful U.S. idea that the 21st Century was going to be more about the oriental hemisphere rather than the occidental one. Gigantic, skyscraper sized, images of Geishas advertise their wares alongside familiar American staples such as Coca-Cola and Pan-Am (who have presumably come back from their 1991 bankruptcy). Chinese neon dragons are dotted around the city and Asian faces pass by the camera in droves. A mechanical “Goodyear blimp” no longer advertises tyres, but instead promises the chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure on the off world colonies, albeit via an unconvincing audio recording.

Of course this Asian influence may just be localised to the parts of the city that we see and elsewhere this urban sprawl could be completely different. But we never get to view those areas.

But it’s the above details like that that transport the viewer off of their seat and into the physical features of the story and it’s easily the movie’s greatest aspect because, let’s be honest, the actual story isn’t all that much to write home about. In fact the story of ‘Blade Runner’ is, probably, its weakest element. It’s a throwaway yarn that’s been torn straight out of the pages of its pulp fiction influences…Philip K. Dick’s source novel ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’ notwithstanding of course. Indeed modern audiences may find ‘Blade Runner’ crushingly dull because it’s rather slow moving and is happy to take its time getting to the conclusion it wants to lead us to.

However, the movie has a way of capturing its intended audience. It’s not what’s shown directly on the screen that ultimately matters, but what viewers can read between the lines, as it were. The L.A. of ‘Blade Runner’ is an engrossing place that leads to many questions. The Replicants, themselves, are a minefield of questions as well. The movie only gives us glimpses of both, but it’s enough to spark imagination.

Over the years there have been numerous variations of Ridley Scott’s film, resulting in several cuts that have made subtle changes to the ingredients while the movie remained essentially the same dish. I myself have always preferred the original (international) 1982 cut, which includes the much hated voice over by Harrison Ford, for which I find myself in a minority and very much so.

But I’d actually argue that the voiceover is essential to the noirish texture of the movie and without it ‘Blade Runner’ loses some of that charm. That charm is one that has borrowed moreso from the likes of Dashiell Hammet or Mickey Spillane than it has from Philip K. Dick, although there are some touches of noir in Dick’s novel.

Ford’s voiceover, for me, invokes such undisputed classic movies as ‘Double Indemnity’, ‘Farewell, My Lovely’ or ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice’, even if it falls into the same trap as their voiceovers in which they can offer an extra layer of welcome information while also threatening to explain too much. Irrespective of that, I’ve always liked it because Rick Deckard’s kin are Mike Hammer, Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade who all had their internal monologues interject with the events going on outside of their head.

Incidentally, the voiceover was part of the production from the beginning, but the idea was so hated by Ford that Scott convinced him that the film would be made without it. Unfortunately for both Ford and Scott the studio later insisted that it be included, which the director and actor reluctantly acquiesced to. Ford could still be found moaning about it in the 2000’s.

These film noir touches are also represented in other characters, too. The Replicant Rachael (Sean Young), Tyrell’s newest model, would be just as at home in the L.A. of November 1939 as she would in Blade Runner’s L.A. of November 2019. Her style of dress and hair is a stark reproduction of the apparel of American women of the 30’s/40’s period. Rachael is also an intriguing mix of a Capraesque independent woman and a Femme Fatale.

The movie is shot, too, using many scenes that wouldn’t be out of place in a moody 1940’s detective film. Characters are sometimes lensed in near silhouette and cigarette smoke adds a haze to the visuals. In a number of scenes, if one was to desaturate the colour, you’d be forgiven if you thought it was set in the past.

‘Blade Runner’ also throws up a number of interesting philosophical quandaries, where it indirectly asks what it means to be human. What it means to be genuine and fake and can the fake eventually become the genuine article?

Replicants are born as fully grown adults but they are imperfect fake replications of a human being. The Tyrell Corporation may try and sell its biomechanical machines as More Human than Human, but their product is subject to limitations. The foremost being an inbuilt five year lifespan that retards the possibility for a Replicant to develop convincing human emotions, presumably so they don’t become impossible for the authorities to detect.

So while these creations can never be anything more than a five year old child in lifespan, they are imbued with artificial conditions so that they can mimic adulthood. But the movie also shows Replicants clearly displaying emotions of a sort or, at least, acting as if they can. The Replicant Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) weeps when he discovers the death of the Replicant Priss (Daryl Hannah). Priss, herself, acts with an extreme anger when she faces off with Deckard. Rachael fears that Deckard my come after her if she runs and she’s also clearly hurt when Deckard reveals that Tyrell has exposed some of her intimate memories to him, memories that actually belong to Tyrell’s niece which have been implanted in her artificial mind.

Conversely, most of the human beings of the movie are presented as cold and more aloof than the artificial beings. Characters like Tyrell (Joe Turkel), Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh) and Gaff (Edward James Olmos) don’t seem register any human feeling at all and Deckard, himself, struggles to emote much either, although he feels sickened at having to shoot a woman in the back. The only human character in the film who displays any humanity is the unfortunate J. F. Sebastian (William Sanderson) whom the Replicants use to gain access to Tyrell.

And thus, we come to one of the most controversial additions to ‘Blade Runner’ that has been included in the subsequent changes to the film. Deckard as a Replicant himself.

In 1982 few people, if any, contemplated if Rick Deckard was a human being or not in ‘Blade Runner’. In fact Harrison Ford’s haircut caused more of a stir than any discussion of Deckard’s nature. Although in the following years rumours surfaced about missing footage and the possibility that the character wasn’t at all what he seemed to be. Fans would offer various theories about Deckard that even Harrison Ford was completely oblivious to, but as far as he and everyone else in the cast were concerned, Deckard was a human and it was absurd to suggest otherwise. But it’s clear that somewhere during production Ridley Scott had this half-baked idea that perhaps he wasn’t and set about planting suggestions just as Tyrell planted memories in Rachael’s head. There has also been some scuttlebutt that the writers Hampton Fancher and David Peoples mooted the idea themselves. Either way nothing was overtly shown until Scott produced the director’s cut in 1992, later solidified in the 2007 Final Cut, Scott’s preferred version. Scott, himself, confirmed that he believed that Deckard was a Replicant.

The problem with all of this is that it makes no sense to have Deckard be a Replicant. He’s clearly much weaker than Roy, Leon, Priss and Zhora, the Replicants he’s hunting. So it’s ridiculous that he’d be tasked with the job in the first place. When Roy breaks the bones in his fingers he screams in agony. Yet Roy can punch through solid brick walls and not bat an eyelid.

It also begs the question of who would know that Deckard was a Replicant? Does Tyrell know? If so he puts himself in unreasonably foolish danger entrusting his life to him. Does the Police Dept. know? If so, they are complicit in a severe conspiratorial crime…and unnecessarily so too.

Deckard also comes perilously close to failing his mission every time he meets the Replicants he’s chasing. He’s roughed up very badly by all of them and nearly killed by Leon and Zhora but for interventions by other people. If not for that Deckard’s case would have ended before it even begun properly.

So, to me, making Deckard a Replicant just ends up being a little stupid and it doesn’t really add anything to the over all story. Perhaps if this angle was truly baked in at the beginning of production and actually part of the story to begin with, it would have made more sense. But as it is, it just comes off as a bad, and unnecessary, attempt at a retcon.

In any case, unlike George Lucas, Scott has never tried to eliminate his original versions. So, fans of the film are free to view whatever version they wish and enjoy them as they like. There’s even a version of the original cut without the voiceover. As a bonus, each version of Scott’s film plays in nicely with Denis Villeneuve’s excellent sequel ‘Blade Runner 2049’.

Finally, a mention should be made about the brilliant score by the Greek composer Vangelis. Where once this type of music had a bad dating effect upon the film in the late 80’s, his electronic music has now become timeless and I was surprised upon this re-watched at just how sparingly it was used.

9/10

You're right. Apologies. I was watching it on IPTV. A google search showed it as on Prime Video but I now see its unavailable here when I search on Prime Video website…

I'd agree with her to a degree.

Really enjoyed it back when it came out, and a few watches after, but then went maybe 20yrs without watching it and decided to one night, and didn't find it as impressive.

Run all night, crime thriller from 2015 starring Liam Neeson and Joel Kinahan. I quite enjoyed this, wasn't expecting much giving his recent action output.