BLADE RUNNER 2049

Stars: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Jared Leto, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Dave Bautista, Hiam Abbass and Sean Young.
Writers: Hampton Fancher and Michael Green.
Director: Denis Villeneuve.

Rating: 3.5/5

Having muddied to the point of audience disinterest the mythology of one blockbuster property in the quest for ‘something deeper’, Ridley Scott’s existential musings on origins and creation continue in Blade Runner 2049. Thankfully, in the hands of self-proclaimed disciple Denis Villeneuve, the themes that consume the creator's mind are granted a more finely-attuned grace and depth than they were in the Scott-helmed Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.

Bleached bleak yet breathtakingly beautiful in the hands and eyes of DOP Roger Deakins, the sequel that seemed entirely unlikely to Warner Bros and Ladd Company backers who saw red on the first film ultimately befits the legacy of its origin. Blade Runner 2049 embraces the enormous shadow cast by Blade Runner 1982 by crafting a vast immersion in scale and vision, as well as indulging fans the rose-coloured sentimentality with which they fuelled the legend of Scott’s 1982 masterpiece-in-hindsight.

On board as one of the six executive producers (from the somewhat worrying roster of 16 producers), Scott has re-engaged scribe Hampton Fancher to revisit America’s west coast thirty years after the events of his first script; co-writer David Peoples did not return, with Michael Green (Logan, 2017) getting a screenplay credit, having earned Scott’s trust as a story contributor on Alien: Covenant. The writing pair has conjured an expanded setting that recalls key elements from the first film’s neon metropolis aesthetic while crafting new landscapes of desolation and decrepitude.

In 2049, the blade runner cops are themselves ‘skinjobs’, replicants tasked with retiring late model Nexus units deemed too dangerous for mortal relics like the legendary but long-gone Rick Deckard. Blade runners now look like Ryan Gosling’s K, introduced to as he deals with a gentle giant (Dave Bautista) deep in the solar power fields that pass as America’s farmland. In the roots of a long dead tree (‘origins of life’, remember), K makes a discovery that soon reveals a shattering secret that hints at the creation of a new form of life.

That’ll do plot-wise, as most of the critical community have promised the film’s distributors not to divulge key details. Suffice to say (as hinted at in the trailer), Harrison Ford makes a compelling return to his third most iconic character, the script affording him moments of emotion that call on the ageing star to deliver some of the most genuinely moving work he has ever done. Gosling is a sturdy if chilly presence, allowed the time over a whopping (and occasionally testing) 163 minutes to gradually emerge as a more-human-than-human android character (thanks immeasurably to the presence of Ana de Armas as his holographic love interest). As industrialist Niander Wallace, Jared Leto again stumbles as a big production’s central villain, his monologues of sociopathic malevolence sounding a bit too ‘Adam West’ for a film craving deep intellectual connection.

Denis Villeneuve does genre films as darkly-hued psychological explorations, more concerned with the journey than with the destination. As remarkable as it is to reference such films with regards to a Hollywood sequel, Villeneuve’s vision of future-noir hails from 70’s Soviet science fiction, specifically Andrey Tarkovsky’s landmark work Stalker. Under his director, the Oscar-bound Deakins fills every inch of the frame with an artist’s understanding of shadow and light, colour and monochrome, just as Tarkovsky’s lensman Aleksandr Knyazhinskiy did.

His visual obsession with making fleeting moments in time grand experiences means Villeneuve’s storytelling can create issues with endings (see Prisoners, or, Enemy, both 2013; even, for some, Arrival, 2016) and he can’t avoid a sense of anti-climax here. Perhaps that is what drew him to his first sequel - the thought of applying his penchant for inconclusive denouements into a franchise sequel. This is a bridging episode, with character arcs left unresolved and plot developments hinted; all the bluster that the production brings to the closing moments (both physically and, less convincingly, emotionally) can’t hide the fact that after 163 minutes, a satisfying third act eludes him.

One can’t help sense that producer Scott’s true desire is to construct another multi-episode franchise arc driven by origin issues, a la his convoluted Alien hexalogy. In one moment that lasts a mere handful of frames, a bald, muscular Nexus prototype instantly recalls the ‘engineers’ from Prometheus. Does BR2049 share less DNA with BR1982 than it does with recent instalments of Scott’s increasingly irrelevant horror space-opera? (In our Alien: Covenant review, we noted nods to Blade Runner and the replicant mythology).

Fittingly (and, perhaps, thankfully), that’s all in the future; for now, this flawed but ambitious, long but beautiful continuation of a classic can spend its time maneuvering to forge its own lofty genre status.

STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS

Stars: Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Adam Driver, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Lupita Nyong’o, Gwendoline Christie, Domhnall Gleeson, Andy Serkis, Peter Mayhew, Max von Sydow, Warwick Davis, Anthony Daniels and Kenny Baker.
Writers:  Lawrence Kasdan, J.J. Abrams and Michael Arndt.
Director: J.J. Abrams.

Watch the trailer here.

Rating: 3.5/5

The Force Awakens is to A New Hope, as A New Hope was to the Flash Gordon matinee serials of yesteryear. Just as those creaky two-reelers inspired a young George Lucas to rework sci-fi adventure tropes for a new generation, so to does director J.J. Abrams now imprint his own frantic filmmaking flourish on Lucas’ source material for the millennial mindset.

Whatever factors rob The Force Awakens of the soulful essence of Lucas’ 1977 blockbuster are, frankly, impossible to define; it will be something as intangible as timing or fate or some such thing. Unlike Lucas’ work, which bowed at the birth of the blockbuster era and spoke with a clear and classic heroic voice, the likes of which young audiences had not encountered previously, Abrams’ vision is very much of its time – busy, self-aware, giddy in the thrall of its own energy and aesthetic. Just as he did so successfully with the Mission Impossible and Star Trek brands, Abrams has breathed new life into Star Wars; why it should then feel lacking in a strong pulse at times is worth pondering.

On the record as a die-hard Star Wars fanatic, Abrams' fan cred comes through in his reverential treatment of thematic and narrative elements synonymous with the series. This honouring of lore may represent his geek-boy spiritual bond or may be in answer to Disney’s demands to not mess with the formula, or both. The blueprint to which Abrams adheres is a strength and a weakness; the warm glow of nostalgia is all over The Force Awakens and imbues immediate goodwill, but Abrams does little to earn his own stripes as a conveyor of franchise mythology (unlike Irvin Kershner achieved with The Empire Strikes Back or, to a lesser extent, Richard Marquand on Return of The Jedi).

The heroic characters are strong in this one, with Daisy Ridley’s desert scavenger Rey firmly establishing a spunky, resourceful central figure and strong bond with the plucky droid, BB-8; John Boyega’s defecting Stormtrooper ‘Finn’ is slightly less well defined, but the actor is a strong presence and establishes an honest chemistry with Ridley. Oscar Isaac’s X-wing hero Poe Dameron is all square-jawed gusto; Lupita Nyong’o’s CGI-rendered cantina owner, the wizened Maz Kanata (looking too much like The Incredibles’ Edna Mode) seems poised to become Yoda 2.0. The impact of Harrison Ford as aged scoundrel Han Solo is invaluable, his superstar charisma and weathered ‘grey fox’ appeal the pic’s greatest asset. His scenes opposite Carrie Fisher’s Leia (no longer a ‘princess’, now settled into a strategic role with the Rebellion) are melancholy and warm.

Abram’s villains are less compelling, none matching the malevolence of Eric Bana’s Romulan Nero in the 2009 Star Trek reboot. Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren casts a meagre shadow over the proceedings, his merciless mean-streak seeming no more ominous than that of schoolyard bully when faced with Rey’s resistance. Some convoluted plotting that ties Ren to our heroes does not convince, leading to a development that should be a series-defining moment but which instead plays as a throwaway contrivance. Andy Serkis lends his mo-cap skills to the CGI-generated Supreme Leader Snoke; solid actors such as Domhnall Gleeson and Gwendoline Christie adopt the stuffy Brit baddie archetype in the dark-suited military roles (then it was ‘The Empire’; now, it is ‘The First Order’).

When the film does soar it is on the back of the production design and effects crews. A sequence that re-introduces the Millenium Falcon leads to a thrilling chase sequence on the desert planet Jakku; majestically staged dogfights between screeching Tie Fighters and beautiful X-wing crafts are truly breathtaking.

To put it in ‘old franchise’ perspective, The Force Awakens is immeasurably better than the dire Lucas-directed prequels and probably as good as Return of The Jedi. But it lacks the free-wheeling bravado and pure thrill of A New Hope and the smart scripting and artistry of The Empire Strikes Back. As a kicker for a new raft of sequels, spin-offs and merchandising, it is serviceable and entirely enjoyable. The bitter irony is that the very thing that inspired its existence also created the frenzied, blockbuster-hungry studio system that reins in its potential.

THE AGE OF ADALINE

Stars: Blake Lively, Michiel Huisman, Harrison Ford, Ellen Burstyn, Kathy Baker, Amanda Crew and Anthony Ingruber.
Writer: J. Miles Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz.
Director: Lee Toland Krieger.

Rating: 4/5

After his acid-tongued, ultra-contemporary take on burdened romance in 2012’s Celeste and Jesse Forever, director Lee Toland Krieger embraces a far more fantastical and glowingly cinematic incantation of fateful love with his follow-up, The Age of Adaline.

Boldly departing from her small-screen persona in her first film-carrying lead role, Blake Lively plays Adaline Bowman, a well-to-do turn-of-the-century 29 year-old whose life appears cut short when her car plunges into river waters turned freezing by a freak North Californian snowfall. Taking its mystical cue from the likes of Back to the Future and The Natural, a bolt of lightning strikes her over-turned vehicle and affords Adaline the apparent virtue of eternal youth.

A soothing voice-over smartly imbues the premise with credible fantasy and a lovingly cinematic extended montage (recalling the weepy opening from Pixar’s Up) leads to the modern day, where the still 29 year-old Adaline lives a work-focussed life in a very photogenic San Francisco. After eight decades, she no longer indulges in notions of romance; her blessing has become a curse, her life spent alone, bar the companionship of her now aged daughter, Flemming (Ellen Burstyn). But Adaline’s existential defences are worn down by the persistent romancing of rich philanthropist, Ellis Jones (Michiel Huisman, very charming), who whisks his dream girl off to a family get-together on their lush estate.

The second-act kicker brings added emotional depth, when Ellis’ father William lays eyes upon Adaline and both are gripped by overwhelming memories of the soulful romance they shared 50-odd years hence. As William, Harrison Ford emerges as Krieger's trump card; the moment when they reconnect, and William’s intellectualism is confronted by a torrent of emotions, represents some of Ford’s best ever frames of film. It is a raw, vulnerable performance that ensures the film soars and draws fresh reserves out of Lively (the definition of 'Supporting Actor', surely); their scenes together are deeply moving, transcending any ‘fantasy genre’ trappings. (Kudos, too, to the casting department for finding Anthony Ingruder, whose physical and vocal rendering of a twenty-something Ford in flashback is uncanny).

Krieger’s vivid, melancholic melodrama emerges as a major work in the tough-to-pull-off ‘romantic fantasy’ genre subset. The cult fan base that fondly recall Jeannot Szwarc’s Somewhere in Time, the Christopher Reeve/Jane Seymour weepie from 1980 in which self-hypnosis brings together lovers born 100 years apart, will adore the narrative boldness that Krieger employs and the visual richness that DOP David Lanzenberg paints with to sell the premise. Nor will they bat a tear-sodden eyelid at the multi-generational leaps in logic that scriptwriters J. Miles Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz slyly ask of their audience.

Revelling in the role that will come to define her transition from tabloid starlet to bigscreen A-lister, Lively exhibits maturity beyond her years and recalls the incandescent bigscreen presence of the likes of Jessica Lange, Eva Marie Saint or Françoise Dorléac. The Oscar-worthy work of Australian costumer Angus Strathie (Moulin Rouge, Catwoman) never overwhelms the star, although it has every right to. Fittingly, all below-the-line department heads - Claudia Pare’s production design; Martina Javorova’s art direction; Shannon Gottlieb’s set decoration - on The Age of Adaline bring their A-game.