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Blade Runner 2049 (15)
Late on in Blade Runner 2049, director Denis Villeneuve (Arrival) convenes a fight sequence in an abandoned Vegas hotel against a backdrop of stuttering holograms of 20th century entertainers performing their most iconic numbers. In a movie full of mindblowing visuals the scene barely counts as a showstopper (except in the literal sense). But seeing 3D projections of Elvis, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra and Liberace glitch and freeze while Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford trade punches feels like a sly comment on the way cutting edge technology is frequently used to create flawed simulacrums of the past instead of chasing after something new.
That’s a pretty bold thing to find in a belated sequel to one of the most iconic films ever. The future imagined by Ridley Scott’s loose adaptation of
Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of
Electric Sheep? has penetrated pop culture so completely that even if you haven’t seen it, you probably feel as if you have. Yet it’s a testament to Villenueve’s vision for this real-time sequel – set 30 years on from Scott’s film – that while it owes its existence to the nostalgia-courting blockbuster machine currently dominating mainstream cinema, it’s not simply a well-made rehash.
Which isn’t to say the two movies don’t share the same DNA in ways that go beyond even Ford’s muchpublicised return as Deckard. True to the spirit of the original, this is big, beautiful and confounding; a film full of abstract ideas about what constitutes a lived experience in a techno-dependent world that raises more questions than it answers. But
Blade Runner 2049 also has its own mysteries, its own look and its own way of doing things, starting with Gosling’s character, the enigmatically named K. Like Deckard before him, he’s a so-called blade runner with the Los Angeles police department, charged with retiring rogue replicants who’ve thrown off their slave status in order to live lives their human creators never intended. Unlike Deckard, whether or not he’s a replicant is revealed in the opening minutes, subverting expectations about his own existential quest as he’s assigned a case that, we’re told, threatens to blow the world apart if the world at large ever finds out about it.
High stakes duly established, Villeneuve takes full advantage of the mega-budget to craft some of the most striking visuals ever put on film and Gosling is perfectly cast, his enigmatic hangdog expression echoing the smirking gruffness of Ford’s earlier performance. But when they’re finally brought together, the film becomes something else, a sort of meditation on its own post-modern status as a movie in conversation with its predecessor. “Is it as good now as it was then?” someone asks Deckard at one point. It’s a question that hangs over the entire film and Villeneuve’s willingness to ask it in a movie that exploits Hollywood’s twin obsessions with its past and its future viability makes it feel like the ultimate film for right now.
On The Road (15)
Following the likes of the The Trip and 24 Hour Party People, Michael Winterbottom’s latest experiment in fusing fiction with reality reinvents the tour film by embedding fictional characters with rising indie band Wolf Alice as they embark on a UK tour. What follows is a subtly engaging look not only at a band on the rise, but how a fast-forged relationship can sometimes be as brief, powerful and magical as the music that soundtracks it.
The Glass Castle (12A)
This melodramatic true-life story turns Jeanette Walls’ best-selling memoir about her turbulent upbringing in a destitute family into an egregiously quirky drama in the Captain Fantastic/the Book of
Henry mould. Brie Larson, Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts star. ■