MOVIE REVIEWS

‘BLADE RUNNER 2049’

2:43 ★★★½ Filmmaker Denis Villeneuve has taken on the herculean task of directing the sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 sci-fi classic “Blade Runner,” a feat that seems nearly impossible to pull off, considering the reverence with which fans hold the original. Villeneuve’s film, “Blade Runner 2049,” is a remarkable achievement, a film that feels distinctly auteurist, yet also cut from the very same cloth as Scott’s film.

This epic riff on the styles, themes and characters of “Blade Runner” expand the scope and story of this world. Written by original screenwriter Hampton Fancher and Michael Green, “2049” is a meditative and moving film, sumptuously photographed by legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins in the finest and most astonishing work of his career. He paints with light and shadow, creating a wonderfully tactile sense of space and texture, using a palette of slate, cerulean and marigold. The aesthetic is subdued, yet thrilling. The score by Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer, sounding like rumbling engines and blaring sirens, simultaneously lulls and agitates.

To belabor story details is to miss the bigger picture of “Blade Runner 2049.” The style is rich, the themes are complex, but the story is a simple, classically cinematic tale. A man is faced with an existential quandary through which he reckons with his own soul and identity in the face of incredible dehumanization.

As LAPD officer K, searching out illegal replicants, Ryan Gosling is perfectly cast as a successor to Deckard (Harrison Ford). His nonchalance reflects the emotionally remote environment, the uneasy, distrustful daily existence in this dystopian, isolated future. He is riveting when K’s spirit tries to break

Rthrough the studiously placid surface. Sylvia Hoeks stuns as Luv, a character who seems to be a reference to Sean Young’s Rachael, just a whole lot tougher.

This is a dark future that feels all too plausible. Nothing is sleek and shiny. K wears comfortable knits under his avant-garde top coat. He conducts his detective work through card catalogs and microfilm — a blackout wiped out digital records, so this modernist world has become analog again. It’s just different enough, but the drone warfare, dumpster bandits and child labor are all extensions of things that already exist.

“2049” is a wondrous spectacle, imbued with haunting questions about humanity. But it is flawed, as epics tend to be. At a beefy 2 hour, 43 minute run time, the film loses grip on its tight control of the storytelling in the third hour, and flails before finding an appropriate ending.

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana De Armas, Robin Wright, Dave Bautista and Sylvia Hoeks. (Violence, some sexuality, nudity and language) — Katie Walsh, Associated Press character who’s just too good to be true. He’s a doctor, he wears fine, expensive outerwear and he listens to classical music on his headphones. Why does he need to rush back to New York? Because he has to do emergency brain surgery on a child, of course. One would imagine that the source material for the screenplay was a pulpy romance novel. It is, in fact, adapted from a novel, by Charles Martin.

Elba’s character Ben, encounters another traveler, Alex (Kate Winslet), while they’re stranded in an airport, a chance meeting that changes their lives forever. She’s a photojournalist rushing to get home to New York for her wedding, and suggests a private charter plane to this stranger she realizes is in the same predicament.

All too soon they’re fighting for their lives on a snow-capped mountaintop in December, after their pilot (Beau Bridges) suffers a stroke while flying. During this ordeal, they become inextricably bonded, learning a great deal about each other and themselves. If Ben is the brains of the operation, Alex is the heart — he’s systemic and risk-averse, she’s emotional and reckless. Sounds about right for their genders and professions.

What saves “The Mountain Between Us” from pulp are the performances of Winslet and Elba. Winslet always has been a wonderfully grounded actor, and she’s at ease here, despite the extreme circumstances. Elba gets to flex a different muscle as the romantic leading man. His casting is a spot-on choice, and the two share a heartfelt chemistry as two people who genuinely learn to like each other, as much as they might love or hate each other at times.

So why does this horrific situation feel so much like fantasy? Because almost every step along the way is another chance for Ben to heroically care for and nurture Alex, to always run back for her, to pull her out of frozen lakes and spoon soup into her mouth. Hampered with a leg injury, the plucky Alex gets to be the damsel in distress, always saved from certain death by her traveling companion. The film shies away from many of the harsh realities to focus on their interpersonal connection, and perhaps that’s what makes the stakes fade away and the authenticity seem an afterthought. “The Mountain Between Us” falls flat, struggling to truly enthrall beyond a basic love story.

Starring: Kate Winslet, Idris Elba, Beau Bridges and Dermot Mulroney. (A scene of sexuality, peril, injury images and brief strong language)

— Katie Walsh, Associated Press case, a Muslim foreigner. Abdul Karim (Ali Fazal) was a young clerk from India who came to London on a ceremonial errand, was retained as a servant at the palace and eventually became her teacher (she wanted to learn to speak Urdu) and companion.

The film is charming and funny, but too often selfconsciously so, stepping over the line into trying-toohard territory. The villains — most notably Victoria’s son Bertie (Eddie Izzard) — are mustache-twirlingly sneery; the good folk, like Victoria and Abdul, are very good indeed. But thanks to Dench, “Victoria & Abdul” is constantly engaging and at times moving. Victoria, unlike almost anyone else we meet in this film, seems to have a sense of humor, and Dench lets it show in a tiny twist of the mouth, a glint in the eye. And she’s able to make this larger-than-life woman become, touchingly, very small.

Starring: Judi Dench, Ali Fazal, Eddie Izzard, Adeel Akhtar, Tim Pigott-Smith, Olivia Williams and Michael Gambon. (Some thematic elements and language)

— Moria Macdonald,

Associated Press