Video review: "Blade Runner 2049"

“Blade Runner 2049” was my favorite film of 2014, mostly because “Blade Runner” is one of my most cherished movies ever, and I did not expect any sequel to do it justice. So I was gobsmacked to encounter a film that is a completely seamless revisit to the dystopian future envisioned by author Philip K. Dick, now 30 years further down a dark road.

Two things usually doom sequels: being too bold, or not bold enough. Most go the latter way, simply trying to reboot all the elements that made the first movie a success, without really moving the ball downfield from a storytelling example. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is a good recent example, as it’s basically a remake of “A New Hope.”

When other filmmakers take over a franchise, they often want to put their own stamp on it, coming up with crazy concoctions that don’t mesh with the original material. This was the danger with “Blade Runner 2049,” with Denis Villeneuve taking over the director’s chair from Ridley Scott.

And yet the new movie looks, feels and sounds very much like the child of “Blade Runner.” Once again, it’s set in a world where bioengineered “replicants” serve as the virtual slaves of an uncaring human populous. Ryan Gosling plays K, a replicant Los Angeles police detective who’s really little more than a paid assassin of other “skin jobs” like himself who have wandered off the plantation.

He uncovers a plot that takes him right up to the very top of the corridors of power, where mega-tycoon Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) wants to launch the replicant trade to off-world markets. His very able assistant, Luv (an arresting Sylvia Hoeks), is put onto the case.

Harrison Ford returns as Deckard, the iconic blade runner from the first film, whom K encounters about halfway through in a clash of generations that’s every bit as electric as we’d hoped.

Ana de Armas plays Joi, K’s holographic “wife.” Manufactured by Niander’s omnipresent corporation, we suspect that Joi is merely another construct designed to keep the replicant workforce docile. But their love seems very real, indeed.

Beautifully shot by cinematographer Roger Deakins – his long-delayed Academy Award seems finally assured – “Blade Runner 2049” is a beautiful, disturbing look into a future that at times seems all too plausible.

Video bonus features are quite expansive, with a decent amount of goodies on the DVD version and even more for the Blu-ray combo pack.

The DVD includes six making-of mini-documentaries that combine together to form “Blade Runner 101.” These include “Blade Runners,” “The Replicant Evolution,” “The Rise of Wallace Corp,” “Welcome to 2049,” “Joi” and “Within the Skies.”

Upgrade to the Blu-ray, and you add another special feature, “Designing the World of Blade Runner 2049.”

Most intriguing are three prologue pieces that explore the world between 2019, when the original “Blade Runner” was set, and the new one we see. They are “2022: Black Out,” “2036: Nexus Dawn” and “2048: Nowhere to Run.”

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Review: "Blade Runner 2049"

The truth: I didn’t really want a “Blade Runner” sequel.

Just as I did not want to see a live-action version of “The Lord of the Rings,” or a reboot of the “Mad Max” franchises. And yet I love those movies now, offshoots of things I cherished as a youngster -- edging to the point of favoring the new over the old, if my middle-aged self was unflinchingly honest with my teen me.

So: “Blade Runner 2049” is the finest film I’ve seen this 2017.

It’s brilliant, disturbing, sad, beautiful, tragic and filled with tempered joy. It continues the journey of a dystopian, not-so-distant future of bioengineered humans made to be servants of genuine ones, and how each struggles at the shackles that bind them together.

This is the rare sequel that is an extension which is both logically and emotionally sound. Having watched it, I can’t imagine it beginning, or ending, another way.

The film manages to introduce us to a new hunter of replicants, played by Ryan Gosling, while reuniting us with Deckard, as Harrison Ford reprises one of his most indelible roles. “I had your job once… I was good at it,” Deckard taunts upon their first meeting. It’s a titanic clash of generations, quite literally.

My suspicion arose chiefly because the sequel, which is set 30 years later than the original and arrives 35 years after, is not directed by Ridley Scott, who’s still around and quite busy at nearly age 80. Yet Denis Villeneuve (“Prisoners”) has perfectly captured the qualities that made the 1982 film so vivid and groundbreaking -- the sense of alienation, the way life is devalued simply because of its origin, the invasion of commerce into every corner of our lives.

Things are helped immensely by the return of original script man Hampton Fancher, joined by Michael Green, working from the novel by Philip K. Dick. (Though ever more loosely, it must be said.)

In this version, there is no question about the nature of Gosling’s blade runner: he is a replicant who hunts his own kind. Known by his serial number, KD6-3.7, or simply “K,” he moves freely among normal humans with a gun, an LAPD badge and all the powers that come with those tokens. Though he is (almost literally) spat upon by other police officers.

While on a routine “retirement” of an old-model replicant (Dave Bautista), K makes a discovery that sets off a world of strife. The old Tyrell corporation that created the first replicants, aka “skin jobs,” is long defunct. But Niander Wallace, a power-mad blind oracle played by Jared Leto, has crafted new replicants more pliable and palatable, which makes his otherworldly ambitions possible.

K’s boss, Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright), whom he addresses as “madam,” wants K to cover the whole thing up. But Niander’s right-hand replicant, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks), is ordered to follow the follower. She possesses an arresting combination of contempt and empathy for the humans who created people like her.

K has a quiet, constrained life, complete with a hologram wife to keep him from wanting more than the routine of ceaseless murder. Joi (Ana de Armas) is fully emotionally connected to him, even though she’s another product of Wallace’s omnipresent corporation. K uses his bonus for successful retirements to buy Joi an “emanator,” which allows her to leave their apartment and have some semblance of corporeal existence.

Slaves of slaves -- so where do the boundaries of servitude begin and end? These are the sorts of vexing thoughts the film raises for us.

Appropriately, this is one of the most hauntingly beautiful films ever made. Cinematography legend Roger Deakins gives us slants of organic light contrasted with inky pools of darkness, vivid colors, blasted landscapes and tactile displays of proffered flesh. Nominated 13 times for an Oscar without winning, Deakins may finally get his due.

At nearly three hours long, “Blade Runner 2049” is not an endless parade of action. People who have not seen the original movie in a while may be surprised in revisiting it how deliberate and contemplative the film is. Likewise, its cinematic inheritor blends moments of gripping violence with languid stretches where the characters just look, and are looked upon, think and react.

Rather than slowing things down, these sequences give the movie its rightful sense of weight and purpose. Here is the uninvited sequel, now indispensable.

Video review: "Suicide Squad"

People seem to want to have an instant relationship with movies these days. Large swaths of the moviegoing public had judged the “Ghostbusters” reboot long before it came to theaters. Folks fell in love with the new “Stars Wars” sequel in a similar fashion, seeing it as the antidote to the unfairly maligned prequels.

After the Sturm und Drang of the lackluster “Batman v Superman,” I think many were not willing to judge its follow-up, “Suicide Squad,” with an open heart. And while the movie’s certainly got some problems, especially in the first half, it’s actually a notable variation on the gradually tiring superhero genre.

Instead of all-powerful do-gooders racked with guilt over their abilities, we are given a half-dozen flawed villains who are given a chance to get out of prison to work for the government. It seems there’s some sort of energy vortex in the middle of the city that could destroy the world, so our gang of creeps is sent in to take care of it.

The A-listers are Will Smith and Margot Robbie as Deadshot and Harley Quinn, respectively. He’s an ace assassin who never misses, while she’s a former psychiatrist who turned into a deranged go-go girl under the influence of her even crazier boyfriend, the Joker (Jared Leto). Alas, if you’ve watched the trailers for “Suicide Squad” you’ve already seen a good chunk of Leto’s entire role. The Joker’s not the main bad guy, just a colorful backgrounder here.

I’m not even going to list the others, because there’s too many of them, plus other secondary figures. Suffice to say they’re a pleasing multicultural mix of killers and psychopaths.

Things take too long in the first half, with quick riffs on each character to introduce them. But it all builds up nicely to a carefully choreographed orgy of mayhem and CGI special effects.

“Suicide Squad” may not be a great super hero/villain flick, but it’s more entertaining and fun than snap judgments might suggest. Sometimes you have to just wait a little bit and let the movie come to you.

The lynchpin of the bonus features is an extended cut that adds 13 minutes of previously unseen footage. You can also watched synchronized pop-up content related to each scene using the VUDU app.

Other extras include seven making-of featurettes and a gag reel.

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Review: "Suicide Squad"

If “Batman v Superman” was a hot mess, then its DC Comics companion, “Suicide Squad” is an even hotter mess -- but also a more enjoyable one.

It’s essentially a “Dirty Dozen” spin on the superhero genre, taking a disparate gaggle of bad guys out of the clink and throwing them into a squad of supposed do-gooders. They fight with each other and rebel against their overlords, and eventually get around to doing some good.

The movie takes waaaaay too long during the “putting together the team” portion of the movie, but it pays off with a second half that is virtually non-stop action and CGI-heavy mayhem. Our gang of misfits actually transforms from sneering baddies into those in whose hands the fate of the very world rests.

(Have you noticed that all superhero movies lately are about the end of the world? That ol’ Earth sure is a vulnerable planetoid.)

The best bet writer/director David Ayer (“End of Watch”) makes is not trying to spread around the screen time and backstory evenly. It’s a first-among-equals approach, with Will Smith’s Deadshot and Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn as the main characters. Everyone else is essentially an add-on.

Deadshot is a merciless assassin who never misses with a firearm, but has a soft spot in the shape of his beloved 11-year-old daughter. He’s a “serial killer who takes credit cards,” so if fighting for the U.S. government is the price he has to pay to be reunited with her, then so be it. Viola Davis is commanding and ice-blooded as Amanda Walker, the intelligence chief running the show.

I should mention all the squad members have an explosive device implanted in their spine, and if they disobey the hardcase leader of their unit, Rick Flag (Joel Kinnaman), they get blown up.

Harley Quinn is written as a scene-stealer, and Robbie milks it for everything she’s got. Harley is a former psychiatrist who got turned bad by her jailbird boyfriend (more on him in a minute), and is now a flirty, sexy, homicidal maniac. Her superhero costume consists of barely-there shorts, cutoff shirt, smeared makeup and fishnets. Her favorite M.O. is to bash people in the face with a baseball bat.

It’s a crazy, off-kilter character, a woman who uses her sexuality as a weapon and a tool. She’s somewhere between a feminist nightmare and empowerment icon.

Her guy is the Joker, played in this iteration by Jared Leto, utterly horrifying in bright green hair, facial tattoos and apparently stainless steel teeth. If Harley’s unhinged, he’s the claw hammer that pulled her screws loose. Jack Nicholson’s J-man was murderously theatrical and Heath Ledger’s was crazily calculating; Leto’s is just crazy for the sake of crazy.

For a while we think the movie’s building Joker up as the main villain. But it turns out he’s basically just a street gangster, not a world-beater.

The rest of the team, in quick order, is: Boomerang (Jai Courtney), an Aussie blade master who’s got a lot of ‘tude; El Diablo (Jay Hernandez), a South-Central gangbanger who can produce ferocious flames from his hands, but has made a vow of pacifism after personal loss; Killer Croc (Adewale Akinnuoye-Abgaje), a misanthropic lizard dude with super strength and reptilian skin; Slipknot (Adam Beach), a Native American warrior and mystery man; and Katana (Karen Fukuhara), a Japanese swordswoman whose blade steals the souls of her enemies.

Certainly the most visually interesting is Enchantress (Cara Delevingne), a dark sorceress who has actually possessed the body of a goody-goody archaeologist. She becomes a ghost-like apparition, seemingly made out of smoke and ash, with baleful eyes glowing out at us.

(At one point Delevingne breaks out into an odd, snake-y, vaguely Egyptian dance move. I kept wondering, “Is this supposed to be… scary? Because it’s actually kinda making me laugh.)

No one is going to confuse “Suicide Squad” with great moviemaking. It’s carelessly plotted and has too many hanger-on characters. But I can genuinely say I was entertained during long stretches, especially in the second hour.

Look at it this way: if the first DC Comics movie wasn’t any good, and this one is half a good movie, maybe the next one can get all the way to super.

Video review: "Dallas Buyers club"

Has any actor ever squandered his career with better efficiency than Matthew McConaughey, then reclaimed it with such a superior run of movies? The former star of “Failure to Launch” has had one terrific role after another as of late, capped off by an Oscar-nominated performance in “Dallas Buyers Club.”

He plays Ron Woodruff, a real-life Texas playboy who in 1985 discovered he was carrying the HIV virus. In a time and a place where that meant automatic ostracism from his crowd of good-ole-boy buddies, Ron became a pioneer in smuggling non-legalized drugs into the U.S. to help a clientele of mostly homosexual and transgender men cling to life.

McConaughey and co-star Jared Leto, who plays a transvestite hooker, Rayon, who becomes Ron’s partner in crime, both starved themselves to the point of emaciation for their roles. There’s no vanity in these transformations, however, as the actors barely even resemble themselves.

Ron and Rayon become unlikely friends, a relationship at first based on convenience but eventually on trust and genuine warmth.

One of the beauties of the film is that director Jean-Marc Vallée and screenwriters Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack never go for the easy emotional outpouring. Ron starts the movie as a hateful, reckless bigot, and by the end he’s only changed by a few turns of the screw. But in learning to do for others, he finds a messy sort of grace.

 “Dallas Buyers Club” is a terrific, somber and enlightening look at a period in history where people forced to the margins of society had to look out for each other -- by any means necessary.
Alas, video extras are rather scant, with only a few deleted scenes and a making-of featurette.

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Review: "Dallas Buyers Club"

Ron Woodruff doesn’t look like a hero. He doesn’t sound like one, either, and in fact does a whole lot of irresponsible and even hateful stuff. When we first meet him it’s apparent he’s particularly not fond of gay people, using the f-word freely -- though this wasn’t really unusual in Texas in 1985, when the AIDs epidemic had finally rolled out into mainstream consciousness.

Yet Ron, for all his many, many faults, did something that was downright heroic. He smuggled in drugs for HIV-positive patients that had not yet been approved by the FDA, saving countless lives. He did it to save his own skin and make money, so it’s not unfair to call him a drug smuggler -- of non-legalized (as opposed to illegal) pharmaceuticals.

The movie about his story, “Dallas Buyers Club,” is easily one of the best of the year, a touching story that never slides into self-indulgence and pap.

But let’s get back to how Ron looks, because it’s a sight. And that means talking about the appearance of Matthew McConaughey, who portrays Ron. The actor, whom it would be fair to say glided for years based on his good looks, has lost so much weight, he’s beyond thin. He’s downright frightening to look at.

All of McConaughey’s movie-star vanity is gone here. His face has caved in, those prominent cheekbones standing out like a pair of lonely buttes on the wide Texas plains. The rippling arms and legs have become withered twigs, the sculpted abs fallen in on themselves. He makes the scrawny guy in those old Charles Atlas muscle ads seem well-fed.

“As wiry as an ocotillo,” a reporter once described Ron, referring to the scraggly desert plant. That’s about right. He walks around with a foot of extra belt hanging off his jeans from being cinched ever further.

Ron, though, thinks he’s indestructible. The first image director Jean-Marc Vallée shows us is Ron, an itinerant bullrider, having sex with two women in the cages next to the rodeo while another rider is horribly mangled. He also drinks, does a lot of drugs, and is basically a disaster waiting to happen.

When he’s injured on the job as an electrician, Ron can’t believe it when the doctors tell him he’s tested HIV-positive. Not even when they tell him his T-cell count, normally between 500 and 1,500, is seven. “Frankly, we’re surprised you’re even alive,” the doc says.

Given 30 days to live, Ron goes through the stages of grief at lightspeed. Rejected by his roughneck buddies, who cannot gather how anyone but a homosexual could contract the disease, he tries to get into a drug trial for AZT. A compassionate doctor (Jennifer Garner) tries unsuccessfully to help him, but he scores some through the black market, though the drug only seems to make him weaker.

Arriving on the doorstep of a quack former doctor in Mexico (Griffin Dunne), Ron learns that there are other drugs available to effectively treat symptoms of HIV/AIDS -- they just haven’t been approved by the FDA. After recovering with the help of this medicine, he makes it his mission to smuggle these into America and make a killing off keeping others alive.

Since his market is (at this stage of the disease) almost entirely gay men, Ron finds that a homophobic, foul-mouthed cowboy like himself has troubles making inroads to this clientele. So he enlists the aid of Rayon, a transvestite prostitute played by Jared Leto.

Leto and McConaughey both deserve Oscar nominations for their performances, especially after witnessing the slow dance toward trust and understanding their two characters undertake. Leto, starved almost to the same proportions as McConaughey, is like a warped latter-day version of Norma Desmond, the fallen star from “Sunset Boulevard.” Rayon desperately clings to the belief she deserves better than what she’s gotten out of life, both her body and her circumstance, and it gives her a sort of vainglorious grace.

Eventually the feds arrive to shut down the party, as they did with dozens of other “buyers clubs” that sprung up around the country in the mid-1980s to sell non-approved HIV medicine. (The scam to get around FDA rules was that the drugs were free, as long as you buy a “membership” in the club.) The movie bogs down a little here, as screenwriters Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack focus too much on the legal shenanigans.

Mostly, “Dallas Buyers Club” is a showcase for the long-dormant talents of Matthew McConaughey, who broke onto the Hollywood scene as “the next Paul Newman,” then lost his way with conceited roles in movies dreamed up by accountants rather than artists. Based on this extraordinary film and “Mud,” he’s ready to shoulder that heavy mantle again.