Blade Runner

Blade Runner

Director ~ Ridley Scott

Writers ~ Hampton Fancher, David Webb Peoples, Philip K. Dick

1982, US-UK

Stars ~Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young

 

[This refers to The Director’s Cut.]

 

A classic, of course, but also surely an influence on all sci-fi that came after, ‘Metropolis’, ‘2001: a space odyssey’ or ‘Star Wars’. And of course, Scott’s own ‘Alien’. Just the opening cityscape – dark, fiery, neon – swooning to Vangelis’ transcendent-ageless 80s synth crescendos and diminuendos is iconic. The retro-futurism neon, cyberpunk, the crammed together population, claustrophobic urbanism – Deckard’s place seems part apartment, part airduct, just one neighbourhood away from Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’ – the seemingly eternal nocturnalism, smog and rain… it’s a timeless mash-up feel of the antiquated and the futuristic. Zeppelins populate the sky along with flying cars – and chortle at the old brand names being advertised in the backdrops, although Coca Cola seems a constant. It feels lived in and plausible: part dazzle, part slum. Douglas Turnbull’s effects are both stunning and immersive. The highest of tech exists alongside entropy, the population distracted by the promise of living off-world. 

 

There’s so much detail to get lost in (a headline about mining on the moon; Deckard climbing over a sofa to cross his over-stuffed apartment) filtered through such a dreamy atmosphere that it takes and rewards multiple viewings to digest. It's marred by the moment where Deckard comes over all let’s teach the lady what she really wants where noirish romance involves a little rough foreplay. It’s an attitude that hasn’t aged well, even when all else still feels timeless; a misstep that glares because so much else is balanced so immaculately. Otherwise, the existential drama hinges on the What Does It Mean To Be Human? that Philip K. Dick’s original specialised in (whilst also cribbing the term “blade runner” from William S. Burroughs). If the question is why would they manufacture android-slaves to be so human-like, even giving them false memories, then surely we can look no further than our tendency to anthropomorphism as much as to Other, or indeed our desire to make AI and CGI as life-like as possible. The question of Deckard’s humanity looms large, but the Why? and What does it mean if he isn’t? gets smothered in the teeming mess and bric-a-brac of this society.

 

Harrison Ford has that look of a bad boy fearful of being discovered to be decent, an engaging vulnerability. Despite his apparent reputation, it has to be noted that Deckard doesn’t seem a convincing hunter of replicants: he only lives because his prey decides to do something else rather than immediately kill him (except when he shoots from behind). There’s an uncanniness to all the performances, a certain oddness that makes everyone memorable. Of course, it is Rutger Hauer that steals the show, chewing the scenery just with the crawl of his smile and delivering an improvised quintessential monologue… “I’ve seen things…” 

 

 

The Time Travelers

The Time Travelers

Director - Ib Melchior

Writers - Ib Melchior, David L. Hewitt

1964 - USA

Stars - Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders

 

A similar adventure to ‘Beyond the Time Barrier’ (1960) with a leap into a future to a dying human race, a quick tour of future doom and some mutants to bring things to a head. What differentiates this is the kitsch colourful sets and androids that resemble the first failed line in life-size sex robot-dolls. The pace is a little plodding with an underwhelming first chase, and the film dwells on the android factory, which it is definitely pleased with, accompanied by the kind of jaunty music that makes it feel like an industry information film, setting an odd mood. Often, the effects resemble magic tricks, and there’s an amusing feeling that the film is chuffed with itself for its sci-fi illusions. This, the slightly stilted acting and the half-enthused light relief truly date it, but of course the groovy-on-a-budget datedness is part of the appeal.  

 

 

There’s a usual post-apocalyptic warning, but ‘The Time Travelers’ differs in its vision that human brilliance will not be stopped by this, that science will continue to try and find a solution to the devastation that it has also wrought. In this case, they’re building a spaceship to try and find other hospitable presumably non-mutant planets. Naturally, it doesn’t quite hold up to scrutiny – all that powerful technology and science underground and what about food if they are trapped in a barren landscape? Are the mutants plotting adversaries or simply mindless brutes? Nevertheless, its retro-charm, silliness and scattering of ideas make it interesting. There’s some gratuitous female shower-time and quite nasty android death when things come to conflict that are exploitation-adjacent.

 

With its portal conceit being influential, it’s the eventual conclusion that does raise it above the norm, committing to its time travel premise rather than going off-world, and leaving a somewhat eerie aftertaste.

 

Crimes of the Future

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE

Writer & Director - David Cronenberg

2022 ~ Canada

Stars - Viggo Mortensen, Léa Seydoux, Kristen Stewart

Judging a film on what has gone before surely only goes so far. Mark Kermode’s review has been reduced to mostly one just namechecking the obvious nods to Cronenberg’s previous works as if this mitigates ‘Crimes of the Future’s worth. But Cronenberg is totally self-aware and deliberate – oh, ‘Videodrome’ TVs; ‘Dead Ringers’ wish for a beauty pageant for internal organs, ‘Shivers’ autopsy; a chair that could be furniture from ‘Naked Lunch’, etc. – which surely means he is slotting this into the tapestry of what he originated. The ae debate. ‘Crimes of the Future’ even takes its title from Cronenberg’s earliest works; the conspiracies and underground rebel groups are the kind from ‘Scanners’ and the dirty dilapidated rooms and backstreets remind me of Interzone (‘Naked Lunch’). Saying “This is just like his earlier stuff and that was better” doesn’t really say much about how it therefore relates to Cronenberg’s oeuvre, or its independent merits, o. Easter egg spotting doesn’t illuminate more than homages, influences and derivatives. But when the artist is drawing from his own extensive back catalogue, and when that artist is Cronenberg, there’s more at play.  

If this namechecking is meant as a criticism of thematic and artistic repetition, and therefore inferiority and stunted artistic growth, I would argue that this too doesn’t quite enlighten: there’s Tarantino’s or Scorsese’s recourse to ensemble criminals, or Schrader’s lost male existential angst, or Bergman’s existential concerns, Ozu’s family dramas, or, etc. And if anyone has established his themes and held them close throughout a long career, it's Cronenberg. He is even credited with forming a subgenre known as body-horror.

Rather, that Cronenberg can still capture the spirit of the muse that set him off appeared a little remarkable to me, rather than reductive, considering how singular it is and with the evolution of his extensive filmography. ‘Crimes of the Future’ is just as talky, uneven, occasionally disturbing, visceral and not-quite-gelling, a little confusing, a little random, viscerally inventive and a little prescient as his earliest body-horrors. As soon as Mortenson said, “My bed needs new software,” I chuckled, because knew I was in Cronenberg’s world and therefore in safe hands for a somewhat messy palette of provocative ideas firing off here and there. But what we also have is the latter-day Cronenberg inclusion of pretty/slicker visuals and elegance smoothing down the scruffiness of exploitation. The opening shot of a boy framed with a sunken ship is a gorgeous holiday picture subversion. Then he eats a waste bin and the oddness is introduced to the narrative. That’s the surprise that sets questions; and then the mother murders the boy and that’s a shock. Then cut to a quite beautiful medium shot of an odd levitating bed-mechanism in which Mortensen is moaning in his sleep.

The husk of a ship also appears later as the backdrop to Saul Tester’s (Mortenson) clandestine meetings. Throughout there are clues to a ruined world that is hinted at but never explicated. The clues scattered around are what provide fun and discussion when trying to figure it out afterwards. The capsized society signified by the boat is at odds with the expense and luxury of the artists we follow, who indulge in body self-mutilation in a manifestation of cultural confusion of finding the human race has turned immune to pain. But there’s an obvious divide between the poverty and disenfranchisement alluded to by those grubby backstreets and the hipsters that are our protagonists.

It is the questions left hanging, the pictures you can extrapolate and paint that makes this more that sum of its parts. It’s focused on one subculture’s response to the next phase of human evolution, but its proposition that Those In Power will always try and thwart this and any arguable progression that strikes true. It also has a prod at Look At me Art culture without recourse to mobile phones. 

But then there’s some nudity which, for the first time in a Cronenberg film, felt to me to be gratuitous. And although some enjoy Kristen Stewart’s performance seemingly for camp value, its wink and neediness seem out-of-tune with the careful calibrations of tone elsewhere. But Cronenberg was always a little messy and uneven at times. Raw is the word, even if the ideas are serious and dense. 

That is, to say, even if you judge this lesser Cronenberg, ‘Crimes of the Future’ is still fully spiced with a headful of ideas that interrogate culture, evolution and technology and reaches existential and exploitational ruminations characteristic of this singular director. What this film tells is that Cronenberg is no less an interrogator of these themes than he ever was at this later point in his career.

Guns Akimbo

GUNS AKIMBO

Writer & Director - Jason Howden

2019, Germany-New Zealand-United Kingdom

Stars – Daniel Radcliffe, Samara Weaving, Ned Dennehy

 

It starts with a nihilistic introduction by villain Riktor (Ned Dennehy) that sounds like it’s criticising audiences always wanting violent entertainment and all else is a kind of virtue signalling. Indeed, it’s protagonist is a vegetarian pacifist, but he’ll soon see the shortcomings of his better aspirations when his hands are fixed with guns – turned into literal handguns – and put into a kill-or-kill-be-killed online game. But in fact, the film is totally attuned to Riktor’s credo. It’s “mindless fun” and so will sneer off any criticism. The other retort seems to be Samera Sarah strolling in and shooting people and places up to ska (is the fact that she seems to carry an invisible arsenal with her at all times a gaming gag?).

 

And then almost immediately after the villain’s introductory narration, we get the protagonist voiceover explaining that this was the day that changed everything, so that’s already two mayor strikes down for me and we’re not even five minutes in. There is a surfeit of bad writing. But, you see, Jason Howden’s previous film ‘Deathgasm’ wasn’t only braindead fun: it was rude and crude, scatalogical and frequently very funny, but simultaneously skewering and celebrating its Heavy Metal culture. Its juvenile nature was totally appropriate to its protagonist and doctrine. ‘Guns Akimbo’ doesn’t pull off or justify the same trick, although it tries to have its cake and eat it in other ways too: taking a swipe at cowardly “keyboard warriors” (“Think you’re man enough?!”) but also making them the eventual kickass hero.

 

Daniel Radcliffe has become a fairly reliable brand to follow, for he seems inclined to more intriguing projects and always visibly committed, however they turn out; and as Miles he certainly grounds ‘Gun Akimbo’ with a nerdy clumsiness and relatability (although those unaware of his wider catalogue might just see no further than Harry Potter Swears!). But we are meant to be cheering on an online troll here. Ned Dennehy is tattooed and villainous, but there’s almost the sense that he’s not fully into it, that there are moments where his innate actor almost surfaces (anyway, he’ll never be as repugnant and as scary to me as he was as Paudi in ‘Calm With Horses’).

 

Samara Sarah has doesn’t have to do anything more than walk in an shoot shit up to another blast of trendy song, a horny boy's vision of a bad girl. Oh, she's damaged too!! It's almost unintentionally funny when the story tries to grant her some earnest humanity and backstory (she has PTSD with fire! … but wait, wouldn’t that make her a less effective killing machine in this context? How the hell did she survive which such a weakness?). But it’s all pose and no trousers. It’s of the attention-deficit school of directing, where you’re never 10 seconds away from a camera tilt, superfluous jump-cut or song. It’s also greatly inspired by gaming culture and excessive fight scenes, but it has none of the style of ‘Hardcore Henry’ (which was equally braindead but audacious and convinced me more) or even the ability to pace things out or make you feel the excess like ‘John Wick’. For me, it’s Miles’ encounter with an alley homeless guy that is the funniest and most memorable encounter, where Rhys Darby as said hobo doesn’t feel chained and restrained by a perfunctory and often lazy script (let’s note the realism of a gunshot’s volume first thing and then forget about it from thereon; we own the police, but we only really see one crooked cop).

 

From the start, ‘Gun Akimbo’ feels like someone trying to ape the better action films he loves, but not nailing it – edgy lawless premise; still frames to name characters; cartoon palette and ultraviolence; random camera tricks and effects that mean nothing; and lots of obvious songs. Lots. Because it desperately grabs the songs, hoping for cool. But in the end, if you get anything from this may depend upon whether you accept a hammer fight played out MC Hammer as funny or edgy. Too confused to be genuine satire.