My Movie Diary – Springtime Odds & Ends

Between starting a new job, trekking to Northern California, and other various activities, My Movie Diary has fallen a bit behind. I am dedicated to catching up, though, so here are reviews for a trio of flicks I saw in the last couple weeks. As always, enjoy, if you can.

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) – The original Blade Runner is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I’ve been skeptical about this long-delayed sequel since the moment I heard about it. I have never felt any burning desire to find out what happened next to Deckard and Rachel – the first film’s somewhat open-ended finale was (to my mind) the perfect close to the tale. Of course, if there’s money to be made, Hollywood will find a way to squeeze every last penny from a property. Thus we get Blade Runner 2049, a wholly unnecessary and extremely overblown add-on. Blank-faced cipher Ryan Gosling stars as another “blade runner,” hunting down rogue replicants wherever they appear. This time, the flick makes no bones about Gosling’s character being a replicant himself – his ability to take orders without question is the key to his success as a blade runner. Gosling is drawn into a convoluted plot involving a possible replicant pregnancy, which would be unprecedented and frankly scary to the humans who run things. The importance of his assignment is continually hammered at by his boss, a black-clad Robin Wright who seems to have wandered in from the set of Escape From New York.
As Gosling (very) slowly circles the edges of the mystery, he meets a host of odd characters, including Jared Leto as the new CEO running the Tyrell Corporation’s replicant operation. Leto is truly terrible here, chewing the scenery and delivering his portentous dialogue in the most mannered, ham-fisted way possible. Disappointingly, Harrison Ford is not much better once he eventually shows up as Deckard. Ford’s acting style has degenerated over the years, and he now just pretty much plays subtle variations on “pissed off Harrison Ford.” There is no discernable difference between his performance here and his work as Han Solo in The Force Awakens, which is really too bad, because Deckard was certainly a distinct character in the original. The best performance in the flick belongs to Ana de Armas, who plays Gosling’s sentient hologram girlfriend, convincingly portraying the complex emotions she’s “feeling” as the story gradually wends its way to its blah ending.
“Gradually” is the key term here. This movie moves at a glacial pace, drawing every scene out way past its rational length. This is a key difference between the original and 2049. The original is kind of slow-paced in parts, but the long, wordless scenes were there to immerse you in the visual splendor of the world Ridley Scott created. You had time to soak in the details and nuance in every corner of the shot. Here, you mostly just watch well-balanced compositions with static backdrops and very little action or even motion. I know the original practically shot-for-shot, and I don’t remember a lot of shots of people standing or sitting motionless in front of blank walls. Even when there is motion, it’s usually painfully slow – no one has ever walked as slowly as Gosling does here. The whole thing is bloated, overlong, and completely unnecessary. There’s nothing in these (almost) three hours that speaks to the human experience and the beauty/terror of mortal existence as eloquently or poetically as Rutger Hauer’s “tears in rain” speech at the end of the original. Blade Runner 2049 is everything I feared it would be, and way more boring than I could have anticipated.

Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) – Star Wars flicks are coming out hot and heavy these days, as Disney pulls out all the stops to recoup their investment in the franchise. This entry is distinctly lightweight compared to other recent Star Wars movies, but that’s fine with me. Everything doesn’t have to be heavy and dark, after all. Han Solo’s backstory is the perfect vehicle for this kind of nimble, action-packed popcorn movie. We first meet Han as he’s trying to escape from a run-down space orphanage of sorts, with the goal of getting his own ship and flying off somewhere exotic with his gal pal Kira (Emilia Clarke). Needless to say, he makes it off the planet, and soon hooks up with a team of interplanetary bandits led by Woody Harrelson and Thandie Newton. An elaborate and exciting train heist hits some unexpected snags and the gang ends up owing a favor to a space gangster. The rest of the flick follows Han as he tries to pull off another big heist in order to repay the mobster. Along the way, he meets legendary Star Wars icons like Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian, obtains the Millenium Falcon, and generally does a bunch of Han Solo-type stuff. Alden Ehrenreich is better than expected as Han, delivering a light, winking performance that’s very much in the spirit of the original. Even better is pop culture Renaissance Man Donald Glover as Lando, who pretty much walks off with every scene he appears in. Glover absolutely nails the role, right down to a perfect vocal impression of Billy Dee Williams. He’s got quite a stash of flashy capes, too. Solo had its share of well-documented production woes, including a late-in-the-game directorial change. Despite all that, the resulting movie is actually a pretty decent sci-fi action flick. Sure, it’s got a lot of fan service-type stuff (did we really need to see Lando’s cape closet?), but what’s wrong with actually pleasing your fans once in a while? There’s even an important scene where Han shoots first! Overall, Solo is a decent bit of sci-fi goofiness that brings some welcome light back to the Star Wars universe.

Captain America: Civil War (2015) (r) – My son was at home sick, so I got to spend an afternoon rewatching this epic Marvel drama. As I thought the first time I watched it, this is a solid enough entry in the Marvel canon, but nothing particularly special. For me, this is one of the flicks that starts to show the Marvel Universe straining to pack too much into each feature. Because every movie has to be tied into the one before it and the one(s) after it, plot and subplot bloat start to creep in. This is frankly more of an Avengers movie than a Captain America movie, because Robert Downey’s Tony Stark carries as much of the weight here as Chris Evans’ Cap. The main storyline concerns the United Nations’ attempts to rein in the world’s various superheroes after an Avengers adventure goes awry and kills a host of African civilians. The world’s leaders ask the Avengers and the rest to sign away their autonomy and work at their behest. Captain America chafes at the whole idea, largely because his old buddy Bucky is being wrongfully accused of blowing up a UN meeting and killing Black Panther’s father. You see how this plot is already getting convoluted? Along the way to a kind of satisfying “ending,” we get a handful of pretty good action scenes, especially an airport battle that pits just about every Marvel hero out there against one another. This scene bristles with energy and invention, as Paul Rudd’s Ant Man surprisingly shows himself to be every bit the equal of the other, more-heralded heroes. I also love that the directors threw in a sly reference to their old gig helming Arrested Development episodes – that’s clearly the Bluth’s stair car sitting on the runway as the heroes do battle around it. That battle stands out as one of the few places the flick really catches fire for me. There’s just too much backstory, exposition, introducing of new heroes, placement of future tie-ins, and just sheer overwrought gravitas for any one flick to shoulder. One of the main reasons I think the first Captain America movie is among the very best Marvel outings is because it managed to nail the comic book tone perfectly. It’s fun and goofy while staying just serious enough to keep things from becoming a joke. These days, Marvel’s taking the whole enterprise a shade too seriously, and the ponderous, weighty tone that a lot of Civil War takes on sucks a lot of the fun out of things. That airport battle is pretty cool, though.

Popwell’s Movie Reviews: The Complete List

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