Blade Runner

Blade Runner dropped into my thoughts the other day in the form of Harrison Ford. I was trying to come up with the names of old Malayalam movies I wanted to watch and couldn’t remember even one. Then for some reason Harrison Ford popped up in my mind. Ford is not a particular favorite of mine. It is a mystery to me how he got himself into the two biggest movie franchises of all time – Star Wars and Indian Jones. Definitely it was not his looks or his animal charm. Some people are just plain lucky.

I might not have watched this Ridley Scott film earlier just because Ford played the main character. Anyway, without many choices last Saturday night, I paired a glass of Cabernet with Blade Runner and some cheese.It was an interesting combo. The casting of Rutger Hauer as the antagonist took away some of my hardship of watching a Ford movie. The rest of the cast was perfect, if you can excuse the 80s hair that seemed to have survived three and half decades of sculpted perfection.

Of all things a movie enthusiast might notice in a cult classic movie the first thing that struck me in Blade Runner's futuristic landscape of 2019 were the neon hoardings of the companies that no longer exist. Pan Am, Atari, RCA - all switched off their lights in 20th century. Later I learnt about the Blader Runner curse. 

Another observation is the absence of children. I will have to read Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", the sci-fi novel which served as the inspiration to this movie, to see if the introduction of robots nullified humanity's primary task - to procreate and propagate the species.

Watching this 1982 movie in 2017, two years away from the AI-rich dark future the movie is depicting, I am glad reality is considerably slower in pace than science fiction, and hopefully a lot less sinister. Blade Runner's dark and slick set design is quite a marvel. I read that the set design inspiration came from all over - from the Pope's sleeping quarters in Vatican to Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House. In real life 2017 flying cars are still in conceptual stages but Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are ramping up on the efforts. After all cars are only slightly bigger drones and drones are ubiquitous now. 2019 is still two years away to fatten up those drones.

Blade Runner is a movie to watch if you are interested in good old fashioned sci-fi. But then again if you were, you must have already watched it. Blade Runner or rather Philip K Dick's story had anticipated and provided material for lots of movies and TV series that came afterward. The most recent ones of the AI strain I can think are West World (world apart, but a perfect conceptual match) and some episodes of Black Mirror.

Read More

District 9

It was a chance encounter. I was at the neighborhood public library scrounging for DVDs. As expected of a person with low expectations all my movie requirement filters were turned off. I'd have taken any movie which looked remotely like Independence Day. That is, any movie that could afford the same adrenaline rush, the tumult of emotions, the invigoration that comes after listening to an impassioned speech of a US president, the CGI and the final triumph of mankind offered by an Independence Day. I felt like I hit the target when I saw District 9. On the cover, looming menacingly over a not so innocent looking metropolis was an alien aircraft. What could I ask for more, I grabbed the DVD and left.

When I started watching the movie, I realized that for some unknown reason best known only to aliens, aliens had skipped dazzling cities like NY, LA or Paris and had decided to hover over Johannesburg. WTH? Not only that, when humans finally had a peek at aliens they turned out to be in worse shape than refugees from civil war torn African republics. At this point I was certain that there would be no Will Smith to save humanity.

Instead what we have in District 9 is very un-Hollywoodsy take on aliens alighting upon Earth from a uniquely South African perspective. Directed by Neill Blomkamp who finds an amazing lead actor in Sharlto Copley in his debut role(what?!) District 9 is like an alien sighting in the world of alien movies. The realism of the real, magical and news footage kind is bound to blow you away. A very human film about aliens, don't miss this sighting.

Read More

The Adjustment Bureau

Philip K.Dick's stories are becoming more relevant as years pass or Hollywood seems to think so. The latest one of Dick's fictional contributions to roll down the California movie conveyor belt is The Adjustment Bureau.

Any futurologist, by which I mean anyone who has ever read their own daily horoscope in a newspaper will find this new class of movies interesting to say the least. If it features Matt Damon, the super flexible man of all trades, the movie is sure to find easy doors to dollars. Doors, by the way are important elements in this film.

The movie starts out with an up and coming young politician, played by Damon caught in an election scandal and has to quit running for whatever political office he was running for. But that's really not the film is all about and you don't want any spoilers, right?

The subject of the movie requires a technical perfection only Hollywood bucks can buy and they do the task as is expected. The Adjustment Bureau is a good watch for anyone who likes romantic sci-fi, Matt Damon or Philip K.Dick or all of those.

Read More

Paul

Paul, the movie is more English than American. Paul, the alien, is well…an alien who wears shorts and talks street-smart English in the voice of Seth Rogen.  This is going to be a biased review because I am awed by the creative aura of Simon Pegg – Nick Frost duo. Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People are all nerdy movies I recommend to other people.

Greg Mottola – the director of Paul has a very different take on films, his movies Superbad and Adventureland were as American as it gets, but nerdy nevertheless. Paul therefore had to be an interesting product, a fusion of British humor and American nerdiness.

Paul does not disappoint. The British lads (Simon Pegg & Nick Frost) land at Comic Con in San Diego and take off on a road-trip through the sci-fi ridden landscape of America’s Areas 51 through 100 and all that comes after that. On the way they give lifts to a friendly alien and a bible quoting All American Girl (Kirsten Wiig.) Their interesting social encounters provide insights into differences between things American and non-American. Paul is not Hot Fuzz, but it is definitely a good entertainer.

Read More

Source Code

In another world this movie might be called 8 Minutes. Somehow that reminds me of Eminem and 8 Mile which is totally irrelevant to this movie because in this world it is called Source Code. Computer geeks amongst us might think the story may have something to do with hacking, computer programs or how the mighty can be brought down to its knees by changing a few lines of code here and there. Others might have visions of neon green 1s, 0s and other related jumble scrolling down their giant flat screens. This movie is not about that either.

Although the core of Source Code is a scientific break-through which facilitates a short rewind of time in the minds of those involved, the story asserts again and again through its characters that it is not dealing with time travel. What it is about is, the human longing to outlast beyond our times, to poke a finger into the great beyond and feel what it is like, even if it is for a tiny fraction of time. Jake Gylenhall gets to push the envelope on life as Captain Colter Stevens in Source Code where he is supported by Vera Farmiga, Michelle Monaghan and Jeffrey Wright.

This must be what a romantic sci-fi story should be like, we are not talking about the boy-meets-girl kind of romance, though shades of that is there in this film. It is romantic as in the yearning for life, being so overwhelmed by the beauty of it that brainy scientists develop source code for life (in terms incomprehensible to most viewers including myself but that’s beside the point.) It is a starry eyed what-if of alternate worlds and thwarted disasters thrown on the face of the audience by director Duncan Jones and screenwriter Ben Ripley. It is the soothed ache of soldiers who get to say their last words to the people they intended to deliver it to. In short Source Code is pure desire for life and all that is beyond, a sci-fi romance at its best.

Read More

Idiocracy : Movie Review

Idiocracy is what future holds for the world, or more specifically for America. If you consider America as the harbinger of global societal changes, the place we can get a preview of the beginning and end of the world, then the message might hold true for the rest of the world too. 

With a precise observation of the current social fabric of the US of A the film-makers start thus, "As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction. A dumbing down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species."

It might be said that Idiocracy is more of a documentary than a movie, the chocolaty presence of Luke Wilson notwithstanding. I consider it as a commentary, a warning of sorts, the way the script and the director captures the cultural nuances of the current age and extrapolates it to a dumbed down universe, five hundred years into the future, scores a bull's eye in my book. Let's go to 2505 where Costco is like a city state, in terms of geographical coverage. There is no water, even plants are irrigated by something like Gatorade called Brawndo which employs half the human race, that is if they ever get off their butts.  Terry Crews as President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho is kicking butt - all is fine.

This is a movie about quotes, perceptions and ideological visualizations of the future, I cannot say it any better than the script, I leave you with another quote from the Idiocracy, "Unaware of what year it was, Joe wandered the streets desperate for help. But the English language had deteriorated into a hybrid of hillbilly, valley girl, inner-city slang and various grunts. Joe was able to understand them, but when he spoke in an ordinary voice he sounded pompous and faggy to them."

Read More