My Amazon DVD Reviews: "Blade Runner"

It's All Here Now
5 Out Of 5 Stars

This review is from: Blade Runner (Four-Disc DVD Collector's Edition). First off, I was surprised to see this set at such a low price. Ridley Scott's Science Fiction masterwork and possibly Harrison Ford's singular best acting job, four discs. and all three versions of the movie. The remastering is stunning, and makes it all the more stunning that "Blade Runner" was created before the CGI days.

In the future, Androids are called replicants, but they also are smart and strong enough to go renegade. if they do, the Blade Runners shoot them down. Deckerd (Ford) is the best of the Blade Runners, and is called upon when an escaped group of Replicants returns to earth in search of immortality. Seems they have a built in 4 year expiration date. That is, except maybe for the one called Rachel, which Deckerd may be falling in love with. Played with smokey noir feminine wiles by Sean Young, she becomes the lynchpin in Deckerd's chase for the runaways.

Noir is a major operative word here. Los Angeles in 2019 is covered in smoggy rainstorms and decaying buildings. Only the rich can afford to build themselves a place in the sun, and they're the ones making the killer bots. Which means everywhere else is darkness, shadows and slivers of light. This is easily one of the most exquisitely filmed Sci-Fi thrillers in history, which means the original cut didn't pass muster with the suits. That version (the happy ending voice-over version is included), along with the 1992 director's cut and the Ridley Scott final version. One of the few DVD's I've found fit to actually own, "Blade Runner" is a marvel of a movie.

   

My Amazon Reviews: Rush "2112"

...And The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth
5 Out of 5 Stars

Rush jumped a creative canyon in 1976, when they released their science-fiction epic "2112." It was pretty much the moment when drummer Neil Peart mastered his writing skills, basing the entire first side on a socialist empire taken down by a guitar slinging rebel. It was more adventurous and ambitious than anything on the band's initial three albums, and also finally put the spotlight on Rush's virtuoso musical chops. Even with the dopey dedication to 'the genius of Ayn Rand' on the cover, the first half of the album was brilliant. A perfect lure for teenagers who thought prog-rock was to arty and not loud enough.

In fact, that side one suite is so amazing that it even saves the album from dropping below a five star rating. Because like it or not, side two is mostly run-of-the-mill hard rock, down to the obligatory stoner anthem ("A Passage To Bangkok"). "Twilight Zone" fares little better. The ballad "Tears" is probably the best of the second half of the album, and Geddy Lee's lyrical contribution to the disc. The stadium ready "Something for Nothing" is exactly the kind of 'raise your fist and yell' concert pleaser, and ends the song on a high note.

"2112" is still the gateway Rush album. It took them a couple more tries to make another brilliant album ("Moving Pictures"), but this was the moment it was obvious that this trio was on to something bigger than the sum of the trio.

   

Isaac Asimov On Ignorance

My Amazon DVD Reviews: The Adjustment Bureau"

Maladjustment
3 Out Of 5 Stars

Matt Damon and Emily Blunt are star crossed lovers. While that may sound like a set up for a romantic movie, in "The Adjustment Bureau," it could destroy the world as 'The Chairman' has planned. As loosely based on a story by Phillip K Dick, the adjusters come to Earth at the orders of the Chairman to quietly make little tweaks so the world runs just as it should. Trouble is, Damon and Blunt are not supposed to be in the plan.

In Dick's story, Damon's Dick Norris is not a rising polition, but some grey suit in an office who stumbles into the adjusters, who happen to be dogs. In the story, the dog is supposed to bark and delay Damon. In this case, the adjusters are given human form and magic fedoras that make John Slattery look like he just crossed the street from shooting Mad Men, but in the movie give them the power to navigate strange portals (a store door that opens to Yankee Stadium, for example) and make things work as the Chairman sees fit.

Religious Allegory much? While that is never mentioned, Chairman = God gets obvious and tiresome as the movie stretches out. While Dick's original story was deeply misogynistic, at least Blunt is given a woman who could conceivably be the strong character Damon would fall for. Ultimately, the faith versus fate versus freewill argument consumes the movie and the holes begin taking up more space than the magic doors. Blunt and Damon have good chemistry, Terrence Stamp is a menacing adjuster, but the movie can't maintain a steady pace. "Inception" this isn't.

 

My Amazon DVD Reviews: "Splice"

Splice B Movies With Big Budgets  
3 Out of 5 Stars

This movie is such a super-collided atomic mess that it us hard to rate "Splice" with just a single star for how endearingly awful it is; and for that reason, it's almost tempting to give it five stars for being such a stunning screw-up. Obviously, someone had high-hopes for "Splice;" by casting Oscar winner Adrian Brody and handing it to up and coming director Vincenzo Natali (best known for cult science-fiction classic "The Cube"), "Splice" had a high concept and old fashioned B-Movie science fiction plot going for it. Brody and co-star Sarah Polley are the scientists who decide to ignore all the rules and go against those stuffy conventions that they get the scientific breakthrough they wanted. The bad news is: they get the scientific breakthrough they wanted.

Yes, that's right. These ever so hip scientists (Brody wanders the lab with ironic t-shirts, there's Anime artwork in the couple's apartment) are genius DNA specialists that somehow match human DNA with amphibians, scorpions, birds and who knows what else to create Dren, which happens to be Nerd spelled backward. Like most science fiction monsters, Dren grows at a ridiculously fast pace, has super-human intelligence, childlike behavior and not much by way of moral turpitude. Of course, Brody and Polley soon lose all scientific objectivity regarding Dren and fall in love with their little monster, and that's when things go horribly wrong.

While this might seem like boiler-plate science-fiction, "Splice" may be the first hipster Science Fiction movie. The best sci-fi/suspense/horror works when your monster somehow is an allegory for whatever the zeitgeist of the world is at the moment. "Splice" works that angle in that "Dren" begs us to consider what nasty creatures we may create if we start messing with Mother Nature, but soon starts going for new levels of irony. Before you know it, "Splice" is whipping questions of gender identity, circumcision, lust, love, parenting, rape and finally, the usual evil corporation profit mongers. With ever upping of the ante, as a viewer, you're left to wonder "did they really just go there?" The answer is yes, and the film just keeps on going. The final third of the movie is such a mess that you feel like you're watching the train wreck. It's not wretchedly bad (for that, you need "Alien Vs Predator" or "Battlefield Earth"), but "Splice" - which borrows so much from the likes of "Species," "Alien," "Prophecy" and even "Rosemary's Baby" that you may feel a bit of deja vu - will still leave you stunned.

 

My Amazon DVD Reviews: Altitude Falling

Here's your future
5 Out of 5 Stars

It's hard to do low-budget sci-fi. And when I talk low budget, I am talking about an eight day shooting schedule and very small cast (basically, five main players and a small handful of extras). Plus making a premise that doesn't collapse under it's own weight. "Altitude Falling," a modestly created look at the near future, pulls it off, and is director Paul Bright's best film to date.

To summerize, it's a decade or two into the future. There's a deep recession going on, and an inexplicable war in Venezuelan. People have been implanted with tracking chips, which started out as innocent ways to identify and locate people in case of serious emergencies, like accidents or natural disasters. But now the mere act of entering a mini-market ID's you and offers you a targeted special offer. It also means that, as the war escalates, the government can find you if they need you.

The five lives interconnected here are all tied to the chips and how they evolved. Greg Forrster (Bright) has fled his old life to take residence in New Mexico, and Danny's family has come to escape their unemployed status after tidal surges have destroyed their home (the consequences of global warming are where the movie's title come from). One of the more intriguing aspects of "Altitude Falling" is just how easily this future could occur, without any whizz-bang gizmos or vaccuously expensive "Avatar" effects. The fiction is subtle, but realistic. "Altitude Falling" is provocative and enjoyable film.