Blade Runner 2049 (2017 Denis Villeneuve)

The first Blade Runner - whilst being sensational to look at, to feel - was not the best film in the world to start with This is so true to the original in music and design too that it looks like a remake. But it also seems like everything is designed to run at half speed and when a plot point is made, the film discovers it twenty minutes after the audience has already worked it out. I'm sorry, but I found it as interesting as surveillance camera footage of a dockside.

We didn't realise either that you have to phone up Harrison Ford and remind him to appear.

It's so long that you can actually read the whole of Nabokov's 'Pale Fire' (referenced early on) while it's playing, and when we got to two hours 15 finally gave up, never to discover that Harrison Ford is Ryan Gosling's father.. oops! Notable mainly for Roger Deakins' finally Oscar-winning photography. Some of his images are just stunning, e.g. the fight between Gosling and Ford in the nightclub. But some of the design just looks silly - I would have thought in the future you'd try to make your environment look better, not worse.

I was mildly interested to see how they had brought Sean Young back in to the sequel, but it was just a way of passing the time really. "Is it her?" I enquired. "They can do anything now." To which Q replied "Well it would have been good if they'd made this interesting."

Some of the very quiet dialogue seemed to me to include these lines:

"You can't stop the future with a plum."
"Many a night I think of cheese."

With Ana de Armas, Jared Leto, Mackenzie Davis (The Martian, That Awkward Moment, Breathe In; and coming up in Tully), Robin Wright, Sylvia Hoeks, Lennie James (as Fagin).

Villeneuve on set. ASC magazine

Roger was probably thinking 'Good job Chivo doesn't have a film out this year...'