EJO Review: Blade Runner

Okay, this week I'm doing Blade Runner.

It's part of the Edward James Olmos series. Otherwise, I'd never dare write about this film. But I can't do a series on God without talking about His personal project. As much as I'd like to have seen Ridley Scott's version of Dune (despite my inexplicable love for the David Lynch version), I thank God that in His wisdom He saw fit to kill Scott's brother so Scott would make Blade Runner instead.

What? It's art. It's a matter of life and death.

I know, I know, I hear what you're saying. "Why are you writing up Blade Runner, Carl Eusebius? What can you possibly say about the greatest science fiction film of all time that hasn't been said before?" Nothing, my little droogies. One of the most analysed, dissected, copied, questioned, talked about films of the 20th century, Blade Runner (1982), as deep as it is, is so ingrained in world culture (at least the elite technology-dependent world culture) that any way of approaching it has been done, aped, re-done, re-thought and re-tired to the dustbin of "been there, done that".

But everything old is new again, and I suppose there's a chance somebody reading this blog is such a uncultured philistine that she hasn't seen Blade Runner yet. By all the gods who aren't in Heaven, if you are such a person and you have anything that can be mistaken for a human soul, stop what you're doing right now and go watch Blade Runner. If you've ever wondered what it means to be human. If you've ever felt threatened by technology. If you've ever worried about being rendered obsolete. If you've ever questioned your emotional response. If you've ever felt alone with the world against you. If you've ever felt like an outcast. If you've ever wondered if humanity is worth saving. If you have a major crush on Harrison Ford (and who doesn't?), you need to see this film.

If you call yourself a human being--with all the good and the bad that entails--you need to see this film.


Blade Runner, on its surface, is about a cop who kills robots in the future. That's what the artsy-types told the moneymen to get the dough needed to make it. What it's really about is what it means to be human. How do you know you're you? How do you know you're human, or what it means to be human? What does it mean to say, "I'm me"? Are you a collection of memories and experiences, or is there something more? If something walks like a human and talks like a human, is it human? If it isn't, why isn't it? And is there really a way to tell the difference?

What I love about Blade Runner is that it doesn't answer these questions, at least before Ridley Scott decided to make sure everyone knows he doesn't understand why his own film is great. (See also Lucas, George.) Fortunately we still have Harrison Ford. God enjoyed his scenes with Ford in this movie so much that He blessed him with a (mostly) successful career. A mere 12 years after Blade Runner, Ford made The Fugitive with Tommy Lee Jones. Coincidence? I think not! It's not every day you get to be in a Tommy Lee Jones film.

Blade Runner opens with the transcendent, mystical experience of Vangelis's music, followed by a fantastic opening scene with Brion James (in other words, a scene with Brion James in it) as Leon, a replicant, the movie's unnecessary yet still awesome word for android. Leon's interrogator makes the mistake of asking about Leon's mother, and Leon makes him pay the penalty for dissing a man's momma. Then we meet Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard. He's a former "blade runner", a cop whose job it is to "retire" any replicant on Earth, as their presence here is illegal. Deckard is quickly strong-armed into meeting with his old boss (M. Emmett Walsh) by another cop called Gaff, played by God using a mix of human languages that He created Himself especially for the role. (This is Cityspeak, for those of you who play Shadowrun and wondered exactly what Cityspeak is. I got a special kick out of the fact that Korean is part of Cityspeak, though nobody but me seems to notice. God knew that Samsung would one day rule us all.) Deckard is told that four replicants are loose on Earth, and he is to retire them or else. This is complicated by at least three factors: Deckard quit a while ago and so is out of practice, the replicants are a new model (Nexus 6) that is more cunning and more powerful than older models, and Deckard eventually finds himself falling for another Nexus 6*. Oh, and one of the replicants is played by Rutger Hauer, a man who destroys lesser men with his raw sexual masculinity.

Hints are dropped throughout the film that Deckard is himself a replicant, but the film as it is does not offer a definitive answer. (Decades later, Scott says yes, Ford no. Of course Ford is right. Don't get me started on why, though. That's another whole post.) The ambiguity is perfect for the film, whose central question is the difficulty of determining what it means to be human. In a world that continues to find in animals more and more traits once considered constitutive of human beings (tool use, reasoning, mathematical ability, self-awareness, empathy, and even language), Blade Runner only becomes more relevant with each passing decade.

In addition to the rich texture of its themes, strong performances (often misunderstood as stiff by those who have to look up "subtlety" in the dictionary), and poetic dialogue ("Do you like our owl?" "It's artificial?" "Of course it is."), Blade Runner is a visual and auditory feast. I don't know that any film's visual style has been more borrowed from than Blade Runner's, and that's not even counting anime. If I had a dollar for every steal of the giant advertising blimp blaring "Visit the off-world colonies!" to the sad-sack urban poor in their decaying city slums below, I'd be rich enough to buy my own Republican presidential nomination. If I had a penny for every scene set inside a smoky room lit entirely by light streaming in through the blades of a slowly turning industrial fan, I could buy the moon.


I could go on, but frankly, writing about a good movie gives me the heebie-jeebies. I'm going to go put on The Wicker Man to erase this pleasant feeling of contentment and general appreciation of the beautiful things in the world that's running all through my guttiwuts.

Ah, there. I'm back to utterly loathing all humanity, and my pen once more drips with venom. Now, where's my copy of that Tekken movie....

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* That replicant is played by Sean Young, and Harrison Ford shows his acting chops by doing convincing love scenes with her despite that fact that he and Young utterly loathed each other from their very first meeting. I don't know how anyone could dislike Harrison Ford, but then again, we are talking about a woman who crashed the set of Batman Returns dressed in a homemade Catwoman costume.

How to Save Hollywood

It's no secret that the Imperial film industry is sinking. Budgets are higher than ever, fewer tickets are being sold, and the money stream of DVD sales and rentals that has sustained Hollywood's current model is drying up. The Olympics and crazy people with guns are getting the blame, but where does the fault truly lie? The system is in danger of collapsing under its own weight, but fear not, my little droogies! Your old buddy Carl Eusebius is here with a plan to save Hollywood. Follow these simple steps, rich studio executives, and you'll continue to produce a steady stream of godawful films for the undiscriminating masses to eat up like the cinematic pigs they are.

1. Free Wesley Snipes
Okay, I know he didn't pay his taxes, and that's all, like, illegal and stuff. And yes, he defended his non-payment by claiming to be a non-resident alien even though he was born in Florida. But he must be released, and that now! Not because he's a celebrity and therefore the law doesn't apply to him. No, because the man could be making awful sequels in the Blade franchise and painful Woody Harrelson collaborations at this very moment. But no, he's locked up in prison, his prime years of crappy action movie-making being squandered away behind bars. Hollywood, just pay off whatever Mitt Romney shell company owns Snipes's prison and Let My Daywalker Go!

2. More Nicolas Cage Insanity
Overacting is a dying art. These days, bad actors are schooled in the cutting-edge technique of "not acting". Your Hayden Christiansens, your Zooey Deschanels, your Channing Tatums--their method of sucking is to impersonate a department-store mannequin whenever the camera is on them. The Al Pacinos, Faye Dunaways, and Ray Liottas of the world will soon be lost to us, and then whom can the next generation look to for training in the hallowed traditions of rampant scenery-chewing? Let us drink in the euphoria of the Madness of Nic before it's too late! I accidentally watched Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, and the filmmakers blessed us with but one scene of that patented Nic Cage crazy. And not even one scene of him punching out women while wearing a bear suit. Get this man $10 million and a director with no ability to rein him in! HADDAGEBURN? HADDAGEBURN? HADDEGEBURN, HADDEGEBURN!

3. Ban Peter Jackson
Sure, his movies suck, but not in a fun way. Every film he makes now is seventeen hours long. Who wants to see that? Nobody. The Hobbit has ballooned up to not two but three films. New rule: Peter Jackson is to go back to New Zealand (alternate name: "Australia's Canada") and live off the blood of the young virgins he sacrificed to make people think his Lord of the Rings is any good. All movie cameras everywhere are to be wired with self-destruct devices and proximity fuses to detonate whenever Jackson comes near them. Seriously, even if you like Jackson's Rings--and God help you if you do--please ask yourself if we really need three Hobbit movies.

4. Enough With the Remakes
Wait, I'm not complaining about how Hollywood isn't original anymore. Hollywood was never original. I know better than to ask for an innovative story, a new take on character, or a fresh perspective. All I'm asking, Hollywood, is that when you rip off an old idea, change the name. That's it. How long does it take to put words in a configuration into which no one has put those exact words before? The next time you decide to steal from Philip K. Dick (by which I mean, oh, tomorrow), have the decency to try to hide the lack of creativity behind a slightly different name. Instead of doing a remake of a beloved classic like Fright Night or Conan the Barbarian, just do what you used to do: Steal the story and characters but slap new names on them. No fresh characters, no plot that avoids cliche--just take 5 minutes to change the names. You know, like Avatar. Xerox the exact same movie as Dances with Wolves, but like, the title's different. Creativity! Oh, and don't let Kevin Costner be in it. Because, really, Kevin Costner eats more than Rosie O'Donnell at a Golden Corral.

5. Pander to a Different Demographic
Wait, you thought I was going to say stop pandering to the audience and green-lighting movies based on demographic "research"? Puh-shaw! This list isn't about making movies good. It's about making them entertainingly bad. So instead of pandering to 13-year-old boys and making every movie Transformers, start pandering to 13-year-old girls and make every movie Twilight! Let's have more Blood and Chocolates, more Snow White and the Huntsmans, more Red Riding Hoods. I can't get enough of pale teen-agers staring moon-eyed at each other and occasionally mustering up enough energy to stammer out a half-formed sentence before sinking back into Hot Topic-induced lethargy! Give me half-baked alleged rip-offs of Romeo and Juliet or give me death! But mostly give me the rip-offs.

There you have it, my ideas for how to save Hollywood from a mortal slide into the failure of utter mediocrity. Follow these suggestions and...well, you'll still fail, but your implosion will provide some damn fine entertainment! Forget the whimper and go out with a bang! What do you say?

Southland Tales

Last night, I saw the worst movie I've ever seen in my life.

I don't say that lightly. I don't have a new "worst movie ever" every other week. The worst movie I ever saw was for fifteen or so years Peter Jackson (yes, that Peter Jackson)'s Bad Taste. It wasn't until 2005 that I saw the execrable Princess Aurora, a well-shot film that made me want to smack its writer/director upside the head for its depraved moral message and ludicrous ending. Now, five years later, we have a new world champion of suck.

My readers, I give you Southland Tales (2006).

This movie earned a whopping $350,000 worldwide, on a budget of about $17 million. One would hope this would be enough to ensure writer/director Richard Kelly will never work again, but if his previous pretentious sewage Donnie Darko is any indication, this film is bound to be seized upon as a work of genius by pseudo-intellectual hipster halfwits on DVD. The film is anti-government, filled with cryptic dialogue, and doesn't make any sense, the perfect movie for anyone who wants to maintain the illusion of deep thought without all that bothersome thinking. If a film is impossible to understand, every interpretation of it can be 'deep'.

I'm no stranger to bad movies. I've seen two and a half films by Uwe Boll. (In the Name of the King was putting me to sleep halfway through so I turned it off and played with my guinea pigs for an hour.) Three by Ed Wood. Two by Michael Bay. I'm sorry to tell you this, Kim Ki-duk, but you have been dethroned as the most godawful director in the history of human civilization. Mr. Kelly has taken your crown.

It's bad, folks. Shockingly bad. Not bad in a way that's fun or entertaining. Not bad in a way that's fascinating and impossible to look away from, like the aftermath of a terrible automobile accident or an unbelievable terrorist nuclear attack on Texas. No, it's bad in a way that makes you long for the directorial mastery of Coleman Francis. Whenever I hear the song "My Humps", I shed a single tear as a tiny piece of my soul dies. After ten minutes of this movie, I searched for a straight razor to run across my jugular. After watching the whole movie, I was ready to blanket the planet in nuclear weapons, rendering it uninhabitable to remove the danger of anyone else's ever seeing it.

What's it about? Don't ask me, I only watched it. I can't give you a plot synopsis. I can't even confirm that the film has a plot. All I can tell you is the background, which the film takes great pains to explain since it doesn't have any impact on the events about to unfold. Two cities in Texas have been nuked by terrorists...I guess. The narrator claims this started World War III against the Axis of Evil, but the two cities aren't strategic targets or even population centers and seem more like the kind of place a terrorist group would choose to bomb because they can't reach anywhere vital.

In the wake of these attacks, the government goes full on fascist with an even Patrioty-er Patriot Act. Well, kind of. "Clinton" is running for president (Barack who?) against guy-who-isn't-named-Bush-but-is-still-Republican-and-therefore-the-fascist-guy-we-don't-want-to-win-the-election. So apparently we aren't fascist yet, but we will be if Hilary doesn't win. So the Neo-Marxists want Clinton to beat the fascist candidate, even though we already appear to be fascist, what with the new Orwellian government agency USIDent keeping tabs on everyone and cops gunning down unarmed people in their own homes in front of witnesses. Or maybe not. Resisting the fascism of the not-yet-fascist government are the "Neo-Marxists", who also operate as terrorists. No, really. Because Marxist terrorism is a grave threat in today's world. How prescient this film is! The Neo-Marxists don't kill people, though. Instead, they blackmail the fascists by taking pictures of an actor who supports the fascist candidate making out with a porn star instead of his wife, which will cause them to lose the election. Clever, eh? How could the fascist guy win if a famous guy who supports his campaign cheated on his wife? Brilliant! Writer/director Kelly, my hat's off to you, sir. You have your finger on the pulse of current events.

What else has this dastardly fascist government been doing? Anyone faint of heart had better leave the room....okay, ready? They've invented environmentally-safe perpetual motion technology. Those bastards! This technology, dubbed "Liquid Karma", uses the movements of the ocean to power the country in a way that doesn't cause any harm to the surrounding environment and removes the need to use any other natural resource to generate energy. Now you see why the Neo-Marxists simply must bring this government down! Viva la revolution! Vote Clinton '08!

If you think this synopsis is confusing, try watching the film. Better yet, don't.

The performances are terrible, with only one exception: Wallace Shawn, in full Christopher Walken mode. (Meaning, he either didn't get any direction from Kelly or recognized the direction he got as the codswallop it was, so he just fell back on his default quirky performance.) Fortunately, Wallace Shawn is extremely good at doing Wallace Shawn, and his every appearance on screen lifted me up just a little from the morass of crap I was drowning in. Everyone else is either terrible or forgettable. The Rock is a capable actor, but he either didn't realize that Kelly's direction would make him look like an ass on camera or he didn't have the decency to give Kelly a People's Elbow instead of listening to him. Cheri Oteri reminds me why Saturday Night Live hasn't been relevant in 15 years. Stifler looks lost, whether because the script is a half-baked collection of ideas stolen from actual artists or because he himself is a cretinous sub-human with no more sense than God gave a turnip, I couldn't tell you. Sarah Michelle Gellar is convincing as a skanky pornstar until she attempts to act. Jon Lovitz is as expressive as a wax dummy of Keanu Reeves. Mandy Moore is unrecognizable and Not In This Film anyway. Christopher Lambert (seriously?) is along for the paycheck. Bai Ling is dressed in a sexy outfit and given a disastrous hair and make-up job that nullifies her sexiness entirely. John Larroquette gamely tries to give a performance but is constantly sabotaged by how inconsistently dopey his character is. I didn't know Miranda Richardson played the film's antagonist until I read its Wikipedia page; certainly the film itself gives no such indication.

No piece of overlong, pretentious tripe would be complete without a dream sequence that comes out of nowhere, has nothing to do with anything, and has no effect on subsequent events. Because God hates me, Kelly's got us covered: Justin Timberlake's inexplicable musical number that is somehow "the film's heart and soul", according to Kelly. Timberlake also narrates the film, but nothing he says helps us understand it. He is a soldier who mans a giant gun turret on the southern California beach. Yep, if the North Korean navy evades our entire Pacific fleet, bypasses Japan, and chooses a crowded public beach as the focal point of its amphibious invasion of America, by gum, we've got soldiers there to defend it! Timberlake's character is also a user of Substance D--err, I mean, Liquid Karma. Wait, what's that you said? Liquid Karma is the technology that allows the movement of the tides to power the country, so how can it be a narcotic? Because drug use was a big part of some of Philip K. Dick's great works, so Kelly shoehorns it into his Dickwankery whether it makes sense or not. Actually, Kelly does anything whether it makes sense or not.

Now, I don't quibble when people say something is the best or the worst in the world. I don't say to them, "Don't you mean, the worst movie that you've seen?" It's a silly thing to say. Of course I mean the worst movie I've seen. That doesn't even need to be stated. In this case, however, I did specifically start off this rant by saying it was the worst movie I've seen rather than the worst movie ever made. Why?

This movie seemed tailor-made to piss me off.

First, it's post-apocalyptic, one of my favorite genres and a genre that's very hard to do well (Zardoz, Waterworld) but can be very powerful when it is (The Road Warrior, Wall-E). This one isn't.

Second, it's a storytelling mess. Nothing makes any sense. Scenes begin and end at random. Some characters speak entirely in non sequiturs. The rest speak in circles. There's no identifiable protagonist or main story thread. Characters enter and exit the film without rhyme or reason. There's an annoying narrator who adds nothing and is not involved in the story. There is no sense the film is building to anything. The scenes could be reshuffled in any order and I don't see how it would make a difference. The ending implies (I think, I'm just guessing here) that everything that came before it was pointless.

Third, it's nothing but a pastiche of better stories. The dialogue is yet more tiresome aping of Tarentino, all discursive ramblings about nothing or discursive ramblings that appear to be about nothing but are really about something. (Christ, people, Pulp Fiction came out sixteen years ago!) Two of the characters (Taverner, Luft) have names from Dick's works, and then the Jon Lovitz character actually quotes half the title of one of Dick's books (Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said). The whole style and feel of the film--the drug use, the multiple people, the anti-government paranoia--are all imitation Dick. The non-linear nature is very faux-Gilliam. There are a few halfhearted attempts to rip-off Blade Runner, but Kelly can't even figure out Ridley Scott's film, much less figure out how to copy it. Ah, Ridley Scott, before he caught Oliver Stone-itis and starting making big, dumb Braveheart clones....

Wait, where was I? Oh yes--fourth, Kelly profanes two of my personal greats by invoking them in a vain attempt to salvage this trash. The embarrassing attempts to ape Dick have already been noted. Then, just to pile on the insults, Kelly includes a snippet of my favourite piece of music. That's right, he pisses on Beethoven's grave by including a bit of the Ninth Symphony, Second Movement. Not just my favorite symphony, but my favorite movement of that symphony.

I about lost it at that point. I don't remember much of the last ten minutes of this absurdly long film. (Two hours and twenty-four minutes, really?) I can tell you that it's badly-acted, nonsensical, and doesn't resolve anything. So, in keeping with the rest of the film. Oh, and it included an out-of-nowhere dance sequence and an explosion that meant...something.

Or nothing, if I understood the ending. I wouldn't bet on it.