Film Reviews by RCO
Welcome to RCO's film reviews page. RCO has written 62 reviews and rated 147 films.
Blade Runner 2049
Demonstrates that new is often not better
Maybe its because I'm 35 years older (or 45 years since I was into Philip K Dick stories) but this is a trivial gratuitous fresh take on the classic. Perhaps if I was 35 years younger it would seem as cool as the original Blade Runner did - but I doubt it as it was still pretty cool when I last saw it about 5 years ago.
This one replaces the depth of the original's mise-en-scene with a surface gloss that conveys nothing except its own cleverness. It replaces the characterisations with cardboard cyphers. It replaces the ambiguity with a teenage boy's fantasies of sex and power.
If you want to see how modern techniques could be used to good effect in this type of future-present story then check out the New Seoul sequences in Cloud Atlas.
If you happen to be a repressed teenage boy you might find this ok, otherwise avoid it.
Stalker
Ponderous and Pointless
Considering I have been wanting to see this for nearly forty years it was a huge disappointment. Nothing happens. There is no meaning. There is no drama. There is almost no story. Nothing is explained. It is tedious beyond belief. The mis-en-scene which may have seemed innovative in 1979 is now tired and done far better in many average recent film and tv dramas.
How did the director of Andrei Rublev (one of THE greatest films, and one I have seen several times) sink to this?