Best movie of 2021?

Hard to argue with Nine Days.

Blade Runner 2049

I need to watch this film a few more times, because my initial reaction is not very charitable.  I realize that many people had a poor reaction to the original film.  I didn't, even though we had to suffer through the VHS pan-and-scan edition of the voice-over cut for ten years, until the Director's Cut hit the scene.  So maybe 2049 will grow on me like the original grew on other people.  Maybe.  I've pre
-ordered the UHD Blu Ray, to find out.

And I will admit that while I saw the film in a Dolby Cinema, that was probably a mistake.  Ostensibly, DC should be the best possible way to experience a film in a theater.  For whatever reason, that hasn't been my experience.  Or, rather, it has typically been the best visual presentation in a theater, but still miles beyond the calibrated light controlled experience of a dedicated home theater.

Somehow, Dolby has managed to specify "recliner" style seating that is less ergonomic than traditional theater seating -- lacking lumbar and leg support, not actually reclining or even allow one's feet to parallel with one's hips.  I've tried different Dolby Cinema's.  All the AMC one's seem to be the same.  

Specific to this film in a Dolby Cinema:  Ridiculously frequent use of seat actuators -- turning the experience of deep bass into a kind of carnival ride.  Talk about distracting.  People in the theater were literally laughing at the campiness of the rumble seats -- and I felt the same way.

Specific to this particular Dolby Cinema:  Atmos sound, Dolby's proprietary audio format that places sounds around an auditorium in a more precise manner than traditional "Surround Sound" can be awesome.  I suspect the 2049 mix was pretty good.  But it addition to the rumble seats overbearing on one's perception, this particular theater had a damaged speaker in the front sound stage, so it sounded like the soundtrack had some awkward, industrial noise instrument playing through many scenes.  (While we are at it, I will note that the screen in this particular screening room had blemishes smack dab in the middle of the expanse, which would become visible each time a fade to white occurred, or bright object appeared on the screen at that location.)

All in all, not an auspicious setting.  The film's start was delayed by 15 minutes of blank screen time and silence.  And then there's the movie:

Things start off badly in the new film, where the opening scene was the rejected failed opening scene from the original Blade Runner. And in most ways, it just gets worse from there.

The callbacks to the original are ridiculous/gratuitous/threaten to cheapen the legacy:

1. Tyrell as a grandmaster mad scientist and industrialist is a believable banal embodiment of an industrial oligarch. The new "Tyrell" (oh, sorry, we had to reboot that) is a silly, over the top caricature that embodies the worst Saturday matinee OverLord Rules cliches. But at least we get to see him gut a naked woman on screen??? (sarcasm)

2. Bringing Sean Young's Rachel "back to life" is a cheap shot, so campy I was astounded. It felt like it a Saturday Night Live satire: What is the most silly beat that 2049 could hit? The stunt felt empty and insulting to the audience, and doubly so when she was dispensed with so quickly. A smart edit would have removed the entire sequence but someone didn't understand the memo about killing your darlings and decided this was what was meant by that aphorism.

3. The hints at the Vangelis score serve to remind us of what we don't hear throughout this film. And Zimmer knows it, because the best way he can create gravitas for this death scene in inclement weather is..... to directly quote the prior film's music and evoke its far more meaningful and earned inclement weather death scene. They might as well have given Ryan Gosling a dove, just to drive the point home.

4. In the first film, at the Tyrell corporation, there is an interesting "water reflection effect" on the walls that has no source. This is silly and a byproduct of the art direction and set design of the day and we accept it as an eccentricity that succeeds in evoking a mood -- even though it's one of the few bits of mies-en-scene bordering on pretension. In the new film, the new "Tyrell corporation" (or, sorry, we had to do a reboot and change the name) has water everywhere, so that same effect appears on the walls but now has a diagetic source. Bor-ing. And super lazy to take one of the few pretensions of the first film and double down on it and make it more literal.

But then again, that's perhaps par for the course for a film where things that were once deep and ambiguous become glib and superficial:

The original had a very simple premise for the action: Replicants are not allowed on Earth. Remove them. All the major themes are subtext and discovered rather than stated, and leave room for interpretation and judgment on the viewer's part. The new film has accepted replicants on Earth, but creates a silly premise about self replicating replicants. The police captain's statements to the contrary, it seems terribly unlikely that self replicating tech would be seen as a problem. It seems more likely that this would be a solution -- creating a greater supply of a limited, useful resource. Either way, stating the conflict so plainly exemplifies how the complex, hidden nature of the original film's central themes have turned into a simple "fetch quest" with a single clear goal leaving little room for interesting, complex subtexts. Etc.

In short:  In the original film, all the good stuff was subtext, possibly alluded to, but often things we needed to piece together.  We were dropped into a world without explanation, where the surface story almost doesn't matter.  It's the explanation we infer about the world by watching how it works that matters.

In the new film, everything is on the surface, is spelled out, and frankly, isn't very interesting.  Maybe there is some radical subtext I am not seeing -- but I don't see any other commentators finding anything like that there, either.

The new film is like the old film with the magic removed.

The Man From Reno

may be the least of your worries. 

Time Lapse

Emphasizing the importance of sticky tape in time travel management. 

The Deep (2012) "Djúpið"

Because the real ordeal begins after surviving. 

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

because she is the child of Jarmusch and Lynch, and no one will mess with her.