film criticism by maryann johanson | since 1997
This might be a movie you love and want to experience on a different level. Or it might be one that would only be improved if you could delete the dialogue. (My choice is one of the latter…)
“[T]he denial of mythos is everywhere in our culture, and it can partially explain why so much of our approach to everything artistic, challenging, or mysterious seems reductive, dull, and unimaginative….”
Designed to cash in on the popular mobile game, this kiddie noir nevertheless sparkles with charming originality. Gentle enough for tykes but with satirical bite for grownups, too. Downright adorable.
Devoid of personality and soul, this hellish Frankenstein monster of processed entertainment product wallows in a stew of borrowed ideas and imagery and does absolutely nothing fresh with them.
The science is ludicrous, the story is almost entirely free of drama, and the finale descends into the hoariest, most ridiculous clichés of the genre. But the future smart-house porn is lovely.
The Auto-Tuned boy-band version of the apocalypse. You will forgive that every plot point that isn’t a cliché is in fact a plot hole because the hero is so dreamy and impossibly perfect, right?
Visually, this dying future world is immersively hellish. Intellectually, though, its ideas haven’t kept up with the rapidly evolving science-fictional conversation.
Trite characters, very well-worn clichés of SF cinema, and a mystery that is completely transparent. All about production design, and even that is familiar.
A key Blade Runner date is “happening” in 2017…
Eschewing the compelling SF questions it raises, Morgan resorts to violence and would-be cleverness, and makes concrete what it should have left ambiguous.
