a movie that could have been

Rating: 5/10 (2 November 2017)

I don't get the rave reviews for this picture. I dunno, maybe myself and the other 10 people in the theater were watching a different film. Sure, the movie is visually stunning. The production design, music and special effects are great but the story and direction seem targeted to dumbtards and 15 year old boys. The acting is no better. You have a group of A-list actors and then a group of unknowns; faces you've rarely seen or can recognize. Like the original blade runner, they do have some very attractive women in this film wrapped in eye candy costumes and production sets. But obviously, the studio and backers insisted on the A-list actors to bring in the box office because Hollywood serves corn to cows but this could have been quite something if they had gone the other way. The performances across the board, but particularly ryan gosling, made my skin crawl. Like watching your kid perform badly in front of hundreds of strangers. What were they thinking with they watched this? Makes no sense. Most of the performances were over the top stiff and melodramatic. A lot of the blame for this has to be on the director though. It's the directors job to determine what works and doesn't and tell a coherent story. I can only assume the director was drunk during most of the production and editing because there's just no other excuse. For example, this is not the first movie to show a hologram in the 'future'. It's a clever prospect but it's not necessary to keep repeating, repeating and repeating the same special effect. Seriously, once or twice would have been enough. It's the repetition and unnecessary plot lines that make this movie TOO LONG. If it wasn't for the design and visual imagery I would have walked out half way thru the film. The point in the timeline where the story takes a dive and ends up in some futuristic vegas. WTF is that about? That's also the point where the main character in the movie, 'k' should have been killed but isn't for no other apparent reason than they wanted to drag the film on for another stupid hour and a half into another plot direction ending up with a ridiculous cgi representation of sean young but without the voice. At that point I wanted to throw my drink at the screen. I just hope the director, Denis Villeneuve, is accused of sexual harassment in the coming weeks so nobody will pay him to do a remake of Dune. That would be incredibly depressing.