What is The Last Movie You Watched?

[tsadriana]

The White House Down and The call both brilliant movies.

[Stavros]

Blade Runner -the Final Cut
An improvement on the original release, but there isn't much to it once you see the same skyline over and over again, and the crowded, rainy streets. The acting is wooden, the content slight -replicants designed to be useful have become a menace, merely another version of Frankenstein- and the lead character may even be a replicant himself. Even Rutger Hauer fails to match the deliciously wild persona that he presented so well in The Hitcher. The film is set in 2019 which is now too close, maybe 2219 would be more appropriate but surely the sun will shine brighter then? I wonder if Ridley Scott has a problem with science and rationality?

[trish]

On Blade Runner (beware of spoilers):

It does raise the issue of whether some sort of Turing Test is an adequate measure of a sort of generalized “humanity.” The test Deckard uses requires over a hundred questions before he can be confident that Rachael is a replicant. Will distinguishing human from replicant eventually become intractable? If so, what will that mean? Rachael asks if Deckard ever terminated a human by mistake. He doesn’t answer. At one point in the movie, a replicant (Pris) poses as an automaton to avoid detection; an example of an artificial human actually attempting to fail the Turing Test and failing to fail as her act seems to raise Deckard’s suspicions. We don’t even know in the end whether Deckard himself is artificial or not. He dreams of a unicorn. If it’s a dream and not an implant, why did Gaff leave an origami unicorn in his apartment?

Of course the film has it’s flaws. If the replicants can withstand extreme heat and extreme cold (plunging their hands into boiling water and liquid nitrogen) wouldn’t there be easier ways to detect them? The film avoids this question precisely because it wants to focus on the notion of the Turing Test.

Explorations of morality what a creation owes its maker are explored in the characters of Tyrell and Sebastian.

Besides the exquisitely depicted dark dystopian future, the movie has some good lines.
From the “I want more life, fucker” to the Roy’s death speech at the movie's climax.

I give it a thumbs up.

[Stavros]

Hmmmm...I didn't see it from your point of view not knowing anything about the Turing Test, although that again raises the question of Scott's interest in, or antipathy to science and rationality -is he saying you can't use science to ascertain the truth of a person? After all Deckard tends to kill rather than reason, with one exception, albeit a 'woman', and then it is love/lust rather than reason that takes over. Also there is the theme of the rebel, which I assume is meant to cast Deckard as the hero. I can't agree that anything much is explored in the characters of either Tyrell or Sebastian, it also seems odd that a man so rich in so violent a world as Tyrell lives in would be so accessible to strangers. Even though I understand the play on identity -the photos in Deckard's apartment are surely from a different century?- it doesn't go deep enough for me, but I don't think Scott is a deep thinker anyway so maybe this is as good as it gets.

[trish]

To paraphrase Turing (perhaps to the point of distortion, for the purpose of discussion) if an artificial intelligence could pass as a human, then we should regard it as a truly intelligent being.

is he saying you can't use science to ascertain the truth of a person?

(my parenthesis). Or perhaps Scott and Phillip K Dick are saying that the alleged moral borders demarcating artificial minds from real minds are conventional, questionable and perhaps too intractably difficult to delineate. Maybe at some point there is no border.

I can't agree that anything much is explored in the characters of either Tyrell or Sebastian

I admit to being imprecise. Rather than the character of the characters it's the symbolism of those characters and their relationship to their creations. Sebastian reminds me of the Angel in Mark Twain's The Stranger. His creations are mangled and foolish, but he's sees no moral dilemma in that whatsoever. Tyrell is murdered by his creation. Aren't we supposed to honor our father and mother, and most of all our Creator? Roy is very much a Nietschean character.

You're right. The film could go deeper. But, for me at least, it's an invitation to delve. Thanks for your response.

[trish]

Addendum:

merely another version of Frankenstein-

I always took the Frankenstein films to be saying that there are questions we should never ask and knowledge we'd be better off not knowing. We should not seek how to create life and we shouldn't create Frankenstein monsters. In my mind this interpretation goes hand in hand with the age in which the Frankenstein films were most popular; though the first was made in the early thirties it was screened over and over again in the 50's and 60's...the height of the cold war and our fear of atomic self-immolation. On the other hand, Blade Runner seems, to me, to say the opposite. The Nexus androids are not pitiful creatures better off never having existed. They are beautiful, intelligent and they know that slavery is wrong. Sebastian is Frankenstein. His creatures are monsters. But Tyrell is God.

[broncofan]

I saw the Counselor. I didn't enjoy it at all. I thought the dialogue was over-wrought and at times inappropriate for the medium. There were some interesting insights, but it seemed the point of every conversation was to impart them rather than advance the storyline. Some good scenes as well (don't want to give spoiler), but certain things came across as embarrassingly contrived and needing editing.

E.g. the Cameron Diaz hump the car scene and accompanying description, the conversation with the drug boss and Fassbender, Cameron Diaz in the confessional...this last one was a good idea because it showed how brazen she was, but it was not developed into anything compelling as the priest simply walked out before she could make him really uncomfortable.

[trish]

The Counselor reminds me of John Gardner's Grendel. The characters are dragons, monsters and Viking heroes. There can be no natural dialogue. Instead there are monologues. Their point is indeed to offer insights and advice ("collect gold...and hoard it"). Personally I love those moments (in any media) where a character essentially stops all action to deliberate upon a choice, or pontificate on the world from her perspective; i.e. to deliver a monologue (as in the scene with Fassbender and the drug boss; or those scenes in Deadwood where Swearengen would be delivered of his monologue by the hooker working on his pecker. However, I agree, it's not natural, realistic or typical to come across a conversation where the participants are spewing McCarthyesque dialogue.

[Prospero]

"Mandela" - Idris Elba cruising for an Oscar. Will post more tomorrow.

[Stavros]

Addendum:
I always took the Frankenstein films to be saying that there are questions we should never ask and knowledge we'd be better off not knowing. We should not seek how to create life and we shouldn't create Frankenstein monsters. In my mind this interpretation goes hand in hand with the age in which the Frankenstein films were most popular; though the first was made in the early thirties it was screened over and over again in the 50's and 60's...the height of the cold war and our fear of atomic self-immolation. On the other hand, Blade Runner seems, to me, to say the opposite. The Nexus androids are not pitiful creatures better off never having existed. They are beautiful, intelligent and they know that slavery is wrong. Sebastian is Frankenstein. His creatures are monsters. But Tyrell is God.

Mary Shelley's book is part of the romantic anti-capitalism which failed to come to terms with 'infernal machines' and which went to the 'next step' ie the creation of mechanical humans with no soul -a warning of unlimited development, and yes there is an analogy with the creation of nuclear devices which can destroy us all, but the context is different. The idea that the replicants in their 'natural' state are 'beautiful, intelligent' doesn't explain why they rebel and become so violent and of course become aware that they are not real. I haven't read Dick's story so I don't know how different it is from the film, but future worlds which are fiercely regimented and provoke rebellion seem common yet the film-makers are not radicals but conservative, as if the regimented society was pseudo-communist and rebellion a spark of individual justice seeking freedom even though in some cases, eg Blade Runner and Cloud Atlas, the 'masses' are sold on an extreme form of capitalism that provides everything, all rather confusing. I think as with Alien(s) and Predator Scott is contrasting modernisation with naturalism preferring the latter to the former even though the former enables him to make films. Wagner had this problem in the Ring -human love discarded for material gain destroys the world-fine; but to present it on stage Wagner needed, indeed, desired modern stage technology and, of course, money to put it all on. He never could square the contradiction, or anxious relationship between his need for material things and his worship of nature; it's one of the reasons his work continues to excite and challenge. As is also the case with Shelley. Next: how many transgendered people having invested in the physical alterations of their body are psychologically/emotionally satisfied with the results? (Even if they are not self-made Frankensteins!! -well, not all of them...)