Screening Room

by Ari

Blade Runner: Final Cut (Ridley Scott, 1982)

While the differences between this cut and the ‘92 “director’s cut” are minor, the restoration is utterly amazing. The special effects in Blade Runner not only hold up extremely well, but compared to a large portion of the soulless computer generated imagery that dominates the screen today, they’re far superior. Blade Runner is the second most atmospheric science-fiction film ever made behind Kubrick’s masterful 2001: A Space Odyssey. The visual effects portray a dark, wet, smoky, dangerous metropolis with dazzling technological advances and a fascinating collision of cultures. The world envelops the viewer. The details of the imagery and the precise framing of the actors and locations convey emotion and feeling like few visual effects movies do today. The classic score by Vangelis adds to that sense of mystery and possibility. Only Alex Proyas’ Dark City rivals Blade Runner for such meticulously crafted and well executed imagery and sound in a recent sci-fi film. Harrison Ford is particularly good as Deckard, the blade runner sent to “retire” the nexus-6 replicants lead by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer). There’s something transcendent about Hauer's famous death sequence. The rain, the emotion, the poetic dialogue...it’s one of those classic movie moments that will never be lost in time like tears in the rain. It’s moving, it’s epic, it’s brilliant.

The Cotton Club (Francis Ford Coppola, 1984)

This film was a major critical and box-office disaster upon its release in 1984. Maybe expectations were too high or people just didn’t get it. Who knows? Either way, the film is considered one of Coppola’s lesser works. And yeah, if you compare it to his ‘70s masterpieces, it is. But compared to The Godfather I and II, Apocalypse Now and The Conversation, what isn’t a lesser film, right? The Cotton Club is an outrageous and entertaining period crime/musical epic that lovingly pays tribute to the classic style of gangster films and musicals of the 1930’s. Everything is overly theatrical and showy, the characters are larger-than-life, the acting is way overblown and the tone and themes are more comical than serious. Interestingly enough, The Cotton Club makes a great double-feature with De Palma’s similarly stylized and outrageous crime epic The Untouchables. If you liked De Palma’s film, then The Cotton Club is for you. Richard Gere stars as a Jazz musician who becomes involved with a ruthless gangster called “the dutch” (James Remar) while falling in love with a dame (a very young and beautiful Diane Lane) who dreams of owning her own club. Eventually he becomes the property of cotton club owner Owney Madden (a classic Bob Hoskins) and is sent to Hollywood where he stars in a slew of popular gangster films. Meanwhile Gregory Hines and his brother give us some incredible dancing, Tom Waits announces each new dance number at the club, Nicolas Cage chews up his scenes as a psychopathic criminal and Laurence Fishburne does his thing as a character based on Harlem gangster “Bumpy” Johnson. What’s not to love here?