Secret Cinema : Blade Runner The Final Cut

"It's too bad she won't live. But then again who does?"

This past weekend I had the opportunity to truly discover what it was like to live within my all-time favourite film Blade Runner: The Final Cut thanks to Secret Cinema.

For those in on the secret, Secret Cinema have been THE company when it comes to Event Cinema, providing immersive, interactive experiences relating to a film that is screened at the end of the night. When it first began in 2007, it really was a secret in that the audience did not know what they were going to see until they got to the event.

It has grown and grown over the years to the point now where the film selections and productions have become so big that the "secret" is out in order to guarantee ticket sales and buy-in from the customers e.g. Back To The Future and The Empire Strikes Back.

But with an inflated price tag of £45-£115, equivalent to a concert or West End show, come inflated expectations.

Having signed up for a new life that was awaiting me on the off-world colony of Utopia, I, Henry Carradine, arrived at World Terminus with a group of my scavenger/dreamer friends to begin our journey. Albeit scavengers who had scavenged costumes off people who looked suspiciously like Rick Deckard and a cosmic Katy Perry.
Sadly the LAPD deemed us not worthy of travel and revoked our identity papers and placed us in a holding pen to watch the rich and powerful breeze by to their new lives.
It was within this pen that we learned of the resistance, a group sick of this world and the injustices they endured. But no longer. For tonight, they would execute Operation Blackout which would reset the clock and level the playing field for everyone.
If the blackout sounds familiar, the writers of Secret Cinema have cleverly tied in to the events that lead into Blade Runner 2049 with a blackout that erased all digital records allowing replicants to disappear without a trace and remove barriers of wealth and class to the rest.
I won't go into the plot too much further but once we were smuggled inside we were given missions and had the opportunity to interact with characters that many would recognise from the original film.
Other guests with different character types (detectives, entertainment models, replicants, etc) all had different mini-missions and there was the immediate temptation to return to try another story thread.
But don't worry if getting into character isn't really your thing or you reach a dead end because you are unable to locate Zhora within The Snake Pit and are refused entry to the dressing room area even when you claim to be from the Committee of Moral Abuses!
For there is so much to see and explore that you won't even care. You will be too busy trying to reattach your dropped jaw to the roof of your mouth.
The level of detail in the recreation of 2019 Los Angeles is simply astonishing. I spent the first twenty minutes just trying to take it all in. There is the noodle bar; check out the digital ad screens for Coca-Cola and Pan-Am; woah, was that Rachel that just walked past?; I wonder if I could buy an artificial owl from Abdul Ben Hassan?
The organisers (L.A.P.D. officers) make you seal your phone in a bag prior to entering the world so you are unable to take photos and share/spoil the experience for others. Part of you will wish that you could capture the memories forever (like Leon and his precious photos) but there is something refreshing about not being on your phone the whole time and being able to absorb and savour every little detail.
I had previously attended the Star Wars event but the quality of the acting and commitment to the characters from all the actors (and guests) was out of this world for Blade Runner and added to the whole experience.
Having gotten a tip from a Replicant singer, we made our way to The Snake Pit where the storyline reached its climax in a thrilling way which was completely in keeping with the universe.
Following that, there was just enough time to order some noodles before taking our seats for the main feature.
With so much energy and focus put into creating this interactive world, it is always a risk that the projection of the film may not be up to the same level. Especially as you are watching it in a converted warehouse and not a cinema auditorium.
However the projection is excellent both in terms of picture and audio. The only problem is that due to audiences enjoying the bars and food stalls for two hours previously, many of them need to visit the bathroom so there is a lot of movement but nothing that will ruin one's enjoyment.
I mentioned previously that Blade Runner is my favourite film of all-time and one of the reasons I love it so much is that I seem to notice something knew every time I see it.
This time it was just how childlike Roy Batty is at some moments, in keeping with the fact that his mind is really only four years old and testament to Hauer's performance.
The other reason is that every time I genuinely change my opinion on the central question of the film; Is Deckard a Replicant?
This time? I would say that he is human. My reasoning this time? Replicants are unable to empathise. This is the reason that they fail the Voight-Kampff test. In the film, Deckard gets very emotional every time that he "retires" a replicant. This leads me to think that he is human and Roy saves him at the end to save his humanity which he has rediscovered through Rachel.
Am I right? Ah, we will never know and part of me loves that mystery. Sorry Ridley.
Without a doubt, this is the greatest and most immersive event that Secret Cinema have put on and I applaud them for that. "You've done a man's job sir". It will be hard for them to top it but I look forward to seeing them try.
Philip K. Dick asked the question, "Do androids dream of electric sheep?". I don't know about androids but I know I will dream of my night in Los Angeles 2019 and unicorns for many a night to come.
So to sum up and paraphrase Batty's final speech...
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. I've watched a sea of people dancing under umbrellas in the Los Angeles acid rain. I watched Roy Batty take down a squad of Blade Runners without breaking a sweat. Without being able to take photos at Secret Cinema, all these moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain..."

5 stars

Secret Cinema presents Blade Runner The Final Cut runs till 8th July and you can get tickets here.

Top 5 Tips

1) Bring your umbrella - You will get wet!
2) Take old photographs - Old memories are essential for bartering for information or entrance to secret areas
3) Don't bring cash - all bars and food stalls take contactless payment. Even if that means you will end up spending more than you planned!
4) Do dress up according to your character - Don't come straight from work in your normal outifit. You will get picked on by the actors as my friend discovered.
5) Once the film is over, make your way to The Snake Pit where you can dance the night away with replicants and blade runners side-by-side. Even if the music selection is not in keeping with the 2019 setting i.e. Beyonce, Outhere Brothers, etc.

Solo: A Star Wars Story - review

With another year to wait until we get another "Episode" Star Wars film, it is time for another "A Star Wars Story" film from Disney that plugs a gap in the cinema release schedule and the Expanded Universe backstory.
Just like Rogue One told the story of how the Rebels got the plans for the Death Star, this new film explores the backstory of the saga's most lovable rogue, Han Solo.
And just like Rogue One, this film is one that has had a route to the big screen even trickier than flying through an asteroid film.
Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (21 Jump Street, The LEGO Movie) were fired by producer Kathleen Kennedy after filming 90% of the movie with too comedic a tone. This led to Kennedy bringing in Ron Howard to complete the movie and shooting 70% of the film.
This leads us to a situation where you have 160% of a film and a battle between two creative styles. How did it affect the story and performances? How would it all gel together? It is enough for anyone to say "I've got a bad feeling about this".

Safe to say the odds were against the film but as a certain someone might say, "Never tell me the odds".
Why? Because on watching the final film, there is no real hint of any issues with production.
With Rogue One, there were the expectations delivered by the initial trailer that ultimately featured many scenes that were not in the final film.
Here, for any viewers unaware of the behind-the-scenes problems, you would never know there were any.
As a reviewer, that is how one must approach the film as well. One cannot review it wanting and hoping they were watching the Lord and Miller version. In a similar way to wondering what Edgar Wright's Ant-Man would have been like. They must give Ron Howard's film a fair old crack of the whip instead (wait, wrong Harrison Ford character reference).
And here we arrive at the main issue with Solo: A Star Wars Story.
The production problems were never the problem. The issue here is that the entire film feels redundant and unnecessary.
When Han Solo first appeared in the Star Wars universe, sitting in the cantina in Mos Eisley, you knew exactly who this character was. From his brash boasting to Obi-Wan and Luke, to the way he coldly and brutally dispatched Greedo by shooting first. This short introduction told the audience everything they needed to know to set up his character in the universe.
There was never any need to see how he became the man he was at the start of Episode IV.
Do we need to discover where he got his gun from? No.
Do we need to see how he won the Millennium Falcon from Lando? No, he told us in Empire Strikes Back.
Do we need to know how he got the name Han Solo? No.
Do we need to know how he met Chewbacca? No but it is a nice scene and one of the highlights of the film.
And we certainly don't need to see a back story to those bloody dice which only suddenly became important at the end of The Last Jedi. Well I hate to break it to you Leia, but they reminded Han of another woman!!!
That woman is Qi'ra played by Emilia Clarke who is cast in the now standard Star Wars role of lead female character who is white, short brown hair and in her late-twenties/mid-thirties (see Carrie Fisher, Natalie Portman, Daisy Ridley, Felicity Jones).
Han and Qi'ra wish to escape Corellia together but when she is forced to stay behind, Han promises to return to free her and travel the galaxy together on a ship.
This promise is what drives Solo for the majority of the story, joining forces with a crew led by Woody Harrelson to pull off a job to win a huge payoff. When this goes awry, they are indebted to Paul Bettany's gangster Dryden Vos and forced to plan and pull off a daring robbery via the infamous Kessel Run.
It is here Solo is reunited with his love Qi'Ra, now in Vos's employ, and meets the other loves of his life; Chewbacca, Lando Calrissian and the Millennium Falcon.
Donald Glover steals the show as the charasmatic owner of the Falcon, along with his droid co-pilot L3-37 (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who similar to Dobby in the Harry Potter films, strives for equality for droids.
But what of Alden Ehrenreich? The man with one of the most unenviable jobs in movie history. How do you step into the boots of Harrison Ford and one of the most iconic characters in all of cinema? Would that it were so simple.

Thanfully he is, more or less, up to the task. He never tries to do a simple impression of Ford. Instead, building his own version that one can see becoming Ford's seminal take on roguish smuggler.

In fact when we first meet the young Solo, he is lightyears away from the man we all know and love. He is wide-eyed, a dreamer and like a puppy in love. He is more akin to a young Luke Skywalker dreaming of escaping life on Tatooine.

Over the course of the film, events slowly shape and mould him into a more recognisable version of the character to the point where you can see him becoming this guy...

While the characterisation is there, the overall plot feels very perfunctory as it carefully but unimaginatively joins the dots to get Solo from to Chewbacca to Lando to the Falcon to the Kessel Run, etc, etc.

This is the last time Lord and Miller will be mentioned but a Lord and Miller-led adventure where you weren't exactly sure where it was going to go and how it was going to play out could have been just what the story needed to feel fresh and relevant. Ron Howard's studio-mandated film is rather pedestrian, tried and tested route. If Howard took the standard 20 parsecs to do the Kessel Run, Lord & Miller could have done it in less than 12. Riskier but the payoff could have been bigger.

The Last Jedi proved that the saga could (and should) take risks but with Solo, instead of "great shot kid, that was one in a million" it left this reviewer colder than carbonite.

2 stars

NB: Please avoid the 3D print of the film which is incredibly dark and muddy

Star Wars: The Force Awakens - review

"There has been an awakening... have you felt it?"

There certainly was an awakening last night as this Star Wars fan found that the love he had for the original trilogy, a love that was thought lost forever, returned in force.
From the moment the Lucasfilm logo appeared and the famous crawl stretched up the screen to the familiar score of John Williams, you couldn't remove the grin from my face.
But wait, I had been here before. Star Wars for want of a better analogy is like the love of your life who broke your heart and turns up years later wanting to get back together. You know that it could end badly but you just can't help yourself and give it another go.
Thankfully JJ Abrams et all knew that the passion I and many other fans had for Star Wars was still inside us. We might not have know it ourselves but just as Luke believed that there was good still inside Darth Vader and fought to bring it out of him, they have done just that with The Force Awakens.
I will not go into details of the plot for fear of spoilers, after all we don't want another Homer Simpson situation on our hands do we?

Suffice to say that The Force Awakens is everything that fans who were disappointed with the prequels would want from a Star Wars film.
Gone are the trade federation taxation routes and political posturing. Gone are the overly CGI backgrounds and wooden acting.
The movie feels like it has been shot in real locations with CGI characters used sparingly with a focus on make up, costume and puppetry to bring them to life.
The script is a lot sharper and brings back that sense of fun. There are a lot more laughs in the film than I was expecting but it all works for the characters.
Not only that but the film has what was sorely missing from the prequels... Han Solo. It was his world-weariness and roguish charm that appealed to audiences, and that presence was not filled by any characters such as Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan or Jar Jar Binks.
The newcomers to this saga such as Finn, Rey and Kylo Ren fit in perfectly to the established universe and the welcome return of Han Solo and Chewbacca acts as a nice bridge between the trilogies, especially as Harrison Ford really does look like he is enjoying being back in the cockpit again.
Kylo Ren in particular, proves to be a much more complex villain than initially thought (just look at how his reaction to bad news differs to that of Vader) and Adam Driver is excellent in the role which will evolve into something really special over the course of the films. The same goes for Daisy Ridley as Rey.
Is The Force Awakens a perfect film? No, it is not. You are occasionally left wanting more from some of the characters, some of whom deserve more screen time, and the movie poses more questions than it answers (clearly conscious of being part one of a new trilogy rather than a stand alone film like A New Hope was originally).
Is it the best film of the year? No. However this film was never going to be judged merely on the quality of this one particular installment. It would always be reviewed and thought of as one part of a much larger universe.
Compared to the crushing disappointment and anger that the prequels generated, causing many people to turn to the dark side, this has shown us the path back to the light.
Any film that has me consistently laughing, close to tears on three separate occasions and leaves me with a grin frozen in place like Han in carbonite is always going to win out on an emotional level.
The Force Awakens proves that "the force will be with you always" and as I left the screen as the credits rolled I whispered "I love you" and Star Wars replied simply with... "I know".

4 stars

The Expendables 3 - review

The Expendables line up features John Rambo, Rocky Balboa, The Terminator, Conan, John Matrix, Ivan Drago, Indiana Jones, Han Solo, Martin Riggs, Mad Max, El Mariachi, Blade and, err, Frasier Crane.

What do the action stars made famous by playing these characters have in common?

Sadly it is that in terms of modern day box office, they are expendable.

None of them have been able to generate a box office hit on their own in quite some time and even with their powers combined they still can't generate that much of an audience.

Much of the "plot" of The Expendables 3 can be seen as a reaction to Hollywood's treatment of the action genre (it begins with rescuing Wesley Snipes from prison for "tax evasion", Stallone decides his team is "getting too old for this shit" and replaces them with a bunch of new kids).

The problem with the film is that instead of rallying against the changes, it embraces them.

The first two films were not very good but at least they were unashamed in their attempts to bring back the hardcore, ultra-violent action films of the Eighties and early Nineties where you would kill a man in cold blood then throw out a cool one-liner.

Here the cast recycle and shoehorn in tenuous links to old catchphrases (Arnie shouts "Get to da choppa!") and the (financial) decision to cut the film for a 12A/PG-13 has completely neutered the action sequences.

Back in 1985, at the climax of Commando Arnold Schwarzenegger single-handedly dispatches 81 people in typically bloody Eighties fashion.

During the final shoot out in The Expendables 3, this body count is probably eclipsed but due to the lack of blood and injury detail instead of being an exciting coherent fight scene is turned into a spectacle that is as ridiculous as the scene in Hot Shots Part Deux where a shoot-out keeps a running total of it exceeding the body count from various movies.

This is compounded by an issue that has been growing ever since the first film and this involves minor *spoilers*.

The biggest irony of The Expendables group is that despite the name, none of them have actually been "expended". No wonder the group is so old, Stallone has never had to replace anybody. Even if someone is shot and injured, the audience fully expects them to turn up at the end to share drinks with the crew. There is just no tension or suspense in the fight scenes.

Recent films like The Raid, The Raid 2 and Snowpiercer have show that it is possibly to make quality (if not commercially successful) R-Rated action movies and the action flows so much better when you are not having to cut out blood or breaking limbs every two seconds.

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks and Stallone should have known better than to try and reinvent the franchise wheel. Terrible as an action film but worth seeing if only for the moment when Stallone managed to say "I Am The Hague" with a straight face... then again it could just have been the effects of Botox.

2 stars

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit - review

Not content with playing a new version of Captain Kirk, Chris Pine steps into the shoes previously worn by Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck in this full system reboot of the Jack Ryan franchise... even if this is the first one to feature his name in the title.

Would the casual cinemagoer actually be able to tell you that The Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger and The Sum Of All Fears were all linked by the same character?

Quick as a flash we speed through John Patrick Ryan's, Jack to his friends, backstory:

A shot of him at London School of Economics tells us he is smart.

Seeing him watch 9/11 on TV and a guy saying "hey, you're American. Sorry man" tells us he's American.

We then cut to a military helicopter in Afghanistan to tell us he is a soldier.

The copter is then attacked and we see him on a stretcher. He is hurt but a hero.

Character building on the most economical of scales.

He recovers in hospital where a date with Keira Knightley is used as an incentive to heal. Some might prefer to stay in a wheelchair! Bazinga!

He is also recruited by Kevin Costner to the CIA to work on Wall Street to follow the money and find potential terrorist groups.

Before you can say "America. F*ck Yeah!", Cut to ten years later and Ryan uncovers a plot by some stereotypical 80s bad guy Russians led by heavily accented Kenneth Branagh (pulling double duty as director too) to launch a terrorist attack on the US and then sell huge reserves of dollars to crush the economy.

Follow that? That's the simplified version that Costner asks Ryan to explain the plot to him (and the audience) in layman terms.

So in the words of Team America: World Police:

"From what I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.N.C.E has gathered, it would be 9/11 times 100.
9/11 times a hundred? Jesus, that's...
Yes, 91,100."

Cue Jack Ryan becoming a fully operational agent which involves him:

having the bathroom fight scene from Casino Royale

several scenes of his girlfriend thinking he is having an affair because he is off doing spy shit before breaking the oath he took when joining the CIA to tell her the truth, which obviously then gets her into immediate danger

the needing to download files from the bad guy's office while his girlfriend distracts him over dinner scene from a Mission Impossible movie

ending with the race against time to find and diffuse a bomb from "EVERY action movie ever made"

Can't say I'm looking forward to the sequel where he must rescue Keira and their newborn child in Jack Ryan's Daughter.

2 stars