"Blade Runner 2049" by Denis Villeneuve (2017)

Of course, I had to check this one out but I was very cautious and reserved upon approaching something that attempts to follow the footsteps of such iconic predecessor. Good news: director Denis Villeneuve does not try to match it or surpass 1982. movie - he creates his own vision, which is fairly faithful in the spirit to the original, but wraps it all in spectacular visual effects. 

If you think that original "Blade runner" was dark, think again - this world is completely bleak and hopeless, constantly grey, apocalyptic and obviously at the end of its life circle. Stunning to watch, but not really enjoyable, kind of makes you want to open the windows and let some sun in the room. Everything in this world is fake and build on some kind of illusions and visual gimmickry - we are constantly treated with electronic images that suddenly malfunction, leaving us with chilling realisation that this is not real. "Real" is the concept of utter importance here, since even the main character, blade runner officer Ryan Gosling yearns for something real - all the commodities are for sale, nothing is real, everything is stored in chips and people basically live in some sort of nightmare where born is the opposite of created. Just like in original movie, here we have blade runner eliminating replicants but since he is replicant himself (is he?) this task has deep moral dilemma - not that one would guess it from Gosling's unmoving face, which is cold and inhuman according to his character, but eventually he does develop some sort of inner soul-searching. Depending on one's attention span, the movie last perhaps a bit too long - Villeneuve greatly enjoys the visual side of it and one gets the impression that he could film desolate landscapes forever - when Harrison Ford finally arrives on the scene, I was already exhausted, but still awake enough to appreciate his turn. Mind you, personally I find Rutger Hauer the real hero of the original "Blade runner" so Ford's character kind of leaves me uninvolved - with all its visual wizardry, nothing in this movie comes close to "tears in rain" moment which is still deeply carved in my heart.