Blade Runner 2049 (2017) ***

Ridley Scott's “Blade Runner” came out in 1982, and since then it has become a part of the canon, a litmus test for college students judging the taste of potential friends, and a standard by which sci-fi films are judged. Harrison Ford played Deckard, a cop who specialized in hunting down rogue biorobots. These biorobots, called Replicants, look human, but they are built with a 4-year lifespan, to keep them from becoming too independent and too human. That doesn't work, as Deckard learns. The Replicants have the same feelings and existential questions we all do: “Where did I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got?”

Denis Villeneuve's “Blade Runner 2049” picks up a few decades later, on an earth that sucks even more than in the first movie. The cities are crowded, and the countryside is a wasteland of techno-farms, with occasional ghost-cities made uninhabitable by terrorist attacks. Those who can, move off-planet, but colonizing new planets and preparing them for human habitation is labor-intensive, and that's where Replicants come in.

New model Replicants are less likely to rebel than the ones from Deckard's day. A few of those old models still exist, however, hiding out, and they still have blade runners to hunt them down and “retire” them. One of these is “K”(Ryan Gosling), a Replicant himself.

On one of his jobs, K discovers the bones of a dead Replicant. On autopsy, these reveal something inconceivable: She appears to have died in childbirth. Replicants were not designed to be able to reproduce. K's boss, Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright) recognizes this discovery as a huge threat. The possibility of Replicant reproduction would likely inspire even new model Replicants to demand human rights, while inspiring a backlash of fear among humans. She instructs K to find and destroy the child and all evidence of its birth. Meanwhile, the mysterious Niander Wallace, creator of the new model Replicants, wants to find the child to learn the secret of Replicant reproduction.

The central question of “Blade Runner 2049” and the original “Blade Runner” is, “Who gets to be considered a Person?” At the heart of this question lies the reason Replicants are needed in the first place. Wealthy earthlings are eager to get off the blighted earth. In order to have pleasant planets to move to, a large army of workers is needed to terraform the planets. Earth is full to overflowing with poor people who would happily do the work, but once they had made a new planet habitable, they would likely demand their own place on it. Part of the reason those with means leave earth is to escape the unwashed masses. They don't want to bring them along with them. Replicants can be used to do the work, then discarded.

There's also a new candidate for personhood in Denis Villeneuve's future: Artificial Intelligence. K has an AI program called Joi in his apartment, which talks to him and projects a 3-d image of a beautiful woman (Ana de Armas) to keep him company. Joi is just a computer program, as widely-available as Windows 10, but we come to see that K's Joi has a personality of its own and is in love with K.

The Replicants and AIs that populate the film obviously have their own thoughts and feelings. In order to use them as the slave-bots that they were built to be, people have to dehumanize them. It's the same thing we have always done, selecting a group of people to be treated like animals rather than people. It's sad to think that we might one day have flying cars, but still depend on the exploitation of fellow sentient beings.

It's also sad that Denis Villeneuve couldn't make a better sequel to “Blade Runner.” Don't get me wrong. “2049” has a lot to recommend it. The scenes are beautifully shot, the cast is good, and the story is fairly interesting. Ana de Armas is so beautiful, I could watch a whole movie about just her. It was also nice to see Harrison Ford again. The problem is that the movie is slow as molasses. It clocks in at almost 3 hours, and it just isn't worth that. Every scene drags on forever, and despite all that, there were points in the film where things didn't quite make sense, and I got the feeling that some explanatory footage had been cut out.

None of that changes the fact that, as a fan of “Blade Runner,” you are going to have to watch the sequel. Just moderate your expectations.

3 stars out of 5

After Hours (1985) ***

Until I started reading about this film, I had never heard the term “yuppie nightmare cycle,” but I immediately recognized the genre. Film critics have defined the Reagan-era subgenre as a merging of film noir with screwball comedy. Comprised of films like “Into the Night,” “Blind Date,” “Something Wild,” “Desperately Seeking Susan,” and David Lynch's “Blue Velvet,” these are movies about a white yuppie being dragged into a dark, unfamiliar world. There is usually an initial attraction to spontaneity, where the conformist yuppie is drawn to a non-conformist femme fatale. Then the yuppie gets in over his or her head, and winds up struggling to survive in what is often a late-night world of freaks and criminals.

In “After Hours,” Griffin Dunne plays Paul, a mild-mannered office drone. Ostentatiously reading Henry Miller in a cafe, in what I assume is an attempt to score chicks, Paul draws the attention of the quirky, pretty Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), who gives him her number. I've never been a huge Rosanna Arquette fan, myself, but she's pretty cute in this film, and later that night, Paul does what any normal guy would do in this situation, he calls her up. Marcy invites him over, and thus begins the worst night of Paul's life. He winds up in SoHo, penniless, meeting one crazy girl after another, ultimately pursued by an angry mob.

Paul's helpless refrain throughout the film is “I just want to go home!” It's the same refrain as in all these yuppie nightmare movies. Whether it's Tom Cruise in “Risky Business” or Kyle MacLachlan in “Blue Velvet,” the conformist yuppie, having played with fire and gotten burned, longs to get back to his safe, white, ordered world.

These movies can sometimes be frustrating to watch, as the protagonist faces one setback after another, often due to stupid decisions. “After Hours” suffers from some of that, but it's funny and entertaining nonetheless. The movie benefits from a strong cast, and the script successfully walks a line between horror-movie darkness and slapstick comedy. There are a lot of lessons in “After Hours”, but the biggest one, the same message as in most of these yuppie-nightmares, is something you've probably heard from your grandmother: “Nothing good happens after 2 a.m.”

3 stars out of 5

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008) **1/2

I'm not sure that the 2004 cult-classic “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle” needed a sequel, but it sure felt like it did. The gonzo original was one long, sophomoric pot-joke, a crazy adventure full of bizarre mishaps, titties, and random run-ins with Neil Patrick Harris. It was a delight, and it ended on a note that seemed to demand continuation, with the boys deciding to pursue Harold's crush (Paula Garces) to Amsterdam.

The sequel came out 4 years after the original, but it picks up the story the next day. The boys pack their bags for the trip to Amsterdam, which for Kumar means packing porn and weed. Talk about carrying coal to Newcastle! Kumar's idiocy gets the boys arrested, accused of terrorism (Al Queda and North Korea, get it?), and hauled off to Guantanamo Bay. As the title suggests, they escape, hitch a ride back to the mainland, and set off for Texas, where they hope a politically-connected classmate can help them out. Their trip across the south entails, you guessed it: bizarre mishaps, titties, and a random run-in with Neil Patrick Harris.

I pretty quickly became disgusted with myself for watching this movie. The dick jokes and jr-high humor have gotten a bit stale with the years. The relentless marijuana humor has worn out its welcome as well. There's a general feeling that directors Jon Horwitz and Hayden Schlossberg (who co-wrote the first film) are dedicated to re-creating the success of the first film at all costs. I might have been better off just re-watching “White Castle.”

Still, I wound up laughing. “Guantanamo Bay”s saving grace is that it gets better as it goes (or maybe my standards just got lower.) The second act of the film serves as a goofy, but fun celebration of American inclusiveness, showing that Rednecks, Jews, Arabs, Asians, and Indians can all be good-old Americans who want to get high and get laid.

Just as drinking 3 shots of tequila makes you feel like a 4^th shot would be a great idea, “Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle” left me wanting more. I'm not sure that “Guantanamo Bay” is any better an idea than that 4^th shot, but if you loved “White Castle,” you are going to have to satisfy your curiosity and watch the sequel. Go ahead and do it, and deal with the hangover later.

2.5 stars out of 5

The Hitman's Bodyguard (2017) ***1/2

Competing for 2017's Worst Title award is “The Hitman's Bodyguard,” an action-comedy buddy-pic about a couple of badasses. Ryan Reynolds plays Michael Bryce, a high-end executive bodyguard whose career takes a dive after one of his clients takes a bullet. He gets a chance to redeem himself by protecting Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson), a professional hitman set to provide evidence at the Hague against a ruthless dictator guilty of war crimes. Naturally, the dictator would rather not face justice for his crimes, so he sends a pack of mercenaries to kill Kincaid and complicate Bryce's job.

“The Hitman's Bodyguard” isn't exactly going to provide you with a lot of food for thought. It's about blowing things up, shooting people, and making you laugh, and it does those things reasonably well. Jackson and Reynolds have good chemistry, and Salma Hayek lights up the screen as Kincaid's wife. Elodie Yung, who plays Bryce's love interest, isn't very interesting, but fortunately she isn't on-screen a lot. Otherwise, the action sequences are good, and the story hums right along. It's an enjoyable action comedy.

Success in the movie business has little to do with how good a film actually is. This film made money, which automatically means there has to be a sequel. In Hollywood's typical, subtle fashion, the sequel to this one is tentatively titled “The Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard.” If that title sticks, then at least “The Hitman's Bodyguard” won't seem like the dumbest movie title ever anymore.

3.5 stars out of 5