Word: sci
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There are a few longueurs, and moments when the plot trips, like Jeremy, over its own complications. Even here there are vagrant delights: a funny, scary chase scene, hints of death and resurrection, and enough sci-fi elements to keep teen-agers happy. But The Secret of NIMH is more important as Bon Bluth's declaration of dependence on a form of popular art that can infuse every corner of the imagination with its rainbow light. If Uncle Walt were to gaze on his renegade nephews, even he might approve...
...ANGELES in 2019 presents few surprises Traffic trangles are thicker and constant rain has replaced the smog, but a skeletal Bradford building still towers over a freakish mob in the high-tech skyline of Blade Runner. Not that the skyline appears very often in Ridley Scott's latest sci-fi film. The director instead focuses on crowded halls and packed rooms, using flying billboards and continuous drizzle to further enclose the outdoor scenes. The atmosphere is stifling; this future world is a cage...
...infiltrated our society and cannot be distinguished from us. This premise, which worked so well in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, fails miserably here. The dazzling effects and set are the entire movie; plot and characterization are virtually nonexistent. Scott, director of Alien, should know how to make believable sci-fi by now. For Blade Runner, he teamed with special effects magician Douglas Trumbull, of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and the dashing Harrison Ford, star of last year's smash Raiders of the Lost Ark. But these three are not enough. The film lacks both focus and depth...
Even fantasy sci-fi films should have a capacity for growth, and even the most deadpan hero can learn to appreciate an enemy. Neither happens in Blade Runner. Ultimately, we learn that the truth has been clear to Ford all along, but realization comes very late and very awkwardly. Life and liberty are everyone's right, preach the robots, one of whom grabs a white dove from the air as he "dies...
After the awards ceremony on closing night, the huge movie screen filled with the letters E.T., and 2,500 merchants and moviemakers became dreamers again. Steven Spielberg had brought his sci-fi romance to Cannes for its world premiere, and throughout the day he had loped down the Carlton corridors dodging the dozens of would-be interviewers, photographers and starlets, all cadging for a moment with the world's most successful director. In the Palais des Festivals he heard applause erupt throughout the screening and watched an audience of grim professionals laugh and cry after two weeks of wheeling...