Blade Runner 2049 was the best film I saw in 2017.

I am genuinely sad that Blade Runner 2049 seems to have been forgotten about already. It was a fantastic movie and it honestly may be better than the original.

This year so far I have seen Dunkirk (incredible), Spiderman Homecoming (solid), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men tell no Tales (please stop making these, the first one was good, second was decent, third was fine, fourth was bad, this one was god-awful), and Baby Driver (great). I want to see Thor Ragnarok, The Last Jedi, and I keep hearing that Three Billboards and Ladybird are excellent, and Coco is good apparently too.

I honestly thought Dunkirk was going to win me over completely. I saw Baby Driver a week prior and that was a fun ride (pun intended), but not Movie of the Year for me. Dunkirk's absolutely unrelenting control over pace and time had me floored when I walked out of the theatre. An instant classic, one of the best WWII films ever made. I went home and called my best friend and we gushed over it for an hour. It was Christopher Nolan's best work since The Prestige.

But then I see Blade Runner 2049 on my Thanksgiving weekend. I went on my own because I had nothing to do that afternoon and to be honest I was expecting to dislike it. I love the original, but Hollywood has a real problem with sequels. Especially a sequel that is over 30 years later. The trailers, to me at least, left me expecting 2049 to be an action film. No real story, no existential themes, just an action blockbuster set in the world of Blade Runner. I am happy to say I was wrong. Denis Villeneuve showed his affection for the original with this movie. The acting, the cinematography, the plot, the writing, the soundtrack(!!), everything came together masterfully. From the moment the film began to the point where I fell asleep that night I was rendered speechless. It felt like time had passed, the callbacks to the original were tasteful and natural, I loved that Deckard did return but he did not completely steal the show, and that the ending was not concrete but it was not begging for a sequel like the final cut of the original. We get at least one or two great films every year, but I think it speaks to the quality of 2049 when I just kept thinking "it has been years since I have seen a movie like this".

Submitted December 03, 2017 at 12:26PM by Axonn101 http://ift.tt/2kiCbau