Lost love is “lost” because not only is the love gone, but you are misplaced as well, changed into something you weren't before, and it may be years before you realize it. When the crying is done, you move on - you adjust, you grow, you heal. Maybe you’ll end up meeting someone better than that awful person who ripped up your heart - someone who makes you feel alive and free, someone who makes you forget and forgive the pain your last love caused. Or instead, maybe you’ll slowly slip into despair, longing and regret. Maybe you’ll sit and wait for that text, or that e-mail, or that phone call… all but certain that none of them will ever come. Maybe you’ll sit and wait and watch the door, hoping he/she will come through it. Maybe he/she will even be smiling when you next see him/her… or maybe they won’t.
Nocturnal Animals, the second film from Tom Ford, the fashion designer who so impressively made his foray into filmmaking with A Single Man seven years ago, is based on a novel that bears little resemblance to this movie. Ford discovered the novel "Tony and Susan" by Austin Wright and contemplated how to actually adapt the book into two different films. The more he churned the story in his mind, however, his imagination began to formulate something that resulted in this offbeat, non-linear tale of a woman who believed she was growing into a better person by casting her first husband aside, then comes to realize over the next decade how guilty she was of hurting him and destroying her own happiness.
Beginning with images so incredibly silly, yet so awfully uncomfortable to view, Ford instantly sets a tone that will make discovering all the traits of these characters, both the “real” ones and the characters in the novel-within-the-movie, all the more impactful. The images are part of a conceptual art exhibit hosted by Amy Adams' Susan, a gallery-owning high roller in the Los Angeles art world. Susan is beautiful and haughty, living an extravagant lifestyle funded largely, we assume, by her husband Hutton, played with born-into-privilege knowingness by Armie Hammer, and thoroughly, thoroughly miserable. After her opening, Susan gives herself a nasty paper cut opening a package: the manuscript of a first novel by Edward Sheffield, Susan’s first husband. She’s disturbed by the package and the accompanying note, telling her that he has dedicated the novel to her.
Susan soon settles in with Edward’s novel. Without warning, we cut to Susan’s visual interpretation of the book. This story-within-a-story begins with Tony (Jake Gyllenhaal) driving his wife, Laura (Isla Fisher), and their daughter, India (Ellie Bamber), to a weekend home. They’re driving through the night on barren Texas roads, and in an instant, things go very, very wrong. It isn’t fair to describe what Tony and his family endures, as to do so would diminish its horror. I will say that this scene of roadside terror is one of the most frightening things I’ve seen on film since, maybe, Blue Velvet. This has nothing to do with physical violence, as none is shown, but the scene takes its time tormenting us. It is so realistic, and it could happen to any of us - you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time and your world is forever altered.
Susan is so disturbed by the novel that the almost subliminal questions she’s been having about her life begin to make their way to the surface. Is this text some fictionalized version of some horrific event that happened in her and Edward’s own shared past? Her memories of life with Edward then present a third line of narrative, with Edward (also played by Gyllenhaal) and Susan as young and idealistic lovers. He encourages her to pursue art - not as a business, but as a calling. She wants him to be more responsible, or realistic. She dreads turning into her materialistic upper-crust mother, but he’s not so sure she really dreads it. Emotional damage ensues, but nothing like the stuff that happens in Edward’s novel. This is a movie that, among other things, trusts the viewer to make sense of it, or maybe demands the viewer make sense of it. All the threads pull together, we presume, when Edward and Susan (whose current life continues to turn to rot as she makes her way through Edward’s novel) agree to meet again in “real life.”
The triumph of the film is how the individual stories are kept in the air so beautifully by Ford, and how the individual actors can convey so much about their jaded, miserable characters with a minimum of exposition (Armie Hammer’s Hutton, away on business, is cheating on her so blatantly he’s almost too bored to hide it anymore). Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the scumbag who terrorizes the novel’s “hero” shows a side of his ability audiences have never seen before, and of course, Amy Adams is her usual spectacular self. Michael Shannon also achieves a career high (and an Academy Award nomination) with his dry but enigmatic portrayal of a Texas lawman with nothing left to lose.
The final scene is one that, I presume, intends to have viewers debating as they leave the theater, and I admit that I would have welcomed such a discussion had I not been alone when I saw the movie. I suppose that without the benefit of a human sounding board for my reaction, I found Nocturnal Animals to be a reminder of how much the loves we leave behind form us in such ways that continue to shape our outlook on life. Whether those past loves were good or bad, happy or sad, we will have suffered damage of some sort along the way, and even inflicted some of our own. Seeing such a simple lesson in dealing with adult emotions told in such a powerful fashion may have been a tad uncomfortable, but it made for a movie that is definitely worth seeing.
It’s been thirty-five years since the original Blade Runner film was in theaters, and nobody saw it then. Well, ALMOST nobody saw it, but thank God for VHS tapes and cable TV, for through these media, some folks realized what they’d missed. Sure, that tacked-on “happy ending” felt out of place, and the sporadic voice-over narration that kept popping up in places was really unnecessary… but oh, THAT WORLD! The visual style and atmosphere director Ridley Scott created, the Philip Marlowe-type character so cooly portrayed by Harrison Ford, the haunting score by famed composer Vangelis, and the ideas put forth about life and what it means! There’s a reason the market allowed (demanded?) Warner Bros. to keep funding the restoration and re-editing efforts that eventually led to Ridley Scott being granted the chance to craft a definitive edit of the film - the reason being that the seeds of a true science fiction masterpiece were always there, and 2007’s “Final Cut” of the film is exactly that. 
So here we are with Blade Runner 2049, set thirty years after the events of the first film, following a new “Blade Runner” (policemen charged with the task of retiring/executing rogue artificial humans, called “Replicants”), known only as “K,” and portrayed by Ryan Gosling. He is assigned the task of tracking down one certain Replicant whose existence can, as his superior officer (played by Robin Wright) explains it, can “break the world.” She doesn’t mean that literally, of course (that would be just plain silly), but apparently society would totally fall apart if this particular Replicant becomes known to the world at large. In an attempt at “breaking” the world, the blind trillionaire industrialist (Jared Leto) whose company manufactures Replicants is also trying to find this particular rogue Replicant, and sends his Replicant assistant/hit-woman Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) to find it and, more importantly, stop K from finding it. 
I won’t divulge much more plot than that, as doing so would (A) take too long, and (B) distract you from what this movie does best, which is the same thing the original film did best - create a world in a stunning, visually-breathtaking fashion. Director Denis Villeneuve (director of both Sicario and Arrival) helms this film, with Ridley Scott producing, and a more appropriate choice to follow Sir Ridley could not have been made, as he so wonderfully keeps the SciFi-noir feel and vibe of the original film. 
Villeneuve also reteams with his cinematographer from both Sicario and Arrival, Roger Deakins, and this master photographer has topped himself once again. His work here is just as impressive (perhaps even more so) than anything he's done before. The constant gloom and rain, with neon and vehicle lights slashing through; the harsh whites in K's police station; the almost-red glow that permeates The Wallce Corporation's interiors. Combined with incredible set design and visual effects, this movie is a veritable package of Oscar nominations to come.
Some critics point to the film’s two hour and forty-four minute runtime as a fault, but I strongly disagree. I never found Blade Runner 2049 to be slow. Many have used the term "slow burn" to describe the pace of this film, and while I agree with that description, I'm reluctant to use it myself because I understand how that term can be interpreted by some to mean "it's long, and while some people like it that way, I probably won't." Having the process of K come across each plot-point, then have him silently react to it and process its meaning, is what kept me mentally leaning forward in my seat. The original film wasn't in a hurry, although to be fair, it didn't have as much ground to cover as this follow-up does. This movie moves along at a pace that enhances our anticipation of the next move in K's journey, and a more rapid delivery of plot-points would lessen their effect.
Blade Runner 2049 is the kind of movie that film students will be writing papers on for decades. This isn’t your average “it’s so deep, man”-type of film. This is not Fight Club, American Psycho, or Inception, where the depth and complexity fade after a first viewing into simple entertainment. This is more like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Solaris or, yes, Blade Runner. A film that resists easy understandings. A film that is open to endless intertextual reading when examined in light of its source material, director, cinematographer, and stars. A film whose flaws reflect deep flaws in society. A film that tries to tell us something novel about ourselves. A film that re-invents film form and language to shake you to your very core, if you’ll only let it.
Early box office returns show that this film may suffer the same fate as the original, in the sense that mass audiences are not flocking to see it on its first theatrical run. Make no mistake, however - Blade Runner 2049 is at least as good as Blade Runner, and only time will tell if it reaches the legendary status of its predecessor. The most impactful moments in this film are in a different class than anything in Ridley Scott’s original. They distinguish it as its own film, and justify its existence as a sequel in the age of the remake, reboot, and franchise.
