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Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #20: Blade Runner

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) is one of those movies that gets more relevant with each passing decade. Set in a (now passed) future in which Los Angeles is overrun with people and pollution, the story focuses on artificial lifeforms clashing with their human creators. As the chase for these lifeforms progresses, writers Hampton Francher and David Peoples imply they may not be so different from the humans chasing them. If this sounds topical in 2024, imagine how relevant it will sound ten years from now. When writing these amateur reviews, I usually try to think back on the first time I watched the movie and what I felt at the time. This is tricky with Blade Runner considering there have been five versions of the film released since the 1980s. I believe the first version I did see on TV was the original theatrical version with the narration to guide the audience since executives thought that was needed. I eventually disagreed and purchased the Final Cut on Blu-Ray to see th...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #357: The long Goodbye

Sometimes in a detective story the mystery is not half as fun as the detective stuck in the chaos of the story. Philip Marlow is one of those detectives. His name is synonymous with Hollywood noir and in The Long Goodbye (1973), he dives deep into a mystery involving a murder, then a suicide, then a missing person, and eventually a very violent gangster operating in sunny Los Angeles. One thing I love about this version is that this detective loves his cat enough to go buy him food at three o’clock in the morning. Now that is a dedicated pet lover. The late great director Robert Altman starts the action at a slow pace to introduce Marlowe (Eliott Gould) as he wakes up to his hungry cat. Here is a man who falls asleep in his clothes, always the same suit and tie, and is either constantly smoking or lighting a new cigarette. He is a friendly person, nice enough to pick up an item for his neighbours while going out to get cat food. It probably helps that said neighbours are five y...

Empire Magazine (2008) Greatest Movies List - #24: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Looking back on the first movie in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings saga, my first thought is that people really need fantasy in their lives. The Fellowship of the Ring came out in 2001, a year when to say the least the news were pretty depressing. An escape to a fantasy land filled with wizards, hobbits, elves, and dwarves engaged in a fight of good versus of evil came at just the right time. You get a certain feeling when you sit in a theater, the lights dim, and you are swept away to the beauty of Middle Earth, via New Zealand. Given the length of Jackson’s movies, it is also a fairly long escape from reality. Prior to sitting down in that theater in 2001, my knowledge of J.R.R Tolkien’s fantasy work was fair at best. I believe I had read the books at least once before and has seen the animated movie from the 1980s, but I was no Stephen Colbert. Since watching that first movie my appreciation for Tolkien’s world has grown as I own the extended cuts of every one of the...

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