Blade Runner Reviews

A motion picture masterpiece on the short list of Reasons Why This Medium is Worthwhile.

Full Review | Original Score: A+

It takes a particularly weird kind of sincerity to end a movie that has been for its entire running time an exploration of surfaces... with its most sublime and humane gesture.

Full Review | Original Score: 10/10

This is perhaps the only science-fiction film that can be called transcendental.

Full Review | Original Score: A-

[VIDEO] Blade Runner is one of the most enigmatic yet problematic science fiction films ever made.

Full Review | Original Score: A+

A quintessential film noir of the 1980s, much underestimated at the time of release.

Full Review | Original Score: A-

A dark, philosophical sci-fi drama for older teens.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

...a hopelessly overrated piece of work.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

As a display terminal for the wizardry of Designers Lawrence G. Paull, Douglas Trumbull and Syd Mead, the movie delivers.

Full Review

From the opening shot of a Los Angeles cityscape at night in the year 2019, it is clear that Scott has conjured up something special.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5

For all its armor of brutalizing urban dystopia (and, boy, is there a lot of that -- you could fund a war on terror with the fog- and rain-machine budgets alone), Blade Runner has a gooey center.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

It may be a quarter of a century old, but Blade Runner still seems like the future . . .

Full Review

Paradoxically, Scott's crowded, misty, neon streetscape seems even murkier; fuzz I chalked up to VHS tapes is production designer Lawrence G. Paull dumping ashtrays in the air.

Full Review | Original Score: B-

Probably close to being on par with Fritz Lang's Metropolis in terms of grandeur -- although of a stunningly different and far more unsettling kind.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

The new version helped me see the soul because, ironically, this rendering is so much brighter. Noir or not, a film you can't see properly is a film you can't fully appreciate.

| Original Score: 3.5/4

Though it's a triumph of visual futurism and an ornament to sci-fi cinema as well as to cinema in general, I resist it on some level.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

It's an overwhelming, immersive experience, a total creation of a possible future so complete that you don't need exposition to know how we got from here to there (2019).

Full Review

Stylistically, Blade Runner is the Citizen Kane of sci-fi movies.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10

Scott's film may keep us at arm's length, but it holds us, too.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5

Blade Runner, which does not look one bit dated, envelops us so completely in its off-kilter, near-future world.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4

The changes are minor, but the overall effect is a much cleaner, more logical, and more organically flowing movie.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4