Tag: Ridley Scott

Aguirre: The Wrath of God

2,383 words

Part 7 of 7 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6)

Translated by Ondrej Mann

This post concludes the series of articles “We and Film,” “Neo-fascism in Film,” and “Sadonacism in Film,” which we have already published on Counter-Currents.

Czech original.

Despite the inflation of images, film is still for modern man what ritual, meditation, or prayer is for traditional man—it allows him to forget himself. (more…)

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In the late 1980s I lived in Brixton, South London. The London in England, that is, not the one in Kentucky or the dozen or so other Londons that are dotted across North America. Occasionally, on a Saturday night after the pubs closed, my friends and I would pile over to the all-night movie show. The famous cinema there was called The Ritzy—formerly The Little Bit Ritzy—and it was a flea-bitten old pit, a relic from the pre-TV golden age of British cinemas. (more…)

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Raw, analog interfaces and whirring computers, primitive digital readouts, clicking binary code, churning cogitators, and flashing buttons. Eerie red light transfusing a zero-gravity space, the silent cockpit of a spaceship, and the white lights of the Mother artificial intelligence mainframe room. The tortured, dying machines of the analog age. (more…)

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Ridley Scott’s Napoleon is a bad movie, but not a terrible one. There are legions of nerds complaining about how Scott got this or that historical detail wrong. Honestly, that’s beside the point. Even if Scott didn’t know Saint Helena from Elba, he could still have made a great movie.

Everyone has heard of Napoleon. But what’s so great about Napoleon? Any film about Napoleon needs to answer that question. But in nearly three hours’ screen time, Scott fails to do so. (more…)

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House of Gucci is a highly entertaining combination of comedy, tragedy, and farce, tracing the decline of the Gucci fashion empire from an Italian family business to a global capitalist brand.

House of Gucci would have been the best Martin Scorsese movie in years — if it hadn’t been directed by Ridley Scott. It has all the Scorsese touches: lots of Italians (albeit Italian-Italians rather than Italian-Americans), a plush running time, studies of characters who are seldom admirable but always interesting, (more…)

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Soul music is said to be the preserve of the Negro, yet the later soul music of the Negro was not the preserve of the Negro, for it very often relied on Jewish production under the likes of Syd Nathan, Ralph Bass, Jerry Wexler, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and on White classical tradition and instrumentation for its orchestral arrangements. (more…)

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Czech translation here

Ridley Scott’s 1982 movie Blade Runner is a science fiction classic and surely the director’s finest work. Blade Runner excels on all levels. It is a highly imaginative vision of the future realized with a stunning visual style. The script is intelligent, even poetic. The cast is uniformly strong, with a number of powerful performances, particularly Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty. The gripping action sequences are acrobatic, balletic, and brutal. But the key to the film’s unsettling emotional power is its deep mythic subtext. (more…)

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I saw Alien: Covenant on the big screen this summer in Budapest. I didn’t write a review then, because another reviewer had it covered. But having seen it for a second time, now on Blu-ray, I feel moved to comment.

Covenant is an excellent film, indeed the best in the series since Scott started it with his path-breaking Alien (1979) — although James Cameron’s Aliens is excellent and iconic in its own right. (more…)

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Blade Runner opened in movie theaters in the summer of 1982 just two weeks after Steven Spielberg’s more heralded E.T., which went on to become the all-time box office moneymaker. Blade Runner, with a $27.5 million budget, took in $27 million at the box office on its first run—hardly a smash—yet it proved its worth in the long run. Almost every science fiction film made since 1982 has been influenced by its production design, photography, and special effects. A new generation of fans has materialized and the film has spawned dozens of Websites on the Internet.  (more…)

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Ridley Scott’s The Martian is a superb movie: suspenseful, inspiring, and deeply moving, with an excellent plot, fine performances, compelling pacing, and completely believable special effects. The Martian in set in the near future when space exploration is once again a national priority and manned Mars missions are regular undertakings.

On one such mission a powerful storm forces a six-man team to evacuate the planet and return to their orbiting base ship while they still have a chance. Unfortunately, botanist Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is swept away in the storm and apparently killed, (more…)

2,640 words

English original here

Film Ridleyho Scotta z roku 1982 Blade Runner se řadí mezi klasická díla sci-fi žánru a představuje vrchol tvorby slavného britského režiséra. Blade Runner vyniká ve všech ohledech. Jedná se o velice nápaditou vizi budoucnosti, uskutečněnou v dechberoucím vizuálním provedení. Herci předvádí solidní výkony, někteří pak až výjimečné – především Rutger Hauer jako Roy Batty. Napínavé akční scény jsou akrobatické, baletní a brutální. Klíč k pochopení znepokojivé emocionální působivosti díla však spočívá v jeho hlubokém mytickém podtextu. (more…)

2,593 words

Czech translation here

Ridley Scott’s 1982 movie Blade Runner is a science fiction classic and surely the director’s finest work. Blade Runner excels on all levels. It is a highly imaginative vision of the future realized with a stunning visual style. The script is intelligent, even poetic. The cast is uniformly strong, with a number of powerful performances, particularly Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty. The gripping action sequences are acrobatic, balletic, and brutal. But the key to the film’s unsettling emotional power is its deep mythic subtext. (more…)

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Greg Johnson and John Morgan join Richard Spencer to discuss Ridley Scott’s 1982 masterpiece Blade Runner, and in particular its disturbing depiction of an overpopulated, inhuman, and multicultural future as well as the questions the film raises about human identity and dignity.  (more…)