Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

My past experience of Blade Runner (1982) consisted of watching the Director's Cut with my dad in 2003 and the Final Cut at AFI in 2015, the latter serving only to enhance my already great appreciation. I'd also read the loose literary basis, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, in between, helping me understand a couple aspects that hadn't gotten much explanation on screen. Thus Dad and I independently got the idea to see the sequel in a theater before long. I can't speak for his optimism, but mine was cautious, noting that (1) long waits usually mean big differences, (2) people were saying nine years ago that Harrison Ford was getting too old to reprise his action roles, (3) Ridley Scott ceded the director's chair to Denis Villeneuve, and (4) Rutger Hauer's Roy Batty couldn't appear in it.

Thirty years after the events of BR, uncannily humanoid organic robots, called "replicants," have become common and mostly legal on Earth, albeit subject to rampant bigotry. Older models, which don't all have the limited lifespan from BR are less cooperative as slaves and thus marked for death at the hands of special forces inexplicably called "blade runners," who are at least typically replicants themselves. LAPD Officer KD6-3.7 (Ryan Gosling), usually going by "K," shows no desire to rebel -- until after the site of one of his hits reveals the fossils of a once-pregnant replicant. Since news of this possibility interferes with the public narrative that replicants are too distinct for human rights, K's boss (Robin Wright) orders him to hunt down and kill the now-adult child. His subsequent detective work continues to blow fuses in his head, metaphorically speaking; and the closer he gets, the more that certain parties try to remove him from the picture....

The Age of Adaline (2015)

There's something to be said for taking a single sci-fi/fantasy concept and running with it. Unlike world building, it doesn't require a lot of fine details; the audience can concentrate where it matters. The premise doesn't even have to be totally fresh if you know what you're doing.

In 1937, a highly improbable accident yields even more improbable results: Adaline (Blake Lively) stops physically aging at 29. A narrator gives pseudo-scientific justification and alludes to a future theory, but it's not important, especially since Adaline herself never learns it. Like some other ageless characters I've known, she makes a point not to stay in one place with the same identity for long, lest she garner unwelcome attention from unethical researchers. This means limited contact with her daughter (Ellen Burstyn), who looks much older than her by the present, when the bulk of the movie takes place. Despite Adaline's understandable aloofness as "Jenny," young man Ellis (Michiel Huisman) persistently courts her. She starts to warm up to him but is not prepared for another unlikely accident: His dad (Harrison Ford) was her boyfriend four decades ago....

Star Wars, Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)

I considered skipping this review, because it's quite likely that you've already formed your opinion from multiple other reviews if not the movie itself by now. But it's also quite likely that you'll take more interest in this subject than in my usual fare, so why not? And it's not like I never read what other people say about what I've already seen.

In a way, TFA is inherently sad from the get-go: Only a generation after the end of the Empire, the galaxy faces an equal if not worse threat called the First Order. General Leia (no longer going by "Princess") naturally leads the Resistance, but Luke Skywalker has lain low for so long that many think him a mere legend, Han Solo and Chewbacca have been up to their old smuggling and other shenanigans more than heroism, R2D2 has been inert in Luke's absence, and C3PO is only so useful without R2. Taking more of the spotlight now are Rey, who resembles a young female Luke with a bit more fire; FN-2187, nicknamed Finn, a rookie stormtrooper disenchanted with the First Order's cruelty; BB-8, a diminutive droid carrying an important map; and Poe, a pilot and BB-8's master. The most prominent villain for now is Kylo Ren, an open Darth Vader wannabe who may actually outdo Vader's command of the Force. Where is the Jedi who can hold his or her own against him?