It’s 2019 and downtown Los Angeles is full of flying cars, supersized video billboards, neon lights, and technogarbage. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a charming-yet-weatherbeaten ex-police officer, whose former position as ‘Blade Runner’ involved tracking down bioengineered human ‘replicants’ (beings so indistinguishable it takes expert knowledge and interrogation to tell them apart from real human beings). Deckard is coerced out of retirement to chase down three particularly nasty replicants who have gone AWOL (played by Rutger Hauer, Joanna Cassidy, and Darryl Hannah). Deckard starts by meeting with the Tyrell Corporation who created this particular model, where he befriends a woman named Rachael (Sean Young) who becomes his ally throughout this mission.

This is the Final Cut version (2007), the only version over which Ridley Scott had complete artistic control. Blade Runner is inarguably a classic, a visual feast with outstanding cinematography, vibrant art direction, and an excellent plot. It’s cool to see what people in 1982 thought the future would look like, but instead of steam filled, neon-clad streets serving all night noodles, we just have pocket phones. GROSS. It’s adapted from the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, a speed freak and creative visionary who channelled paranoid delusions and spiritual experiences into literary gold.