Life, Uh...

Year: 2018

Director: J. A. Bayona

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall

Run Time: 2 hours 8 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Jurassic Park is one of my favorite movies in the history of cinema, so I don't know whether that makes it shocking or completely understandable that I felt no interest in checking out Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. The fifth entry in the long-running blockbuster franchise is about as far from that original film as you can get while still being about CGI dinosaurs. Jurassic Park has more in common with When Harry Met Sally than Fallen Kingdom.

Approach with caution.

So, Fallen Kingdom picks up several years after Jurassic World. Dinosaurs are living in peace on Isla Nublar following the destruction of the theme park, but a volcanic eruption threatens their survival. Dinosaur rights activist Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and velociraptor trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) are sent to the island on a rescue mission by Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), a proxy for John Hammond's former business partner Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell). Because you can never trust the rich, in real life and especially the movies, this trip may not be as kosher as it seems.

Along for the ride are sharp-tongued paleobiologist Zia (Daniella Pineda) and wimpy tech dweeb Franklin (Justice Smith), as well as what the movie paints as years of emotional baggage and sexual tension between Owen and Claire, even though it's just thin air. Also there's a little girl (Isabella Sermon) running around, because what's a Jurassic Park movie without an unnecessary child character?

Better.

Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom is a phenomenally dumb movie that takes the franchise in a phenomenally dumb direction that paints future Jurassic directors into a corner, forcing them to make a phenomenally dumb movie as well, whenever that should come down the pike. It's so dumb that its dumbness is literally infecting the future. Its dumbness has slipped out of the timestream, and not even Doctor Who can stop it.

Sometimes this dumbness is used to its advantage, like how every shot of Claire begins at her sensible shoes and pans up, throwing a hilariously overbearing number of winks at the "high heels in the jungle" controversy. Mostly it is used to its detriment, like the rapidly fluctuating number of guards around at any given time when our heroes need to sneak around the bad guy's lair that totally diminish any tension or stakes because they're never around when plot stuff needs to happen. 

Sometimes Fallen Kingdom hits the bad-good strides I was hoping for, including a sterling moment where Bryce Dallas Howard shrieks the word "Chair!" with a hurricane-blast of emotion like she was gunning for that clip to end up on her Oscar reel. In fact, she's frequently too good for the material, but in the completely wrong direction, turning random lines into scenery-obliterating grenades of diva drama that would make Gone with the Wind blush. 

"These raptors will never be hungry again!"

While Howard is busy either giving the best or the worst performance in the movie, the rest of the cast just flounders around, drowning in a sea of unmotivated decision-making, inscrutable dialogue, and CGI mayhem. Chris Pratt seems devoted to being as bland a male cypher as possible, and a heap of character actors dawdle around the edges with nothing in particular to do. And don't get me started on Jeff Goldblum, who I don't particularly like on a good day, and who is positively catatonic in his one-scene cameo.

The only person who seems to have actually showed up to work is J. A. Bayona, who directs the crap out of the movie. Not out of the actors, mind you. But as far as the imagery goes, Bayona is the second best director to ever touch one of these movies. His composition of light and shadow is frequently exquisite, especially in the bizarre turn the film takes toward gothic mansion horror in the third act. He directs the movie like a German expressionist masterpiece, only instead of using the implication to drive the horror, you also get to see a whole lot of CGI dino-monster.

If this were any other movie, I'd call that the best of both worlds. But Fallen Kingdom isn't the best of anything. Bayona really is working it (to the extent that I'd even recommend seeing this movie, just to bask in the way he captures the feeling of majesty and awe that Spielberg so capably honed in the original film), but it's still a dumb, milquetoast popcorn epic that doesn't have a lot to offer in terms of narrative, character, acting, fun, or much of anything a person would come to this movie for.

I mean, I came for the visual references to Nosferatu, but I ain't your average bear.

Oh, and the score isn't even good. John Williams' iconic themes are mostly shelved in favor of a bizarre choral piece that shrieks in your face how big and important every scene in the movie is. It's the movie in a nutshell: Fallen Kingdom tries very hard to be a lot of different things, and it fails in a lot of spectacular ways. The things that work really work, but if you made a list of those things, it would fit on a Post-It note.

TL;DR: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is a bland nothing of a popcorn flick, although its director clearly has his head in the game.

Rating: 5/10

Word Count: 916
Reviews In This Series
Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993)
The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1997)
Jurassic Park III (Johnston, 2001)
Jurassic World (Trevorrow, 2015)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Bayona, 2018)

Marvel's Contract Negotiations: The Movie!

Year: 2018

Director: Joe & Anthony Russo

Cast: C'mon

Run Time: 2 hours 29 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

So, the time has come. More or less the entirety of modern cinema has led to this, the culmination of ten years of multi-million dollar blockbuster filmmaking. People online have made fun of Marvel's comment about Avengers: Infinity War being the most ambitious crossover event in cinema history, but people online don't have a great track record of thinking things through. Marvel is right. Infinity War is an act of pure Hollywood hubris, cramming as many successful properties into one punch-kicking chunk as humanly possible. It was either going to be the best movie ever made or a fully incomprehensible hash.

Unfortunately, because the world doesn't live in binaries like we want it to, Infinity War lands somewhere in between. But honestly, that's the best case scenario, because it could have been so much worse and frankly we as a species don't deserve the glory of what would have happened if they threaded that needle.

But we DO deserve Danai Gurira and Chris Evans' beard being in as many movies as possible, so at least we're getting that started.

Oh boy. This is the part where we recap the plot of the movie. Wish me luck. 

Umm... remember all the Marvel movies since 2008? Well, you'd better. Every character you've ever known and loved and a bunch of characters who you assume are from the ones you didn't see are in danger, because the big purple Jay Leno alien known as Thanos (Josh Brolin) is finally ready to bedazzle his Polly Pocket glove with the sparkly Infinity stones that have been cropping up oh so often lately. Once he collects them all, he can send in the box tops to receive his prize: the death of half the population of the universe.

Turns out, people don't like that idea, so pretty much everyone who has a superpower or who looks good in a leather catsuit have assembled to prevent this catastrophe on as many fronts as possible. Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Rocket (Bradley Cooper voice, Sean Gunn mocap), and Groot (Vin Diesel) search for a mythical god-killing weapon. Meanwhile the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy - Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Drax (Dave Bautista), and Mantis (Pom Klementieff) - head to cut off Thanos at the site of some Infinity Stone or other. 

Meanwhile meanwhile, Iron Man (Robert Downey, Jr.) has disappointed girlfriend Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) by hopping onto the ship of Thanos' right-hand monster Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) to save Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) with stowaway Spider-Man (Tom Holland).

Meanwhile meanwhile meanwhile, Vision (Paul Bettany) and Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) are trying to bone in peace, but he's got a big ol' Infinity Stone in his head so he must be evacuated to Wakanda by war criminals Captain America (Chris Evans), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), and Falcon (Anthony Mackie) into the custody of Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) and also Hulk is there (Mark Ruffalo).

Did I miss anything? Oh yes, 45% of the cast. Well, I tried. I really did.

I'm getting why Thanos wants to destroy half of these people. It would really make things easier to follow.

Much like the screenwriters of Infinity War, I really don't know where to start. There's a lot of good in Infinity War and a lot of bad, but they're all hopelessly entangled. Maybe we should start with Thanos, who has been lurking in the background of this franchise since the end credits tease in 2012's Avengers. The movie really wants to have a sympathetic villain, but doesn't quite stick the landing. Maybe it's the fact that it's easier to relate to someone who doesn't look like a CGI gummy bear. Maybe they cashed in their small supply of Good Villain points to make Killmonger back in February. Maybe it's just the fact that every time the script shifts to its serious tone, the gears start to grind a little bit. I'm going to assume it's all the above, but let's discuss the latter.

The screenplay, from the writers behind your favorite Marvel entries including Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor: The Dark World, is kind of a mess. Whenever it attempts to get profound (as any apocalyptic movie is tempted to do), it adopts a clownish grimace and forces its characters through a gauntlet of the most maudlin, overwrought monologues yet known to man. Combined with the barbaric clunkiness of the exposition every time that rears its ugly head, a lot of sequences in this movie are just punishing to watch.

A scene where you can see exactly where it's going within seconds drags out its overheated drama for full minutes, jam-packed with explanatory dialogue that finds endless ways to rephrase "you say that things are THIS way... But they're THAT way!" Infinity War never cuts to the chase, and its complicated labyrinth of life-or-death contrivances, arbitrary ticking clock action sequences, and bizarre character motivations isn't smoothed out by how painful and empty the emotional scenes are.

But it's hard to drum up stakes when you know that there are going to be 18 more of these movies in the next, like, three months. Especially when the punches are as hyperbolically pulled as this one. The Marvel films have always had a problem with balancing the power levels of its various characters, but Thanos is so perilously overpowered that when he stoops to the level of a punchfight, you wonder why he doesn't just crush these people like ants. His strength and ability wax and wane exactly as the plot needs them to, and that almost completely neuters his ability to be an impressive villain. He's literally upstaged by his sidekick Ebony Maw, who has a crazy frightening countenance, a startlingly powerful telekinetic ability, and a much more mustache-twistingly eeevil approach to his work.

The fact that the movie doesn't realize how freaking terrifying he is just goes to show that you shouldn't add characters willy nilly when you're stuck with the ones you've been teasing for a decade.

This arid, emotionless state of affairs isn't helped by the cast, which is like 800 pounds of sexy glowering shoved into a five pound bag. Whether it's because they're finally grown tired of their characters or if they just feel like they don't have to try too hard considering they'll only get like five minutes of screentime, a lot of our team roster here is on autopilot. Much like the script, these performances are leaning hard on the assumption that you already know and love these characters and they don't have to try too hard to earn your trust.

Robert Downey, Jr. has obviously getting tired of playing Iron Man for some time, and Chris Evans has literally been fatigued by the lifestyle he's had to live to keep Captain America afloat, but their disinterest is front and center here. Mark Ruffalo also seems to have lost his hold on what exactly Hulk is doing in these movies, and some of the one-scene reappearances from actors like Idris Elba are clearly catnapping. And Gwyneth Paltrow is practically comatose.

Luckily, this isn't an actors' movie. This is a posing in tight shirts movie, and that more than does the trick. And a lot of material is patched up by the people who really are pulling their weight, usually the newer additions to the franchise. The Guardians of the Galaxy, fresh off their sequel, are still packing a comic punch that keeps the lighter tone in the air, Danai Gurira from Black Panther owns the screen with just a twitch of her lip, and Chris Hemsworth is still harnessing the Kiwi magic that made Tho: Ragnarok so special. Plus, Tom Holland is flat out great, giving me the only scene that actually impacted my emotions in any way at all.

Even though the Iron-Spidey suit is... questionable.

OK, finally we've transitioned into the good parts of the movie, of which there are quite a lot. In an infinite universe all things are possible, and there's no universe as big as the MCU, so there was always going to be just as much good as bad. Or... almost as much.

The action scenes aren't all spectacular, but they're definitely engaging popcorn cinema, and one fight that brings back the magical aesthetics of Doctor Strange is a decadent visual feast, reminiscent of Dumbledore and Voldemort's showstopping battle in the Ministry of Magic in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Aesthetically, the film comes alive for a lot of its spacefaring adventures, painting worlds and landscapes we've never seen before with candy colors that are drunk on the visual potential of comic books. Not every setting is perfect (a climactic battle is staged in a location where everything is a different shade of "rust"), but there's a lot of big budget whimsy to be had here.

And when the script does shift to its lighter tones, the comedy pretty much always works. Obviously laughs are in the mouth of the beholder, but over the past few days since I saw this movie my mind has been irresistibly drawn back to a lot of the one-liners, of which I have retained a much higher quantity and with greater accuracy than even most straight-up comedy films I like. Again, the best of these are delivered by the actors who are actually trying, but everybody gets a shot at a line or two that undeniably works.

And... fine. Not all the melodrama is bad. I wish I could talk about it without spoiling it, but I can't, so I'll suffice it to say that a metanarrative decision on the parts of the filmmakers really drives home the emotional impact of an event in the third act, retroactively making it feel much more brutal than it felt, at least to me, in the moment. Ask me in the comments if you want more detail on that.

Anyway, there's really a lot wrong here, but I'm going to err on the side of enjoying popcorn cinema and forgive some of its sins in favor of the parts I did really like, at least on a shallow entertainment level. The sheer amount of balls they manage to juggle is impressive, and while it doesn't feel seamless, it's at least comprehensible, which it almost certainly didn't seem like it was going to be.

TL;DR: Avengers: Infinity War is surprisingly legible and certainly fun, but emotionally unavailable due to its jam-packed story.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1764

Reviews In This Series

Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014)

Avengers: Age of Ultron (Whedon, 2015)

Captain America: Civil War (Russo & Russo, 2016)

Doctor Strange (Derrickson, 2016)

Black Panther (Coogler, 2018)

Avengers: Infinity War (Russo & Russo, 2018)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed, 2018)

Popcorn Kernels: Q4 2016 Review Purge

In which I muck out my annual New Year’s backlog with mini-reviews of 2016 movies that just barely missed the cut.

Passengers

Year: 2016

Director: Morten Tyldum

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Chris Pratt, Michael Sheen

Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Two interstellar travelers are awoken from cryosleep 90 years before they reach their destination.

Passengers doesn’t know what it is. Is it a chamber piece about human durability? Is it a romance about how the love between two people can overcome all obstacles? Is it a soft sci-fi action film about two people stranded in the cold expanse of space? Passengers at times attempts to be any and all of these things, but here’s the secret. I know what it is: It’s a feature-length Apple commercial.

OK, not literally. Literally it’s a feature-length Sony commercial, as evidenced by some truly hilarious intergalactic product placement. But what I mean by this is that Passengers is full of immaculate creamy white textures and burbling electronic music, is exceedingly pleasant, and lingers in the memory for exactly 0.35 seconds. This ain’t a bad thing. An unchallenging film is sometimes just what you need, and the simplicity of Passengers allows it to act as a clear lens, magnifying the heat of the two stars burning bright at its center.

Sure, it’s stupid. Its infrequent feints into action territory come at the expense of any sort of logic or coherence, and its finale is mind-numbingly implausible. But it takes itself lightly enough that the goofy excess becomes joyful sci-fi window dressing, a loopy analogue to the struggle of the two characters at its heart. And Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence are good in this movie, insofar as they just stand still and emit charisma as good movie stars are able to do.

Basically, whenever Passengers tries to have a plot, it threatens to rattle apart (especially during moments of Weyland Utani-esque foreshadowing that thud to the floor like it’s an electromagnet and go absolutely nowhere). But it excels at big, sloppy sci-fi spectacle, especially during the occasional moments where it remembers that gravity in space is like, kinda funky.

It’s shallow, but it’s far from a waste of time. And as loathe as I am to admit it, Thomas Newman’s score – which feels a little like it was written for a silicon valley corporate training video – stirred something in my godforsaken, electro-loving soul. Passengers is probably your best bet in theaters right now if you’ve already caught up with Rogue One and Moana and want to spend an evening away from the cold.

Rating: 7/10

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Year: 2016

Director: Taika Waititi

Cast: Sam Neill, Julian Dennison, Rima Te Wiata 

Run Time: 1 hour 41 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

A man and his foster son get lost in the New Zealand bush, inciting a nationwide manhunt that propels them to hide out in the wilderness.

Remind me again why the don’t set all fairy tales in New Zealand? Hunt for the Wilderpeople takes after Lord of the Rings as a visual exploration of just how f**king majestic the New Zealand landscape can be, and although it’s set in our reality it becomes just as riveting a fantasy. It doesn’t seek to pull away from its storybook influences at all. Hell, there are chapter titles dividing up the ten major segments. This is a daggum fairy tale and it is gorgeous.

In essence, Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a tale of two dissimilar people who are thrown together to become unlikely friends, but it’s so much more than that. Sometimes it’s a wry, silly adventure movie with a child’s sense of wonder. Sometimes it’s a scalpel-sharp satire about societal norms and what constitutes a traditional family. Sometimes it’s a lush, large-scale epic with Tangerine Dream-esque synth cues quivering over the soundtrack. It’s a lot of things, but what they all have in common is that they’re pretty brilliant. 

Sam Neil has played a curmudgeon who needs to open his heart to a child before and he does it well here, but as a scene partner, Julian Dennison blows Jurassic Park’s Lexi and Tim out of the water like they’re rubber ducks. The young actor perfectly captures the character’s arc, nailing the nuance of his prickly exterior and displaying a world of pain and emoting on his face as he slowly lets his guard down. And comic timing must be genetic, because someone should have suffered through decades of training to be able to deliver jokes that well.

Oh yeah, did I mention this film was funny? It’s earnest and fantastical with the occasional sharp edge, but it’s also downright hilarious. Every character is a tile in a perfect mosaic, and every piece is in its place to deliver a wonderful cinematic experience. It’s rare that you see such sharp comedy paired with equally luscious visuals, but Taika Waititi is working magic here. It’s just a delightful film, and you should definitely make seeking it out a priority.

Rating: 9/10

Demon

Year: 2016

Director: Marcin Wrona

Cast: Itay Tiran, Agnieszka Zulewska, Andrzej Grabowski 

Run Time: 1 hour 34 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

A man becomes possessed by a dybbuk on the evening of his wedding.

For hardcore film fans, the final week of December is known as “cram week,” where we scramble to watch all the films of the year that we missed in order to properly flesh out our Top 10 lists (and, as you might notice, mine in particular requires a lot of fleshing out). I discovered that essentially my entire cram list was made up of foreign films, which makes sense because they’re not so easy to find in your local Cineplex: Japan’s Sadako vs. Kayako, Norway’s The Wave, South Korea’s The Wailing… But at the expense of the others, I chose a Polish export called Demon and here’s why.

1) It’s a tale about a dybbuk, a Jewish demon that doesn’t get much coverage in modern horror. 2) As arthousey as it looked, it also seemed like it would be a devastatingly chilling slow burn. And 3) First-time director Marcin Wrona committed suicide at the festival where this film debuted, and I wanted to honor his fist and last film. Plus, that story is so macabre and tragic, it’s like catnip for the horror community.

Let’s address the elephant in the room right off the bat: Demon is barely a horror film. Frankly, there’s more comedy than there is horror (pretty solid comedy at that, especially involving the drunkard town doctor and an impatient priest), but neither tone is sustained for too long either way. Demon is a very European film, content to glower at its audience with pallid, grey cinematography and a snail’s sense of pacing and dialogue.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The subtextual layering of Demon is phenomenal, beginning with the stress of going through an intense personal crisis on a day where you’re the center of attention and ending at a truly devastating reflection on the erasure of Jewish culture in Poland, a society still shattered by the lingering effects of the Holocaust (delivered in a heart-wrenching moment by an otherwise unassuming wedding guest who subtly emerges as the best performer of the entire piece.) It’s like being pummeled by a swinging log. There are long periods where nothing is touching you, then – WHAM! – the impact crushes you with freight train force.

Demon does very many things well, but they’re scattered throughout a story that feels rather aimless. It’s ambiguous and opaque in a way that seems almost aggressive, and the truly stellar moments are few and far between. While I was affected by these moments, I don’t feel like I can reasonably recommend the movie and the effort it requires to sift through its tonal doldrums. Still, it’s something you don’t see every day and I’m glad I had the opportunity.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1325

Raptor Buddies

Year: 2015

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Ty Simpkins

Run Time: 2 hour 4 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Jurassic World is not a better popcorn movie than Jurassic Park. But to be fair, I can list the number of popcorn movies better than Jurassic Park on a Post-It. With room to spare. But as a peer to this summer's Mad Max: Fury Road, which is also a decades-later followup to an inordinately successful trilogy, I can comfortably say we're two for two in fourth sequels that aren't total garbage wastes of time. 

Mind you, Mad Max is a luminescent, damn near perfect masterpiece of balls-to-the-wall action that challenges the very notion of what cinema can be and Jurassic World merely isn't quite as dumb as Jurassic Park III. We're measuring on vastly different scales here, but two successful franchise continuations in the new Millennium? For Hollywood, this is like Christmas.

Though I daresay Santa's reindeer have slightly fewer teeth.

Jurassic World is a direct sequel to Jurassic Park, depicting the successful application of John Hammond's dream to create a fully functioning theme park with genetically modified, de-extinct dinosaurs. Run by the eccentric billionaire Simon Masrani (Irrfan Khan), Jurassic World is now a well-oiled machine attended by thousands of happy tourists a day. Hoewver, as time has passed, children have become immune to the technical wizardry of the past. They long for bigger, better, more exciting adventures, and Jurassic World is prepared to give it to them. The park, that is. The movie is content to slop a bucket of CGI onto the screen and call it a night. But I digress.

Headed by the emotionless businesswoman Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), the park has been developing a new attraction designed by the noteworthy scientist Dr. Henry Wu (BD Wong, the only returning cast member from the original film). Called the Indominus Rex, this massive creature has been designed to be scarier, deadlier, and larger than any creature the park has ever attempted before. Evidently they failed on that front, because we learn from a too-early reveal (and a quick scan of any nearby Toys R Us shelves) that the creature is pretty much just a kinda tall, albino T-Rex. Wheeeee.

Needless to say, the highly intelligent animal escapes, putting Claire's nephews - surly teen Zach (Nick Robinson) and his wide-eyed younger brother Gray (Ty Simpkins of Insidious) - and the entire park at risk. Together with the gruff raptor trainer Owen (Chris Pratt), they must work to bring the theme park back from the brink of total disaster, butting heads along the way with Hoskins (Vincent D'Onofrio), a militaristic meathead who wants to use the raptors to bring down the beast in order to prove their viability as military weaponry.

As you can probably tell, Jurassic World has a bit too much on its mind, and that's without even mentioning the subplot about Lowery (Jake Johnson), the comic relief control panel worker, or the ongoing divorce proceedings of the kids' parents, Karen (Judy Greer) and Scott (Andy Buckley).

Trying to keep track of them all is like trying to keep four raptors from biting your pretty hands off.

Jurassic World has too many plates spinning in the air, which prevent it from ever truly realizing its full potential. 

The first plate to wobble and crash to the floor is its characters. There's too many of them drifting on and off the screen to really find a hero to root for, only two of them have any semblance of an arc (Claire, who seems to be the protagonist, if only because she happens to be onscreen the most and her costume design actively reflects her transition, is the first; the second is Zach, who goes from being a surly teen to a less surly teen, so let's not dust off our Oscar shelves just yet), and the rest are shallow ciphers: Hoskins is a picture of avaricious evil, Gray is the whiz kid, Owen is the badass knight in shining armor, and so on.

The emotional impact of the storyline lacks sinew thanks to the protagonists' lack of inner life, and many of the broad strokes masquerading as character development only weakly prop up the cardboard cutouts populating its world. The parents' divorce adds next to nothing to the film (save about 5 more minutes of screen time), and the awkward, forced romance between Owen and Claire is about as credible as the McDonalds "Healthy Choices" menu.

Just look at that crackling chemistry. You can feel the heat from here.

The second, and largest, plate to fall is the special effects. CGI graphics are improving as time goes on, and nothing here is quite as egregious as the weightless copy-and-paste construction robots in Tomorrowland, but the fact remains that Jurassic Park was a success thanks to its conscientious use of computer graphics. Instead of using computers to augment and aid practical effects, Jurassic World  liberally - and lazily - slathers the film with pixel grotesqueries. 

The only abominably unconvincing dinos are the T-Rex and occasionally the raptors, but there is no lasting spectacle to be found in Jurassic World. Chockablock with flat, obtrusive CGI that lingers even in the furthest corners of the film (Really - A gate? A bird? You're telling me there's no birds pecking around the windowsills at Amblin that you could grab?), even the most convincing visuals lack impact thanks to their remarkably spotty brethren.

When you set uninspiring CGI monsters against a cadre of dull stereotypes, all running around the island madly bumping into one another, it becomes extremely difficult to muster up any cobwebs of suspense.

I mean, look at this. I'm pretty sure I played this computer game in third grade.

The third and final plate is the script. Along with a complex tunnel system of plot/logic holes, nearly every decision made by any human is the worst possible outcome for whatever situation it happens to be. I of all people am willing to accept some gaps in logic from dumb characters in suspense movies, but many key moments (and nearly every aspect of the "release the raptors" subplot) are idiotic and, worst of all, generic.

It would be one thing if the flaws in the story were in service of unparalleled action and suspense, but for the most part they form a loud background hum to one of the most hideously cliché adventure movie beats in years. Bad government, mad science, wan romance, and blockbuster drama collide in Jurassic World, careening pointlessly in all directions. The film is self-important in the worst way, packed to the gills with Important Lines that characters say while staring off into space. In fact, I don't think a single shot exists in the first act, where Chris Pratt doesn't saunter into frame (even if he's already in the middle of a conversation) to say something Badass and Insightful.

Chuck in a production team that somehow thinks it's appropriate to resurrect John Williams' classic theme when the characters are riding an escalator and you've got yourself a bit of a mess on your hands.

Nothing a good barber can't fix.

OK, are we done complaining? Good. Because, in spite of its ample flaws, Jurassic World is still a fun, dumb summer flick. The shadow of Jurassic Park is a terrifyingly tough one to escape, and of course this film - with its supremely rickety foundation - does not manage it. But it does manage to scrape together a pretty decent thrill ride for the new generation of dino lovers.

There's a negligible amount of genuinely effective suspense in this film thanks to its thin characters, but more than a couple scenes have moments that startle the senses into something above complacency. Likewise, there are a handful of comic relief moments that strike gold and have the capacity to elicit actual, bona fide peals of laughter. The rest of the film coasts on effects-filled action and, when it gets a chance to abandon its pretenses at telling an authentically human story, it does not disappoint.

Jake Johnson is funny as always, and Bryce Dallas Howard is more effective than the trailer gives her credit for, but the real conflict comes with Chris Pratt. He does more than enough to prove himself as a viable candidate for future non-comedic roles, but Owen gives him absolutely nothing to work with. He's awash in the contradictory pages of the script, relying only on his natural charm to get the point across rather than any act of true character creation.

It's shallow and it's messy, but it's still a good time at the movies. Maybe the rampaging dinos don't have they heart they used to. Maybe the humans they tread upon fall short of interesting. But as a slick, surface level thrill ride, Jurassic World does its job. No more and no less than that, but it's something I don't dread seeing again.

TL;DR: Jurassic World is a totally fine popcorn movie, all things considered.

Rating: 6/10

Should I Spend Money On This? I ain't gonna stop ya.

Word Count: 1514

Reviews In This Series

Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1993)

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Spielberg, 1997)

Jurassic Park III (Johnston, 2001)

Jurassic World (Trevorrow, 2015)

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (Bayona, 2018)

Awesome Mix: Volume 1

Year: 2014

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista

Run Time: 2 hours 1 minute

MPAA Rating: PG-13

For any but the most die-hard comic book fans (*coughcoughHenry*), the Marvel Cinematic universe has been wearing out its welcome. Despite the relative merits or deficits of Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Thor: The Dark World (this year also overloaded us with another Amazing Spider-Man and X-Men: Days of Future Past), the overwhelming feeling is that of one long drawn breath while we anticipate Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Notice how none of those films are numbered. No easy-to-follow chronology like Iron Man 2 and 3. That's because Marvel knows that if they give us Cap 2 or X-Men 7, they'll tip us off to just how many of these darn movies they're shoving into cinemas and the weariness will set in like a rot. Again, to be clear, I'm not saying there is anything wrong with these movies, merely that the stranglehold of Marvel in American cinemas has been slowly draining the enthusiasm of the public.

Luckily, almost supernaturally, the company managed to transform an almost unknown series into a ringer. It is quite obvious in retrospect that Guardians of the Galaxy would reignite the Marvel craze like no other film since Avengers for one reason and one reason only. They hired an auteur. Because, frankly, nobody cared about the Guardians of the Galaxy comics, director/writer James Gunn was allowed to make a film imbued with his traditional sense of humor (derived from years of writing for the notorious production company Troma and fighting his way through the horror trenches) rather than just dumping out another homogenized and slick superhero thriller.

Also, considering that he is the man who made this happen, he is nothing less than a god.

So, the story. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is an intergalactic outlaw who operates under the name Starlord, abducted from Earth at a young age in 1988 and raised by Ravagers, a roving band of thieves led by Yondu (Michael Rooker of The Walking Dead and Slither), a blue dude with a hella cool magic science arrow.

After some plot happens, Starlord ends up thrown together with a ragtag band of escaping prisoners after stealing a mysterious orb from a deserted planet. These prisoners with their clashing motives and personalities, end up becoming unlikely friends and guarding some galaxies or whatever. 

Anyway, they are Rocket (Bradley Cooper), a wisecracking bounty hunter raccoon, his best friend/partner/house plant Groot (Vin Diesel), an animated tree-being who only has enough intelligence to say "I Am Groot," and Drex (Dave Bautista), a muscle-bound warrior whose race has no concept of metaphor, so he takes everything quite literally to hilarious effect.

Last but (debatably) not least is Gamora (Zoe Saldana, who must have gotten so fit from all the times she had to walk up stairs so we could see her butt), a green alien woman adopted by Thanos (Josh Brolin), this film's obvious sequel tag villain who, despite his vast power and supposed menace mostly just looks like a blue Jay Leno. When Thanos lends her and her sister Nebula (Oculus' Karen Gillan) to the eeeeeevil Ronan (Lee Pace) as assassins, she betrays him in an attempt to obtain the orb he so covets and sell it so she can buy a ticket to a better life.

Any life is a better life with him.

I really don't want to get into the mechanics of the plot beyond the level of character because, let's face it, it's really not important. Everybody wants the MacGuffin. MacGuffin holds infinite power. Bad guy meets with bigger bad guy on mysterious hunk of rock. Stop the bad guy from using it to destroy the galaxy. (I know it's the title, but man what a narrow-minded evil plot. Just one galaxy? Color me unimpressed.) Bing bang boom.

The plot is typical Marvel, but it's the trappings that allow it to transcend as one of the best superhero movies of... definitely the decade, maybe even the century. It's not what you say, it's how you say it. And James Gunn can really... say.

Guardians of the Galaxy puts witty humor at the forefront, shoving action and plot into a secondary position (smart, because it is both of these elements that are the weakest in the film - the first thanks to some occassionally haphazard editing, the second due to a certain lack of emotional heft). This is a witty comedy movie with some superhero elements, not the other way around like your Iron Mans or your Avengers.

Because of its ability to exist almost entirely unbeholden to a truly large-scale story, the characters have room to breathe and bounce off one another, providing thoroughly comic entertainment. By which I mean two things, in that it is consistently, effervescently hilarious and that it provides the joy and amazement of experiencing an actual comic book with all the flash and glamour and not-so-thematic bedazzlement that that entails. Although those looking for a more solid thematic throughline or character arc certainly have material to work with, that's not what we're about here.

We are too cool for school by a considerable margin.

With a fantastic soundtrack of 70's and 80's pop songs that acts as both an ironic underscore to a sci-fi extravaganza and a link to Starlord's eternal childhood and connection to Earth, Guardians of the Galaxy really didn't have to work hard to get me on board (AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH'M, hooked on a feelin'). And it shouldn't have to work hard for you either, if you're receptive to a wonderful bit of popcorn movie mayhem.

Of course there are flaws. The largely unmotivated villains are too generic to ever feel like a legitimate threat, despite game performances by two wonderful actors. The editing will occasionally slip up and cram too many images together to make sense of a few sequences. There is a tendency to overexplain plot points in the dialogue. Glenn Close is wasted in a weak "point and gasp" role.

But honestly you don't notice any of that when the lights go down and Gunn hits you with the good stuff. This is his first big break to show off his style to the world and he pulled out all the stops, coordinating gags so effortlessly that they hit with the impact of a missed step when walking down the stairs.

And last but not least, the actors are delightful. The movie with be nothing without them, considering how much of the humor is grounded in their characters and interactions. Chris Pratt is the obvious anchor, combining his awkward and adorable Parks and Rec style with an action hero stud body. If, after this, there's not more Chris Pratt in cinemas, I will personally tear down my local theater brick by brick.

Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel are also standouts as comic relief characters that almost supernaturally fail to get on my nerves. The digital animation for both these characters is astounding and their timing is pitch perfect. And Dave Bautista makes you forget he was ever involved in the WWE, a gargantuan feat if you ask me. Only Saldana gives a performance not worth raving about, but in a less-developed, more straight-faced role. You can't blame her for the character. And she does get some great moments.

Anyway. Guardians of the Galaxy. Go see it. It might not be the most important movie of the year. It's not going to change your life or alter your worldview. But if you want to go to the movies and just have yourself a meaty slab of fun, get your tickets now.

TL;DR: Guardians of the Galaxy is a dazzling sci-fi comedy bolstered by impressive performances and an auteur for the ages.

Rating: 8/10

Should I Spend Money On This? Yaaaaaaaas!

Word Count: 1311

Reviews In This Series

Guardians of the Galaxy (Gunn, 2014)

Avengers: Infinity War (Russo & Russo, 2018)

Ant-Man and the Wasp (Reed, 2018)

Best Picture Roundup: Siri Not Siri

I actually watched another Best Picture nominee! This might be the highest proportion of contenders I've seen in any Oscar year!

...I'm not a great film major.

Year: 2013

Director: Spike Jonze

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson, Amy Adams

Run Time: 2 hours 6 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Before I dive into some of the harder to swallow nominees like Dallas Buyers Club or 12 Years a Slave, I thought it best to start with the soft, pastel embrace of Her, Spike Jonze's tale of love in the not too distant future. A strangely divisive movie, this love it or hate it story details a future world in which a newly divorced man, Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with an artificially intelligent operating system named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson).

That's about all there is to the plot, really. Chris Pratt magically appears (inexplicably dressed like Ron Swanson) in a couple scenes because he is contractually obligated to show up in the exact places you'd least expect him. Also Theodore's friend Amy (Amy Adams) has troubles with her husband (Matt Letscher), a man who proves that no matter how much things change, douchebaggery is eternal.

Although it doesn't commit the Wolf of Wall Street sin of stretching a diaphanous plot to an unbearable three hours, it can hardly make it to two without tearing somewhat, despite the strengths of the screenplay and performances.

Although any movie with Amy Adams deserves at least two hours of your time.

Largely a one man show, Her relies entirely on credible interactions between one man and a disembodied voice and Phoenix sells it utterly, packaging it all in a man full of tics and an invisible complete backstory hidden behind every gesture and expression. Not to be petty, but he certainly deserved that acting nomination far more than Leo ever did. Sorry, Shannon.

Johansson also does a terrific job, exuding effortless Rashida Jones charm and singlehandedly steering a script that loses track of her character around the beginning of Act Three. All without being onscreen for a single second! It's hard to synthesize naturalistic emotions on a soundstage stool clutching a bottle of mineral water, but she owns it.

And oh, the production design! All creamy pastels and just a touch beyond modern architecture, Her imagines a future seamlessly attached to the direction of the world as we are living it. The set design is soft, smooth, tactile, and pleasant - the exact culmination of a society that is slowly collapsing inward as people find newer and newer ways to ignore each other.

And what else could this film possibly be about but the way in which modern technology provides us enough comfort to ignore those niggling feelings like loneliness or unfulfillment? Don't get me wrong, I love technology. But there people who use it as a crutch to avoid ever having to interact with people and, well, the metaphor isn't too difficult to unpack.

Nope. Nothing metaphorical here.

What Her does best is casual and relaxed world building, one of my favorite elements of sci-fi/futuristic films. Only one of the technological advancements of this future is important to the story, but there's enough information in the dialogue and background to provide a complete and credible universe for this technology to exist within.

I guess I'm just a sucker for well thought out alternate universes. But the way Theodore's video games can interact seamlessly with his AI and his desktop files makes me yearn just a little bit. Really incredible production design that was put together with great care and love makes me proud.

But anyway. The rest of the movie. There's some great cinematography at work here that actually enhances the story instead of clouding it with artsy squartsy nonsense (although it does have its fair share of inscrutable visual symbolism) and the screenplay is sprinkled with Oscar bait nuggets of wisdom tailor made for inspirational Tumblr blogs.

The third act is where things begin to unfortunately unravel. The enjoyable premise loses a lot of its flair past the 90 minute mark and begins to drag as the plot scrambles to find an ending (which I won't spoil here but I will say that the company that makes the OS's should prepare for a hell of a class action suit).

There's several problems inherent in being in love with the device that's in charge of your entire computer.

Her always operates at a base level of pleasantness that it rarely departs from, but it finds it difficult to be both pleasant and meaningful for the entirety of the run time, although it does come close. I certainly enjoyed it and would recommend it, but maybe it's not such an important film as all that, despite the many high quality efforts put into its production.

TL;DR: Her is a tad overlong but never unpleasant.

Rating: 7/10

Did It Deserve Best Picture? Probably not, but it was an interesting piece of intellectual cinematic fluff.

Word Count: 833

Everything Is Awesome

Year: 2014

Director: Phil Lord & Christopher Miller

Cast: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett

Run Time: 1 hour 40 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG

Let me tell you, The Lego Movie had one of the least promising opening scenes of any comedy I've ever had the privilege to watch. It appears before anybody has a chance to get used to the somewhat jarring animation style and features the most YouTube-caliber comedy I've ever seen in a feature film. That is not a compliment.

This further reinforced my fears that The Lego Movie would be exactly what it sounds like - a feature length commercial with little to no redeeming value. But history has taught me to trust directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller when they make a film that seems like an outrageously bad idea. These are the men behind Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs and 21 Jump Street, after all.

Lo and behold, The Lego Movie is almost nothing like it seemed to be from the promotional campaign or even its own opening (Sidebar: What is it with Hollywood marketing these days that makes even the best films seem like generic garbage? It's like they're actively trying to deter viewership.).

Me every time I have to sit through another crappy movie preview.

Let me ask you a question: If you were tasked with creating a movie out of a narrative-less pile of colorful blocks, what genre would your story be? Action adventure? Romantic comedy? Maybe even an epic fantasy?

The Lego Movie is a dystopian rebellion movie and that is what separates the geniuses from you or me. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to pull influences from 1984 and Brave New World is a lunatic. But it totally, absolutely works. And it's pretty laugh out loud funny all the way through.

This is the story of Emmet (Chris Pratt), a construction worker who lives to follow the instructions (a brilliant bit of brand tie-in). He does everything he is told, listens to the music he is ordered to like, and has never had an original thought in his life.

But when he discovers a mysterious unknown Lego piece tied to a mystical prophecy, he uncovers the tyrannical president's secret plot to destroy the world and is whisked away by rebel agent Wyldstyle (Elizabeth Banks) to train with the Master Builders (the only creative people left in the universe - with the power to assemble whatever they desire sans instructions) and save the world.

This wouldn't be the first time Chris Pratt has saved the world.

The message is simple and childlike in the best way possible - painted with broad strokes but absolutely resonant with children and adults alike, just like the eternally undervalued Adventure Time. Emmet is an anonymous nobody who needs to learn to believe in himself to unlock his creative potential.

Featuring a veritable clown car of guest actors including Charlie Day (!!!), Cobie Smulders, Morgan Freeman, Will Arnett, Anthony Daniels, Will Forte, Alison Brie, Jake Johnson, Liam Neeson, Nick Offerman, and Shaq, as well as 21 Jump Street alums Channing Tatum, Dave Franco, and Jonah Hill (as well as one cameo that can't possibly be a surprise, but nevertheless feels like one so I shan't spoil it here), The Lego Movie has a thoroughly modern pop sense of humor that, despite some massive ADD, is topical and clever in ways that anybody of any age can enjoy.

The Lego Movie combines the whimsical (and low-rent) joy of playing with toys with a heartfelt message picture and rapid-fire comedy both lovably dumb and X-Acto sharp. Some of the busier action sequences are nearly impossible to contain in your visual cortex and the sheer amount of branded material is enough to make any copyright lawyer weep in fear, but it's a fun ride through and through.

But seriously. Rendering this frame alone must have taken binders of legal documents.

In the movie business, it has been a long, cold, lonely winter, and The Lego Movie provides a warm ember that lifts the spirits for the cinema slate of 2014.

You'll leave the theater singing, smiling, trading favorite lines (I myself am partial to "Come with me if you want to not die.") and fondly remembering childhood playtime. And even if it's not the best animated comedy that has ever been released, that is certainly good enough for me.

TL;DR: The Lego Movie surprises by not being terrible, but surprises even more by actually being pretty darn good.
Rating: 8/10
Should I Spend Money On This? Yes. You should.
Word Count: 762