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)

Murder Most Foal

For our podcast episode about this film, please click here.

Year: 1991

Director: Jonathan Demme

Cast: Jodie Foster, Anthony Hopkins, Ted Levine

Run Time: 1 hour 58 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

In the history of the Academy Awards, only four horror films have been nominated for Best Picture: The Exorcist, Jaws, The Silence of the Lambs, and The Sixth Sense. It’s a paltry group at best with several entries only dubiously included in the genre, and only one of them has won. That triumphant film would be The Silence of the Lambs, based on the Thomas Harris novel of the same name.

The question that remains is this: Does The Silence of the Lambs deserve to be that one? And despite my unequivocal love for The Sixth Sense, my answer would have to be yes.

I would like to thank the FBI Academy…

In Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster, of hit films from pretty much every decade since she was born, as well as circuitous Golden Globe speeches) is an FBI trainee who is plucked from her studies at Quantico by Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn), director of the Behavioral Science department. She is sent into a Baltimore asylum to confront the notorious cannibalistic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in order to get him to fill out an analytical questionnaire.

In their meeting, Hannibal offers Clarice an opportunity to get a psychological profile of Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), a serial killer who has been abducting and skinning women while rudely evading capture – in exchange for information about herself. Soon after, Catherine Martin (Brooke Smith), the daughter of a U. S. Senator, is abducted by Buffalo Bill. With only three days to save her, Clarice begins a series of grisly sessions with Lecter where he gives her a series of clues to the murderer’s identity after psychologically tormenting her for a bit.

It’s kind of like speed dating but less ruthless.

The stunning thing about Silence of the Lambs is that these conversations, spaced throughout the movie in five minute chunks, manage to be even more frightening than all the severed heads, bottomless pits, and suits made of women’s skin in the rest of the film combined. Under the guiding hand of skilled non-horror director Jonathan Demme (whose most recent credit is the charming Meryl Streep musical family drama Ricki & The Flash), the film sings, no pun intended. His sequences are so well crafted that its hard to believe he’s a human being and not just an anthropomorphic camera.

Every aspect of the film is eerily stunning, from the production design (courtesy of Kristi Zea, most notably the glass panel in the place of iron bars in Hannibal’s cell, which diminishes the sense of distance between them) to the sound mixing (wind howls in the background of an indoor scene while Clarice tells her titular lamb story) and the cinematography itself (in that same scene, Lecter’s face dominates the screen in extreme close-up; people are shot talking directly to the camera while Clarice is shot at an angle, to promote identification with her character). This is a director who knows what he’s doing working with a team of dedicated, creative people (including legendary costume designer Colleen Atwood, who designed Hannibal’s iconic mask and has helped shape Tim Burton’s career from the very beginning), and that’s a combination you just don’t get very often in horror cinema.

Usually, it’s a director who has two days to complete shooting and a crew that has a higher percentage of cocaine in their bodies than human tissue.

When you’re dealing with a film where the technique itself is almost more terrifying than the content, it becomes difficult to think rationally. The tense atmosphere ratchets up into a shrieking roar to the point that one can be freaked out by a clanging metal drawer or a reflection in glass. In a way, it’s an atypical horror film because it doesn’t overplay its hand on the gory shock elements in favor of a mystery-based crime story. But in another way it’s the perfect horror film because it generates a perpetual sense of dread organically from the characters and their situations. And that dread sticks with you until the bitter end.

Like I said, this effect could not have been achieved without a team of talented people working at all cylinders. But one of the most integral portions of that crew is the cast. Every single core actor brings their all to Silence of the Lambs, most notably – for obvious reasons – Anthony Hopkins.

His performance of the factory refined evil of Hannibal Lecter is light years away from the over-the-top villainy that another actor might have brought to the role (Sidebar: Could you imagine, say, Kiefer Sutherland as Hannibal the Cannibal? You’re welcome). In fact, he’s so far under the top that he might as well be in a pit like Catherine Martin. This is a character so comfortable with his dark nature that he wears it like a favorite cardigan, making sure it’s neatly pressed and delicately removing any loose strings. Hopkins is reserved, polite, and playful, a terrifying combination with Hannibal’s wicked deeds, turbo powered by his merciless creativity in discovering new and improved ways to strip off his humanity (like the now immortal fluttering tongue noise that transforms shim into a coiled rattlesnake, ready to strike).

Not so subtle but equally terrifying is Ted Levine’s Buffalo Bill. His performance is the antithesis of Lecter, a man about to burst at the seams (it’s a good thing he’s got some extra skin handy). Ted Levine’s acting is so monstrously Other, so exquisitely different from anything that had ever been seen before that it’s unsettling even when he’s not mockingly screeching down at his captive in the basement. And lying exactly between these polar opposite villains is Jodie Foster, who tends to be ignored amid the maelstrom of pure lunacy around her. However, she too is – as the kids say – killing it, forming a layered personality behind the façade of cool confidence that Clarice uses as a shield. Especially in her conversations with Hannibal Lecter, minute reactions demonstrate her intelligence, her ambition, and her fear that she’s in way over her head.

Mind you, that last reaction can be provoked from merely sitting in a room with Anthony Hopkins.

Foster’s performance informs one of the film’s subtler motifs. As a woman in a “man’s field,” she constantly faces discrimination and condescension, and she is constantly hit on by the large, predatory men that surround her. Man can’t look past her dainty surface to see the strength that lies beneath, and that is their downfall. Only three men can see her as she is under the skin, all of whom are integral in her pursuit of Buffalo Bill.

The first is her boss Jack Crawford, who sets her up with Hannibal Lecter. The second is Lecter himself, whose interests have transcended far beyond the sexual. And the third is Buffalo Bill himself, who understands the importance of skin more than anyone. Foster navigates this man-eat-woman world (in some cases, literally) with resigned familiarity, never using it to her advantage or giving up her own identity. The strength she gives Clarice is her own and it shows.

There are many more factors that go into making this film an indelible classic, including the make-up (which rarely gets to show off gore but renders what it can with gruesome realism) and the screenwriting (there are more classic lines in this film than there are lines at Disneyland), but in an effort to prevent this review from merely transcribing the film’s credits, I shall wrap up here.

While The Silence of the Lambs doesn’t connect with me personally at quite the intimate level that the novel it’s based on does, it’s still a treasure of a film. It is a remarkable confluence of geniuses in their field. So does it deserve that Oscar? Hell yeah, it does.

TL;DR: The Silence of the Lambs is a spectacular horror film that deserves every accolade it has received.

Rating: 9/10
Word Count: 1352
Reviews In This Series
The Silence of the Lambs (Demme, 1991)
Hannibal (Scott, 2001)
Red Dragon (Ratner, 2002)