Jurassic World

*** out of ****

Jurassic World is the best sequel in the Jurassic Park franchise… and that’s a minor compliment. It’s the first entry to throw caution to the wind and behave like the unrestrained dino-rampage movie that big kids want to see. The result is a mixed bag full of fun and stupidity.

The movie asks the question: What if at some point between the first movie and the present day, the vision of the original park's creators was finally realized? In this movie, we visit an alternate universe where de-extinction is commonly accepted and the renamed “Jurassic World” is one of the most popular vacation resorts on the planet.

We follow two adolescent brothers (Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson) as audience surrogates into the world of the movie. The younger one of the two, is excited at every opportunity to see a dinosaur, while the older one is distracted by his smartphone, and just as impressed by real live dinosaurs as we are with modern CGI.

Their Aunt Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is the resort’s power-suit administrator, with the careless motivation to take the park’s already booming popularity up a level with a dangerous new twist to their dinosaur cloning, courtesy of genetic engineer, Dr. Henry Wu (B.D. Wong -the only returning JP alum).

Chris Pratt is the park’s Velociraptor-wrangler, who works on training the animals, which is catching the eye of a security specialist (Vincent D’Onofrio) who sees their potential for military weaponization.

All these elements culminate to result in dinosaurs on the loose, kids in peril, a badass who can wield the rage of raptors in his favor, and an uptight businesswoman letting loose to save the day. These contrivances are justified by the generic sci-fi jargon of writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver (Rise of the Planet of the Apes) -and are lightened-up through the humor of director Colin Trevorrow and his collaborative writer, Derek Connolly. How their semi-entertaining comedy, Safety Not Guaranteed, landed them this coveted project is beyond me, but at least it isn’t boring.

Michael Giacchino's new score conveys excitement, but fails to use John Williams' original music creatively. Sometimes it's just awkward where you hear the original themes (Yes, themes. Williams was so awesome back in the day, that you left the theater with more than one melody dancing in your head). Giacchino is one of the better composers working on major films today, but it's sad how seldom his work has a big impact.

To my relief, after the online criticisms, like the one on Cracked.com, the final color grading in this movie is normal, resembling the look of the previous movies. It's also primarily shot on film. However, the CGI often suffers from a lot of the industry's needless indulgences pointed out in that brilliant article.

If there’s one thing I know, it’s that I’m probably never going to get the Jurassic Park sequel that I want. The original movie proposed some profound concepts, for which every sequel has refused to expand upon, favoring dinosaur carnage being the result of sheer stupidity and the repetition of the same old mistakes. 

Until this movie, we hadn’t even returned to the original island. As far as spectacle-driven entertainment goes, Jurassic World contains things I always wanted from a JP sequel accompanied by things I never wanted from a JP sequel. I don’t have the time to list them, but the overall experience they create, is acceptable, brainless entertainment.

Poltergeist (2015)

*** out of ****

Gil Kenan's (Monster House) 2015 remake of Poltergeist is almost as good as the original - a film I've always found to be overrated - so I guess that's not a big compliment.

The original movie made some kind of undefined cultural commentary about the excess of suburban life during the dawn of yuppie culture, but the artistic confusion between its director Tobe Hooper and producer Steven Spielberg resulted in a movie that succeeded in entertaining but had little to say beyond its broad messages about materialism and television infecting the modern American family. However, the movie was filled with product placement and one too many needless special effects scenes.

Naturally, the remake doesn't have any new filmmaking techniques with which to impress us, but Kenan understands how to achieve the same tone the original movie had. Sam Rockwell and Rosemarie DeWitt are well cast as the imperfect parents in a family, haunted by a presence in their suburban home. And Jared Harris plays a ghost-hunting reality TV star signifying the filmmaker's wise unwillingness to find a Zelda Rubinstein surrogate.

The remake has some lame touches, such as a whiney smartphone-fixated teenage daughter, which may be a stereotype inspired by reality, but not one worth re-enforcing through cinema. Marc Streitenfeld's creepy music is no match for Jerry Goldsmith's, but whose is? There's also a stupid scene, late in the film, involving a toy drone being used against the spirits, begging us to wonder why they don't start controlling it as they have every other piece of home electronic equipment earlier in the film.

Writer David Lindsay-Abaire (whose suburban drama Rabbit Hole seemed like the right kind of experience for this project) seems to miss out on the original films emphasis that the then-new subdivision homes worked as an unlikely place for a haunting. In this movie the suburbs look old and decayed, coming off as haunted to begin with. As silly as this sounds, I would have found it very interesting if the family were haunted by ghosts from the early eighties.

The movie still has enough intrigue and genuine scares for me to recommend it for anyone who doesn't feel like watching a movie made in 1982.

Spy

**1/2 out of ****

Writer/director Paul Feig’s latest comedy, Spy, is what I expected it to be, but thankfully, not worse. I’m still fed up with comedies, which surpass the ninety-minute mark in a misplaced obligation to see through aspects of the movie that have nothing to do with making people laugh.

In this movie, Feig works with Melissa McCarthy again, but gives her the opportunity to show more range. I’ve always liked McCarthy, but ever since Bridesmaids escalated her fame, I’ve seen her being typecast as an obnoxious insult-queen to a tiresome degree. She gets the opportunity to revisit this shtick in Spy, but only when her timid character is forced to play a part, while doing her job.

As you could guess by the title, McCarthy is playing an undercover agent, continuing Feig’s overpraised reputation for grabbing genres – and subgenres - normally associated with men, and giving them a female twist. In Bridesmaids, it was the lowbrow filthy comedy revolving around a wedding. In The Heat, it was the buddy cop comedy. This time, it’s the seemingly incompetent and unglamorous spy sent on a glamorous mission, worthy of James Bond.

In my opinion, giving women movie projects that have been so worn-to-death by men isn’t an example of progress. It’s more like a lame hand-me-down. However, Feig’s projects tend to be quite funny and Spy has some pretty big laughs. McCarthy thankfully tones it down here and works well with her co-stars. Jude Law and Jason Statham play delusional spies convinced of their male superiority. Miranda Hart is a goofball CIA coworker envious of her friend's opportunity to go out into the field. Rose Byrne steals some scenes as the film’s bitchy villainess.

Feig knows how to make jokes, but as the online video series Every Frame a Painting points out, he is one of so many filmmakers lacking vision in the art of comedy filmmaking –and favors conventional studio aesthetics to keep the audience engaged. As a comedy-action movie, this one is no exception in the genre’s tendency to waste lots of time near the end with extended fights and chases, which wouldn’t be worthy of a good action movie - and jokes spliced-in, which aren’t worthy of the comedy that preceded.

Feig is still developing his all-female Ghostbusters remake with McCarthy in the cast. I expect the results of that project to be similar to this one: Lots of laughs, but not enough to forgive the film’s long uninspired structure, which drags the entire experience into mediocrity.