It looks like life found a way yet again to bring us another Jurassic World film. This time around, the dinosaurs appear to be out and everywhere on the planet. It’s like someone at Universal saw Mission Impossible: Fallout and said “How about we try all of that, but with Dinosaurs?!”
Motorcycle chases? Check, now with dinos.
Issues on a flight? Check, now with dinos.
I’ll admit though that I’m excited for this one. I’ve always wanted to see a Jurassic Park scenario where Dinosaurs reached the mainland, and The Lost World was possibly the closest we had there. It’s also cool to see that Blue (everyone’s favorite Raptor) has a little one of her own!
This third film brings back both Sam Neill and Laura Dern, reprising their roles as Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler. Jeff Goldblum and B.D. Wong are back as well with the Jurassic World cast, Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Isabella Sermon, Daniella Pineda, Justice Smith, and Omar Sy. Dichen Lachman (Netflix’s Altered Carbon) and Mamoudou Athie (Underwater) are new to the series.
Jurassic Park Dominion premieres in theatres June 10, with Colin Trevorrow returning as Director.
In the movies, child geniuses inevitably turn out to be little creeps at that’s certainly the case with The Book of Henry.
Henry (Jaeden Lieberher) is an 11 year-old with an exceptional IQ, which essentially means that it’s supposed to be cute when he talks down to people and treats them like shit. In fact, Henry is such a genius that he’s managed to make a lot of money on the stock market and he also invents stuff. He practically raises his younger brother, Peter (Jacob Tremblay, who is as authentic as Lieberher is overbaked). He also takes care of his mom, Susan (Naomi Watts). Susan’s a waitress because it’s a rule of movies like this that the single parent of a child genius will always either be a waitress or a physicist. There’s really no middle ground. Anyway, Susan appears to be destined to be forever single but she says that’s okay because Henry is the only man she needs in her life.
(Cringe)
Anyway, Henry lives next door to the Sickleman family. You know that’s going to be a problem because, in the movies, good people never have names like Sickleman. Glenn Sickleman (Dean Norris) is not only the police commissioner but he’s also not a very good neighbor. He’s the type of neighbor who complains if the leaves from your tree gets in his yard. He’s also not really comfortable living next door to a child genius. It’s probably because Henry is kind of a condescending jerk.
Henry suspects that Glenn is abusing his stepdaughter, Christina (Maddie Ziegler, who is best known for Dance Moms). However, before Henry can do anything about it, he has a seizure dies. Uh-oh, turns out that Henry had a brain tumor! A genius killed by his own brain. So. Much. Irony.
However, before he died, he left behind a book and recorded instructions for Susan. It turns out that Henry knew he was going to die because Henry was a super genius who could see the future. (At least, I assume that’s what happened.) So, he decided that his mother should murder Glenn and he even came up with some helpful instructions for how she could do it and not get caught.
Now, let me ask you a question. If you discovered that your recently deceased son spent the last few days of his life plotting how to murder his neighbor would you…
a) Destroy all the evidence and pretend you never saw it
b) Shrug and decide to grant his last wish by following his instructions and killing the neighbor?
I mean, let’s think about this. By all evidence, it would appear that Henry was a sociopath. Even if you accept the idea that he had to kill Glenn to save Christina, you still also have to accept the idea that he coldly and methodically plotted out the perfect way to commit a murder and then, realizing he was going to die, he decided that his mom should commit the murder instead.
This is the type of material that a director like David Fincher, Michael Haneke or Lars Von Trier could have a lot of fun with. However, The Book of Henry was directed by Colin Trevorrow and he takes this weird sentimental approach to the material. Instead of freaking out over having raised a sociopath, Susan immediately starts to follow all of his instructions. What’s amazing is that, even in the recording he made for his mom to listen to after his death, Henry is still a condescending little jerk. At one point, from beyond the grave, Henry directs his mom to take a right turn. Then he adds, “No, your other right.”
But what really gets me about this movie is that, after all the build up, Henry’s big genius plan is for Susan to get a rifle and shoot Glenn. That’s it. I mean, anyone could have thought of that! If you’re going to make a movie like this, at least have Henry come up with some big complicated scheme! At least give us that! I mean, honestly, Susan could have come up with Henry’s plan on her own.
Does Susan follow through with the plan? I’m not going to tell you. But I will tell you that the film’s climax features a school talent show. Maddie Ziegler gets to dance. Jacob Tremblay gets to perform a magic trick. They’re both really talented. Sparkle Motion does not perform and that’s a shame. Sometimes, I doubt Colin Trevorrow’s commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Anyway, to say that The Book of Henry is a bad film doesn’t quite do justice to just how ill-conceived this film really is. Someone decided to make a heartwarming and rather humorless film about a child ordering his mother to commit a murder. You may think it’s a parody at first but no, it’s a real movie. It’s The Book of Henry.
When I first began this site on Christmas Eve of 2009 I had to thank the excitement I had for event films after seeing and experiencing James Cameron’s Avatar. It was an experience I hadn’t felt since the days of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and, even earlier than that, the original Star Wars trilogy. These were films that fired up one’s imagination, appreciation and love for film as entertainment and art. Some of these films would linger on longer in one’s mind than others, but that first viewing in their initial release would always imprint their effect on each viewer.
When George Lucas announced that he would be returning to that galaxy, far, far away with a trilogy of prequels almost 15 years since the world last saw Return of the Jedi premiere first the first time, the Star Wars fandom were giddy, excited and hyped beyond belief. The Star Wars films and the many spin-offs (novels, comic books, video games, etc.) which came about because of it only whetted the appetites of long-time Star Wars fans for more films detailing the adventures in the scifi universe created by George Lucas.
Yet, the prequels’ effect on these long-time fans would be the direct opposite of the effect the original trilogy had on the fandom. These three prequels (all directed and written by George Lucas himself) would do more than disappoint the fandom. It would create a schism between those who saw the original trilogy as the gateway to their fandom and those younger generation who never saw the original trilogy and had the prequels become their gateway to the fandom. Even to this day there would be some of the younger generation who truly believe that the prequels trump the original three films which began the franchise.
When news came down that Disney had bought Lucasfilm and everything which George Lucas had built and cultivated there was no chance in hell that there wouldn’t be another series of Star Wars despite the disaster which were the prequels. Lo and behold, it didn’t take long for Disney to greenlight the sequel to Return of the Jedi and have it set decades after the events of that film.
So, it is with Star Wars: The Force Awakens that the Star Wars fandom get to see whether their continued faith in the franchise was worth it or if they have been Charlie Brown’d once again and had the ball taken away at the very last second. It’s easy to say that Star Wars: The Force Awakens was great or it was awful. The true answer to whether this film succeeded in what it intended do was a bit more complicated.
Yet, if one was to look for an easy and simple answer then I’m happy to say that Star Wars: The Force Awakens was great. It had it’s moments of logic gap and plot holes, but as an overall finished product the film succeeded in course-correcting the franchise from the nadir it was at with the culmination of the prequels. It wouldn’t have taken much to surpass the very low bar set by those prequels, but The Force Awakens leapfrogged that bar and went even higher.
The film does begin thirty years after the events of Return of the Jedi and we find out with the now familiar episode intro crawl that Luke Skywalker has disappeared since those events and the galaxy has remained in turmoil with his absence. The Galactic Empire has been defeated, but in its place a new danger in the form of the genocidal First Order has arisen from the Empire’s remains. Opposing the First Order is a sort of galactic force supported in secret by the New Republic and led by General (not Princess) Leia Organa calling themselves the Resistance. It’s the conflict between these two factions and the search for Luke that forms the narrative base for The Force Awakens.
The film doesn’t linger too long in explaining the events which occurred in that 30-year gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. It doesn’t need it as we’re quickly introduced to the series’ new characters in the form of Poe Dameron, the best pilot in the galaxy, who has been sent on a secret mission by Leia to find the clues as to her brother’s whereabouts. Next in line was Kylo Ren who becomes this film’s analogue to the Darth Vader figure of the original trilogy. Yet, the bulk of the film was told through the eyes of Finn and Rey. The former is First Order stormtrooper who has seen first-hand what the First Order truly stands for and not for the betterment of the galaxy. The latter is a young woman living life on the desert planet Jakku scavenging the graveyard of starship wreckage from a battle thirty year’s prior.
It’s through Rey and Finn that the audience learns through their adventures upon meeting up with each other on Jakku what has transpired since the Rebellion destroyed the second Death Star and killed Emperor Palpatine. To these two characters, the events from the original trilogy seem to have passed beyond the realm of history and become more like legends and myths to the younger generation. Through a combination of fear and awe, Ren and Finn get introduced to some of the original trilogies main characters (Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca and even Admiral Ackbar). These are the stories they’ve been told of growing up come to life right in front of their eyes and their reaction mirrors those of the audience who haven’t seen these characters in anything new and relevant since the end of Return of the Jedi. The reaction alone to seeing Han Solo and Chewbacca alone seemed like the fandom’s collective cheer for the good that has been missing with the franchise for over 30 years now.
The Force Awakens is not a perfect by any stretch of the imagination. Like mentioned earlier, the film does suffer from some gaps in story logic and plot holes. As with most J.J. Abrams directed films he had a hand in writing the script and one could see where he sacrificed coherent storytelling beats for something that just pushed the story along the path he wanted the film to take. For those who have been steeped in Star Wars lore and backstory, this would be easily explained as the Force nudging, guiding and, if all else fails, pushing the characters onto the right path, but for the casual viewers it would come off as story beats of convenience.
As a story to bring back the faithful and lure in those still uninitiated to the franchise The Force Awakens straddles the line between nostalgia and trying to bring in something new to the proceedings.
Let’s begin with the former and just say it now that The Force Awakens does follow some major story beats directly from A New Hope (to a smaller effect from Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi). One could almost say that this film was a sort of soft reboot of the original trilogy with how it lifted ideas from them and through some writing and directing recombination come up with something new, but still very familiar for hardcore and non-fans alike.
Does this decision to lean heavily on the original trilogy for ideas hurt the film? For some it might be a bit too distracting to recognize too many callbacks to those earlier films, but for most it’s a reminder of what the prequels lacked and that’s the sense of adventure and fun. There was never anything fun about the prequels. The Force Awakens brings it all back and for most viewers this is the course-correction the series has needed since the last images from Revenge of the Sith faded away from the silver-screen.
Even the new characters introduced in this latest film were an amalgamation of the main characters from the original trilogy. Where Abrams and Kasdan changed this up a bit was to go beyond just creating new analogues for the classic characters of Leia, Han, Luke, Chewie and R2D2. They opted to take all the qualities fans loved about those characters and mixed them all up to be used in the roles of Rey, Finn, Poe, Kylo Ren and BB8.
As the standout character in the film, Rey (played by find of the year Daisy Ridley) would bring back memories of not just the young and hopeful Luke from the original trilogy, but also some personal traits of Leia and Han. The same goes for Finn who at times reminded us of Han’s roguish charm to Luke’s naivete of his role in the larger world he has finally witnessed for the very first time. For the half-empty crowd this might look as lazy character development, but those who see the film with the half-full mindset would easily latch onto these new characters. Characters who now take on the responsibility of moving the franchise beyond the nostalgia of the original trilogy and erasure of the disappointment of the prequels to new adventures with the next two films.
So, is Star Wars: The Force Awakens worth returning back to the franchise after the prequels or is it too much of a rehash of the original three films? The answer to that is a definite yes despite some of it’s flaws. For some the very flaws some have pointed out (too many callbacks, sort of a reboot, etc.) was what made the film a fun time to be had. It’s a return to the comfort zone the fandom missed with the prequels.
Will the next two films in this new trilogy follow suit and just rely too much on nostalgia to continue trying to satisfy it’s massive audience? Or will Rian Johnson and Colin Trevorrow (director of Episode VIII and Episode IX, respectively) move into new territory with minimal callbacks to those earlier films? We as an audience will have to wait til 2017 and 2019 to find out. Until then enjoy what Abrams and Lucasfilm has accomplished with The Force Awakens. A film which has reinvigorated a film franchise that has seem some major lows, but one which also happens to be one hell of a fun ride from start to finish on it’s own merits.
P.S.: Some controversy has arisen since the film’s release concerning the character played by Daisy Ridley. Some have been very vocal about calling her Rey character as a sort of knee-jerk reaction to the accusation that the Star Wars films have lacked for a strong female lead. An argument that’s as misguided and misinformed as that of the films being whitewashed. The films in the franchise have always had strong female characters. The accusation that Rey as a character in The Force Awakens is such a “Mary Sue” (a female character written and created to be the best at everything, no flaws) ignore the details in the character’s development.
What’s sadder is that some of the very people (film critics and writers) who in the past have complained that major films (especially blockbusters) have been lacking in very strong female characters have been the very same who see Rey as a negative and a character too good. This despite the character following in the very same footsteps in how her predecessors have been written (Luke, Han, Anakin). It’s an argument that is sure to bring heated debate among fans and detractors, but one that takes away from the performance of Daisy Ridley who should be one of the many breakout stars to come out of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
So, it’s that time of year! 2015 is nearly over and soon, it will be time for me to make out my best-of and worst-of lists. That means that now is the time that I look over all the films that I have watched up to this point, I realize how many of those films I have yet to review ,and I think, “Oh my God, how did I get this far behind?”
So, here are 6 capsule reviews, designed to help me get caught up!
Ant-Man (dir by Peyton Reed)
Ant-Man has already been reviewed twice on this site, once by Leonard Wilson and once by Ryan The Trashfilm Guru. Leonard liked it. Ryan did not. As for me, my reaction was somewhere in between. I enjoyed Ant-Man, though not as much as I’ve enjoyed some of the previous Marvel films. Ant-Man was better than the second Thorfilm but nowhere close to being as good as Captain America: Winter Soldier.
What I did like about Ant-Man were the performances of Paul Rudd, Evangeline Lilly, and Michael Pena. I even enjoyed Michael Douglas’s performance, which is saying something when you consider the fact that, as of late, Michael Douglas has really been making my skin crawl. I also thought that the film did a good job creating Ant-Man’s microscopic world, even if I’m still not totally sold on the character as a dynamic hero. I do wish that the film had a stronger villain. Corey Stoll is such a good actor and capable of doing so much and it was hard not to regret that he was stuck playing such a generic bad guy.
Cinderella (dir by Kenneth Branagh)
Oh, how I loved Cinderella! The film, a live-action retelling of the Cinderella story, was a gorgeous fairy tale and a wonderful reminder that a film doesn’t have to be dark and depressing to be good. (In many ways, Cinderella serves as an antidote to not only Into The Woods, but countless Tim Burton films as well.) Lily James is beautiful in the title role, Richard Madden is wonderfully charming as the prince, and Cate Blanchett and Helena Bonham Carter are perfectly cast as the stepmother and the fairy godmother.
Jurassic World (dir by Colin Trevorrow)
Jurassic World was previously reviewed by Ryan the Trashfilm Guru. I hate to admit it but I was, initially, one of those people who watched Jurassic World and got annoyed because the film was predictable and the script was a bit clunky. Traditionally (and, if you doubt me, just read my review of Avatar), it bothers me when a film devotes so much time special effects that it can’t seem to be bothered with character development and clever dialogue.
But then I thought about it somewhat and I thought to myself, you know what? This movie had Chris Pratt and it had some very convincing dinosaurs! And, especially when it comes to a summer blockbuster, that is sometimes all you need.
(Why I enjoyed Jurassic World while disliking Avatar largely comes down to the difference between Chris Pratt and Sam Worthington.)
Magic Mike XXL (dir by Gregory Jacobs)
Oddly enough, I had the roughly the same reaction to Magic Mike XXL that I had to Jurassic World. Yes, there are certain things — mostly concerning the film’s script — about which I could nitpick but what’s truly important is that Channing Tatum, Joe Manganiello, and most of the original cast of Magic Mike is back and they’re stripping again. Magic Mike XXL is a huge (heh heh) crowd pleaser, a film that delivers exactly what it promises.
Though Steven Soderbergh served as cinematographer for Magic Mike XXL, he did not return to serve as director and perhaps that’s why Magic Mike XXL feels like a far less pretentious film than the first Magic Mike. Out of the original cast, both Matthew McConaughey and Alex Pettyfer both declined to appear in the sequel. McConaughey is missed, Pettyfer less so.
The Man From UNCLE (dir by Guy Ritchie)
The Man From Uncle is one of the many stylish spy films to be released this year. Henry Cavill is an American spy, Armie Hammer is a Russian spy, and Hugh Grant is the Englishman who tells them both what to do. The Man From Uncle was entertaining. It took place in the 60s, so there was a lot of wonderful retro fashion and the whole movie moved at a nice, breezy pace. Ultimately — and I’ll be the first to admit that this isn’t exactly fair — The Man From UNCLE suffered because it was released in the same year as Kingsman and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. Man From UNCLE was entertaining but rather generic. At no point did it reach the lunatic high of Kingsman’s Free Bird sequence.
Terminator: Genisys (dir by Alan Taylor)
You can read Ryan’s review of Terminator: Genisys here. I have to admit that Terminator: Genisys confused the Hell out of me. Not being a huge fan of the entire Terminator franchise (though, yes, I do know what Skynet is and I have seen the first two films), I do have to admit that I sometimes felt lost while watching Genisys.
But you know what? If you just sit back and relax and try not to think about the film too much — if you just accept it as an action film and watch for the stunts and the explosions — Terminator: Genisys is not the disaster that many critics made it out to be. I mean, let’s just be honest here. Most critics would die before they gave a good review to any film featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Just check out all the negativity that greeted the brilliant zombie film, Maggie.) After all, Schwarzenegger is an outspoken, confident, cheerfully arrogant Republican and most film critics can only relate to the arrogant part. (And even then, they don’t ever seem to be very cheerful about it…) Terminator: Genisys is a well-made and perfectly adequate action film, one that works as long as you don’t spend too much time dwelling on it. It’s cinematic junk food and there’s nothing wrong with that.
How many times have you heard that one? Well, in the case of the just-released (and record-setting in terms of its worldwide box office take) Jurassic World, it turns out that tired old adage is actually quite true, since director Colin Trevorrow has chosen to hew pretty closely to Steven Spielberg’s original model for this fourth installment in the previously-presumed- moribund franchise extrapolated from the works of Michael Crichton. There’s certainly nothing happening here that one could call overtly “new,” per se, but gosh — it’s been so long since Jurassic Park III that it all just sorta feels new, ya know?
CGI technology has come a long way since the original Jurassic Park made its debut in 1993, as well, and that’s a big factor — maybe even the biggest factor — in this new flick’s by-popcorn-movie-standards “success,” but don’t think that means I’m damning Jurassic World with faint praise. Truth be told, we just got back from seeing it in Imax 3-D and it’s got pretty much everything you’d ever want in a brainless summer thrill ride : superb effects, likable leads, drama, suspense, tension-cutting humor, nicely despicable (sorry, does that even make sense?) villains, and mile-a-minute thrills. My wife and I both left the theater smiling and I ain’t ashamed to admit it.
My only real gripe is one that I knew I’d have going in — Jurassic World continues the morally-questionable trend established at the series’ outset of using kids placed in danger (in this case brothers Zach and Gray, played by Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins, respectively) as its primary focus/narrative crutch, with benevolent adults coming in to save the day (here represented by Chris Pratt’s “dinosaur wrangler” character Owen, and Bryce Dallas Howard — who, goddamit, Hollywood is bound and determined to make a star out of yet! — as their hitherto- inattentive aunt Claire, who’s one of the park’s big-wigs), and I’m sorry, but if you don’t know why that scenario is inherently creepy to some of us, then you haven’t been paying much attention to the some of the uglier and more salacious rumors about Spielberg’s personal life that have been swirling around for decades now. And that I won’t repeat here. So let’s just move on, shall we?
In any case, that solitary-but-predictable qualm aside, the fact of the matter is that Jurassic World is expertly-crafted throwaway fun. Not every movie needs to re-invent the wheel to stand out, and Trevorrow wisely has that figured from the outset here. All we want from his big-budget extravaganza is pretty much the same sort of story that had us jumping in our seats all those years ago, and to feel the same sort of “rush of excitement” that we did back then and which the two previous installments in the series just weren’t able to capture. It’s a dinosaur movie, for Christ’s sake, so just give us a shit-load of dinos on the loose and we’re gonna be happy! How hard is that to figure out?
About the only wrinkles to the formula here are the introduction of the new genetically-engineered “super-dinosaur” Indominus Rex, and the hare-brained scheme laid out by the villainous Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio) to train Velociraptors to be — uhhmmm — super-soldiers for the US army. But rich people with more money than sense employing unscrupulous lackeys and amoral scientists have been a Jurassic staple, in one form or another, from jump, and one might even argue that really smart people doing really dumb things has always been at the heart of these flicks. That’s okay with me if the end result is admittedly disposable fare done with this much gusto, flair, and panache. There are a million and one reasons to write off Jurassic World as derivative, senseless garbage, sure — but when you’ve got five or six bloodthirsty dinosaurs battling it out for supremacy at the end, I don’t care about any of those intellectual (or, as is more often the case, pseudo-intellectual) arguments. I’m just having a damn good time.
Through the Shattered Lens 