3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Jurassic World Rebirth

2025, Gareth Edwards (Monsters) -- download

Huh. Its a Gareth Edwards movie. Didn't expect that. And it just came and went without so much as a T-rex subsonic rumble. And, I guess the Jurassic World "series" of movies were not done, with the release of Dominion? New trilogy in the sub-franchise? Stand-alone? No matter what they had in mind, this movie is not going to inspire anything further. I hope, at least, that Edwards went away with a big paycheck to fund whatever passion project he had in mind next.

You would figure that Gareth Edwards would be the perfect choice for making a movie about giant, awe inspiring monsters, considering his success with Godzilla and ... well, Monsters. But from my view point, this movie struck me as least-effort, not bothering to exceed the expectations of the Purple Suits who decided the movie had to be made, and directed every second of it. Instead of a proper Edwards movie, we get a pastiche of previous Jurassic movies, as well as his own, but it all ends up feeling more like a mood board of a movie, rather than a creator's vision.

Connected with Kent while this post was in draft, and I mentioned I was surprised we didn't even talk about going to see it. He mentioned how Edwards was brought in late in the movie, not even being the first or second choice director. I get that Hollywood is a machine, that movies are often constructed, but this isn't his vehicle let alone his "passion project" and that is apparent. He's just the guy assigned to the activity.

And yet it still started off strong, to my perception. As this movie is abandoning the cast and story of the other three, but still retaining the continuity, this is a world where dinosaurs got released from the parks, made their way in the world, but.... are now dying off. So much for "life finds a way". Anywayz, the novel way this one sets itself up is to focus on the mercenary team hired to bring someone illegally to the island where the dinosaurs they want to exploit are. The mains are initially presented as this entirely economically driven group.

These movies have always had a "mercenary team" but they have usually been relegated as background fodder, almost nameless, ready to be "joyfully" munched upon by the dinosaurs. You had Ludlow's team sent to capture dinosaurs, under the eye of big game hunter Roland Tembo (The Lost World) and the backup team hired by the wealthy Kirbys in Jurassic Park III. And of course, Vincent Donofrio's Hoskins security head who has his own ideas. They are all less than sympathetic characters playing a dangerous game for money and maybe some thrills. And then they die.

This movie brings us a much more sympathetic Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson, Asteroid City), who is the main character, and the main face draw to the movie. She's entirely in it for the money, offered more than enough cash to hire a team to take the latest Corporate Buffoon (Rupert Friend, Asteroid City) to yet another island where the/a corporation was experimenting with newer, flashier, more dangerous versions of the dinosaurs that were going out of fashion in the rest of the world. And they bring Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey, Bridgerton) an actual dinosaur enthusiast, as a SME, and unappreciated moral compass. Finally, the movie adds in the sympathetic family, a spinoff of the little girl who got bit in The Lost World. The Delgados are on a family sailing adventure, across the Atlantic, when they are capsized by the whale-sized dinosaur our main team is hunting. They are picked up by the main team, but inevitably they all end up marooned on the island where the big nasty experimental dinos are.

Oh, the toss away reason for all of this is that heart-blood from three really really big dinosaurs can create a wonder drug that will save millions of lives, and Corporate Buffoon tags along so he can twirl his moustache. The SME, while accepting the paycheck, would rather the drug become open-sourced, but he is a dinosaur enthusiast, not a Big Pharm scientist, so I am not sure what he thinks he can do with a couple of vials of blood; but shrug whatever, unappreciated moral compass.

Continuing with the pastiche, there are elements that make this almost a family movie as the tight knit Delgados are focused on as much the mercenaries who get munched on and die, sans other named-face Mahershala Ali (Green Book). We even get the frightened-little-girl-gets-cute-baby-dino distraction. If I wasn't so fond of Manuel Garcia-Rulfo (The Magnificent Seven), who plays Daddy Delgado, I would have found the whole idea annoying AF. Of note, the mercenaries were not the Bad Guys, so each death is supposed to carry a pang of regret, instead of the "yeah, the raptor got em!" of previous movies. It somewhat successful at that, but I am unusually subject to collateral death.

Then we move onto the horror movie, when the two groups finally connect at "the village", or the central compound where the originating scientific research group were based -- basically we get the research station, fuel pipes, helicopter landing pad, and a convenience store / gas station. Oh, and most importantly, to give us some Alien vibes, we get "sewer tunnels" below the whole research station. As Marmy pointed out, the Big Bad, a monstrously mutated very large dino was channeling the human-xeno hybrid (what was with the big bulbous gelatinous forehead? sort of a "shoot here" formation)  from Alien:Resurrection. But none of it is very compelling nor exciting, more just merely by the books. Set design was great though.

As for the presence of Edwards, we get little flourishes and that's pretty much it. You get the lighting reveals of scale from Godzilla once the D-Rex (Distortus Rex) appears, and some of the grand landscape scenes reminded me of the background establishing shots in The Creator. If the ooo and awwww of the dino herd was his, I couldn't tell. And one thing definitely not his, was the terrible terrible CG. Primarily it was composited into the scenes really badly, and usually terribly lit. 

If this movie was meant to be the "rebirth" of the whole franchise, it has failed on every level. ScarJo's presence served nothing for the movie -- she's there, she competent, she has the hint of being an interesting character, but... we get little. There is nothing left in the plot that could lead to more, and nothing distinct about this one that would inspire the re-use of the characters. I really hope this doesn't hurt Edwards career, and just gives him some bank for whatever he would really like to be doing.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): 65

2023, Scott Beck / Bryan Woods (Haunt) -- download

There is a scifi actioner sub-sub-sub-genre that I am always down for --- a spaceship carrying passengers, sometimes people in stasis, sometimes prisoners, crashes on a remote planet and the pilot, along with whomever survives, have to ... survive. My elevator pitch for the next one is has a Predator doing the crashing but into an Earth-bound warzone. This one has pilot Mills' (Adam Driver, House of Gucci) passenger transport ship hit by a rogue meteor, dropping his ship onto Earth, killing all his passengers but one. The gimmick? The title -- its Earth's prehistoric time period, and guess what that "rogue meteor" was part of? 

This movie attempted, and somewhat succeeded, to do more than just the Get From A to B and survive. There is world building (theirs, not ours 65 mil ago), providing Mills a backstory of taking another long haul job to pay for his daughter's medical treatments. It gives weight when the only survivor of the crash is a young girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt, Awake), from a planet/people with a language he doesn't speak, and most of his tech is broken, so he cannot properly communicate with her. So, the dialogue and exposition conduit is Mills, a man who would have killed himself upon crawling out of the wreckage, but has a tortured need to save... someone. You see, and you probably guessed the SPOILER as soon as I did, but his daughter died while he was away. And he cannot let another young girl die.

Of course, there are lots of dinosaurs to contend with as he traverses a landscape more akin to northern BC than our familiar dino laden jungles of other movies. There are the requisite familiar ones, from the Jurassic movies, like the T-Rex and raptors, none of which the movie cares are in the same era, but also these nasty, brutish things that are probably not any real species. Just five minutes of Googling shows that pretty much every dinosaur enthusiast on the Internet is screaming about this movie being inaccurate. 

But does it really matter? No. Monsters chase and try to eat people! That is wall this movie wants, and the use of the 65 Millions Years Ago gimmick is only considered sparingly, and for the purposes of creating draw. Its an elevator pitch applied to a template, and I would say the movie succeeds more in the spaces between the pitch, the performances and the relationship between the two humans. I said earlier that the movie only somewhat succeeds, and since I am attaching the performances to that tentative success, I guess I have to say Driver is primarily responsible. I am not widely familiar with his non-mainstream work, and he was very very cardboard as Kylo Ren in Star Wars (do I have to say that? yes, yes I do, as I know a LOT of people who have never seen these movies), but he does raise this character a smidge above what ... say Mark Wahlberg would have done with the character. I do wish the movie was just a bit more refined, so we could end up at the level of Pitch Black but I was satisfied with what I got.

3 Short Paragraphs: Jurassic World Dominion

2022, Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guaranteed) -- download

I actually looked forward to this pile of dreck, but much in the same way I did Moonfall. Is it considered "enjoy ironically" even if you genuinely enjoy them while understanding how terrible they are? Its not about mocking them nor turning them into a drinking game, its more just accepting how terrible it was going to be and enjoying watching them through the eyes of a less rigid viewer, with little critical judgement. I choose to hand-wave all the badness away until its over, once I have had my in-the-moment experience. But its not like I can do that with everything that is bad; for example, with most of the Bruce Willis dreck that hits the Direct To circuit, despite them often hitting the Violence or Scifi notes I often enjoy. Even if seeing all the terribleness that Trevorrow provides in this movie, I can see that he and the people involved give a shit, do a good job, and know the art of making movies. And, of course, they have much much more money to throw around.

This is the conclusion to the second series in this franchise, in which we never learn from our mistakes comes to a not-really-truly finality. I mean, each movie has a finality which is ignored so there can be another movie. The Jurassic World franchise started because someone ignored that Jurassic Park was a disaster and recreated it, with More Safety Measures. They failed and dinosaurs ate everyone, and some escaped. The island was shut down. In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, foolish humans return to the island to save the dinos before a volcanic eruption destroys the island. Instead, just before the island itself blew up, they capture some and bring them to a Evil Rich Guy's estate and things go badly. That should have ended things, but instead some dinosaurs ran away, or swam away from the original island disaster. Now dinosaurs are In The Wild.

Seriously, despite the idea of saving rare wild animals, if they were wandering around the mainland US eating people, crops and livestock, they would be put down. But nope, the conceit of these movies is Saving the Dinosaurs. This one gathers all the mains from the first franchise together with the mains from this franchise, to AGAIN find a place where the dinosaurs have all been gathered "safely", this time a Nature Reserve that has even More Safety Measures. There is a conspiracy by a Rich Evil Guy to capture Clone Girl (sub-plot from previous movie) as well as hide the fact that the giant (like, more than a foot long) locusts are his mistake. Everyone has to combine skills and morals to shut this guy down, and as with all the movies, inadvertently feed him to the dinos. 

They all have their issues, but this one seemed to just be resting on its "its the old gang back together" laurels and didn't have much else going for it. Yeah yeah, dinosaurs are running wild in the US but the movie is more concerned using that idea as just TV news bites in the background, and just spends all its running time recreating scenes from previous movies with flagrant nods & winks. By the time I got to the end of this movie, I was actually wondering if Trevorrow ironically enjoys making these movies, as he even finds a lame way to squeeze in the "I know this, it's UNIX !" scene for the updated audience.  There were some inspired bits, usually focused around concepts not present in any of the other movies, such as the Morocco dino-smuggler market where we finally see that Bad People Eat Dinosaur (I almost wrote dino-snuggler, but that *cough* would be too far for any movie).  In the end, this one sits less with me than the previous two, but maybe in a year, I will do a re-watch like I did for the original three during one of our lockdowns. Maybe during our next lockdown.

10 for 10: more TV than necessary

[10 for 10... that's 10 consumables which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie or TV show we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?   ]

In this edition:

Living With Yourself (season 1 - Netflix)
Batwoman (3 episodes - CW/Showcase)
Stumptown (pilot episode - ABC)
Genndy Tartakovski's Primal (season 1 - Cartoon Network)
His Dark Materials (3 episodes - HBO)
The World According to Jeff Goldblum (4 episodes - Disney+)
Harley Quinn  (5 episodes - Cartoon Network)
Impulse (season 2 - YouTube)
Rick & Morty (season 4 - Cartoon Network)
The Mandalorian (season 1 redux - Disney+)


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Over the holidays I did back-to-back viewings of Us and Enemy (unfortunately The Double was unavailable), getting some intriguing doppleganger viewing in.  I had forgotten that, back in October, we had watched Living With Yourself, the Paul Rudd-starring Netflix vehicle about a struggling advertising executive who is referred to an experimental self-improvement process, and comes out feeling like a new man...because he is, literally, a new man.  The Paul Rudd that steps out of the treatment is actually a rapidly grown clone with some behavioral modifications that immediately starts improving his life...better performance at work, a better relationship with his wife.  But the original Paul Rudd, who was supposed to be terminated, wakes up in a shallow grave and finds his life usurped by this newer version.  But rather than being nefarious nemeses they wind up more like twins, since they both basically have the same shared memories and experiences, just their attitudes are slightly different.  The show doesn't put them through any overtly extraordinary paces, despite their unique situation, instead it reminds us that the only person who can make our own lives better is ourself (it's a metaphor).  That said I loved how the show would keep switching its POV character from episode to episode, following one Paul, and then at the start of the next episode recapping the previous episode's events from the POV from the other Paul.  The show may not be the goofy comedy I was hoping for, nor is it a forced farce, or sci-fi nightmare, instead it's a light drama in the vein of Amazon's Forever or Netflix's Maniac (both shows left unreviewed from The Dark Year of this blog).  It has some sharp storytelling tricks to establish a very human and grounded tale.  Not exceptional but certainly watchable (as most Rudd vehicles are) with some very enjoyable elements.

[10:00 (I actually forgot to start the clock, oops)]

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Batwoman as a comic book character is a difficult choice to base a whole TV series off of.  Kate Kane is an excellent character, but the modern interpretation of her is not even 15 years old at this point and she's only had a handful of solo adventures.  In the time between her introduction into comics and today, the entire universe she exists in had at least one huge reboot and a few soft ones, so the character hasn't really had time to grow as part of the DC superhero community.  The basics is she's Bruce Wayne's cousin (from his mom's side).  Her dad is a hard-driving ex-military.  She dropped out of the military due to "don't ask, don't tell" policies.  She had childhood trauma as a result of the deaths of her mother and sister in a car accident.  She becomes Batwoman, for reasons I don't recall.

In the show, she becomes Batwoman because Batman/Bruce Wayne up and disappeared from Gotham three years prior and someone has to do something about all the crime (and her dad's private security force is...problematic).  Kate's comic book time hasn't been long enough to establish a very thorough rogues gallery, so the only villain she's really connected to is Alice, who runs an "Alice in Wonderland" gang motif, and who is really Kate's crazy, long-thought-dead sister.

Rewatch: Jurassic Parks

I don't have any particular fondness for this franchise, but I did enjoy the first one immensely, and the others decreasingly as time went by. I only watched because I needed something to watch on Netflix that I could watch in chunks, turning on and off again, while staring at my phone or doing work.

Jurassic Park, 1993, Steven Spielburg (The BFG) -- Netflix

That seminal scene, the ripple vibrations in the glass of water, as the T-Rex walks forward. I always loved it, as it came with such a sense of impending doom. But it doesn't make any sense. Is the T-Rex making every third step a heavier one? Is he pausing between each step? Walking very very slowly? Unless someone can toss me some science where soil vibration gathers, the further away it is, I am just going with For Dramatic Effect.

After all these years, over 20 to be precise, the first reveal of those dinosaurs is still awe inspiring. After over 20 years, the reference of, "This is a Unix system. I know this..." still really bugs me. What bugs me even more is that, it's a genuine representation. The system she is on is an SGI (early high end unix systems often used for TV graphics; Marmy used one) workstation and they had an experimental 3D file manager called 'fsn'. Yup that's it. It's real.

Back then, Sam Neill's point of view felt very plausible but these days, he feels a little anti-science. Sure, they are doing something very very dangerous and for entirely corporate reasons. But they did successfully achieve something astounding! They just needed more oversight and less cost saving measures. I am sure with today's venture capitalism, InGen would have done some incredible things. But I do agree, maybe a theme park shouldn't have been the first implementation of the technology.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park, 1997, Steven Spielburg (War of the Worlds) -- Netflix

This one's basic plot always escapes me. I know they are going to the sister island of the one from the first, but why is never in my memory. Essentially Hammond now knows better and wants unfettered propagation of dinosaurs on that other island, without human intervention. His company InGen wants to absorb some losses by monetizing it. And this time leather jacketed Jeff Goldblum gets to be the main character. And he has a kid.

So, after the young tough guy (Vince Vaughn) screws up and helps a baby T-Rex, only to lead to the destruction of their Damnation Alley style accordion bus, and the death of a selfless, helpful character, I always thought the army of hunters was arriving to rescue them. But no, InGen sells knowledge and access to Big Game Hunters, one of whom I am sure is a dentist. This gives us a larger body of mooks to die at the hands of the raptors and T-Rex's. One poignant bit I never caught before was Pete Postlethwaite's hunter catching onto the folly of challenging these beasts, after his best friend and partner is killed. Then again, he has accomplished his goal and has captured a T-Rex, of which is being transported back to the mainland in a King Kong style disaster.

That end scene, with the T-Rex rampaging amusingly, but not amusingly (eating motorists), around LA always annoyed the fuck out of me. And it did again. Again, mass casualty for the purpose of chuckles. And considering they were trying to keep all this under wraps, the cat would be out of the bag for the rest of the movies, no? Apparently not...

Jurassic Park III, 2001, Joe Johnston (Jumanji) -- Netflix

III is three slashes; get it?  Groan.

This movie takes place in the post-dinosaur world. The events of the second movie could not have been covered up (despite what the X-Files tells you) and now the world is aware of recreated biologica dinosaurs. I wished there had been more discussion, more debate, more background of what this new world was like, but no, this is a  quick toss back into the action as a kid and his step father disappear on Isla Sorna after some ill fated and foolish para-sailing.

This is also the 'bring back the old guy' movie! While Goldblum was celebrated as the lead for the last movie, I like the idea of bringing back non-action, non-smarmy Alan Grant, the palentologist who just wants his bone digging work to be funded, while everyone wants to talk to him about him nearly being eaten by real dinosaurs. As he and his team lament; who wants to fund bone digging when there are now living, breathing ones.

Dr Grant is conned back to the island by the father of said para-sailing kid, who pretends to be a foolishly wealthy man seeking an aerial tour. Along with the man come some short lived mercenaries, and his stereotype complaining, foolish wife. Please stop screaming, please stop running off into the forest where all the dinosaurs want to eat you! The movie runs back to the formula of just finding a way off the island, this time running from something that eats T-Rexes, but is not very memorable but for some cliff escapades.  Still, they get the tension right which is the only point.

I Saw This!! (2015 Unreviewed) - summery blockbusterish

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Graig or David attempt to write about a bunch of movies they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so.  Now they they have to strain to say anything meaningful lest they just not say anything at all.  And they can't do that, can they?

In this edition, four films from the Summer of 2015

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Ex Machina (2015, d. Alex Garland) - in theatre
Jurassic World (2015, d. Colin Trevorrow) - in theatre

Trainwreck (2015, d. Judd Apatow) - in theatre
The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015, d. Guy Ritchie) - in theatre

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A science fiction film starring Domnhall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac that I've seen five times?  Yeah, it's called Star Wars: Episode 7: The Force Awakens... I don't really need to see it a sixth, but I most certainly will, and probably countless times beyond that.  There's this other scifi film starring those two actors (much more prominently, I might add), a wonderfully tense psychological drama called Ex Machina that I definitely need to see again.

The crux of the film finds a reclusive billionaire tech genius Nathan (Isaac) pulling from his vast stable of employees (via an in-company lottery) a young, intelligent designer Caleb (Gleeson) to his remote estate for what promises to be a life (and potentially world) changing week-long private engagement of the minds.  What Caleb finds out is that he's to be one half of a Turing test (the testing of a machine's ability to think or behave in a unquestionably human capacity), as he's introduced to Ava (Alicia Vikander) a robot in a sleek female form with a decidedly beautiful face. 

As the tests persist, questions arise as to who is controlling the test, is it Caleb, or Ava, or is it Nathan behind the scenes.  The more Caleb engages with Ava, the more it seems she passes the test, to the point that he starts developing feelings towards her...whether romantic or sympathetic...either way, he begins projecting human emotions upon her, as he perceives human emotions emanating from her.  But Nathan is a wild card in the process.  How much is he manipulating things, not just the tests, but Ava and Caleb as well. 

The end result of the film isn't some "shock twist" meant to put it in that category of film, but rather yet another reveal that is meant for us to question what we saw and the motivations of those involved.  The film wisely never settles on conclusive answers but provides so many clues, overt and subtle alike, that one can make up their own minds about what transpired and not be wrong.  But the seeds of doubt about what's really going on is the true genius of Alex Garland's directorial debut.  Garland's written many a great features, some outright, others in a cult fashion, but this is nothing short of masterful.  The cast is primarily the three leads in a secluded environment (with Sonoya Mizuno as Kyoko as Nathan's mistreated, foreign help) and are all beyond excellent.

This is the film that gave us this, so we should be forever grateful:

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I've come to learn that amongst many Millennials Jurassic Park is their Star Wars, by which I mean it's the series of genre films with which they have strongest attachment because of their childhood association with it.  Star Wars was virtually a dead entity when Jurassic Park emerged, having been 10 years since the last film, and many years since the dissolution of the toy line and comic books.  The time was ripe for a blockbuster film that catered to both kids and parent, presenting a world never seen before.

Over 20 years later, Jurassic World arrived in theatres like a freight train run amok, an unstoppable juggernaut at the international box office that would be challenged by only one other film (unsurprisingly, it's Star Wars).

I'm quite clearly a Star Wars kid, and a bit of a fanatic at heart.  That doesn't mean there's not room in my fandom for dinosaurs, but the truth is I've never made the space.  I don't hate Jurassic Park (or The Lost World, its sequel) but I care so little about it I never bothered with the third movie, and actually had planned to skip World altogether.  It was only a childless weekend and a need for utterly mindless entertainment to distract from work-related stress (and a heap of affection for @PrattPrattPratt) that brought me to the new Jurassic age. 

And rather mindless entertainment it is, but enjoyably so.  It strives for a commentary on how terrible events always tend to repeat themselves when money is the primary motivation, and perhaps a restatement of the old JP condemnation of the hubris of man.  It tries for these statements rather minimally.  Overall it's more interested in cool things happening with dinosaurs and displaying some protofuturism.

The further I get away from this film the less it matters to me and the less I really have to say about any of it.  Chris Pratt made a surprisingly convincing badass, Bryce Dallas Howard was fine in a role that was very confused about what it wanted to say about this woman (running in heels, people), and the kids...well, the film could have done without them as they served little purpose in the end.  I most enjoyed Irrfan Khan's billionaire park owner who was unafraid to get his hands dirty, and B.D. Wong's minimal part as nefarious scientist/middleman was about as close to intrigue as the film got (obviously setting up the sequel).  Vincent D'Onofrio does "creepy, sweaty guy" practically every other role, so he's naturally pretty good at it, while Jake Johnson and Lauren Lapkus provide out of left field, unnecessary comic relief.  Oh, then there's Judy Greer in her second of three "tertiary mom roles" of the summer (see also Tomorrowland and Ant-Man). 

Like the other Jurassic films I've seen, I was entertained, but I have little desire to see it again.

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So powerful is Amy Schumer's voice imprint on Trainwreck that I completely forgot who directed it.  I mean, I knew Judd Apatow was involved in getting Schumer to writer her own script for a feature but I forgot that Apatow had actually directed it.  This is an Amy Schumer movie, not an Apatow picture.  If that means anything to you.

Schumer has exploded in recent years as a comedian and comic performer thanks to her sketch comedy series Inside Amy Schumer.  It's a series that treads water in crude vulgarity just as much as observational irony and comedic sincerity.  Schumer wrestles with her pseudo feminism on the show, wanting to bring issues about women in comedy and entertainment as well as systemic sexism to the forefront but also sometimes unassredly playing into a ditzy blonde role.

With Trainwreck, Schumer reinvents the romantic leading woman as well as the romantic comedy, creating a tremendously funny (and occasionally touching) movie about the confusing and complex nature of love and sex.  It's a film that points out to a barely exaggerated degree just how much we overanalyze relationships, and the exterior and interior pressures we put on them.

Schumer, playing Amy, was raised by her father to believe monogamy is a false concept, and in her mid-30's somewhat enjoys her life of frivolous casual encounters and open relationships, with the lens projecting nary an impulse of slut shaming or finger pointing.  It's not judging her actions in isolation.  The film doesn't say there's anything wrong with her behavior until Amy herself acknowledges that she feels something is wrong with her world view, and starts to examine her behavior.

Trainwreck doesn't so much as subvert cliches as avoid them.  There's a formula for romantic comedies and while this follows the ABCs, it's all MQXs outside of them.  The cast is ridiculously winning, with Bill Hader making an unusual but agreeable romantic leading man, especially with LeBron James as his wingman (James doesn't just steal the show, but runs it to the net and dunks it).  Not to be outdone, Pro wrestler John Cena puts in a shockingly against-type performance playing Amy's sensitive, casual boyfriend. The film bolsters Shumer's life with family: Colin Quinn as her ailing father, Brie Larson as her buckled down sister, and Mike Birbiglia as her so-square-it-hurts brother-in-law who plays step-dad to her nephew).  And so chameleonic is Tilda Swinton that it took more than half the film to realize she was Schumer's magazine mogul boss.

What Apatow brings to the movie is the smarts to not get in its way.  He allows for improvisation on the set, which assuredly results in some great comedy, but he also trusts the script, its structure, and its density to deliver not just a funny movie, but something relatable and tangible. Schumer's script is definitely a character study, not just a series of vignettes, allowing for a few quieter moments amidst its many, many laughs, and Apatow invests in them fully.  With his clout, he's been able to deliver a 2-hour comedy, once unheard of, now almost a mainstay in cinemas.  The terrible secret is few films ever earn that run time, but this one absolutely does.  2015's best comedy*

*right next to The Martian.**
** coff

(what's most remarkable is how Trainwreck managed to be marketed, in the summer, with only one poster!  Who does that in this day and age?)

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With the exception of the 60-something crowd, the property Man From U.N.C.L.E. holds no sway.  It hasn't stayed in the pop-culture conversation at all since it went off the air over 40 years ago.  Only fans of the superspy/espionage genre bring up its name with any familiarity. 
As a moderate fan of the superspy/espionage genre, I wrote about the original Man From U.N.C.L.E. pilot episode before, having acquired in late 2014 the complete series in a handy dandy briefcase-style box.  I managed to make it four episodes in before all the other pop culture of the time took priority over it, relegating the case to a top shelf to collect dust waiting patiently for some sick day binge watch.  That said, even in those four episodes I managed to become quite fond of the series already.  It's a 1960's superspy series that, at least in its first season, took itself seriously as a counterpart to the early Bond films.  Word is that in later seasons it steered more into the gadgets and broad villainy as Bond did, and then fell straight into Batman-style camp.

Guy Ritchie comes to the property with very little expectations set before it.  In fact, I'd wager to say the filmmaker comes with more expectations than the film matter.  Ritchie delivered massive successes with the Robert Downey Jr.-led Sherlock Holmes movies but those films, and his original pictures that surrounded it (Revolver, Rock'n'Rolla) didn't quite have the same panache, style, fun and cleverness as his sophomore effort, Snatch... a film which remains Ritchie's high watermark. 

With Snatch, and Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels before it, Ritchie was expected to be the next Quentin Tarantino, a student of film with a knack for witty banter and no shortage of ingenuity.  But Ritchie fell into a hole with Madonna and has been seemingly clawing his way back to filmmaking relevance ever since.  My expectation for the film was that it would find a happy medium between big-budgeted action of his Sherlock movies and his more quirky storytelling tendencies from his earliest films.  To be honest, he came pretty close.

The film takes place in the 1960's, hot in the middle of the cold war.  Superman Henry Cavill plays American super-agent Napoleon Solo, while Lone Ranger Armie Hammer plays Russia's top man Illya Kuryakin.  The two should be natural foes, and in fact the film opens up with a brilliant cat-and-mouse chase sequence between the two in East Berlin, but a plot by a third party to acquire and use nuclear weapons has force the two together, one-time only.  In between them is mechanic Gaby Teller (a most welcome second appearance from Alicia Vikander this summer) whose estranged father is somehow involved in the warhead exchange.

In this regard the film follows the TV show's format, finding the two agents helping out a civilian who must become part of the proceedings at their own risk.  Though Cavill, as the American character, is clearly the story's lead, the romantic subplot unusually (and I think smartly) occurs between Gaby and Illya, with Solo maintaining a rogue-ish playboy image.  The villain plot isn't quite as convoluted as a vintage James Bond, nor are the villains as colorful, but Bond movies are generally about a single agent making his way through tricky situations with wits and gadgets, while this film is more about two supposed foes learning to rely upon and trust each other.  It is a noticable difference in the execution of the two properties, though the distinction in story is a little harder to discern.

Ritchie does bring a fair amount of visual pop to the film, with eccentric split screening being the most notable flourish.  The 60's aesthetic is recaptured quite well though a modern lens, the mod style looking even more appealing than it probably did back then.  There seems to be a focus on practical action over big effects sequences, and though everything is executed well, it's really only the first sequence that stands out, and the final sequence doesn't quite feel satisfying.  I was hoping for a more engaging soundtrack (Snatch's song selection seemed integral to the emotional execution of the story) but nothing quite stands out in that fashion.

The trio of Cavill, Hammer and Vikander are winning, and the tense dynamic between Solo and Kuryakin was one of its best features.  But if The Man From U.N.C.L.E. had a main flaw it would be staging it as an origin story for the U.N.C.L.E. agency, rather than it already being an established thing.  It seemed to diminish a film called "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." when there was no U.N.C.L.E. for a man to be from.  I would love to see a follow-up from Ritchie and this crew, a little bigger, a little more eccentric.  While the latest Bond and Mission Impossible movies have managed to veer away from the super-seriousness of the Bourne movies, there's definitely room for a lighter, more retro action-espionage.

3 Short Paragraphs: Jurassic World

2015, Colin Trevorrow (Safety Not Guranteed) -- cinema

I am not sure why but I really wanted to see Jurassic World in the theatres, most likely because I just needed a big, dumb summer blockbuster that I had nothing invested in. And that is exactly what I got. It was made with gobs of money, is big, spectacular with great lead actors but not a lot of intelligence in the writing. In fact, the lack of intelligence amongst the leaders of the park sort of reflects the low common denominator intent of the creators -- do whatever you have to make us money. And it shows, because in the long run, a few weeks after seeing it, there is nothing lasting in my recollection about the movie, as with all great popcorn movies.

Well, almost nothing. My thrill in watching the utter ridiculous nature of Bryce Dallas-Howard's defiantly high heel wearing character was immense. To explain. Bryce plays Clare Dearing, the park's operational manager, in pristine white business suits, eyes always glued to her smart phone and a complete awareness and understanding of every aspect of the park. Well, at least those parts that the company that owns the park lets her in on. She is a control freak, completely focused on maintaining her place, her role in the running of the park. She sacrifices all to the park, even her relationship with her sister, as she drops her nephews off with her assistant instead of bonding with them personally. Her shoes become the symbol of this. Clare's power comes from being in control of the park; when she loses this, she clings to her last vestige, a pair of expensive high heel shoes.

Even when the perfect park becomes a death trap, and the genetically engineered, brand new, even nastier, teethier dinosaur starts rampaging and eating people left and right, Clare barely roles up her sleeves. Its a joke in the movie, but for the audience as well. She gets progressively dirtier, fleeing from the monsters, fighting the monsters (and saving the Male Lead, Chris Pratt) but never gives up the shoes. I saw it as tongue in cheek defiance. But the outrage machine saw it as a slight on women. More offensive to me was the death of her assistant, who did nothing but stay loyal to Clare's ideal, and was rewarded by being swallowed whole.

Fall Pilots 2011: A Gifted Man/Suburgatory and those two I couldn't watch all the way through

The "An [Adjective] [Noun]" title has cropped up far too frequently in recent years, to the point where I can never properly remember the title to this show.  Perhaps if I write it down a few times it'll stick.  But the show's name is the least of A Serious.. A Beautiful.... A Gifted Man's challenges.  It's chief obstacle is in it's curious genre mix of medical drama, ghost story, with a sprinkle of romance.  It's House meets Ghost Whisperer but it takes itself more seriously than the pithy former series and strives to avoid the campy melodrama of the latter.

Patrick Wilson plays what he plays best, a bastard (although he did manage to swing sympathetic in Watchmen), and it's no surprise that he's really good at it.  He's also pretty good at letting his bastard guard down in moments too, showing clearly that his character is able to come out of his own ego.  It's a chance encounter Dr Michael Holt has with his ex-wife, Emma, which triggers this transformation, having not seen each other for nearly 8 years since he left her doing clinic work in Alaska for NYC where he's become a preeminent neurosurgeon.  His high profile clinic has led to high status clients and the show is effective at establishing his organization, establishing his type of clientele, and establishing his talent.  It's a little clunkier in establishing the other aspects of his life, specifically the introduction to his sister, his problem-child teenaged nephew and Emma, all who enter the show rather abruptly, though each serves a distinct purpose in how Michael relates to the world.

Obviously Michael is the focus character of the pilot, but there's little room for any other characters to make an impact.  The actors involved include the great character actress Margo Martindale as Michael's long-suffering personal assistant, and Pablo Schreiber as Anton Little Creek, a spiritual adviser set loose on Michael by his flighty sister (Julie Benz) are both highlights in the cast but, again, in supporting roles only.  There almost seems to be no room for anyone else in the pilot or the series, which is also loaded with no less than four cases for Michael to juggle in the midst of perhaps losing his grip on sanity once it's revealed that Emma died two days before he had his chance run-in with her.   Jennifer Ehle as Emma is the weakest link of the show.  Her choice to play the ghost as somewhat patronizing, perpetually sympathetic, a little cloying, and always painfully smiling is kind of grating, and I kept hoping there would be a more sinister twist to her attachment to Michael, and intent that would have been made painfully clear during Michael's "treatment" with Anton.

The pilot was directed by Jonathan Demme so it has a rather cinematic feel to it, but that cinematic aspect really makes me wonder why this wasn't a motion picture, as it seems like the idea of a spirit guide to personal transformation would suit a 2-hour screenplay far better.  I wonder how long a series about a man talking to a ghost can last without getting repetitive especially when the only journey for the show seems to be Michael's spiritual transformation.  I'm not certain what the week-to-week episode format will be or if it will be at all interesting, though hopefully it does something more interesting than a case-of-the-week slant (which judging by the synopsis of the second episode, it's not going to).  I'm intrigued by the show, but I think I'm only going to be let down.

While Cougartown is on hiatus ("EHHHHHHHHHHH" - Abed) Suburgatory is the substitute, a single camera sitcom about a teenaged girl and her single dad moving from NYC to the surreal suburban wasteland of plastic people.  The setting has been mined by films and television since the days of Clueless, so it doesn't feel familiar, but practically exhausted.  And yet, Suburgatory has found an angle that I haven't seen yet, that of the single father, having raised his daughter on his own after her mother abandoned her shortly after birth.  Of course, the show is realized from the perspective of Tessa (Jane Levy who just may be the next Emma Stone), but it's her father (a wonderfully cast Jeremy Sisto) as the handsome, single dad (fresh pickin's in the suburban jungle) that the show finds energy, for as unfamiliar as Tessa is with her surroundings, it's George that's even more out of place.

The cast is bolstered a host of comedic actors and actresses including Curb's Cheryl Hines, Firefly's Alan Tudyk, SNL's Ana Gasteyer and Mad TV's Arden Myrin, though it's the father-daughter chemistry between Sisto and Levy which is its strongest aspect and hopefully is utilized more than it was in the pilot.

Though obviously a convention of the high school comedy genre that it's exploring, Tessa's narration I found to be a tad overbearing in the pilot, serving the purpose of exposition often but not adding much to the comedy.  It's not an essential but if the show learns how to use it as a stronger comedic voice then it can become a stronger facet to the show.  Hopefully though the high-school aspect is less prevalent than Tessa's observations on the adult world around her

It's a good looking production, with set design and wardrobe aiding much of the humour's execution.  Bringing it back, it's actually not far off from where Cougartown started in its first few episodes, which isn't to say we have another Cougartown on our hands with Suburgatory (because some might construe that as an insult) but it's strong, funny and charming and hopefully develops a more unique voice from its cinematic predecessors (see also Mean Girls, Easy A).

And in my final (for now) pair of pilot peeks, I watched about 8 minutes of Pan Am before I just couldn't stand to watch anymore.  The show obviously had a good chunk of money sunk into replicating sets and costumes of the era, while digitally recreating the planes and cityscapes of the 1960s, but where Mad Men (its obvious inspiration) lives in its environments, nudging the era's gender politics and naive advancements towards the audience, Pan Am throws them in all in the audience's faces.  It's just so overbearing and, frankly, unbelievable.  It's definitely trying for a lighter, loftier tone than Mad Men, but in not taking itself seriously (introducing one of the Pan Am girls as a spy, and having another encounter her lover's family on her flight) I lost all interest.  I don't want another substandard, ridiculous soap opera, I already have Ringer.

Terra Nova, I was expecting to hate more than I did, and managed to last ten minutes longer through the pilot than I thought I would.  The network sci-fi shows (basically anything that's not on Fox) have rarely succeeded in the past 20 years, from Jeremiah to Dark Skies to Earth 2 to V, all cancelled within 2 seasons, while the sci-fi (and fantasy) shows that run on Fox, or the CW seem to be granted a much longer shelf life.  In North America, sci-fi and fantasy, no matter what the box office returns tell you, are niche products, specifically those that partake in long-form storytelling.  Why Transformers 3 and Super 8 make boffo cash at the box office is easy, spectacle, something which the genre programming on television can't afford to provide on a week-in, week-out basis.  On a network willing to take risks, which isn't the big three of NBC, CBS, or ABC, you will get a show with a focus, or at least a showrunner with a vested interest in the final product.  On the "big three" networks you get a product that's trying to satisfy executives perceptions of what the show should be as well as what network executives think the public wants to see.  What the public wants to see, I tell you now, is not Terra Nova.


Jason O'Mara, having survived another short-lived genre show (Life on Mars) is a cop in a dying future, where overpopulation has finally taken its toll and the ecosystem of earth in on the verge of total collapse.  O'Mara and his wife are busted with a third child (immediate guess, give his extreme over-protectiveness, is that the child isn't actually his and he's overcompensating) and he's scuttled off to 22nd century jail.  His wife gains a pass to Terra Nova, where the future of all mankind is set to inhabit a new civilization a few billion years in the past, coexisting with the dinosaur times.  O'Mara's wife orchestrates his jailbreak and he escapes with them to the past, where he's found out as a escaped con, but kinda sorta pardoned because his doctor/scientist wife is something of a big deal.  The future setting is intriguing, but poorly realized and ultimately disposable (we spend no more time there than we absolutely have to), while the dinosaur world looks, well, kind of like so many other major network sci-fi sets: dull and expected.  There's some interesting seeds of drama but none of the actors seem either skilled or invested enough in delivering them with anything remotely approaching subtlety.  Having seen a dozen other shows with a settling in a strange new world vibe, I basically felt like I've seen the show before and I knew where it was heading.  Shows like these are meant to be familiar, unchallenging, and, I believe, are purposefully unexciting, giving an audience who doesn't know any better something that will pass time quickly and without any fuss.

3 Short Paragraphs: Fall 2011 (pt 4)

Mixed bag this time with Terra Nova, Revenge and one sitcom Suburgatory that I was not even looking out for.

Conventional television specFic is not very good.  Sometimes it surpasses it's genre and becomes good drama, ala Battlestar Galactica, but usually it just falls into templates and formats and gets boring very quickly. Terra Nova is going to be one of those, I can just smell it like dinosaur poo.  The pilot was one of those rare two-hour premieres where we see the dark world of the future and are almost immediately tossed into the dinosaur & big bug filled past so humanity can "start again".  Luckily they cover the time-travel trope of "new timeline" so they don't step on any butterflies -- I commend them for addressing that. The annoying thing is that there has to be uppity teenagers and precocious kids and bad guys who saw The Road Warrior too many times. I will watch another few episodes, at least until it bores or annoys the hell out of me.

Then there is something I never thought I might watch again but... might... just... have... to.  It's Revenge, loosely based on the premise inside The Count of Monte Cristo, a premise I very much enjoy. Here we have a pretty girl returning to the Hamptons where nobody recognizes that she is the daughter of someone they destroyed years ago. She has a fortune given to her by an internet billionaire and connections every which way. The weird thing is that we are going to root for this pretty girl as she destroys lives and probably kills a few people. Its very standard but I am curious if it will get as dark as it could.

Suburgatory seems to be one of those out of the studio sitcoms based on a series of teen novels, but it isn't. It's narrated by our teenage girl lead who, along with her dad, has moved to the suburbs -- dad wants to give her a better life. I grew up in the suburbs of the 80s and they were not this idea of vast houses, boob jobs and plastic kids. And Jeremy Sisto is not the kind of guy I would expect playing a nice, schleppy dad who is a fish out of the pool around all the manicured and orange-tinted men of the burbs. But Alan Tudyk is in it, so it will warrant some more attention before the jaded daughter is converted into thinking every in the burbs is actually ok, afterall.