Review: Jurassic Park (30th Anniversary)

Jurassic Park
Cert: 12A / 126 mins / Dir. Steven Spielberg / Trailer

There's something about the nonchalantly galling nostalgia of anniversary screenings for movies you saw in the first time around and technically weren't even a child then that nobody warns you about. The last time I watched Jurassic Park in a cinema (which I swear blind wasn't that long ago) it was old enough to buy a pint, yet now the fossilised mosquitos and interactive CD-ROMs weren't the only thing in that room feeling ancient...

And truth be told, there's not much to say all these years down the line about a movie that's still perfect. John Williams' score is still majestic, Bob Peck's focused intensity is still magnetic, the jokes still get audible laughs and Gary Rydstrom's sound-design for the Tyrannosaur is still one of the most hair-raising things I've ever heard. The digital and practical effects work is astounding of course, but above all else it's the human reactions to the dinosaurs that really sell this. And not just Ariana Richards' and Joseph Mazzello's terrified scrambling as Lex and Tim, but the sense of awe and jaw-dropped wonder from Laura Dern, Sam Neill*¹ and Jeff Goldblum. Meeting the Brachiosaur herds was magical in 1993 and it's magical now. I genuinely still wipe away a tear in that moment. Like I said, perfect.

It's also still horribly relevant. This romp of dinosaurs gone rogue (or more properly, dinosaurs behaving completely naturally) is in its essence a timeless cautionary tale, glossed over with unapologetically self-aware marketing. It's no accident that a parable about the dangers of unfettered capitalism has its own logo'd merchandise literally appearing within the film as part of the problem. The story is blunt in its message (classic Michael Crichton), but hugely accessible in its scope (classic Steven Spielberg). One of the most interesting aspects is how the director actually leaves the audience feeling slightly sorry for park-visionary John Hammond, the gently-spoken entrepreneur whose myopic hubris causes widespread destruction, mutilation and death, while at the same time we're invited laugh at the demise of lawyer Donald Gennaro as he cowers on a suddenly exposed toilet. Remember, he's one of the few professionals who hadn't been bribed or cajoled onto the island to sign-off the project, and was merely working to represent the interests of investors who had well-founded concerns about the park's demonstrably appalling safety procedures. In the first act of Jurassic Park, Gennaro is actually the good guy. This flips of course once he gets dollar-signs in his eyes and is subsequently punished by the narrative as a result. Like I said, blunt.

But perhaps most pleasingly, in the end there's no deus ex machina which gets our protagonists out of trouble. They just have to pick their battles, make it through the night and survive the ordeal*². Jurassic Park is about teamwork and tenacity in the face of adversity. About weathering the storm and about leaving no one behind. Yeah, even if they caused all this shit in the first place. Like I said, horribly relevant.

*¹ And for the record, Dr Alan Grant is never more than three lines of dialogue away from Sam Neill's native Kiki accent kicking back into gear, and I don't even mind. That's how much I love Jurassic Park. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² I do hope the poorly Triceratops was okay in the end. The plot-thread of the illness doesn't get resolved in the film (it's explained more in the novel but sill not 'fixed' iirc), and I'm not cool with the thought of her lying there incapacitated while the T-rex goes rampaging about the island willy-nilly... ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: The Son

The Son
Cert: 15 / 123 mins / Dir. Florian Zeller / Trailer

It's Earnest™-season so here comes Florian Zeller's The Son, a turgidly po-faced, navel-gazing domestic melodrama starring Hugh Jackman as the worst type of Pantomime Business Dad who doesn't know how to set his phone to do-not-disturb for meetings, who pulls sad-faces for two hours because his teenage boy doesn't appear to be coping well with his parents' divorce from a decade earlier.

Laura Dern turns up intermittently to sob into her Martini, Vanessa Kirby pouts around an apartment which thinks it's too good for wallpaper, and Anthony Hopkins phones in just enough of a performance to secure the 'and' in the credits-ranking. Hugh's boy is played by Zen McGrath, setting out his stall here for a tour of the Northern club circuit as a Timothée Chalamet tribute act*¹.

WRONG

This is one hundred and twenty minutes of characters angrily asking each other what's wrong and nobody having the answer. It's depression. The kid has clinical depression. It's no-one's fault and it can't be cured, only treated. There, saved you two hours. To be fair, the film doesn't come up with any magic solutions for all this, not least because there aren't any of course, but in the meanwhile it wallows in knowing that anyway and tormenting members of the audience who can see it a mile off.

The whole thing might be meaningful if it wasn't so offensively average, whilst also apparently refusing to explore the subject it's chosen for itself. Going full-Atonement in the last stretch just isn't good enough. Adapting his own play (again), Florian Zeller is happy to churn out a desaturated Channel 5 weekday afternoon angst-a-thon, and Jackman is happy to take the money for pretending he can do serious films as well. Theirs is the only happiness you'll see here.

And I'm taking points off for the shot where the kid is filmed walking alone the 'wrong way' down a heavily signposted one-way street. That's GCSE film-making.

Beautiful Boy was far better at all this, and at least there was some excitement 'cos of all the skag...

*¹ Oh and Hugh Quarshie turns up as well - that's right, Captain Panaka - as a hospital administrator, and nobody calls him Dr Griffin which means this film doesn't take place in the same continuity as Holby City despite having the obvious opportunity and quite frankly I'm probably more furious about this than I am about the appalling approach to mental health issues (including the very scene which Hugh Quarshie is in, for the record).^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Little Women (2019)

Little Women
Cert: U / 135 mins / Dir. Greta Gerwig / Trailer



Greta Gerwig, a celebrated, dedicated and ascending storyteller of note, seems to have used her not inconsiderable clout to assemble what can only be described as A Dream Cast*¹, and then used that pooled talent to craft the kind of twee, perfunctory, relentlessly-soundtracked costume drama which could have been knocked out by any TV director. So well done, I guess.

Now admittedly I am not in the target demographic for this, I haven't read Little Women or seen any of the fifteen previous screen adaptations, but I don't feel particularly enlightened for having been introduced to the story now. I can see what Gerwig has added structurally in her rendition, and while that's an interesting play I just couldn't find anything within the story itself to engage me. I don't believe in 'girl films' and 'boy films', just stories worth telling and worth telling well. This is characters shrieking over one another for two-and-a-quarter hours while I play Hunt The Redeeming Feature.

Is this a test?
Because if so, I'll be happy to wear a badge saying 'I Failed'.

Oh, I don't know. Costume drama things, I suppose.
I mean I can see that it's a bit more than that, but it's definitely still similar to them.



Well if you're not bothered about the Skywalker family this December, the choice is between this, Cats and Playing With Fire. So good luck.



Sunday afternoon, wouldn't hurt.



It is not.



I imagine so.



There is not.



Level 1: Amilyn Holdo is in this.





*¹ Two things here, though. 1) Saorise Ronan, Florence Pugh, Emma Watson and Eliza Scanlen are all fantastic but do not, repeat not, look like sisters - am I to assume this is in some way intentional? 2) Despite him being 'a name' in 2019, I have only seen Timothée Chalamet in one thing, he was very good in it but I am now so fucking done with his shit it's not true, moping around the set with his pouting, winsome, simpering mannerisms like a haunted flannel soaked in Lambrini and regret. There, I said it.
^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Cold Pursuit

Cold Pursuit
Cert: 15 / 119 mins / Dir. Hans Petter Moland / Trailer



Since first seeing the publicity material for Hans Petter Moland's Cold Pursuit (an English-language remake of his own 2014 film, Kraftidioten), I have become convinced that this an entry is an under-the-radar series of prequel-era Star Wars tie-in adventures. Frozen in carbonite as part of an undercover Jedi mission, Qui-Gon Jinn's subconscious plays out a life in another world, where the snowy terrain and mortal danger are psychological projections of his in-universe surroundings. Sounds ridiculous? Of course it does. Until you bear in mind that Obi-Wan Kenobi cropped up in the TV version of Fargo and Mace Windu had his own Big Game. That's my theory anyway, and you're going to have to work pretty damned hard to change my mind.

I digress...

In the snow-blown town of Kehoe, high in the Colorado Rockies, snowplough driver Nels Coxman (Liam Neeson) tries his best to live a quiet, if gruelling, existence with his wife Grace (Laura Dern). When their son Kyle (Michael Eklund) becomes mixed up in the business of drug-lord Trevor 'Viking' Calcote (Tome Bateman), he ends up as cold on a mortuary slab as the weather outside. Directionless but with a sense that some reaction needs to be implemented, Nels embarks on a methodically escalating spree of revenge, exposing the extent of the local narcotics network and putting noses out of joint accordingly. This will not end well...

FACED

Adverse publicity aside, one of the main struggles faced by Cold Pursuit is that it's a Liam Neeson revenge-thriller. Hardly the first one of those in his repertoire and probably not the last, either. It is, however, markedly different from his usual dour-faced fare in that Frank Baldwin's screenplay has a blackly comic seam running throughout.

This is both the film's blessing and its curse, as many of the cast members aren't just playing things deadpan, they're playing them completely straight - which doesn't always work. First and foremost in this list is Neeson himself, who can do comedy with the right direction, but it's just not quite matching up to the potential in Moland's vision.

HANNIBALLED

Make no mistake, Liam is on solid form (even keeping his non-regional-specific American growl under control) but as much as it pains me to say it, he's not quite right for this role. Even at his best, you've seen this performance before. What's needed is someone with a bit more unhinged, wildcard flare, like Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson or even Kurt Russell.

The screenplay's marrying of gleeful violence and straight-faced humour initially brings with it overtones of the Coen Brothers' work, of course. But it slowly becomes apparent that in remaking this for The Hollywood Machine, there are also aspirations to Tarantino levels of kooky slickness. This never manifests fully as the characterisation just isn't there, and after a while the film becomes closer to something of Martin McDonagh or Guy Ritchie's gangster-canon. Although with new characters still being introduced half-way through rather than set up at the start of the film, Moland can't match those levels of enjoyable silliness either.

BARACUSSED

Around an hour in, the film almost seems to forget that Neeson is its central character, pootling off for extended periods into the snow with the gangsters. At a minute under two hours this is hardly A Long Movie, but these pacing issues mean it starts to feel weightier than it should.

On-screen captions helpfully mark off the various underworld players as they're despatched from the story. But instead of steadily building to a crescendo, more hoodlums arrive to be picked off at the same steady rate, meaning we're never quite sure how much longer there is to go as long as Liam's still around. The crescendo is worth the wait, but by that point the ending writes itself.

Quietly funny and full of the types of characters it's satisfying to see the end of, Cold Pursuit is a diverting enough ride which will be good for a few late night passes. But its uneven nature means the film’s long-term appeal may be limited...

Well it's more Seven Psychopaths than Snatch but with elements of both without being quite as good as either.



It is.



It is.



Well, let's not get carried away.



It's possible, I suppose, depending on how set against it you are.



There isn't.



Level 1: Qui-Gon Jinn has settled down and married Amilyn Holdo in this.







DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Star Wars - The Last Jedi (tenth-pass)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (tenth-pass / 2D / spoiler-free)
Cert: 12A / 152 mins / Dir. Rian Johnson / Trailer


Previous reviews: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9

Well, we did it*¹, we made double figures. And as it turns out, my tenth viewing for The Last Jedi appears to have been the final screening at my local cinema. Ending the run this early feels unusually eager on the part of the programme selection team, since a five-week stint for a film of this size is hardly excessive*², and even I was surprised that there was a fair old audience amassed to watch it. But hey, I don't set up the schedule, and I have to admit to finding something faintly poetic in being there for the first and last showings of a movie I love.

But examinations of the numbers aside, we did it*³. I've watched, absorbed and ruminated upon The Last Jedi enough now for it to no longer be 'the new Star Wars movie. By this point, Rian Johnson's feature is the same familiar, comfort-blanket of other-wordly adventure that I get from all (all) the other entries in the series. I'm still not sold on the Rey From Nowhere idea, and still not exactly a fan of that one particular scene, but I accept their presence and, for the time-being at least, their pertinence to the respective character-arcs. Which is my way of saying that a perfect movie can still contain things which you personally find imperfect. I haven't, and will not be, signing any online petitions to expel the offending toys from my pram.

So, short of me catching the film at some other cinema before it disappears completely (I believe it's still playing in the larger venues in London), this will probably be the last time you'll have me banging on about Episode VIII until the inevitable triple-bill screening before Episode IX. And now I can go back to grumbling about how unexciting all the normal flicks are.

My own internal digestion of The Last Jedi will continue as I read various tie-in publications, and with the bonus material included on the Blu-ray release in March/April*⁴. Although by then of course, I'll be getting super-hyped for the Han Solo movie which we still (at time of writing) haven't had a trailer for. But I digress...

In closing, all I can really say is that you haven't seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi until you've seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi ten times.

Discuss.

The Star Wars's.



It is.



For me, it's a buyer (already pre-ordered, obvs).



It's high.
It's very high.



Over some points, possibly.



There is.



Level 0: It is Star Wars.






*¹ I say 'we', I mean 'I'. Obviously. I'd be very surprised if you'd been to see TLJ ten times. Impressed, but surprised. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Taken 2 played for six weeks as I recall, although that seemed to be more because they couldn't find anything else to take up the screens. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Again, 'I'. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ Although as it's already been flash-stickered as "over two hours" worth, that sounds like it'll be about as in-depth as the Rogue One extras. Which is to say, 'fleeting, at best'. For the record, the Phantom Menace DVD in 2001 arrived with 6 hours of bonus material, and the 2011's saga Blu-ray set had over 40. Just saying. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Star Wars - The Last Jedi (ninth-pass)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (ninth-pass / 2D)
Cert: 12A / 152 mins / Dir. Rian Johnson / Trailer


Previous reviews: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

One of the neatest things about A New Star Wars Film is its ability to change your outlook on the previous entries. Whether it's set before or after other episodes in the saga, there are often props, snippets of dialogue and background aliens on a previously unvisited planet which can shed new light on old stories. It's the Galaxy Far, Far Away's ability to continue unfolding as the years go by which keeps bringing audiences back for more.

Now, I like language. I'm a fan of good writing in general and while I make no claims to be perfect, I have a general fascination with (and unduly harsh criticism of other people's) grammar and punctuation. Sure, I'll begin a sentence with the words 'and' or 'but', as well as using the semicolon and Oxford comma like they're going out of fashion, but the grocer's apostrophe and erroneous use of there/their/they're can get right out. There's no excuse for those. Even more troublesome (from a certain point of view) are the 'grey areas', the more informal ticks which people use, but which aren't routinely reinforced during school-years.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I'm a big fan of the ellipsis. That's the '…' or three full stops used to imply that while the sentence itself has finished, the ideas or suggestions within have not. That there's still more to be said on the subject, often eliciting the response from the reader. A punctuational shorthand for 'to be continued'. I love an ellipsis almost as much as I love a footnote*¹.

The standard, generally accepted, form of the ellipsis is, as noted above, three dots. If you use two, it just looks like you've accidentally hit the full stop key twice. Four feels needlessly long, and five or more is generally reserved for informal memos on the noticeboard in the office, organising leaving drinks and the like, typed by people who also use multiple exclamation marks without a single ounce of shame.

For the record, the four-dot-ellipsis is a thing. It's just not applicable in the context of the Star Wars opening. If your word-processing application of choice automatically converts three typed dots into an ellipsis character, you can easily end up with what appears to be four dots by having the ellipsis plus a full stop afterward. It still looks awful and wrong.

So anyway, I'm sitting the other week happily watching The Last Jedi, concentrating on the opening-crawl now that I'm familiar with the events of the movie, when I notice that it ends with a four-dot-ellipsis. Star Wars, my thing, my Star Wars, has used non-standard punctuation in the famous yellow-on-starfield introductory text. Then the next time I watch the movie, I notice that it uses a four-dot-ellipsis in the 'A Long Time Ago' text as well. WHAT KIND OF FRESH HELL IS THIS? Now, for obvious reasons, I am unable to share screenshots of this unexpected anomaly*². I thought I was just going to have to ramble about this with you on-trust until March/April when the DVD lands.

As it goes, I'm able to illustrate the issue more easily than I'd feared. Like any sensible audit enthusiast, I though it would be a good idea to look at the precedent set by other entries in the series. To gauge the level of the bar set by the other Star Wars movies, at least one of which I've been lucky enough to love since I was four years old and still grappling with the very basics of literacy. My first port of call was to look at the last-available versions of the films (so the 2011 blu-ray cuts in with Episodes I to VI, and the standard domestic releases for The Force Awakens and Rogue One).
This is what I found...



SERIOUSLY THOUGH, WHY HAVE I NEVER NOTICED THIS BEFORE? I mean fine, it's not like the logo comes on and says "STAR WAR'S", but still. And it's not even used consistently; Return of the Jedi goes for the standard (CORRECT) three-dot-ellipsis at the end of its crawl. What the actual shit is all this about? And the 'Long time ago' card has always been like that, too.



But then I figured maybe that's to do with the films (at least the Original Trilogy) being remastered and tidied-up over the years. So without wading into the territory of screen-capping my VHS collection, here are stills from the 1995 'THX' laserdisc versions of the Original Trilogy, the set with minimal touch-ups.



Nope, it's always been wrong.
Insane.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that Star Wars was a huge formative influence in my early life and reading progression. My fascination with typography can be traced back to sitting in my bedroom as a six year-old, looking at the classic logo on a poster adorning my wall and drawing it freehand on a pad in front of me; learning the shapes not so much of the letters, but of that particular logotype; the inside and outside lines of each, their interaction with crossbars, baselines etc. And when I took a reading-test in school for children two years older than me at around the age of eight, my teacher visibly raised an eyebrow in surprise when I skimmed through the word "fatigue". How did I know that? Because of Luke Skywalker® (Bespin™ Fatigues)", that's how.

Star Wars didn't exactly teach me to read, but it's been a constant sounding-board and reference point as I grew up. Culturally, morally and creatively, it continues to be so. Then I find out that the cack-handed intern has been doing the typesetting all these years. I'm not so much astounded at my favourite, life-defining, film series using sloppy punctuation, more that it's slipped by me on every single occasion before January 2018. I'm not angry, just really disappointed*³.

So it's not like I'm going to start using the four-dot-epilsis now with the justification that 'hey, it's good enough for Lucasfilm'. I'm going to take away the lesson that sometimes we just have to be better than the examples presented to us...

"We are what they grow beyond. That is the true burden of all masters."
~Yoda, Ahch-to, 2017.

The Star Wars's.



It is.



For me, it's a buyer (already pre-ordered, obvs).



It's high.
It's very high.



Over some points, possibly.



There is.



Level 0: It is Star Wars.






*¹ See? In fact, there are few things I enjoy more than using both... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Not least because I hate bootleg movies even more than I hate erratic punctuation. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ With myself, as much as with Lucasfilm. I can't state that emphatically enough. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.