Classic Movie Review Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park (1993) 

Directed by Steven Spielberg 

Written by Michael Crichton, David Koepp 

Starring Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough 

Release Date June 11th, 1993 

Published June 12th, 1993 

To say that Jurassic Park was ahead of its time in film technique would be an understatement. Somehow, Steven Spielberg made a massive CGI world come to life that still looks good today compared to much more expensive movies that came after it. Spielberg's dinosaurs of 1993 are, for me, more appealing than anything created since by his peers such as George Lucas or James Cameron. Spielberg's magical realism, the grounded story he tells about humans and dinosaurs, is filled with wonders that Lucas and Cameron forego in favor of spectacle. 

Spielberg still believed in actors and performances while Lucas and Cameron appeared to feel that actors got in the way of their vision. Spielberg never lost sight of what truly compels an audience, characters they can relate to, fear for, and root for. In selecting his cast for Jurassic Park he didn't choose giant movie stars, he chose people who were well known for their skillful acting. Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum, the core of the Jurassic Park cast, were actors first and movie stars a distant second. 

Spielberg needed their skillful performances to truly give life to the monsters he was using CGI to bring to life. It would be mildly impressive to see the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park on their own but the dinosaurs take on a greater sense of wonder when actors are able to convince you that the dinosaur is in front of them. The wonder and excitement of these performers is truly what gives life to the CGI creations of Spielberg's brilliant behind the scenes team. 

Jurassic Park kicks off on a horror movie cliché. A black actor is tasked with letting the monstrous T-Rex out of its cage and, in unfortunate horror movie fashion, the black guy dies first. I'm not calling the scene racist, it's not really my place to make that judgment. I'm merely pointing out one well worn trope that was strangely present throughout the history of horror and monster movies. And, make no mistake about it, while I am not sure I would call Jurassic Park a horror movie, it's most certainly a monster movie. 

Dinosaurs in Spielberg's universe, especially the vicious raptors and the horrifying T-Rex, are introduced in classic monster movie fashion. Much the way that Godzilla and his cadre of fellow movie monsters are introduced in their films, Spielberg establishes his monsters as dangerous killers, slows down to show us how beautiful his monsters can be, and then unleashes the monsters upon his heroic human characters. The nature of the suspense of Jurassic Park is no different than the nature of the suspense of 1950s drive-in monster movies that you can easily imagine Spielberg himself having enjoyed. 

Spielberg is undoubtedly making a drive in monster movie, he's just doing it with modern tools unavailable to the forgotten generation of monster movie makers who delighted drive-in audiences of the 50s with the unforgettable sight of giant spiders, aliens, and gorillas. Godzilla is owed a debt as is King Kong who was the T-Rex of 1933, impressing audiences then just as Spielberg's fearsome dinosaur impressed us in 1933. Jurassic Park is a great improvement over the monster movies of the past but Spielberg is also fearlessly paying homage to movies that he grew up with and help generations fall in love with the spectacle of going to the movies. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review The Son

The Son (2022) 

Directed by Florian Zeller 

Written by Florian Zeller, Christopher Hampton 

Starring Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern, Vanessa Kirby 

Release Date November 25th, 2022 

Published November 29th, 2022

The Son stars Hugh Jackman as business dad, Peter Miller. Peter is a business dad who does business things like staring pensively out of a window, wearing nice suits, and ignoring his family. Peter's business dad persona is shaken when his ex-wife, played by Laura Dern, turns up at his door one evening. The ex-wife, Kate, informs Business Dad Peter that their teenage son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath), whom Peter has dutifully ignored per the rules of being a Business Dad, has been skipping school and she can no longer keep track of him. 

Kate tells Business Dad that Nicholas wants to live with him and after consulting with his new wife, the brilliant, and completely wasted here, Vanessa Kirby, he agrees. Now he can truly be a Business Dad and ignore his son directly. No surprise then that Nicholas immediately begins skipping school again. New wife catches him hanging out in a park instead of going to school. Business Dad tries talking to his son and crying but it doesn't work, and Nicholas becomes ever more despondent until he attempts to kill himself because Business Dad is always business-ing.

Where director Florian Zeller made a genuinely thoughtful and insightful film about mental health and aging in The Father, he has crafted a dramatically inert and lacking in insight film in The Son. Hugh Jackman does his best cry acting since The Fountain and the result is a movie that even Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby cannot lift to a level of being watchable. The problems are evident in a story that has nowhere to go. Business Dad is bad and wrong and should not be a Business Dad is the level of insight we get in The Son. 

It's all dad's fault that his son has severe mental health problems. It's his fault for working too much, for breaking the norms of society by, shock of shock, leaving his wife for a younger woman. He's wrong for being too rich and successful and for traveling too much. That's the surface level critiques that The Son appears to be lobbing at this Hugh Jackman character and his response is to cry or to sulk in his big corner office, staring wistfully out of high rise windows. 

Truly, I am trying to understand the purpose of The Son other than pure misery porn. The film crafts a character in Nicholas who has no way forward, he's a boulder rolling down hill toward tragedy. That's not a bad place to start with a character but the movie gives him no nuance, there is no insight into who Nicholas is or what drives him. The journey from introducing this unpleasant teenage child to the inevitable tragedy seemingly coming at the end is a series of miserable scenes that do explain why the kid is a trainwreck in progress but there is simply nothing else happening here. 

Attempts to give the movie something beyond Business Dad bad, sad teenager wants to die, involves introducing a character played by Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins plays Business Dad's own Business Dad, a true prick, a hateful, bitter man, who also happens to see right through Jackman's Business Dad. When Hopkins' character mocks Jackman's character for seeming to blame him for his failure as a father, it's cruel and lacking in empathy and self regard, and it is the single most honest moment in an otherwise  phony movie. 

Hopkins is unquestionably supposed to be a villain here and yet, he makes the character seem cruel but with a purpose. He's the first character who does something other than sulk, cry, or run to another room to avoid the drama. I don't want to say that Hopkins' openly cruel, arrogant, and bitter character is refreshing, but I am struggling to describe it as anything other than that when compared to everything else in this mind-numbing melodrama. 

How does a movie have the brilliant Vanessa Kirby and relegate her to leaving the room when the drama kicks in. Her character exists to be called away to check on a baby. That is until she gets shuffled offscreen permanently with the excuse that she needs to protect her baby from all the drama. This is not how you use your Vanessa Kirby. Kirby is a brilliant actress, having her constantly leaving the room to check on an unseen baby is a weird choice for how to use her. 

Click here for my full length review at Geeks.Media. 

Movie Review: Wild

Wild (2014) 

Directed by Jean Marc Vallee

Written by Nick Hornby 

Starring Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Thomas Sadoski 

Release Date December 3rd, 2014

Published December 1st, 2014 

I fell in love with Cheryl Strayed in "Wild." As played by Reese Witherspoon as a lost soul with her heart on her sleeve, with those big, beautiful, Reese Witherspoon eyes, it's nearly impossible not to fall for her. Add to that a highly compelling journey through rain, snow and creepy backwoods hunters, and you have the makings of awards-worthy entertainment.

Strayed was a troubled woman, especially in the wake of her mother's death. She began using heroin and sleeping around, and it cost her marriage. To right her ship and get clean, she chose a measure nearly as extreme as her attempts at self-destruction. In 1995 Cheryl set off to hike from Mexico to Canada: the Pacific Crest Trail. 

The film begins with Cheryl, who never has been much of a hiker before, building a comically over-sized pack that other hikers nickname “The Monster.” Watching Witherspoon struggle to stand under the uneasy weight of her pack is quite funny but also rather poignant. Cheryl put nearly her entire body weight on her back, a perfect symbolic representation of the emotional baggage she was attempting to shake on this journey. 

I love stories about compassion, and this is indeed a deeply compassionate story, filled with characters who come to admire and assist Cheryl as she makes her incredibly challenging journey. Pruitt Taylor Vince is up first as a rancher who gives Cheryl a place for a warm meal and a hot shower after she's found herself in the middle of nowhere with the wrong kind of cooking torch. Vince comes off as a creep initially, but soon becomes Cheryl's first new friend on the trip. 

Tracking her progress and sending care packages is Cheryl's former husband Paul (Thomas Sadoski). The relationship between Cheryl and Paul is moving, even though Paul is only a minor character in the story. The letters he sends Cheryl during her journey and the flashbacks to their time together while she was falling apart are powerful and evocative of two people who love each other but can't take the hurt anymore. 

The story of "Wild" is exceptionally well-told thanks to director Jean-Marc Vallee ("Dallas Buyers Club"), writer Nick Hornby, and cinematographer Yves Belanger. Many will argue that it’s easy to make the Pacific Crest Trail look beautiful. But it’s the way in which Belanger captures Witherspoon against that beautiful background that makes it stand out. The film was shot almost entirely in natural light, with a handheld camera but without the usual clumsiness of a handheld. 

Witherspoon is remarkable in "Wild." She gathers the contradictions of Strayed -- her wounded pride, her deep well of grief and her surprising grit -- into one of the most compelling and entertaining performances of the year. 

It's nearly impossible not to fall in love with Cheryl Strayed. I dare you to try. 

Movie Review Cold Pursuit

Cold Pursuit (2019)

Directed by Hans Pettier Moland

Written by Frank Baldwin 

Starring Liam Neeson, Laura Dern, Tom Bateman, Emmy Rossum, Julia Jones

Release Date February 28th, 2019

Published February 27th, 2019

Cold Pursuit is the latest attempt to prop up the old guy action star genre. The film is an exercise in silly violence and black humor that is rarely exciting and rarely humorous. Director Hans Petter Moland had more success perhaps the first time he made this exact same movie in Sweden under the title In Order of Disappearance. That film was also an exercise in the old guy action movie genre with Stellan Skarsgard leading the way and doing about as much as Neeson does here. 

Cold Pursuit stars Liam Neeson as Nels Coxman, a snow plow driver in the Colorado Rockies whose job is to keep one road open between a small skiing town and the outside world. Nels is popular in his small town where he has recently been named citizen of the year. Things however take an unfortunate turn when Nels’ son is killed by drug dealers. That’s what he believes happened, cops tell him that his son overdosed.

Being Liam Neeson and thus better than a police detective, Nels sets out to find the drug dealers and begins killing his way up the drug chain of command from the low level dealers who did the killing all the way up to the Denver based kingpin, nicknamed Viking (Tom Bateman). Viking is a cold-hearted killer who, though he employs flunkies for most of his dirty work, isn’t afraid to do some of his own killing. 

While Nels is searching for Viking, Viking is unwittingly searching for him while accidentally blaming a rival gang of Native American drug dealers for the murders that Nels is committing. This only serves to amp up the danger and the bloodshed while Nels flies under the radar for a while creating chaos and unwittingly fomenting the showdown between Viking and his hated rivals in the drug trade. 

Cold Pursuit is efficiently crafted and has a stark and striking setting. Director Hans Petter Moland has a leg up on this material as he did make this movie before. Moland is no stranger to the cold climate as his earlier movie was set in the barren, snowy outlands of Sweden. Moland knows that red blood against white snow is a strong visual as is steamy breath against moonlit darkness. These motifs aren’t exactly new but they are more effective than the silly story of Cold Pursuit. 

Liam Neeson appears as tired of his action movie persona as we are. His Nels may be a tough guy but his age is showing in the bone weary exhaustion in his face and manner. Neeson has spoken of retiring his action movie character but with the terrible, The Commuter, having made more than $100 million dollars at the worldwide box office it appears that only Neeson and film critics, like me, are actually tired of movies like Cold Pursuit. 

Just how tired is Liam Neeson? He disappears from the movie as if he needed a nap before resuming the plot. Partway through the second act, Nels goes offscreen while we follow the bad guys and their machinations against each other while they are unaware of Nels and his one man war against them. Tom Bateman, a British stage actor, is not a bad actor but since we don’t know who he is, he isn’t particularly compelling. 

A role like Viking needed a character actor, perhaps a younger Christopher Walken type. A Walken like actor could have transformed this character with his innate weirdness and oddball tangents. Bateman is playing the role with a good deal of energy and gusto but he’s far too serious. He’s approaching the material with a straight up bad guy performance and there is nothing special about it. The bad guy role is as perfunctory as the plot which literally ticks off a list of kill after kill with names on the screen that get crossed out as the movie goes on. 

I’m aware that Cold Pursuit was intended to have some black humor to it but none of the humor lands all that well. One example of the film’s approach to dark humor happens when Nels goes to identify his son’s body. As Nels waits awkwardly to make the identification we watch while a morgue table rises slowly from the floor to eye level. The table takes forever to rise and we are supposed to, I assume, find it hilariously awkward as the body of Nels’ son rises into the frame. 

Did you know that the brilliant Laura Dern is in Cold Pursuit? Of all of the sins of this perfunctory, forgettable, predictable action movie, casting Laura Dern only to treat her like some unknown day player is perhaps the film’s greatest sin. Why bother paying to have someone of Laura Dern’s stature when you have absolutely no interest in using her talent. Dern plays Neeson’s wife and after their son is killed her role is reduced to sulky resentment toward her husband before she just disappears. 

Movie Review Marriage Story

Marriage Story (2019) 

Directed by Noah Baumbach

Written by Noah Baumbach

Starring Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Ray Liotta

Release Date December 6th, 2019 

Published December 2nd, 2019 

Only Noah Baumbach could make his least cynical movie about divorce. Cynicism about other people, about relationships, romantic or parental, is at the core of Baumbach’s work. Baumbach has always had a sharp ear for dialogue that cuts to the heart of intimate conflict and in movies such as Greenberg or Margot at the Wedding, he’s used that sharpness to darkly humorous effect. His films are often very insightful even as they are especially bitter. 

Thus we arrive at Marriage Story, Baumbach’s most mature and thoughtful movie that finds places of deep, ugly, honesty and yet manages to end on a note that doesn’t leave you feeling that he loathes the rest of humanity. Marriage Story may be about the desperately sad end of what appeared to be a happy and fulfilling marriage but somehow, Baumbach turns that ugliness into something beautiful and bordering on hopeful. 

Marriage Story stars Adam Driver as Charlie and Scarlett Johannson as Nicole. Together, they are the parents of Henry (Azhy Robertson) and are part of a successful theater company where Charlie is a rising star director and Nicole is the star. They’re friends believed they were a perfect couple but now, they are getting a divorce. Nicole is moving to Los Angeles for a television job and Henry is going with her. 

The plan is for Charlie and Nicole to work out their divorce together with no lawyers. That lasts about a day or so until Nicole accepts some advice to visit with Nora (Laura Dern). Nora helps Nicole see the challenges ahead of her in trying to establish herself in Los Angeles while Charlie pressures her to move back to New York City. Nicole wants Charlie to recognize that she wants things as much as he wants particular things. Eventually, Nicole agrees that hiring Nora is her only choice. 

Blindsided, Charlie is forced to get his own lawyer, first turning to a high powered, expensive brawler, Jay Marrotta (Ray Liotta) before settling on the less expensive and more fatherly, Burt (Alan Alda). Burt urges Charlie to settle and even consider moving to Los Angeles as his case for living in New York appears weak compared to Nicole’s case for living in Los Angeles. Both Charlie and Nicole have strong reasons for wanting what they want and the movie is fair to both sides.

There isn’t much more of a plot to describe in Marriage Story. The movie isn’t about plot, it’s about characters and in Charlie and Nicole, we have some of the most indelible characters that Noah Baumbach has created in a career filled with great characters. In Adam Driver and Scarlett Johannson, Baumbach has a pair of actors who are magnetic personalities. No matter what kind of nasty or thoughtless words Baumbach puts in their mouths, Driver and Johannson remain people we care for deeply. 

Since Marriage Story isn’t a movie that is about plot, we are forced to rely on moments and Driver and Johannson are incredible at creating moments with these characters. The standout moment is an argument that is verbally violent. It’s a scene of remarkable energy and intensity deepened by how real it feels. The going for the jugular in this scene is not showy, not over the top, it has an organic, earnest, and angry quality that is raw and real. 

In a movie filled with great moments, another that stands out is a musical performance. Marriage Story is not a musical and the two musical scenes are not fourth wall breaking moments of experimental cinema. Rather, both scenes are organic to the performative nature of these two wonderful characters. The one that stayed with me was the performance of a Gershwin song by Adam Driver. He may not be a natural singer but his manner carries the song, an almost accidental confession of his vulnerability. Driver’s acting sells the performance in ways a trained singer might not be able to achieve.  

Marriage Story is Noah Baumbach’s first visual masterpiece. The direction is flawless with the sets and the compositions adding depth and beauty to the complex emotions of this story. Some visuals are a little on the nose such as a scene where Charlie and Nicole are on opposite sides of a gate they are helping each other to close but for the most part, the look of Marriage Story with its bright, spare spaces filled with visual dividers is a lovely reflection of the divisions growing between Charlie and Nicole. 

The ways in which Baumbach and his crew visually divide Charlie and Nicole is subtle yet striking when you do notice it. My favorite moment is in Nora’s expensive law office. A pair of overhead lights act as a visual dividing line with Nicole on one side and Charlie on the other as the camera slowly recedes from the scene. It’s a gorgeous use of setting to underline the story being told. 

The script for Marriage Story is the best of Baumbach’s career, a lacerating yet lovely script that establishes why Charlie and Nicole can’t remain married while making neither one the villain. That’s quite a trick to pull off. Movies like this tend to rely on one side being the villain but not Marriage Story. Both Charlie and Nicole have done things that they regret and Charlie has been openly neglectful of Nicole’s desires but for the most part, both sides are treated fairly. 

There are no illusions about Nicole and Charlie’s future, no hints that a simple resolution is coming that will make everything okay and yet, the movie has a hopeful quality. The message appears to be that there is life after divorce and recriminations are like small cuts that eventually heal. Forgiveness is part of loving someone, even if it isn't the kind of love that keeps a marriage together. 

I mentioned at the start that Marriage Story is Noah Baumbach’s least cynical movie and it is. You will need to see the movie to find out why. That’s not to say that there is a spoiler per se, I don’t think I could spoil this movie, but there are emotional elements that you need to access for yourself to understand what I mean when I say the movie is less cynical than movies like The Squid and the Whale or Mistress America or his previous Netflix effort, The Meyerowitz Stories.