Month: June 2022

Released: June 2022

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Run Time: 146 Minutes

Rated PG-13

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Genre: Action/Science Fiction

Cast:
Chris Pratt: Owen Brady
Bryce Dallas Howard: Claire Dearing
Laura Dern: Ellie Sattler
Sam Neill: Alan Grant
Jeff Goldblum: Ian Malcolm
DeWanda Wise: Kayla Watts
Isabella Sermon: Maise Lockwood
BD Wong: Dr. Henry Wu

I was ten years old when I first saw Jurassic Park.  It blew my mind.  The moment Sam Neill’s Alan Grant sees a live brachiosaur, I was in a state of awe.  I had never seen anything like that before.  The special effects of the original film brought dinosaurs back to life in a way that had never been done before.  Dinosaurs were always awesome, but Jurassic Park made them even more so, because it looked like you could reach out and touch them.  Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur opus was a landmark film in so many ways.  What he did with visual effects revolutionized the industry in the same way that James Cameron did with Terminator 2, which had come out two years prior.  The movie was a box office smash, as it was loved by both audiences and critics.  So, I was genuinely excited when Steven Spielberg would direct the sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park.  At the time, I enjoyed it, but over time, I saw the cracks start to form.  It wasn’t anywhere as good as the original.  Two of the original cast members didn’t return, and it focused more on corporate greed.  Jurassic Park III embraced the silliness of its concept to its benefit and detriment.  It was a lot of fun, but not very good.  Jurassic World was supposed to be a triumphant return of the Jurassic Park franchise.  In a way, it was.  It wasn’t as good as the original, and it did feel like it borrowed too much from the original, but it was still a lot of fun.  Then we got Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.  Personally, I enjoyed it, but it’s not a good movie, and a lot of people hated it.  So, is Jurassic World: Dominion the epic conclusion to the franchise that Universal was hoping for?  No.  No, it isn’t.  Not even close.

So this is it.  THIS is how the Jurassic Park franchise comes to a close.  At the end of Fallen Kingdom, the dinosaurs that were captured to be sold on the black market were released by young Maise Lockwood.  4 years later, the world has basically come to accept that humans are now forced to co-exist with previously extinct animals.  Former velociraptor wrangler Owen Grady is living off the grid with his girlfriend Claire and young Maise.  They discover that one of the raptors that Owen trained, Blue, had a baby of her own.  Meanwhile, Dr. Ellie Sattler investigates a farm that was ravaged by what appears to be mutated locusts.  She seeks out her old friend, Alan Grant to help her infiltrate Biosyn, the company they believe to be responsible for those locusts.  At the same time, the head of Biosyn, Lewis Dodgson(Dodgson! Dodgson!  We’ve got Dodgson here!) has a group of mercenaries track down and capture Maise as well as Blue’s offspring.  This leads Owen and Claire on a globe-trotting hunt to find Maise and the little raptor, while Grant and Sattler infiltrate Biosyn to meet with Ian Malcolm and discover what’s going on.  One of the reasons why the original Jurassic Park was so damn good was because the story was straight-forward.  It was simple when it had to be and complex when it called for it.  But at no point was it hard to follow.   Even the youngsters could have an easy time following this movie, but that was also because there was a lot of dinosaur stuff going on.  Dominion is simply convoluted.  It’s hard to follow what’s going on.  Mutated locusts?  In a dinosaur movie?  Why?  If you’re going to have a subplot about the effects of a potential cataclysmic shift in Earth’s ecosystem, all you had to do was leave it at the dinosaurs.  This unfortunate focus on corporate greed has been a problem with the franchise since The Lost World.  In the original film, which was about dinosaurs, was also about human greed and the dangers of scientific hubris.  Also, part of what made the original movie believable was the science.  It wasn’t overly realistic, but it was plausible, and you can thank the late author Michael Crichton for that.  Honestly, I couldn’t tell you what Dominion is all about because it’s a jumbled mess.

The acting is pretty solid across the board.  Honestly, I really did love seeing Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum work together again.  It was great.  The chemistry between the three was still there and they all had really important things to do in this movie, which I’m grateful for.  BD Wong also returns as Henry Wu, one of the scientists from the original movie.  I like the actor, but the way the character is written in this movie is very different from the previous two.  The previous two movies made Wu out to be some kind of greedy villain.  Here, he’s got some kind of redemption arc that just doesn’t sit right with me.  It feels unearned.  Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are decent enough, but it feels like they’ve been pushed to the background in favor of the OG crew.  You’ve got a bunch of these no-name mercs that just happened to be employed by Dodgson and they’re disposed of quickly enough.  The only new character that managed to gain some traction was pilot Kayla Watts, played by DeWanda Wise.  I thought she was great.  Her comebacks were just as snappy as everybody else’s and I think she fit in pretty well.

“Um…you ARE going to have dinosaur action in a movie about dinosaurs, right?  Uh…hello?  Yes?”  My god, this movie was dull.  For a movie that was supposed to be about dinosaurs, it sure went out of its way to avoid having them in the movie.  They’re all over the place, but they’re not doing ANYTHING.  There is a chase through Malta which was really good, and there are some moments here and there that are exciting a little bit, but the movie focuses way too much on stuff that’s just not interesting.  There’s a lot of running, talking, running, talking, posturing, a gun fight here and there, but not a lot of people getting devoured by dinosaurs.  How do you fuck that up?  There’s no real carnage here, and most importantly, there are no real stakes.  It just doesn’t feel like anybody’s in danger.  That’s boring, and the last thing a movie about dinosaurs should be is boring.  As bad as the last movie was, it delivered on the carnage and dinosaur action.  The previous 4 sequels were still fairly fun to watch.  This isn’t.  This is the least entertaining movie in the franchise, and that shouldn’t have happened.

Maybe it was the theater I was in, but the movies was LOUD.  I was literally cringing in my seat during some of the action sequences.  It was literally painful.  Again, I don’t know if the audio in my theater wasn’t calibrated right or whatever, but I almost ended up leaving because it was so loud.  It got better towards the end of the first half of the movie, but man, that was an awful experience.  It gave me a headache.  The last movie to do that to me was Michael Bay’s Armageddon from 1998.  Having a good sound system is key, but it doesn’t need to make you deaf.  The visual effects here are all over the place.  There are clearly moments when animatronics are used, and that’s great, but the CGI wasn’t very good for a lot of sequences.  It felt very video-gamey to me.  Not only that, there was a good amount of shaky-cam that I noticed.  Nobody learns, do they?  Shaky-cam is bad.  Steady-cam is good.  Also, a good chunk of this movie takes place at night, which makes things even harder to see, and for a movie about dinosaurs, YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO SEE THE DINOSAURS!!!

I don’t actually hate this movie.  At least not in the way that I hated Morbius.  No, I’m very disappointed in how this movie turned out.  This could’ve been one of the most epic conclusions to a franchise ever.  The title of the film even implies it: Jurassic World: Dominion.  Sounds pretty damned epic, right?  It’s not.  There are a number of things in this movie that I really do like.  The original cast mixing it up with the new was pretty cool.  The chase in Malta was incredibly fun, and some of the newer dinosaurs looked amazing.  But it’s all hampered by pedestrian writing, lousy camera-work, bad decision-making, and being too bloated.  There’s too much going on for people to pay attention to.  Also, at two and a half-hours, this movie is 20 minutes too long.  I’ll give it another shot when it hits Peacock next month, but as it stands, I can’t recommend it.  If you enjoyed it more than I did, great.  I’m happy for you.  I wish I felt the same way, but I don’t.  Honestly, stick with the original movie.  It doesn’t get old, despite BEING almost 30 years old.

Released: June 2021

Director: Josef Kubota Wladyka

Run Time: 86 Minutes

Not Rated

Distributor: iFC Films

Genre: Drama/Thriller

Cast:
Kali Reis: Kaylee
Daniel Henshall: Bobby
Tiffany Chu: Linda
Michael Drayer: Danny
Kimberly Guerrero: Jaya
Kevin Dunn: Willie

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these.  Movies about human trafficking have been done for decades, but people really didn’t start paying attention to the subject matter until Taken came along in 2009, starring Liam Neeson.  It’s a heartbreaking situation, but it’s also a really hard one to impress on audiences how devastating it actually is.  Some movies take it more seriously than others, while other movies just use it as an excuse to break skulls.  It’s not a bad excuse, really, but it doesn’t really inform the audience as to how to deal with the situation.  Even the last Rambo movie took a lot of it’s cues from Taken.  There have been some movies that actually do take it seriously like Trade and Eden, but the execution isn’t always great.  But there’s an even larger issue at stake here:  A lot of these movies are centered around pretty young white women.  It’s called the “missing white woman syndrome.”  People go missing every single day, but the ones that get covered by the media are the young white girls.  Why?  I don’t think it’s always malicious, but it’s been theorized that it has everything to do with keeping white people on top.  It makes sense.  All the numbers of missing women and girls are mostly white.  Sure, you get the occasional black or Asian woman, but those are few and far in between.  Well, there’s a little indie thriller that was making its rounds at the Tribeca Film Festival last year that hopes to change that narrative a bit: Catch The Fair One.

Catch The Fair One stars Kali Reis as Kaylee, a Native American boxer.  Her sister went missing two years ago, and Kaylee got a lead that her sister was abducted into a sex trafficking ring.  So, Kaylee infiltrates the ring to find answers as well as the men responsible for her sister’s disappearance.  It’s about as straight-forward a plot as you can get.  It does away with any extreme twists and offers a top-notch and brutal thriller.  You might be asking yourself, “what makes this movie different than any other, given it’s premise?”  True, it might seem that way on the surface, but there’s more to this film than you might believe.  First of all, the person abducted was a Native American.  How many movies of this sort have you seen, where the focus is NOT on a pretty young white girl?  Maybe a handful.  The reality is that when indigenous women go missing, it’s very underreported, if at all.  It’s a problem that the FBI hasn’t been able to get their finger on, really.  But that could also be a part of the problem.  Authorities aren’t trusted to not be a part of the problem.  The other thing that this movie does is it sets the tone early on.  Kaylee’s trainer admits that it’s been two years since Kaylee’s sister vanished.  The odds of finding her alive, if at all, are statistically minimal at best.  Some people might have an issue with the dire tone that the movie takes, but you have to understand that this is a problem affects Native American women on a daily basis.  It’s a harsh reality, and I really like the fact that Catch The Fair One really shines a light on this particular problem.

It’s very rare to see a movie of this sort to be carried by someone who really has no real acting experience.  Yet, Kali Reis not only carries the weight of the movie on her shoulders, she does it incredibly well.  Her performance is incredibly natural, as you see her express rage, fear, anxiety, and doubt.  What makes her stand out, is that Kali herself is a boxer.  A two-time world champion boxer, I might add.  The fact that she’s half-Native and half-Cape Verdean makes her stand out that much more.  It’s an ancestry that Kali carries with pride and you see that in this movie.  She exudes so much power in this movie, it’s unlike anything I’ve seen before.  You’ve got STRONG female characters, strong FEMALE characters, and strong female CHARACTERS.  Kali and her character embody all three of these aspects incredibly well.  I would not want to be interrogated by this woman.  She doesn’t need to yell to be intimidating.  Her presence is amazing.  As a professional athlete, Kali handles the physicality of the role incredibly well.  It looks like she does most of her own stunts and fighting, because that’s what she does for a living.  What I really admire about Kali is that in reality she’s a very strong advocate for Native rights and is an active supporter of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls movement.  That alone explains why she took on this movie, as she also a story-writing credit, so this is clearly a passion project for Ms. Reis.  The acting across the board is really solid, even though Kevin Dunn isn’t really given a whole lot to do, but this is Kali Reis’s show first and foremost.  This is about her trying to give a voice to the indigenous women and children that have gone missing over the years.  I think she succeeded.

I would not call this an action movie, even if it is paced like one.  The tone is very different from movies like Taken.  It’s grim, downbeat, but the reason for that is pretty clear.  This is a serious movie about a very serious topic, and the violence makes that even more clear.  As some critics have said, this is a bruiser of a movie.  You can feel the violence, it’s incredibly hard-hitting and messy.  Kaylee is not some secret agent with a “particular set of skills.”  She’s a sister trying to find answers and she’s willing to do some serious damage to get them, and she does, but she also makes mistakes along the way.  She’s driven and that can be problematic.  I love the pacing of the movie.  Once it gets going, it doesn’t let you go.  You’re along for the ride.  86 Minutes is a good length for this film.  While the story is serious, it’s still an entertaining watch.  Watching Kali go to town on these scumbags is incredibly satisfying.

There are some issues that I do have.  They might seem a bit of the nitpicky variety, but they’re significant enough to warrant a mention at least.  First of all, some of the dialogue is a little heavy-handed from the bad guys.  They’re not excessively over-the-top, but some of the stuff that they say is a little much.  Also, the ending of the movie is going to be an issue for some people.  I’m not going to spoil it, but I am kind of torn about it.  That’s all I’ll say about the ending.  My big gripe comes with the home video release.  I understand that doing special features for DVDs and Blu-Rays is not cheap, but I would’ve loved to have seen some interviews with Kali Reis about the film.   I would love to get her perspective on this movie and what it means for Native Americans, because that’s clearly who this is aimed at.  Unfortunately, we don’t get anything on the disc, not even the trailer.  All my complaints aside, Catch The Fair One is an outstanding film.  Kali Reis is phenomenal in her feature-film debut.  Considering that she’s really busy at the moment with being a fighter and activist, I would love to see her tackle another movie.  I think she’s fantastic, and she can clearly command the screen.  So, yeah, Catch The Fair One is one of the best indie films that I’ve seen in a long time.  I think more people need to see it.

1. Johnny Depp V. Amber Heard
   

There are two pieces of news that happened over the past week that I want to discuss.  As many of you know, actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard were embroiled in a defamation lawsuit brought against Heard by Depp for an op-ed that Heard had written accusing Depp of physical and sexual abuse.  That op-ed did some pretty gnarly damage to Depp’s career, even though it was already in decline, but it kept him from taking on roles in major movies.  I’m not a legal analyst of any kind, so I’m going to leave the details of the lawsuit to the experts who know far more about this than I do.  I’m going to focus on the aftermath of the verdict.  The verdict came in that awarded Johnny Depp 10 million dollars, but also 5 million in punitive damages.  However, due to a statute in Virginia, the punitive damages were reduced to the maximum cap of $350,000.  So, Depp won 10.3 million dollars.  However, the jury award Amber Heard 2 million dollars for one count of defamation.  So, the total award to Johnny Depp comes to about 8.3 million dollars.  While I’m sure that there are going to be die-hard defends of Amber Heard out there screaming that she got screwed by the judge and jury.  It couldn’t be further from the truth, which is clearly what Amber Heard failed to do in this case.  She’s planning an appeal of the verdict, but the problem here is that she doesn’t have the money to do it.  I could be wrong about that, so don’t take my opinion as gospel.  What IS going to happen is that movie studios are going to take a long, hard look at deciding to cast Amber Heard in any of their projects or not.  My gut feeling says no.  This lawsuit, that she lost so spectacularly, just ended her career.  At least for the time being.  Public perception is CRITICAL, not only to actors, but also to movie studios and execs.  They don’t want somebody that could potentially become a liability or risk making their projects look bad.  It rarely ends well.  The verdict in this lawsuit is going to paint Amber Heard as an abuser and a liar herself, whether you think it’s fair or not.  Nothing is more damaging than a negative out-look in the court of public opinion.  Her attorney has been going on talk shows blaming the jury and judge and is not helping her in any form.  Johnny Depp on the other hand, while he may not have the same draw that he did a decade ago, is going to be fine.  The public’s on his side, and because of that, he’s probably going to get more offers as a supporting actor.  That’s just my observation about the situation.

2. Star Wars Actress Gets Death Threats and Racist Messages

On May 27th, Disney released the first two episodes of Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney Plus.  This show is about what the character of Obi-Wan Kenobi has been doing between Episodes III and IV.  It’s a very dark period in the Star Wars time-line, and I found myself fully enjoying the show.  A lot of people were.  However, a very loud vocal minority has been sending actress Moses Ingram death threats and racist messages.  They also accused Disney of “filling their diversity quota” which is a roundabout way of saying that they don’t want a woman of color in a major role in a Star Wars story.  The backlash that Disney got for casting Thandiewe Newton in the Han Solo movie and than killing her off early on was severe.  To their credit, Disney knew that this could happen and they got out in front of it.  Ms. Ingram has gotten a lot of support from folks who aren’t even fans of Star Wars.  The show’s main star, Ewan McGregor, even released a video singing her praises and condemning that hateful minority, calling them non-Star Wars fans.  This isn’t the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last.  As long as there’s a bunch of tiny-minded, scum-sucking cousin-humpers that have nothing better to do than send hateful messages, this will continue to be a thing.  To Moses’ credit, she’s also come out against it and NOT slowing down.  Regardless of how you feel about her performance in the show, she doesn’t deserve that kind of treatment.  Nobody does.  Racism and white supremacy are a blight on the civilized world and has no reason to exist.  They’re clearly jealous at not being as successful as Moses Ingram is.  It’s also because they’re trying to over-compensate for their pathetic little insecurities.  Moses Ingram will be remembered for being a part of something as big as Star Wars.  What have these dirt-bags done with THEIR lives lately?  As Star Wars puts it on twitter: “There are twenty million sentient species in the Star Wars galaxy.  Don’t choose to be a racist.”