My Favorite Scene: Jurassic Park (1993) “T-Rex Attack”

Jurassic World, the fourth entry in the Jurassic Saga, is three weeks away, so guess what we’re doing in this column the next three weeks?  Oh it is time for a stroll down dinosaur memory lane beginning with the biggie: Jurassic Park.  It’s hard to recreate today the amount of buzz this film had on all levels of the population.  You had fans of the novel, you had Spielberg in his prime, you had a genius marketing campaign and you had every kid in the entire world from 3-103 who has ever gone through a “dinosaur phase”.  By the time the film was released, I was vibrating at such an unbearable rate that even my overprotective parents let me go to my first-ever PG-13 movie.

It was one of the greatest theater experiences of my life, and not just because my best friend got so scared by the time the dilo attacked Nedry that he literally ran out of the theater.  There are films that come along ever five years or so, that reimagine what we think F/X are capable of, and the true mark of one of those films is that the original effects hold up.  The dinosaurs in Jurassic World look no better than the T-Rex, who took its place amongst filmdom’s greatest monsters, with its entrance and attack on the convoy.  Everything still looks stellar 23 years after the initial release and oh my sweet Lord typing that made me feel old.  That’s no knock on Jurassic World, but rather just a measure of how far a leap forward this was for special effects.  The funny part about it, if you listen to interviews with Spielberg, is that out of the whole scene, the hardest effect they had was making the rings of water on the glass emanate outwards!

Trailer Time: Jurassic World Trailer #2 (2015) PLUS THREE NEW POSTERS

While not quite as egregious as the second Terminator: Genisys trailer, the second trailer for Jurassic Park 4 gives away WAY WAY too much of its plot.  Now you can play shell games in the trailer with the plot when your movie is going to have a complex one (Chris Nolan is famous for doing this with his trailers and sucker punching viewers with preconceived notions).  However, this movie is about dinosaurs eating people.  The first film and novel had a clever plot to make that possible, but once we have the dinos and the humans together…..really all we want to see is dinos eating chubby tourists.  So why Universal did the same boneheaded thing FOX did and give away pretty much their whole plot just boggles my mind.

Honestly, and this is no good for my page stats, but if I were you, I’d skip this trailer.  You know if you’re going to see this or not already and this does nothing to change that.  I wish I didn’t have to watch them to write these pieces, but my advice would be to just go watch some human munching and decide how good the film is with the information you already have when it opens on June 12, 2015.  Also released over the weekend were three new promo posters for the film featuring Jessica Chastain and a large set of chompers, Chris Pratt and his trained velociraptor squad and the gigantic, alligator-like Mossasaurus.

Movie Review: Focus (2015) *Will Smith is Will Smith Again!*

The most remarkable thing about After Earth, Will Smith’s last movie (unless you count the three seconds he was in Winter’s Tale), was that somehow M. Night Shaymalan had completely neutered him of all personality.  Will Smith may well be the most charismatic, personable person in the SOLAR SYSTEM.  He has likability fountaining out of his ears.  So to manage to turn him into someone completely devoid of an ounce of personality may be the low point (or high point if he was really TRYING to do it) of Shaymalan’s baffling career.  Whatever else you want to say about Focus, it is bursting with Will Smithiness.

Trailer Time: Focus Trailer #2 (2015); Will Smith’s Return?

Quick, name the last good Will Smith movie you saw?  Men in Black or Independence Day popped into your mind, didn’t it?  Maybe Bad Boys?  The fact is the once King of the Box Office hasn’t made a memorable film in a long time.  That’s an incredible shame because not only is he one of the most likable people on the planet (who doesn’t like Will Smith?), but he’s also a deft comic and dramatic actor who should be doing much better material.  I’m intrigued by Focus.  It doesn’t have a lot of names in it aside from Smith by both trailers, this being the second to come out, have been funny and this is one I think I’m going to give a try.  Focus opens February 27, 2015.

Movie Review: Jurassic Park 3D (1993/2013)

How can it have possibly been 20 years since Jurassic Park was released?  I can remember the first time I saw the teaser poster with the black and red Jurassic Park logo and the “65 million years in the making” and just the anticipation leading up to its release.  They were so good in hyping it without showing you hardly anything at all.  I can’t remember before or since a non-franchise (at that time) film having that kind of buzz about it before it opened.  Plus, every boy goes through a dinosaur phase at some point and I was no exception.

Jurassic Park was the first PG-13 movie I was allowed to go see in the theater.  My parents were…let’s just say strict about moviegoing and I was only able to go because it was my best friend’s birthday and his dad did some voodoo on my parents to get me permission.  I, for the record, was perfectly fine throughout the movie.  My friend ran screaming from the theater when the Dilo eats Nedry.  Oh yes, I remember.  YOU RAN, DUDE!

Revisiting it 20 years later, it really is a movie that demands the big screen.  I’ve seen it a hundred times, but in the theater it really is just a whole different level of spectacle.  The 3D is well-done.  It’s not intrusive.  The F/X still look fantastic.  In fact, I’ve watched the other two (shudder) since and I think the dinosaurs look better in the first film still than in any since.  The wonderful reveal as the jeeps pull to a stop on the hillside and you see the slow dawning dumbfounded expression cross the characters’ faces and then the pan up to the Brachiasaur.  Still gives me chills

Steven Spielberg had in 1993 possibly the best year a director has ever had.  He released this and Schindler’s List in one year.  There’s no way he could make this movie now.  Somewhere along the way he lost the ability to craft adventure pieces and tightly pace his films, but this was right at his peak.  This stands beside Raiders of the Lost Ark for me as perfect adventure moviegoing fun.  It’s a classic.  It changed moviemaking forever and 20 years later, it’s still as good as the day it was released.  Go see it and take your kids like so many adults in my theater did so they can be permanently scarred by the T-Rex attack.  Or maybe they’ll break at the Dilo like a certain KT reader who’s swearing at me right now…
10/10