65

Alvarez Now

65
USA 2023
Directed by
Scott Beck & Bryan Woods
Columbia
UK cinema release print

Okay, so this review of the latest Adam Driver sci-fi movie 65 is going to be pretty short. So being because it’s neither terrible or great and I don’t have much to say about it either way. It was fairly entertaining but the negatives and positives of the thing balance out pretty well with nothing really standing out in either direction.

Okay, so the plot is that, while transporting human cargo in suspended animation capsules which should take him about two years, the starship piloted by Mills, played by Driver, is hit by part of an uncharted asteroid cluster and crash lands on an unknown planet. Only he survives the crash, other than one suspended animation pod which wasn’t destroyed. He manages to locate it and thaws out a 9 year old girl, Koa, played by Ariana Greenblatt, who doesn’t speak the same language as him. He then has to get her and himself a number of kilometres away and up a mountain to find where the escape capsule ended up, to see if he can get them off the planet. Where he has landed is the planet earth, 65 million years ago... where dinosaurs just want to eat them, more than anything else. And, of course, those of you familiar with the Alvarez hypothesis will know exactly why Driver’s craft was hit by an asteroid (with bigger ones to follow) and just why he has to get them off planet as quickly as possible.

And like I said, there’s good and there’s bad. The good... well, the three main actors, Driver, Greenblatt and Chloe Coleman as Driver’s ‘sick daughter back home’ (who was so good in Gunpowder Milkshake... reviewed here) are all absolutely brilliant. And, to support them, the special effects are pretty nicely done too. Add in a fine score by Chris Bacon and things are an easy watch.

The bad... well, there are a couple of things. Firstly, I wanted to see this movie because, when I saw the trailer a number of weeks ago, it reminded me of just the kind of story that would have been serialised as a black and white comic strip in a late 1970s to mid 1980s issue of 2000AD, when I was a kid. And, well, that’s pretty much exactly what we've got here. Which is a double edged sword because the script, as in the way the characters bond and the situations they find themselves on their quest, really does seem like it would have been fine in the 1980s but... it just seems a little hackneyed and clichéd these days. There really aren’t many surprises... apart from a truly brilliant, early jump scare when Driver’s character first sees some dinosaurs... and the tired old trope of separating and then running away from danger into even worse danger seems well overplayed here. I think they do that one at least three or four times and, you kinda knew exactly when these moments were going to happen. As well as knowing pretty much how each character was going to get out of their situation, due to telegraphing things earlier in the movie. So, yeah, it was kinda comfortable and entertaining rather than scary, for most of the time.

And the dinosaurs are pretty well done but they’ve certainly gone away from the expected designs of things and these have their own look. Not a bad thing, for sure but, well, when I see a big dinosaur I want it to be at least as scary as those in the original Jurassic Park movies... these one’s weren’t all that, it has to be said. Competent and believable for sure but, no... much less intimidating than I would have liked.

But, like I said, scripting aside, 65 is more than competently handled, very well acted and a general crowd pleaser in terms of at least delivering some action and lots of appropriate growling. It’s just not a great film and, as I said at the start, not a terribly bad one either. I’d recommend it if there’s nothing better on and you want to just lay back in your seat and be entertained, Nothing to write home about but, you’re certainly in the hands of some good actors in this one.

Jurassic World Dominion

Dominion Reunion

Jurassic World Dominion
USA/China/Malta 2022
Directed by Colin Trevorrow
Universal

Warning: 65 million year old spoilers.

Okay, so I loved the original Jurassic Park trilogy, yes, even the third one, even though they got a little worse with each one. However, if you’ve been reading my reviews long enough, you’ll know that I am not exactly a fan of the modern Jurassic World sequels. That being said, the third part of the sequel trilogy is here, Jurassic World Dominion and, it’s actually not a bad film, certainly the best of the modern trilogy.

And it also serves as something of a reunion because, while Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are back from the previous two, along with the clone daughter of a brilliant scientist they escaped with in the last film (which I’d completely forgotten, since I’d only been able to stomach watching that one the once), played here pretty well by Isabella Sermon... it also reunites the three original protagonists from the very first Jurassic Park movie... played once again by Sam Neil, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum, who are all given a lot more to do in this one and form half of the narrative, with both sets of protagonists meeting up for the last half an hour or so.

So, yeah, plotwise we have the film opening strongly with a newsreel, reminding people that the dinos are on the loose since the previous installment and that mankind is trying to live with the dinosaurs sharing our planet. But the clone daughter from the previous movie, along with velociraptor Blue’s young offspring Beta, are kidnapped and taken by an evil company called BioSyn. So Pratt and Howard need to get them back. Meanwhile, swarms of giant locusts who will be responsible for everyone’s extinction on the planet due to the way they are eating various targeted crops, are the concern of Neil, Dern and Goldblum, as they infiltrate Biosyn to get the evidence that these locusts are engineered to control the food chain by the company. And, as I said, the film finds the two sets of protagonists working together at the end as they all go through action set piece after set piece.

And, yeah, it’s really not bad. Especially the first half of the movie, where we get more of a glimpse of how mankind is both living with... and exploiting... their cohabitation with dinosaurs. And, honestly, the dialogue in this one seems a lot better too, with even Chris Pratt coming across as a more interesting version of his recurring character, for once.

There are also lots of nods to the original movie, of course. Dr. Wu is back, played once again by BD Wong but, also, we have a character returning from the original Jurassic Park, the nefarious Dogson (who wanted Nedrys to steal samples and put them in his fake shaving foam can, remember?) but, they’ve gone with a different actor this time (apparently, the original actor is now a convicted sex offender so, yeah, I was wondering why they’d not asked him back). There are also a lot of character beats and references back to the original such as Sam Neil giving a blood thirsty speech about how dinosaurs can kill a person, Laura Dern’s delight and enthusiasm about certain dinosaurs and, in a scene where I thought he really wasn’t going to make it this time, Jeff Goldblum’s character once again using something fiery to distract a huge dinosaur to divert attention from his friends.

Probably my favourite sequence, surprisingly, is one involving Pratt and Howard and a new character played by DeWanda Wise, as the team come together in a brilliant set piece set around an underground dinosaur exploitation meet up (dinosaur fights bet on, dinosaur meat for sale etc) leading to a double chase through the streets as various factions try to survive both bad guys and new dinosaurs trained to go after specific laser tagged individuals (yeah, guess who gets tagged by the villains to be dinosaur food?).

The film mostly tends to work but it is the longest of the franchise  (two and a half hours) and it does kinda drag towards the end... I think the last third really loses a little of its appeal where a lot of old clichés are rolled out, such as humans being saved from attacking dinosaurs by other attacking dinosaurs etc. Michael Giacchino’s music is on hand to keep the glue going although, like his previous Jurassic World scores, I really think he needed to put more of John William’s original themes in this, rather than just the odd, passing reference at key points. The score was serviceable but it isn’t great and I suspect the stand alone listening experience on this one might well be a similar story (but at least it’s getting a CD release so, I guess I’ll soon know).

And, yeah, that’s me pretty much done on Jurassic World Dominion... while it’s not as good as, pretty much any of the films in the original Jurassic Park trilogy, it certainly beats the other two Jurassic World movies hands down and so, if you are into those two, you should certainly have a good time with this one. It does kind of redeem the new trilogy a little by not absolutely sucking (which I think is not a quality that the previous two could claim) and so I’m also happy to recommend this to fans of the original trilogy too. Worth a watch if dinosaur movies are your thing.

Journey To The Beginning Of Time

Unnatural Prehistory Museum

Journey To The Beginning Of Time
aka Cesta do praveku
Czechoslovakia 1955
Directed by Karel Zeman
Second Run Blu Ray Zone A/B/C

Wow, this is a really great movie. I remember back in the early to mid 1970s, there was often a ‘mostly animated’ film of The Fabulous Baron Munchausen showing sporadically on channels such as BBC2 at strange times of night and day and, occasionally, I would delve into these and watch for ten minutes or so before running away to do something more active (such as playing with action figures). Well, now it seems it’s time for me to finally catch up with this master of Czechoslovakian animated films although, this first feature is more live action with special effects inserts and doesn’t really look like his later stuff at all.

No matter, though, because it’s a revelation to me and is also a quite charming and whimsical piece, while following and accurately documenting the thinking of the time on the various pre-historic periods of our planet... almost like an educational film for kids. So... a bit like an old Children’s Film Foundation movie but, in this case, actually quite watchable (a big difference to the CFF movies in my opinion), entertaining and educational to boot.

I used to love finding fossils and researching both those and various dinosaurs when I was a kid. If only I’d have had access to this movie back then. The film starts off with one of the four children who, as it happens, make up the entire human cast of the film. He gets out his log book of their recent adventures and starts telling the viewer about the fossilised trilobite one of them found by a cave. I love trilobites so this was definitely a way to get me hooked. One of the party wanted to see what they looked like and, as luck would have it, inspired by Jules Verne’s novel Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, they decided to go on an expedition (somehow taking small backpacks with heaps of clothes and provisions in their little row boat), through the cave they found and, as it happens, they follow the river which starts with the ice age and takes them on a journey back through the aeons to the dawn of time.

And thus we follow the adventures of Petr, Jenda, Tonik and Jirka, played respectively by child actors Josef Lukás, Zdenek Hustak, Petr Herrman and Vladimír Bejval on a wonderous journey where they encounter Pterodactyls, a Styracosaurus, a few Stegosaurus’ and various other creatures and species of both animal, bird and dinosaur. And it’s really advanced stuff with the special effects using layers of live action, puppets, stop motion models, matte paintings and various other things in a truly remarkable, ‘way ahead of it’s time’ fantasy film. It’s pretty ambitious for a 1955 movie, not to mention being a director’s first feature length film (he’d done various shorts before this) and, honestly, it’s absolutely gobsmacking how far ahead this guy was compared to his contemporaries and many others who came after him with this stuff. I mean, sure you can spot some of the matte lines, wires and layers colliding if you’re on the look out for them but it’s not always obvious and it’s decades ahead of what everyone else was doing at the time. I was blown away by this.

Also, a great aspect of this film is the wondrous attitude of the child actors as they experience each new thing. If you’re watching adult characters in a fantasy movie then they’re not, more often than not, taking in their environment or reacting to it in quite the same way. The characters tend to be treating it as part of the world they are in and dealing with the consequences of their situation rather than experiencing ‘the wonder’ and with good reason. It’s something which generally helps sell the fantasy of these films as almost a necessity of attitude, I would imagine. So it’s kind of refreshing and quite charming to see the kids take time to truly appreciate the wonders created by the special effects team here and quenching their thirst for knowledge with creations based on what the current scientific discoveries of the day were.

It’s also got a lot of heart and takes time to make some interesting points, such as when they are investigating an absent caveman’s home and seeing his depictions of animals on his cave’s wall. The kids realise how sensitive and like them their ancestors were, as opposed to the brutish semi-animals they were assuming them to be.

It’s also got a poetic way with words even when it’s at its darkest, with one of the kids comparing the dawn of time, long before life had awakened, as an ominous experience and commenting, “It was like nature had been cursed”. For a family film it gets a little dark, perhaps but it doesn’t go too over the top... although I was impressed with the thick, viscous dinosaur blood flowing in all its stop motion glory after two dinosaurs have the obligatory fight.

The score, by various composers, is pretty interesting too, sometimes adding a deliberate speed to the more sedate moments and sometimes overtly pricking the brain as it hovers just the right side of sinister curiosity before something happens... it’s an interesting set of cues for sure. And it helps the various, somewhat fabricated dramatic moments where one or other of the party of kids gets separated for their own encounter, while the others are busy searching for their friend. There’s a wonderful moment where, after going back for some notebooks to record data of the dead Stegosaurus, the boat is found crushed and splintered beyond repair as a dinosaur has walked over it in their absence. How are they going to get out of this one? Well, I’ll let you find that one out for yourselves but it’s a really great film, although it doesn’t offer any explanations as to how the kids journeyed back and forwards through their path to return to present day. Although, by this point, it doesn’t really matter, for sure.

All in all, I was really pleased with Journey To The Beginning Of Time and you can expect at least one or two more reviews of films by this director on here at some point, I think (this week in fact, keep checking this blog over the next few days). The Second Sight Blu Ray has some nice extras on the film such as breakdowns of how the visual effects were achieved, a demonstration of the restoration of the film with its beautiful, pastel colours and various supplementals provided by the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague which is, frankly, somewhere I’d love to go if I ever got the opportunity to go travelling some time. I’d definitely recommend this to most cinema lovers I know, especially those with a particular liking for the films of Willis O Brien and Ray Harryhaussen, for sure. Absolutely loved this and will certainly watch it again at some point. Can’t wait to watch another.

Jurassic World - Fallen Kingdom

Amber-ling Entertainment

Jurassic World - Fallen Kingdom
2018 USA Directed by J.A. Bayona
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Very minor spoilers.

Hmm... yeah. Okay this is not that great people. In fact... it’s far from good. I gave the previous entry of the five Jurassic Park films, Jurassic World, an okayish review (just here) but you can tell I was trying to be really kind to it and I said it was my fourth favourite of the bunch. This one... well, it’s not exactly terrible but, yeah, I guess this is my fifth favourite and it seems to be one of those franchises like Transformers or, to an extent, Pirates Of The Caribbean, which gets just a little bit worse each time around.

It’s pretty hard, I would have thought, to screw up a movie where giant dinosaurs run around eating people and, to be fair, this still holds true for this movie... kinda. Except there must be some real problems, it seems to me, when I find myself struggling to stop myself from looking at my watch during the movie.

Okay... so let me focus on the stuff they got right for a minute...

Well, the performances from returning actors Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard are top notch and, even when they haven’t got great dialogue... and this is a film of a lot of scenes which don’t have great dialogue... they do an admirable performance in their roles here. As do co-stars Rafe Spall, Daniella Pineda and Justice Smith. Jeff Goldblum is, of course, always watchable but, as I suspected when I saw the trailer, he’s only in it for a couple of minutes at the start and a couple of minutes at the end so... not a great return for his character Ian Malcolm, to be honest. I was quite pleased when Toby Jones turns up as a nasty business man because the first thought you have is.. this guy is just here to get eaten. That’s almost his sole purpose in this movie... so that was another box ticked off.

Another positive is that the director seems to be making a concerted effort to design some nicely composed shots some of the time. There are cool examples of emphasising things by shifting focus and using sections at the edges of the screen in a few instances. So some nice, cinematic moments scattered throughout.

Okay so... that’s pretty much all the good stuff there.

Frankly, this film dragged quite a bit... even though it was full of action. Well, I say that... nothing much happens for the first twenty minutes or so but, once we get to the island, things go wrong for the main protagonists very quickly and heroes and villains are speedily identified. Everything is clearly marked but even the main characters seem to be acting like they have labels rather than names. Like many films, each character has their function but this movie makes it seem so obvious as to what role the characters are supposed to fulfil that you might as well just label them up... ‘velociraptor whisperer’, ‘high heel in peril girl’, ‘vet girl’, ‘button gal’, ‘computer guy’ etc. Everything slotted into place so obviously that there was nothing much to surprise you except... oh yeah... that one thing.

There’s a sleeper of a twist reveal which you kinda know is coming for the little girl played by Isabella Sermon as they keep dropping visual hints but... and this is a problem with a lot of things throughout the whole film... nobody, including the audience, really gets time to digest it when the big reveal is finally... um... revealed. And that’s a typical thing happening with this movie because, once the movie ramps up about 20 minutes or more in, there aren’t really that many pauses or time for reflection and suspense to build up before the next bus load of dino madness is upon us. So there’s no real weight or sense of terror lurking in the background and the suspense sequences feel just a little bit samey and anemic. Not something which has bothered me before when I see these things but it is a big problem here because this story really doesn’t have too much going for it. It really can’t afford to rollercoaster over those few good dramatic beats here and there in the way it does.

It’s interesting because this movie is much more graphic in its depiction of violence compared to the other Jurassic Park movies... it seems to me. Bearing in mind it’s a 12A rating in the UK, there’s a scene where half a guys arm gets pulled off while a dinosaur ‘toys with its food’ and another scene where you see a man ripped in half, Darth Maul style, between two dinosaur’s mouths. Now I’m not specifically blaming the director for what I’m about to say here but... you never really feel the violence and it shows just how beautifully crafted Steven Spielberg’s first two films in the franchise were because, with a minimum level of on screen goriness, you somehow feel the grizzly nature of violent death more in the way those are shot, edited and scored. Here, you see more but feel way less. Maybe a good demonstration of that old cliché ‘less is more’ in reverse here, it seems to me.

And talking of scoring. I love the majority of Michael Giacchino’s film music... heck, I even went to his birthday concert last year... but the music in this really is an unstoppable force and has a heck of a time trying to compete with the sound effects on this one. It seems simplistic and overpowering and, given the composers knack for weaving in other composers styles and melodies, the John Williams source material is barely referenced. In fact, there was probably more of it in the trailers than you got here and that’s just crazy because there are some real moments where the audience could benefit from the identification of those Williams themes to lift the emotions and, it just doesn’t really happen.

My one big, unforgivable mistake on this whole movie, however, happens within the first ten minutes or so and I was so angry about this that I could barely watch the next scene because my outrage was  persistent. In the early scenes they use a lot of BBC ‘newscast’ footage to recap the audience on what happened at certain points in the last movie as well as bring them up to speed as to what has happened in the couple of years chronologically between the two films. There were even scenes of people watching these broadcasts with their naked eyes and no special glasses... you know what’s coming don’t you? How in the heck are we supposed to believe that the BBC or whoever is broadcasting in 3D? Seriously, the TV footage stuff was all in 3D too and there’s absolutely no way that would happen. Popped me straight out of the movie. Just completely dumb. How is this stuff allowed to happen? I don’t even have the words to express my anger as to how a flat screen is suddenly able to magically broadcast in 3D. What were they thinking?

Also, while I’m at it... is it even possible for amber to break, let alone shatter from such a small distance? I think not, somehow.

So, yeah, I’ll just try and calm down now and say that... if you like the other Jurassic Park films then Jurassic World - Falllen Kingdom is probably going to hit some of the right buttons although, honestly, I’m getting really fed up with these now. There’s a post credit sequence which just underlines what you already know, which is that the producers obviously have a clear goal for the next movie in the series but, honestly, I’m just not sure I care what happens after this. A bit of a misfire but the kid inside you might like it. Or not. Who can tell? Give it a go and see what you think.

Jurassic World

Dinos ‘R’ Us

Jurassic World
2015  USA/China
Directed by Colin Trevorrow
UK cinema release print.

I remember absolutely loving the first Jurassic Park film when I saw it in 1993 (reviewed by me here). That was definitely the year of the dinosaur with every conceivable merchandise item you can think of, officially or not, being turned into some kind of prehistoric monster. It also tapped into a long forgotten and never properly developed passion for paleontology I had as a kid, which kinda kicked off with a knack I seemed to have for finding prehistoric fossils in even the most unlikeliest of places (I once even stumbled on a small ammonite in a stone which had been chopped up for gravel in a car park... something which still blows my mind today). Alas, like the dinosaurs that we all know and love, my enthusiasm for looking at, cleaning and dating bits of animal/vegetable impressed or incarcerating rocks soon became extinct... although I still have a soft spot for movies which feature dinosaurs and such.

That’s why, even though this movie isn’t a shadow of the original Spielberg opus, I still found it to be an entertaining film, to a certain point, although it really does seem a little unnecessary when you compare it to previous installments. As I said, I loved the original movie and even liked the sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which I remember coming in as a bit of a disappointment for a lot of people, although it was in some ways a partial remake using the old King Kong formula... even to the point of composer John Williams kind of referencing just a little of Max Steiner’s original 1933 score in one section. For the record, by the way, I love King Kong movies too... and a lot of the bizarre rip offs that followed in the giant ape’s footsteps over the decades. By the time that Jurassic Park III was upon us, I’d lost a lot of interest in the films and Spielberg was no longer in the director’s seat for this third installment. Still, it was entertaining enough because, even if there was no longer anything really new to show the audience, you really can’t go wrong with a dose of giant dinosaur action and it was still quite watchable.

I think the one thing you can accuse the movies of is that they’re definitely following a standard formula of throwing dinosaurs and humans together into the mix, to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum’s character from the first movie, and seeing who the heck is going to come out better off. The various films all pretty much deal with either kids or teenagers in peril, needing some kind of rescue, thus placing everyone in danger and fair prey to big, scary beasts with ferocious looking teeth. They’re usually a lot of fun with such a simple and robust formula and this latest incarnation, Jurassic World, also follows the same mix of ingredients, reataining that fun factor. It’s definitely a switch your brain’s higher functions off and sit back for the ride kinda movie but, there’s nothing really wrong with that, I think.

It does have it’s problems though.

The main problem with this one is, I’m afraid, that we’ve seen it all before and, really, nothing much has changed... it’s just got bigger and, arguably in some points, better rendered. This kind of gives it a bit of an uninspired feel and I find it interesting that the writers of the movie seem to have identified their own problem and made it a plot point, while still suffering from a lack of coherent solution to the issue. By this I mean that the plot involves a new “super dinosaur predator” which has been cross-bred and genetically enhanced by the only character/actor in the film from any of the original movies (B D Wong as Dr. Henry Wu, from Jurassic Park) because the audience for the theme park requires bigger and better dinosaurs to hold the interest for repeat visits. This, of course, follows the same mentality of a movie which feels it needs a bigger and better dinosaur to gain box office this time around and one wonders if this wasn’t a laconic in-joke snuck in by the writers to the point that it got past the producers of the movie. The thing is, the new dinosaur isn’t really that special in terms of look and so... it’s just really a bit bigger. Chris Pratt’s “velociraptor-whisperer” character Owen comments, “They’re dinosaurs. Wow, enough.” but, alas, my own reaction to these usually terrifying beasts in this movie was more... “They’re dinosaurs. Meh! Enough.”

Actually, although the acting and stereotypical characters by the likes of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard have been fairly heavily criticised (it seems to me), I had absolutely no problems with this reverting to stereotypes business. It’s not any more or less offensive, I feel, than a profusion of violence , for instance... something I can’t condone in real life but am more than happy to enjoy at the level of being entertained by it in the movies. Actually, I thought Howard’s character Claire is actually a stronger person than people are giving her credit for but... I’ll let everybody else make their own judgements on that and am happy to leave my comments on her in the shadows. She did the job just fine, as did Pratt, and I was entertained by them probably more so than the dinosaurs... if truth be told. The two “kids in peril” figures, Gray and Zach, were also brilliantly played by Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson so, really, no problem with the performances at all. Or even the script in terms of the dialogue to a large extent. Mostly it’s the story direction and lack of scares from the dinosaurs which was a little disappointing for me this time around. I remember the first time I saw Jurassic Park in 1993 there was a moment where I kicked the back of the seat in front of me inadvertently because my brain was kicking a velociraptor away... this time around that visceral vibe really wasn’t a factor in this, I’m afraid.

One of the reasons for this, I suspect, is the fact that we don’t, in this one, have an opening like the other three... which all begin with quite ferocious dinosaur attacks and which deliberately shock/warn the viewer to be really wary because these things are dangerous. The most successful of these openings, of course, being the Velociraptor attack at the start of the original Jurassic Park. Now I can totally understand the film makers choice not to go with this kind of set up again... especially after doing something similar in each film... but I think they’ve failed to take into account that it’s been 14 years since the majority of their audience have seen one of these things on the big screen and, in the case of some of their potential viewers, this is their first experience of one of these at a cinema... on a giant window into their fantasy land with a soundtrack dominating the experience over all the normal household sounds which can mar any home viewing. I really think the filmmakers missed a trick not giving us a truly terrifying opening to set up just how dangerous these things can be on this one and, for the record, a quite badly CGI’d crow does not provide the kinds of scares you’re looking for... nor does it serve a purpose unless you are going to bring crows back later on in the story. Any inherent metaphor is lost by the time you get to flying reptiles in this one. It just doesn’t really work other than for the laugh factor the director was presumably going for.

Another thing which really doesn’t help this particular film is that the trailers showed so much from it that you can completely piece together what’s going to happen before you even see the movie and... they really didn’t hold anything good back to save for just the main viewing experience, to give it the “wow factor” that the people running the island in the film are so obviously looking for, too. A bigger dinosaur doesn’t really cut it and, though they do tease what it looks like for a little while in the film, when you do see it it’s just... well... it’s just a big dinosaur. What’s next? So I think my personal experience of the movie would have been a little better if they’d have just stuck to more teasery trailers and not given us everything there is in one hit. Not a very smart move, I would have to say.

That being said, though, there are some nice things in it. The references to the first film such as it being set on the original island and a pretty big, not quite logical, reference to that first movie involving the teens that I won’t spoil here, are nice little touches. As is Michael Giacchino’s score which, given his past credentials and services to sequels over the years, I wouldn’t expect to be any less than excellent and that’s exactly what it is... riffing on John Williams’ original themes when required and hitting key points in the film. The score is a definite purchase from me but, honestly, I’m not sure if I’ll be bothering to pick up a home viewing version of the film on Blu Ray for a repeat watch anytime soon.

One of the things the director here has to be applauded for, although I don’t think it’s done all that successfully, is trying to capture some of the "little details leading onto larger revelations" mentality  that Spielberg utilised in his original two movies. In Jurassic Park, for example, we had that lovely moment, pretty much stolen from the scene when the tanks invade in The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, where the vibrations caused by the footsteps of the Tyrannosaurus Rex make visible ripples in a glass of water. Or the lovely moment where the canvass diorama illustration of a velociraptor turns into the visible presence of a real one when you least expect it, heralded by one of the characters shaking in fright so much the jelly on her spoon is wobbling. In The Lost World, we had two nice moments, one involving slowly cracking glass and another of velociraptor’s trails through tall grass. Those sequences really elevated the film from being just another dinosaur movie for this audience member. Jurassic World tries to use the same kind of visual philosophy, most notable when droplets of blood start dripping onto a throwaway character’s hand. Also, it highlights objects in the visual plane, such as a misplaced firearm, to ramp up the suspense and let the audience know, in a shorthand way, that the characters are in more danger than they at first maybe had realised. I actually don’t think any of these things are done that successfully, or with the flair that Spielberg achieved using similar techniques in the first two movies, but a big thank you and well done to Colin Trevorrow here for at least trying to hit the same kind of beats... even if they arent always effective on an adult audience (I’m sure it terrifies the kids though so... that’s two thirds of the job done, surely?).

At the end of the day, Jurassic World is a fairly entertaining movie and a guaranteed okay time at the cinema. It’s not a great movie and I think either something a lot more clever or, possibly, a lot more ‘over the top’ in terms of execution might well have lifted it above the status of being... just another fun watch. However, that being said, since I’m pretty sure that being a fun watch was probably the largest concern of all those behind the camera, I think it certainly succeeds in that. My fourth favourite of the four movies but certainly something which I think will be regularly showing on television screens for the next twenty years or so and, since it’s had a really big opening weekend, I don’t think this will be the last one in the series. If you like big dino movies, then you’re not going to go too far wrong by seeing this one, that’s for sure.