jurassic park

rewatched this recently and while at this point every single line is burned into my brain i'm finally willing to admit it has some serious third-act problems. once you're past the big T-Rex scenes the movie starts jumping between characters and situations with no sense of geography or time passing, just marching through plot mechanics as all of a sudden the movie becomes about turning the power back on, somewhere "at the other end of the compound." roll out a map for us or something! the kitchen scene is still amazing, and i do love "clever girl" and some the kid bonding stuff, but almost everything else is kinda silly and feels beneath the level of a movie where dinosaurs have come back... limping around to turn the power back on, fretting over the computer system to turn on the doors... that's lazy. grant and ellie stop having good lines, also - just weird stuff no one was willing to tell crichton they were cutting, like the shit about the frog DNA. they halfway cut the bit about why the triceratops gets sick every six weeks seems, meaning it's set up but not paid off - weird.

BUT it's still terrific viewing almost all the way through because spielberg just goes the extra mile. so many shots and setups and lines that get that little extra pinch of love. the dust coming off grant and ellie in their trailer when they're meeting with hammond. the jiggling jello. makes it all the weirder that there are screwups as huge and distracting as the T-Rex habitat changing back and forth from level ground to a four-story cliff. but BOY does he put in the work to make you like these characters at the start so that when they see dinosaurs for the first time, you're right there with them and feeling how amazed they would be. movie magic right there.

no sense of geography or time passing

it's true we never get a sense of where's where on the island but no sense of time passing seems v wrong to me-- look at the striations in this composite cardamon posted upthread of every second of the movie. that's the lovely weekend malcolm thanks hammond for.

grant and ellie stop having good lines, also

ellie gets "sexism in survival situations"; grant gets "after careful consideration i have decided not to endorse your park". and it's not a line but his scene sitting in the tree, tossing the raptor claw away while the kids sleep, is lovely.

almost everything else is kinda silly and feels beneath the level of a movie where dinosaurs have come back

the ooh and ah is for the first half; then comes the running and screaming. the actual monster movie inside the elaborate metaphor for monster movies.

they halfway cut the bit about why the triceratops gets sick every six weeks seems, meaning it's set up but not paid off

this and "the lysine contingency" (ludlum title obv) are like bare scaffolding yeah.

fretting over the computer system to turn on the doors

this is a tech-hubris joke i guess but it's too late and superfluous to land.

the jiggling jello.

i said this upthread somewhere but it is SO AMAZING that the jello is the third and ultimate quivering fluid heralding a monster -- but unlike the others which quiver because the monster is merely really big, the jello at the end of terrified lex's spoon quivers because the monster is really scary. a different kind of impact tremor.

movie magic right there.

thing's a master class.

i guess re that image, it's just that last daylight section yr talking abt. but i still like it. feels hungover.

OTM re: the jello.

regarding the passing of time, I think what I was specifically thinking of was the sequence where arnold leaves to turn the power back on. other key cast members are setting themselves up in a bunker (is this under the building they were in? where was that relative to the visitors' center with the jello and the kitchen? or someplace else?). cut away to grant and the kids doing something. cut back and ellie is proclaiming that arnold's been gone too long and she's going to take action. it just feels sort of detached from real time and reality - how long was he gone exactly? feels like some short cutaways were chopped for running-time reasons - - - them in the bunker, drumming fingers, sweat dripping from malcolm's fevered brow, something. idk, maybe just me.

i also feel like the jump from the climax to the comedown is really sudden - totally awesome badass thing with the T-Rex fighting the raptors, then our heroes scurry out the door and there's a jeep already waiting, the credits are practically coming up... just seems abrupt and low-stakes all of a sudden, but i guess the movie's been in thrill-ride mode for a good stretch at that point so it does have to end. again these are kind of micro-critiques only possible because the craft and detail are so totally on-point elsewhere.

regarding the computers and the doors and so on: my beef is not so much the ebertian one, where it's a shame to bring back dinosaurs and nail the ooh and ahh, just to do a monster movie with them. i accept the monster movie - just seems like if you have fucking dinosaurs, there have to be lots of ways to raise the tension and scare you that do not come down to "oh won't the system boot up faster?" everyone remembers the T-Rex attack and the kitchen scene, and rightly so - in each of these the prospect of being attacked by dinosaurs (one unspeakably overpowering, one unspeakably cunning) is right there front and center.

fretting over the computer system to turn on the doors

I noticed a minor problem with this sequence on last rewatch, which is that Tim is just standing there next to Lex while Ellie is holding the door against the raptor and not able to reach her gun. She should have asked him to get it for her!

this score is only temporary. it all has very dramatic music, of course. boom, boom, boom-- a whole march or something. hasn't been written yet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSbQzWj1Bd0

a weird subplot that i never noticed is the total fascination of all the characters to the Mr. DNA sequence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUaFYzFFbBU

look how much they love it! if you showed them who framed roger rabbit they'd lose their minds

difficult listening hour
Posted: 7 November 2017 at 04:00:12
this score is only temporary. it all has very dramatic music, of course. boom, boom, boom-- a whole march or something. hasn't been written yet.

https://youtu.be/D-f9bpMpddA

That whole sequence is so smart

Just a really good way to explain the “science” to the audience as if to a child and yeah the adult scientists start off cynical and end up enraptured

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-f9bpMpddA

Tbf, maybe they think Mr. DNA is real, just like the dinosaurs.

he's been with the world

The new one is fucking terrible and deserves Razzie nominations.

The previous one was kinda mediocre but was at least entertaining.

This one was a plot "twist" that in The Room fashion, is forgotten about a minute later.

This one's description scans like Alien Covenant: bad-idea landing on mysterious planet, housebound gothic horror denouement.

hawt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grCRBa0n72c

i'm not sure what's more baffling: getting all the way through shooting that before deciding not to include it, or deciding that it was in some way less essential to the film than the personal assistant death scene, vincent d'onofrio free-associating about a wolf cub, or almost anything else in that trainwreck of a film.

That was very Romancing the Stone. Would have been super awesome if they smeared dino poop on themselves and were immediately attacked.

I liked the new one it was very stupid!

In Jurassic World the CGI dinosaurs were more convincing and less distracting than her nosejob

I just started watching parks and recreation, is that girl’s boyfriend who lives in the hole - is he the main character in this? lololololol

in case you haven't seen it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4mVIJ5eTBY

Doo keeep uuup

see the first Jurassic World was a trainwreck but it at least had moments that were fun.

this new one is b-movie terribleness which would be cool if the movie didn't think its pathos was deep and real, maaaan.

the plot twist is hilarious. it would be a "deus ex machina" if it had anything to do with the general plot of the movie and wasn't forgotten 2 seconds later.

i won't spoil here tho

I feel like y’all not into roger corman

hmm... plot twist. I'm gonna guess that it turns out that our heroes actually died in the last movie and they're clones of themselves, and this was the real purpose of Jurassic Park and its genetic labs all along

what if the dinosaurs were the friends we made along the way

lol yr not completely far off.....either of you

i love Corman movies. but they are usually small budget and have good music. also it's not like i ever paid $15 to see one new in a movie theater, i catch them on Saturday afternoon tv.

fwiw ill probably see this at a drive in.

I'm mostly disappointed to learn that five movies in and we have still yet to see someone throw a saddle on a dinosaur and ride it like a horse.

There were kids doing that with baby triceratops in the last one

Did they have lassos and hats?

seems like they are setting up Pratt as the dino whisperer. if they don't give him that moment it will be a lost opportunity.

It's going to be like nu Planet of the Apes, he is going to lead the Dinosaur Revolution against his oppressors. And it will be very dark.

As long as it features people riding dinosaurs and assaulting cops in a major setpiece a la the Golden Gate Bridge sequence in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I'm down.

exclusive production designs for jurassic war leaked

https://cdn.movieweb.com/img.news.tops/NE9PDtCKPv73ci_1_b/Dino-Riders-Movie-Mattel.jpg

knew what that img was gonna be; thumbs up.

ok ok so the twist is... humans were originally cloned FROM dinosaurs. by aliens i guess. cloners, from planet kamino. or at least, chris pratt has dino dna, explaining his bond with the raptors and his clunky, walnut-brained "chemistry" with bryce dino howard.

omg that's it isn't it

cgi attenborugh: "you... were my greatest creation"

This was batshit stupid and I enjoyed it.
Want a Pinky & The Brain film starring Toby Jones and ...?

Stephen Merchant?

tim blake nelson

I want a Chicken Boo movie starring Mr. DNA

At this stage I’d be disappointed if these films weren’t dumb and bad - I was saying after the first Jurassic world that it would be a betrayal if the trilogy didn’t end with genetically engineered dinopeople, talking raptors, the full gremlins 2 basically - so I can’t say this one didn’t meet my minimum requirements, but it’s dumb and bad and boring for too much of its runtime. There were some cool bits once they got to the mansion tho

When they were sailing away from the island I thought to myself “this fuckin film is a ballhair away from showing a single tear rolling down a velociraptor’s cheek” and then half an hour later that ballhair had been well and truly eaten

don’t u dare sully the gleefully inventive gremlins 2 by association with this production-line sludge

a few of my friends told me they were sobbing throughout the film and I'm like, cool that's what this franchise has always needed, huggable dinosaurs

more pathos, baby. more pathos.

also there's another "dinosaurs as super soldiers" moment where you'll think to yourself "isn't it just easier to fire a million bullets at someone"

bg otm Gremlins 2 is some top notch funnel cake