JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION

Stars: Chris Pratt, Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Bryce Dallas Howard, Isabella Sermon, Jeff Goldblum, Campbell Scott, DeWanda Wise, Mamoudou Athie, Omar Sy, BD Wong, Dichen Lachman and Justice Jesse Smith.
Writers: Colin Trevorrow and Emily Carmichael; from a story by Derek Connelly and Colin Trevorrow; based on characters created by Michael Crichton.
Director: Colin Trevorrow

Rating: ★ ½

Aside from a fleeting diversion to the Bering Sea, where a deep sea monster balances out the oceanic life ledger by sinking a fishing trawler, the sixth Jurassic franchise film opens in a faux 4:3 ratio. This allows for a montage of evening news clips and CNN types talking about how hard it’s become to live with dinosaurs since they integrated themselves into human society, a promise of things to come that we glimpsed at the end of 2018’s Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (who names these films??). 

The audience, rightfully expecting an opening that sets hearts pounding from frame 1 (like what Steven Spielberg did with some ferns and a bunch of guys in hi-vis helmets, back in ‘93), is instead napalmed with information concerning the industrialization of genetic science and the government agency controlling the increasingly dangerous problem and blah, blah, blah. It is a clumsy, crappy opening to a summer blockbuster, but it sure sets the tone for the 150 minutes to follow.

Director Colin Trevorrow, once thought the man to forge a new path for all things JP, then segues his already convoluted narrative into, of all things, a big bug movie; genetically mutated locusts, as large and disgusting as house cats, are destroying crops all across America, except those planted by ‘Big Farmer’ conglom BioSyn, a Monsanto-like corporation with designs on global food sector domination. It’s an early bit of stupid plotting (how long before investigators establish that link?), but is by no means the most egregious, indicating Trevorrow and co-writer Emily Carmichael are happy to jettison logic in favour of maintaining momentum.

The problem that faces the writing pair, however, is the number of characters they are going to have to juggle to keep us invested in if they want to see out the film’s hook - uniting the key cast members from both iterations of the Jurassic film eras in a trilogy-encapsulating final chapter. Paleobotanist Ellie Satler (Laura Dern) is called upon to bust open the bug conspiracy, providing an entry point for OG everyman hero Alan Grant (Sam Neill). Dr Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) has let his ethical firewall slide in the intervening years; he’s now consulting for CEO Lewis Dodgson (Campbell Scott, a fitting physical appropriation for the original “Dodgson!”, Cameron Thor), allowing Ellie and Alan passage into the villainous hi-tech BioSyn lair.

Of the Jurassic World ensemble, we are reunited with dino-whisperer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt, bringing his patented ‘ironic blandness’ in spades) and Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), now guardians for mopey teen DNA fleshpod, Maisie Lockwood (Isabella Sermon). They live in the woods, sharing the wilderness, often uncomfortably with raptor heroine ‘Blue,’ who has ‘found a way’ to have a calf, called ‘Beta’. When kidnappers take Beta (for her black market value) and Maisie (for her bridging DNA strands), Owen and Claire enlist the aid of JW#1 callback Barry Sembene (Omar Sy), now a French undercover agent, to get them access to Malta's thriving, illegal underground dinosaur marketplace.

Is anyone still reading this? Because it’s exhausting to recall and boring to write, and I still haven’t got to DeWanda Wise’s tough-talking mercenary pilot Kayla Watts; Mamoudou Athie’s naive corporate shill, Ramsay Cole; Dichen Lachman’s cold-hearted black marketeer Soyona Santos, whose chilly, OTT glamour seems more suited to Bond villainy; or an insufferably mopey B.D. Wong, returning to the fold as original JP geneticist, Dr Henry Wu. Worse still, the script allows each support player feeble and time-consuming character arcs and earnest dialogue; at one point, I turned to my equally-dejected movie mate and said, “I wish everyone in this film would just shut up!” 

It is at this juncture that you have every right to ask, “Uh, we are going to have some dinosaurs…in your…in your dinosaur movie review? Hello?”, given that it was exactly the question I whispered to myself as the mighty beasts of prehistory found themselves being shunted into the background of their own film series. New species turn up, including an impressive beast called Giganotosaurus (“The biggest carnivore that ever lived,” says Dr Grant, in one of many ‘Golly Gee!’ dog-whistle moments for the franchise-primed target audience), but Trevorrow mostly just drops them into the path of our heroes, who dodge them with scant regard for their status as ‘alpha predators’. 

This seemingly endless parade of hoops through which to jump is a built-in reference to the plot machinations of the series that demands our heroes travel from point A to point B, dino-dodging the whole time. But even in the much-maligned Jurassic Park III (finally casting off its ‘Worst of the Franchise’ tag), the protagonist’s trek held some degree of menace, some ‘imminent threat’ element that provided an often very basic but undeniable tension and sense of adventure. That never manifests in Jurassic World: Dominion, a bloated 2½ hour plod that is unforgivably dull and irreconcilably misjudged.

THE BFG

Stars: Ruby Barnhill, Mark Rylance, Rebecca Hall, Bill Hader, Jemaine Clement, Matt Frewer, Rafe Spall and Penelope Wilton.
Writer: Melissa Mathison; based upon the children’s novel by Roald Dahl.
Director: Steven Spielberg

Premiered Out of Competition at 69^th Festival du Cannes; screened at the Grand Lumiere Theatre.

Rating: 2/5

Steven Spielberg has been open about his adoration for the classic Roald Dahl children’s novel The BFG, of how the 1982 book was standard bedtime reading in his household and how an adaptation has been in development for close to 20 years. He is not alone; the book is a publishing phenomenon that impacted a generation of young readers, just as Spielberg’s body of work is arguably the most fondly favoured American film output of the last half century.

Reteaming with the late writer Melissa Mathison (E.T. The Extra-terrestrial) and long time producing partners Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, Spielberg at least delivers on his promise to get it made. Unfortunately, the only element of the entire production that inspires any kind of wonder is just how far from a satisfying adaptation the film proves to be, given the potential held by the pairing of these two great storytellers.

The heroine is Sophie (Ruby Barnhill), a little girl with big dreams who wanders the halls of her 80’s era London orphanage (looking very Harry Potter-ish, as does much of the film) well into the witching hour. Barely 10 words have been spoken in the film when we meet Oscar-winner Mark Rylance’s not-yet-friendly giant, who abducts Sophie from her bed and takes her to a faraway land. The trauma of the abduction barely registers on Sophie and soon a type of accelerated ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ kicks in. The pair chatter away interminably in the giant’s home at the expense of plot establishment, the now friendly giant instead introducing her to such wonders as The Tree of Dreams and a workshop where he mixes the tree’s pickings to create happy night time visions.

The BFG is the runt of a large band of horribly ill-tempered, one-dimensional giants (just like the ones in Bryan Singer’s dud Jack The Giant Slayer), many times larger and with a cruel hunger for human flesh. Sophie convinces The BFG to come with her to Buckingham Palace, resulting in the film’s liveliest, funniest sequence, and advise The Queen (Penelope Wilton, the film’s best asset) and her offsider Mary (an entirely ill-fitting Rebecca Hall) that the giants are a real threat and a military first strike against them is the best option. Nocturnal kidnapping, the threat of cannibalism and the upside of a tactical airborne offensive all make for a modern family movie, apparently.

The absence of any discernible narrative for a great swathe of the film may not bother the real littlies; colour and movement abound and Barnhill is cutey-pie enough to connect with the tots. On the other hand, parents (in fact, anyone over 10) will be driven to distraction by the sweetness-over-substance approach. The BFG and his clan also speak in a broken ‘pigeon English’-like dialect called ‘gobblefunk’ that is often impossible to understand, ensuring a ponderous 115 minutes of young ones pulling at your shirt sleeve and asking, “What did he say?”

Steven Spielberg has rarely ever let the technology at his disposal do the work for him. Jaws, Close Encounters of The Third Kind, Jurassic Park, A.I. and Minority Report broke new ground in almost every frame, but Spielberg steadfastly put story first.  The BFG more readily recalls his lumbering over-produced misfires 1941, Hook and Always. It also bares witness to just how fallible the director is in this late-career stage; for every great work (Munich; Lincoln; Bridge of Spies), he persists at shoehorning storylines into experiments with CGI and performance capture tech, resulting in stinkers like Kingdom of The Crystal Skull, The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse.

The occasionally pretty images captured by DOP Janusz Kaminski and omnipresent orchestral work of John Williams keep demanding that we feel for Sophie and her gargantuan friend, but Spielberg’s erratic tonality, overly-familiar technique and heavy-handed graphics renders what should have been a soaring adaptation of Dahl just plain dull.

POLTERGEIST

Stars: Sam Rockwell, Rosemarie DeWitt, Jared Harris, Jane Adams, Kyle Catlett, Kennedi Clements and Saxon Sharbino.
Writer: David Lindsay-Abaire.
Director: Gil Kenan.

Watch the trailer here.

Rating: 2.5/5

If Gil Kenan’s remake of Tobe Hooper’s (or, if you believe the scuttlebutt, Steven Spielberg’s) 1982 spectral spectacular Poltergeist is remembered at all, it will be as further evidence of Hollywood’s disregard for the horror genre in its pandering to the PG-13 demographic.

Robbed of the upwardly mobile, early 80s spunk that imbued leads Craig T Nelson and the great Jobeth Williams with such warm personalities, whiny smart-alec Sam Rockwell and an anaemic Rosemarie DeWitt star as Eric and Amy Bowen, two career-less strugglers mired in an America of foreclosed suburban blocks. In 1982, The Freelings earned our affection with funny and familiar family moments that remain fan favourites (the burying of the dead bird; giving the pool guys the finger; the battle for remote control with the jerk-neighbour); in 2015, The Bowens are introduced in a static single shot, bundled together in their bland people mover and shrilly yelling over each other to be heard. In modern screen parlance, writer David Lindsay-Abaire’s lazy opening represents ‘establishing character.’

Those rich characterisations that ensured emotional investment in the plight of the all-American nuclear family are but one of the many assets exorcised in this shallow retelling, but it is arguably the most crucial omission. The narrative’s dramatic impetus has been taken away from the mother; the tormented focus that the grief of losing a daughter to supernatural forces and the desperate determination to get her back provided Williams with meaty maternal material. Alternatively, DeWitt is largely a nonchalant bystander, barely registering a furrowed brow as her youngest navigates ‘The Great Beyond’. Similarly, Rockwell’s father figure seems annoyed by the overall inconvenience of the spiritual invasion; any comparison to Nelson’s crumbling emotional wreck is really no comparison at all.

Otherworldly heroism falls to middle-child Griffin, played by an ok Kyle Catlett (moms can’t be heroes in 2015 franchise reboots); his role is essentially a live-action version of the animated tyke director Kenan conjured in 2006’s Monster House.  Teenage sister Kendra is played with an ultra-modern ironic detachment by Saxon Sharbino, who can’t be jolted into any kind of emotional life no matter how much the ethereal denizens of her home try; the abducted moppet made famous by the late Heather O’Rourke is ably realised by Kennedi Clements, easily the best of the ensemble. Jared Harris and Jane Adams are reduced to naff comic relief in roles that carried dramatic weight 33 years ago when played by Zelda Rubinstein and Beatrice Straight, respectively.

If the human elements are left wanting, there is some meagre joy to be had in the prerequisite frights. The most successfully rendered reworking of an original element is the clown that freaks out Griffin (although how it comes to be in his room at all represents an implausible disregard for new home owner due diligence); based on the high profile that the clown has in all the marketing material, the producers are aiming for the ‘creepy doll’ audience that PG-13 hits The Conjuring and Annabelle brought in. Also relatively effective are CGI-heavy re-imaginings of the iconic ‘Killer Tree’ sequence and the ‘Wardrobe to Hell’ portal to the homes’ heart of bi-location.

To list further failings in Kenan’s remake would begin to sound churlish – the financial hardship the Bowens find themselves in means no backyard pool sequences; no E-Buzz, the family dog whose animal instincts first sensed the true nature of the house; no discernible music score, unlike Jerry Goldsmith’s orchestral masterwork. Also, blaming the atmospheric ineffectiveness on the tinny digital sheen that has replaced the rich, deep shadows and vibrant colours provided by film stock is a moot point; film production is what it is in the modern industry.

Fact is, Poltergeist 2015 was not made to honour its source material. Nor will the PG-13 audience for which it was created be all that familiar with its origins (or, for that matter, what a poltergeist even is). It should be judged on its own terms; in that regard, it is a tepid, mid-range effort, lacking in logic and derailed by one-note characters servicing a narrowly focussed B-movie storyline. It’s just that little bit sadder that proof exists indicating it could have been so much more.