Ballad of a Small Player - I actually enjoyed this movie quite a bit, only to find out it is getting killed in reviews. Maybe showing a bit of bias towards Colin Farrell as I enjoy most of his movies. Movie also was beautifully shot. Makes sense given Edward Berger also directed Conclave/All Quiet on the Western Front.
I really liked it as well. I really don't get all the bad reviews.
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Jurassic World: Rebirth out on Amazon....it is an awful movie.
The first scene is a lab making hybrid/mutant dinosaurs, which instantly pisses me off as dinosaurs are scary/exciting enough. Stop making hybrids. They create some dinosaur that's too large and mutated to be shown to the public, but keep it around for...reasons. It's only purpose in life is to be large and ornery.
They've named this thing "Distortus Rex". Which means deformed king. I'd be pissed off too if that was my name. It also doesn't make any sense. Supposedly this thing would be an offshoot of a T. Rex, so you'd keep the Tyrannosaurus Genera and change the species or sub-species name, depending on how mutated this thing was. So Tyrannosaurus Distortus or Tyrannosaurus Rex Distortus might be correct. I guess that doesn't sound as cool. These guys are also crappy scientists.
They're also making larger flying Velociraptors. Once again, for reasons. It's an animal they've had a lot of trouble controlling in the past, but lets make it stronger and harder to contain for kicks. These animals also defy the laws of physics, as they manage to fly with large body weights and relatively small wings. They look like dragons from GoT with smaller wings...it's dumb. Especially as they've already cloned actual pterosaurs.
Next we learn that the dinosaurs that were released all over the world in the other films are actually dying, as they don't like modern air and climate after all. They survive in the equatorial zone, as supposedly there's more oxygen there (there isn't, in fact, less). People have abandoned these zones and left them to the dinosaurs. The countries in the equatorial zones with the highest populations are in Africa. Has most of Africa been abandoned? They don't deal with that.
I also never really got the whole idea of just sharing the planet with dangerous dinosaurs. It seemed to be the idea of environmentalists, but was the movie agreeing with that movement? It seemed be making fun of environmentalists for pushing the idea of sharing the planet (including cities) with dinosaurs. I don't know, but sharing cities with predatory dinosaurs is not a good idea.
The premise of the movie is that an evil corporation wants to make a heart medicine, but they need samples from the three largest dinosaurs of the land, sea and air to do so. These animals are only found on some remote and dangerous island, so they recruit ScarJo to handle the job.
In the previous scene they showed a huge theropod loose in a city. Apparently, that blood is no good, it has to be from the largest dinosaur....of each type. Even though we don't know what the largest dinosaur was, as we only know the largest one discovered in the fossil record, or so we presume based on our fragmented taxonomy. No reason for why the blood of a dinosaur 80% as large can't be used to create magic heart medicine.
They settle on the following 3 "dinosaurs" that blood samples need to be collected from:
1. Titanosaurus: Not a species of dinosaur, but a genera. I'll write that one off as that might be just what the public calls this dinosaur.
2. Quetzalcoatlus: Not a dinosaur. A flying reptile.
3. Mosasaur: Definitely not a dinosaur. In fact, more closely related to snakes and turtles than to dinosaurs.
I have no idea why blood samples from these 3 very distinct groups of reptiles can make heart medicine for humans. There's no scientific basis for that. I know I'm nitpicking at the science, but Michael Crichton put so much effort into the science of the first novel/film that I can't help but hold this franchise to some kind of a standard.
Before going to the island ScarJo uses her wiles to recruit a group of extremely muscular black men from Suriname. All of these people serve as red shirts throughout the film.
Then they finally make their way to the island....they don't actually get there for an hour. It takes an actual hour before they step foot on the island. This movie is about 2.5 hours long.
The dialogue from the movie is absolutely awful. I think they did that on purpose, as they would have a scene with exceptionally bad dialogue and then play what seemed to be purposely cheesy music.
The tone of the movie was weird. They had a lot more horror and gore than previous JP films, but also jokes for young kids too. The movie was set in modern day, but a lot of the characters at times spoke and dressed like they were in an old timey explorer adventure. The movie seemed to be paying homage to the 2005 Jack Black King Kong film. There were ancient ruins on the island, that they never explained in any way.
The writers constantly sacrificed realism and mood for comedy. There's one scene where a guy goes to urinate and is stalked by raptors while doing so. He's saved by a flying raptor who kills the other raptors....except that he's only a few feet away from where he's sleeping with a family, that includes an 8 year old kid. They all go back to sleeping at that site after he's done urinating.
The constant corniness, bad dialogue and cuts into bad music lead me to conclude that this movie was purposely bad. They were going for the same vibe as those "Shark vs. Giant Octopus" type movies from the early 2010s. Or maybe someone involved in the production realized how bad this was partway through, hated their life and added the extra cheese elements as an F U?
The culprit in all of this seems to be the writer, David Koepp. For whatever reason, Spielberg loves this guy, and has given him free reign to destroy cinema. Not only was he responsible for this piece of crap, his other credits include:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Mummy (2017)
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
War of the Worlds (2005)
This guy goes around ruining movie franchises, and I don't understand how this has been allowed to continue. Maybe when Spielberg decides that he doesn't want a franchise to continue, he gets David Koepp inserted as the lead writer to kill it?
Maybe if you want to see ScarJo in a sweaty tanktop check this out. There's another female lead, but she plays a college girl (she's actually 24) so the writers decided to cover her up in a large t-shirt the whole time. That t-shirt is wet most of the time though. So once again, I'm totally confused as to the tone of this film.
The minute the opening scene showed a man getting killed in a super advanced Dino cloning facility because the gluttonous slob dropped a ####ing candy wrapper and that disrupted a futuristic advanced holding cell I knew I was watching a B Movie. It was so utterly ridiculous that the writers were so ####ing lazy they couldn’t come up with anything better. Like a giant middle finger to the audience and our collective lack of desire to have our movies have even the bare minimum of intelligence or thought put into the events that take place.
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Agreed, love that movie! Amazing George C. Scott performance and one of the best jump scares of all time.
Oh yeah, easily.
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My wife’s mother is visiting, Father. And Tuesday night she’s cooking us a carp. It’s a tasty fish, I have nothing against it. But because it’s supposedly filled with impurities, she buys it live. And for three days it’s been… swimming up and down in my bathtub. Up… and down. And I hate it. I can’t stand the sight of it. Moving its gills. Now, you’re standing very close to me Father, Have you noticed? Yes… I haven’t had a bath for three days. I can’t go home until the carp is asleep. Because if I see it swimming, I’ll kill it.
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The minute the opening scene showed a man getting killed in a super advanced Dino cloning facility because the gluttonous slob dropped a ####ing candy wrapper and that disrupted a futuristic advanced holding cell I knew I was watching a B Movie. It was so utterly ridiculous that the writers were so ####ing lazy they couldn’t come up with anything better. Like a giant middle finger to the audience and our collective lack of desire to have our movies have even the bare minimum of intelligence or thought put into the events that take place.
I just don't get why that thing was in the holding cell in the first place. It showed enough intelligence to know how doors worked and have some kind of personal grudge against the scientists. It just seems like a really bad idea to contain that thing in a tiny cell.
I'd also like to know who's handling their liability exposure and risk assessment practices. This is the same company that's likely defending a plethora of lawsuits from the first few movies. Which jackass CEO is green lighting a massive, futuristic, and very expensive looking facility dedicated to designing larger, deadlier and harder to contain dinosaurs. FFS they just caused a global ecological disaster by releasing entire populations of dinosaurs into the wild. The shareholders can't be happy with this.
Do they not listen to anything that Jeff Goldblum says.
I need to stop getting so worked up about how bad this film was.
I just don't get why that thing was in the holding cell in the first place. It showed enough intelligence to know how doors worked and have some kind of personal grudge against the scientists. It just seems like a really bad idea to contain that thing in a tiny cell.
I'd also like to know who's handling their liability exposure and risk assessment practices. This is the same company that's likely defending a plethora of lawsuits from the first few movies. Which jackass CEO is green lighting a massive, futuristic, and very expensive looking facility dedicated to designing larger, deadlier and harder to contain dinosaurs. FFS they just caused a global ecological disaster by releasing entire populations of dinosaurs into the wild. The shareholders can't be happy with this.
Do they not listen to anything that Jeff Goldblum says.
I need to stop getting so worked up about how bad this film was.
I just can't get over how, outside of the obviously perfect first movie, studios keep fumbling maybe one of the greatest literary ideas of all time which should just be able to endlessly fuel good scripts. But here we are.
It's not a good movie. It's overwrought and caricaturish. However, it's insanely quotable and memorable, so it has staying power.
In that vein...holy hell, I think I need to go rewatch Rashomon. Kurosawa is a genius.
Rashomon is brilliant! Gave rise to a whole new understanding and exploration of POV. Made in the year I was born as it happens (1950).
There’s a piece of me that despairs for the lack of artistry in films now…cartoonish nonsense, blow-em-ups, silly storylines….sigh.
I did though have the pleasure of rewatching both Bohemian Rhapsody and the wonderful, if fatally flawed, original Blade Runner, on the way back from Europe. (Not exactly a lot of good choices available…)
The new Jurassic Park was actually pretty good. Much better than the rest of the sequels. Pretty fun too, if you accept the silliness of the giant six legged dinosaur with a brain tumour and just move on with your life towards enjoyment.
We are talking about an Island full of dinosaurs that were repopulated with a mosquito after all. I wasn’t too worried about the scientific realism of it all.
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The new Jurassic Park was actually pretty good. Much better than the rest of the sequels. Pretty fun too, if you accept the silliness of the giant six legged dinosaur with a brain tumour and just move on with your life towards enjoyment.
We are talking about an Island full of dinosaurs that were repopulated with a mosquito after all. I wasn’t too worried about the scientific realism of it all.
Yeah I actually liked it. I mean I have the same criticisms as everyone else, I posted my review a few pages ago and touched on the same points, but despite those still really enjoyed it
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Originally Posted by btimbit
Alright, finally saw Jurassic World Rebirth. I know I'm late to the party, but I hate going to theatres so waited.
Had a ton of fun. It's not a great movie, for every part I really enjoyed there was an equal amount of parts that made me figuratively roll my eyes. I'd call it a solid 6/10.
Middle of the pack for the series imo. Million miles ahead of Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, Million miles behind the first two, kind of in there with JP3 and the first World.
Spoiler!
Opening scene was alright. It's the usual Jurassic opening, some sort of incident gets someone killed/seriously injured/put in serious danger, but we don't get to fully see what.
Other than of course, the whole thing was caused by a goddamn snickers bar wrapper. Obvious product placement aside, come on, a ####ing wrapper takes down a facility like this? That's just lazy. At least dump coffee on a control panel if you just straight don't give a #### about writing, lol. But whatever, ignoring the cause, the scene was fun.
Totally glossed over the rest of the set up. Gotta get live samples from big dinos because of some corporate greed reason. Characters aren't set up great, but who cares we haven't gotten that outside of the first JP anyway. Let's go see some dinos.
Highlight of the movie was the ocean scenes. Awesome to see Spinosaurus again, and Mosasaur is neat. That whole sequence was good. Yeah, there's the usual JP 'innocent family stuck in the middle of it' but at least these ones weren't doing anything incredibly stupid to put themselves there, just out sailing. Daughters boyfriend didn't need to be in the movie at all though, I wish the Mosasaur got him when the boat capsized, his character arc of '####head is annoying, does one decent thing then is just kind of there for the rest of it' wasn't needed. But getting chomped would have added even more weight to the scene.
Whole middle part of the movie was meh. Titanosaurs were just kind of there, bad CGI in this part, and there were way too many of them so it just looked lame. Come on, that valley would be stripped bare like The Land Before Time if there were that many of those beasts living on that island. The sequence of the angry flying dinos was alright, seeing that guy get swallowed whole stayed with me for a few hours unlike any other death in the series, no idea why. That was cool, even though you knew from the second they were on screen that he and the short haired girl were just in the movie so nobody you care about dies.
Raft scene was fun, homage to a part of the first book that was never used yet. Really loved this part, aside from the fact that the whole scene felt way too 'safe.' If you've ever scene a Jurassic movie, you know nothing was ever going to happen to this family (Another reason I wish the boyfriend died earlier, to make me second guess that)
Not many thoughts on the Raptor+Pteradon scenes. Just some action, not bad not great.
Weakest part of the movie by a mile, the stupid D-Rex. WTF was that thing? Dinos are cool enough, we never needed to do this whole genetic mutant thing at all. It was fine with the I-Rex but that should have been it for that. But even worse, this thing looks so dumb. Like the Cloverfield monster bred with Godzilla. And it just spent most of its time standing there being really big, it was never really that threatening despite being a monstrosity. Oh and the CGI of it holding the helicopter was pretty bad.
Anywho, those long rambling thoughts and criticisms aside, I had a lot of fun with that one. I'm sure it doesn't sound like I was singing it's praises there but despite it's many, many failings, the scenes that did work for me, worked really well.
Jurassic Park is easily one of my top 3 favourite movies, but I know it'll never be touched by anything else in the franchise so I'm just happy we're still going despite how horrible the previous two movies were. Glad it went a different direction again. I'm a simple man, that movie wasn't great but I loved it. And they made Scarlett Johansson wear tight shirts most of the movie, which I appreciated.
6/10 is a good rating. It was entertaining, solid, pretty good enough, but had its flaws. Not a movie I’d rush to watch again but if someone put it on I wouldn’t complain.
The big bad was just dumb (both in design and the creature itself seemed super dumb), but it served its menacing purpose. Like a hungry, mean looking dinosaur sloth that just slowly lumbered around messing up plans. I kind of liked that it wasn’t some “ultra smart velociraptor crossed with Trex!” or whatever they tried to do with the Chris Pratt one. I already forget.
A real good popcorn flick. You’re not going to learn anything, no meaningful awards will be awarded, but just a nice creature feature with some thrills and all that.
The references to the OG were plenty and I appreciated them.
I also enjoyed Jurassic World: Rebirth for what it was.
I think the 6/10 is about fair.
Yeah, you have to let a lot go and I get that the suspension of disbelief was being stretched to it's breaking point but other than that it was better than a lot of the other sequels in terms of just entertainment.
Its not winning any awards or anything and I wouldn't make a special effort to watch it again, but it wasn't hot garbage either.
Its about managing expectations.
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6/10 is a good rating. It was entertaining, solid, pretty good enough, but had its flaws. Not a movie I’d rush to watch again but if someone put it on I wouldn’t complain.
The big bad was just dumb (both in design and the creature itself seemed super dumb), but it served its menacing purpose. Like a hungry, mean looking dinosaur sloth that just slowly lumbered around messing up plans. I kind of liked that it wasn’t some “ultra smart velociraptor crossed with Trex!” or whatever they tried to do with the Chris Pratt one. I already forget.
A real good popcorn flick. You’re not going to learn anything, no meaningful awards will be awarded, but just a nice creature feature with some thrills and all that.
The references to the OG were plenty and I appreciated them.
I just feel like they could have done it, without the horribly stupid premise.
Yes, some of the dinosaurs scenes were actually pretty good. The effects were good and they incorporated some practical effects to make things look better. They also had the dinosaurs do weird dancy moves from time to time which pulled me out of it.
I mean, if you ignore everything bad and just focus on the dinosaurs that don't suck and the tank top, there's some entertainment there.
Once again, I think they might have purposely been making the movie bad for the sake of comedy or irony, or because it's not cringe...I don't know why. But even the main bad guy, the pharmaceutical company, they never really resolved the motivation of. It was assumed they would overcharge for the heart medicine? But that's kind of how medicines work, and they become public IP in the USA 20 years after the patent is filed. ScarJo was accepting $10 mil from them, so she is also kind of evil....but not, because she's ScarJo.
I just feel like they could have done it, without the horribly stupid premise.
Yes, some of the dinosaurs scenes were actually pretty good. The effects were good and they incorporated some practical effects to make things look better. They also had the dinosaurs do weird dancy moves from time to time which pulled me out of it.
I mean, if you ignore everything bad and just focus on the dinosaurs that don't suck and the tank top, there's some entertainment there.
Once again, I think they might have purposely been making the movie bad for the sake of comedy or irony, or because it's not cringe...I don't know why. But even the main bad guy, the pharmaceutical company, they never really resolved the motivation of. It was assumed they would overcharge for the heart medicine? But that's kind of how medicines work, and they become public IP in the USA 20 years after the patent is filed. ScarJo was accepting $10 mil from them, so she is also kind of evil....but not, because she's ScarJo.
Yeah some of the motivations/turns just seemed like they were there to move the plot along and kind of fell apart if you thought about them too much.
I feel like, outside a direct remake, this is probably the best a Jurassic Park movie can even be at this point. Directed by Gareth Edwards who did Monsters/Godzilla, both of which were great, and written by the guy who co-wrote the first JP. Add in a pretty great cast and it’s hard to figure out why this wasn’t closer to an 8/10.
Maybe it’s over analyzing it though. Couldn’t tell you the motivations of most of the characters in the original but I bet on closer examination it all seems pretty silly, too.
Yeah some of the motivations/turns just seemed like they were there to move the plot along and kind of fell apart if you thought about them too much.
I feel like, outside a direct remake, this is probably the best a Jurassic Park movie can even be at this point. Directed by Gareth Edwards who did Monsters/Godzilla, both of which were great, and written by the guy who co-wrote the first JP. Add in a pretty great cast and it’s hard to figure out why this wasn’t closer to an 8/10.
Maybe it’s over analyzing it though. Couldn’t tell you the motivations of most of the characters in the original but I bet on closer examination it all seems pretty silly, too.
The original movie was just better and made sense. You had a rich egotistical billionaire who'd been secretly working on a dinosaur theme park. He brings in a group of scientists, consultants and insurance risk assessment experts in various fields to survey his work prior to opening. The billionaire's own grandkids are there, as Hammond wants to show his ego project off.
The dinosaurs escape after a combo of a storm and corporate sabotage lets them loose. At that point, people were unaware of how difficult to control the dinosaurs would be. The dinosaurs are just dinosaurs and the carnivores behave like the predators they are, which is pretty scary. They don't need to be spliced with anything to make them scarier. Instead, thought is put into the action sequences to create good cinema.
Other than the fact they cloned dinosaurs from tree sap (which even then is kind of a creative/fun bit of fictional science), the story is actually somewhat believable and sensical. The action pieces were extremely well fought out, with details like the water glass ripples or the raptor foot tapping becoming iconic. The effects somehow look better than the movies that followed. The dinosaurs move like large beasts. They lumber and shake the ground. In the new films they move like cartoons largely without interacting with their environment.
The original JP creators had clearly observe large living animals like elephants, rhinos and ostriches and mirrored how they move. They aren't super spry and getting up and down is a bit of slow process. It's easier just to make the dinosaurs super quick and light on their feet than to write a good action sequence.
Here's the largest living dinosaur descendant, an ostrich, running. It is pretty fast in one direction, but can't make sudden sharp turns at speed or leap off rocks and tree branches. It has to slow down to turn. As animals get bigger, they would become less agile than this.
I love that part. The whole movie is great. Fabulous cast. Great visuals. Genuinely scary at times.
Been meaning to re-watch as it's been a couple years since the last watch. Did so last night.
Love this movie. What a force George C. Scott is. Lots of clever and funny dialogue. I think one of the things I like about this movie the most, and my other favourite horror movies, is the general sense of dread throughout the movie. Just bleak dread.
Yeah, warm take it seems, but i also found JW: Rebirth enjoyable.
With the others you could turn off your brain and still feel insulted as a fan, which is quite a feat. At least this one was kind of back to basics.
Mind you, I haven't felt inclined to rewatch it since the theatrical release so that probably is telling of how good it is in a vacuum, versus relative to the awful sequels that preceded it.
I'd watch more movies with that core group of mercs or whatever they were. The likable cast certainly helped.
