The most dramatic sequences of 2018’s Best Picture, “Green Book,” involved the piano playing of Doctor Don Shirley. In another recent awards winner, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the recreations of Freddy Mercury’s performances proved to be a high point. These sequences, well-rendered by directors Peter Farrelly and Bryan Singer, respectively, are put into the shade of the…
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is, for lack of a kinder way of saying it, a prehistoric mess. Nestled between a passable 2015 sequel and a bookend to the trilogy coming in 2021, it is sloppy staging for what’s sure to be an underwhelming and anticlimactic third effort. Chris Pratt (“Avengers: Infinity War”) and Bryce Dallas…
Matthew McConaughey (“Interstellar”) stars in Gold, a dreary rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches-to-rags tale directed by Stephen Gaghan (“Syriana”) that, while the Academy Award-winning actor (for “Dallas Buyers Club”) gives a passionate, above average performance (along with a perky Bryce Dallas Howard, “Pete’s Dragon”) in, the narrative of a 1980s mining company striking it rich is often muddled and…
“Original” would seem the last word one should use to describe a current kids’ movie about the friendship between a boy and his dragon that is both a remake and a sort of “E.T.” clone, but it is what it is. As Disney is knee-deep in pillaging their catalog of classics for profits, they’ve managed…
It has been 22 years since the incident at Isla Nublar, but the earlier devastation is now just a footnote in the logbook of the InGen financiers, for they have forgotten the tumult and the ethical barriers they tore down and commercialized. They now operate a seemingly infallible amusement park with monorails, an aviary, a…
You muck with nature and nature mucks you back. And as seen in this latest trailer for Jurassic World, it does so by eating you and everything else within range of its fanged mouth. Causing all the initial problems is a hybrid dinosaur, known as Indominus Rex, conceived in the lab to be bigger than…
Isla Nublar is in business! And if you thought T-Rex or the Velociraptors were bad news, you haven’t seen the dinosaur mutation dreamed up by the scientists of the park (led by Bryce Dallas Howard). Patrons weren’t supposed to see it either, but nature has a way of breaking containment (didn’t something similar happen in…
