Pokémon Detective Pikachu is a film not unlike the Pokémon that populate it. On the surface it appears simple — a collection of seen-it-before neo-noir aesthetics, cute creatures, and a generic story, all tied together with a few charming leads. However, this is merely a façade. Before long it reveals itself to be a beast…
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…
Prior to Kong: Skull Island, there have been at least a half dozen feature films based on the monstrous King Kong character, including the original 1933 classic, 1962’s campy “King Kong vs. Godzilla,” the Dino De Laurentiis 1976 budget-breaker and Peter Jackson’s overlong and ambitious 2005 edition, among others. Despite the various incarnations, the plot…
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…
Aubrey Plaza has this look about her. She is short with large eyeballs so she has this way of looking up at people and showing them non-verbally that she thinks they are morons and whatever situation she is in at the moment is stupid. If you are a fan of the TV show “Parks and…
