Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Dir. J. A. Bayona
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At this point in the Jurassic franchise, the movies have no choice but to be insanely idiotic. By this fifth movie, the fact that the humans still haven't learned their lesson not to EFF with nature, I have to say I'm siding more with the dinosaurs at this point! While there's room in my heart for stupid-fun action movies (I will continue, against logic, to sing the praises of xXx: Return of Xander Cage), this movie feels like a group of Hollywood moguls collectively pissing on Michael Crichton's grave.
The ridiculous plot takes place three years after the failed opening of the Jurassic World theme park. Although the island has been abandoned in order for people not to be killed by dinosaurs, our heroes Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt) want to save them all before the island's massive volcano erupts, making them re-extinct. Claire is now a dinosaur rights advocate - a role that is such a 180 from her character in the last film it's a wonder why they cast the same actress. She's recruited by Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), a wealthy industrialist who was partners with Jurassic Park's creator John Hammond. She, alongside Owen, a paleobotanist (Daniella Pineda), and a nerdy systems analyst (Justice Smith) - all thinly sketched stereotypes - must race against the lava clock and keep alive their giant lizard friends! But little do they know that Lockwood's company has some possible dastardly plans for the dinos once they are rescued...
It's hard to delve into what's wrong with this movie without incurring specific spoilers, but from top to bottom, characters seem to make absolutely crazy, self-destructive decisions. Some questions I had include: Why did Lockwood only decide to recruit Claire mere days before an active volcano was set to explode, leaving almost no time? Why build a park on an active volcano in the first place? Why does Claire bring a systems analyst along who is clearly unwilling and terrified - are there seriously no other better-suited systems analysts to choose from?! How is a little girl able to literally wander into a basement which houses billions of dollars worth of top secret technology? Why is that same little girl referred to as a clone, only for that not to pay off in any way later? And perhaps the biggest question: Why is Jeff Goldblum only in this movie for TWO minutes?!
The one thing that works in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director J.A. Bayona's imagery. There is a great sequence involving a drowning glass orb vehicle shown in one long claustrophobic shot, similar to the famous one shot car scene in Children of Men. There is also a whole section that features dinosaurs creeping and crawling through a gothic mansion that's reminiscent of Bayona's work on The Orphanage (in fact, Guillermo del Toro gets a shout out in the credits). But these fleeting, striking images and moments cannot save the unbelievably bad script by co-writers Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow, who can't seem to handle the balance between having an "animal rights" message and having dinosaurs be monstrous killing machines.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is by far the worst of the Jurassic films. It's not fun, clever, thought-provoking, or original. This is a series that belongs EXTINCT!
Final Verdict:
SKIP IT
Sicario: Day of the Soldado
Dir. Stefano Sollima
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The two best things about the first Sicario - Denis Villenueve's amazing, tense directing skills and Emily Blunt's interior, powerful performance - are sorely missing in its sequel, Day of the Soldado. The film continues to follow the exploits of unscrupulous FBI agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) and his mysterious, determined-father operative/hitman Alejandro Gillick (Benicio del Toro). Graver is given the go-head by the Secretary of Defense (Matthew Modine) to "get dirty" after a series of terrorist attacks at the Mexican border; they were supposedly smuggled through by the Mexican drug cartel. Graver's plan is to instigate a drug war by kidnapping Isabela (Isabela Moner), the teenage daughter of a Mexican drug kingpin and blaming it on a rival gang. However, the plan is eventually compromised, one thing leads to another, and Gillick is stuck with Isabela on one side of the border while Graver is tasked with eliminating his hitman buddy!
I think the biggest problem with Day of the Soldado is there really isn't any character among the chaos that is an audience surrogate. Although the critique of the US-Mexican drug war is still present, all we see are big, miserable dudes with guns shooting at each other. What little characterization we get is through Gillick's past, which we learn only slightly more about 3/4 into the film. Emily Blunt freaking out about Graver's flip-flop casualness while going above the law is what made that film dynamic and interesting, but we get almost none of that kind of moral dilemma here.
There's little in this film that wasn't done much better in Villenueve's Sicario. Day of the Soldado is a perfunctory sequel and I'm really not sure why it even exists.
Final Verdict:
SKIP IT
Tag
Dir. Jeff Tomsic
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Being of a certain age, it's sad to see how friends can go on their separate life paths as the years go by. But the middle-aged friends at the heart of this "true story" found a unique way to stay in touch: by playing tag. For one month every year, five competitive buds - played by Ed Helms, Hannibal Buress, Jake Johnson, Jon Hamm, and Jeremy Renner - play a no-holds-barred game where they're willing to risk their jobs, relationships, and physical safety just to tag someone 'it.' The movie is basically the film manifestation of the phrase "boys will be boys," and it's an unfunny, juvenile slapstick comedy that fails at earning its emotional payoffs.
So much of this movie is littered with the most unimaginative dick jokes you could imagine. Literally every woman in the film - from Isla Fisher to Rashida Jones - exists just to serve the male characters. The cast also has zero chemistry together, with Hannibal Buress in particular feeling like he's ad-libbing from a completely different movie. When I first heard the concept for this movie, I was hoping there'd at least be one cool chase sequence, but nope!
Tag is a craptastic, thinly-stretched generic comedy that fails to do in 1 hour and 45 minutes what the CBS This Morning segment on the real "tag" players accomplishes in 10 minutes.
Final Verdict:
SKIP IT
Gotti
Dir. Kevin Connolly
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I'll admit, the only reason I went to see Gotti was the curiosity factor: it's currently resting at a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. John Travolta's "passion project" about one of the most notorious gangsters in recent history was apparently notoriously terrible, and I wanted to know why.
While Travolta is trying his best, director Kevin Connolly brings a "Brand X" Martin Scorsese style that nosedives hard. I don't even know how to review this movie other than to say it feels like a complete boring mess. Almost nothing about this movie works - the camerawork is clunky, the music score is generic and terrible (rapper Pitbull contributed to the soundtrack), the scenes feel almost randomly edited together, and the performances range from one-note to cringeworthy.
Gotti is not like The Room in that it's so-bad-it's-good, it's just flat out BAD. This is watch-checkingly bad. I don't understand how you can take a real life person as interesting as John Gotti and make a film this incoherent. This movie should be weighed down with concrete and thrown into a river!
Final Verdict:
SKIP IT
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