Monday, January 27, 2025

Basmati Blues: A Review (Review#1931)

BASMATI BLUES

I know, for good or ill, many people dislike Brie Larson. They do not see a competent, even Oscar winning actress. They see a smug scold or insincere elitist. I cannot muster any hatred towards Larson, however, even in something as fluffy and inconsequential as Basmati Blues. One thinks that its heart is in the right place. Its execution, however, leaves much to be desired. 

American scientist Linda Watt (Brie Larson), along with her father Eric (Scott Bakula) has created Rice Nine, a genetically modified rice that is resistant to pests and drought. The Mogil Corporation needs a representative to sell Rice Nine to the Indian market. The Mogil mogul Mr. Gurgon (Donald Sutherland) decides that perky, naive Linda is the perfect saleslady.

It is off to India, where Linda finds herself in conflict with struggling and poor student Rajit (Utkarsh Ambudkar) who is also well versed in rice production. She does have help from William (Saahil Sehgal), a young Agricultural Ministry official who wants to also get Rice Nine into the Indian market. Linda does her best to blend with the Indian community, but she still stumbles through things. An unofficial competition between Linda and Rajit to win the hearts, minds and contracts of their competing rice and stink weed to see which is better.

Linda now has to fight her attractions to both William and Rajit. The former is wealthy and lured by Gurgon and his aide Evelyn (Tyne Daly) to push for Rice Nine even if the contracts would tie farmers to buy the rice every year and hand their land over to Mogil. Will Linda, who eventually learns of the deception, rise to save the day? Whom will she choose as her love interest?

I figure that the second question is easy to answer since this is a movie where the expression "opposites attract" seems to describe its romance. I found a bit of a shame given that I thought William was a better fit for Linda than Rajit. Put aside how I think Sehgal is better-looking than Ambudkar. William was from an equivalent socioeconomic background, did have a change of heart at the end where he helped thwart Mogil's evil schemes and was more apt to listen to Linda than Rajit, who starts out with contempt for her.

I found Basmati Blues had its heart in the right place. It just did not have good execution. I was surprised to learn that Basmati Blues was an attempt at a Bollywood type musical. Having seen Bollywood and Tollywood musicals, Basmati Blues was nowhere near as big and enthusiastic as the Indian films that I have come across. It is more like a standard Western musical, where characters attempt to express emotions through song.

Not that the songs were particularly good or memorable. The opening song, All Signs Point to Yes, almost startles the viewer because there is nothing to indicate that Basmati Blues is a musical. If one does remember the musical numbers, it is for the wrong reasons. Linda, Rajit and William have an odd love trio in Love Don't Knock at My Door where each of them sings about their conflicting emotions. I found it a bit strange.

Perhaps the oddest moment is when Donald Sutherland himself breaks out into a song-and-dance with The Greater Good, where he and Daly seduce William into seeing things their way. I do not think that even Donald Sutherland thought he was ever going to be King of Broadway Showtunes. He mostly talks on pitch, which makes his number with experienced singer Tyne Daly all the odder. To be fair, The Greater Good is deliberately over-the-top and cartoonish, so we can cut it some slack.

If the songs in this musical are not awful but not great, what about the acting? Well, it is serviceable. Larson is pleasant enough as the mostly cheerful and focused Linda. Ambudkar is appropriately flustered and irritated as Rajit, who knows that he is right but cannot prove it. Sehgal is equally appropriate at William, who is supposed to be a bad guy but is actually quite pleasant. 

As a side note, exactly why this Indian man has this very English name Basmati Blues never bothers to ask. 

Both Daly and Bakula are on screen so briefly that they seem almost wasted. Daly acts as if she is fully aware that Basmati Blues is meant to be silly, so she does not bother to try to be anything other than a broad villain. How can one sum up seeing Tyne Daly and Donald Sutherland break out into their own reworked version of This Train (is Bound for Glory) as they attempt to ride off with their massive sacks of Rice Nine? 

Basmati Blues does try to be amusing, if not clever or original. I cannot find it in my heart to truly hate on it. The film is not the worst thing that I have seen. I found it well-meaning but not good. 

DECISION: D+

Sunday, January 26, 2025

Nickel Boys: A Review (Review #1930)

 

NICKEL BOYS

Nickel Boys has a fascinating subject that uses a unique and rarely used cinematic method to tell its story. In a curious twist, the concept that most people praise Nickel Boys for left me cold and removed from the characters rather than inviting me in.

In segregated Florida, young Elwood Curtis is becoming active in the growing Civil Rights movement. He also has a supportive Nana Hattie (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) who is part of a group that encourages him to go to the Melvin Griggs Technical School where he could advance. On his way to the technical school, he accepts a ride from someone who stole the car. Elwood is arrested as an accessory.

He is sent to the Nickel Academy, a reformatory school where he will ride out his sentence. Nickel is segregated, where the white pupils get nicer accommodations and a chance to play football while the black pupils are de facto slaves in this orange plantation.

Here, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) bonds with Turner (Brandon Wilson), a fellow Nickel detainee whoEvewants to finish out his time and move on. As Elwood and Turner continue serving their time, they see how the Nickel administration favors the white students, down to telling a fellow black inmate to throw a boxing match in favor of the white boxer. Elwood wants to expose the abuses at Nickel to inspectors, but it is Turner who manages to get the info to the inspectors. That only causes the Nickel Academy to target Elwood. That requires an escape, where not everyone will survive. 

Now the mantel will have to be taken up by someone else to eventually, decades later, reveal the mass graves and abuses at Nickel Academy. It will be time for a reckoning.

The twist that Nickel Boys has is that director RaMell Ross (who cowrote the screenplay with Joslyn Barnes from the Colson Whitehead novel) uses a first-person point of view where we see the events from sometimes Elwood's perspective and sometimes from Turner's perspective. The notion behind this cinematic venture is to put you in the character's shoes. 

I can think, off the top of my head, only one other film that did this first-person POV: the Robert Montgomery film Lady in the Lake. As I have not seen Lady in the Lake, I cannot say how well or poor the effort work. Here, the first-person POV had the opposite effect that I think Nickel Boys intended. For myself, rather than place me in either Elwood or Turner's world, I found myself more removed and separated from them than had Nickel Boys adopted a more traditional manner.

I think it is because somewhere in the middle of the film, we shift from Elwood's POV to Turner's. That shift is indicated by how the film repeats the scene from Turner's perspective after we saw it from Elwood's. Once we got that switch, Nickel Boys goes between them, rarely allowing us to see from both of them simultaneously. I get that this was the intention. For me, it ended up looking like a cold, aloof gimmick.

I could not connect with either Elwood or Turner. I found Nickel Boys to have a certain coldness, distance even. This comes from how in what would be the present or non-Nickel Academy scenes are shot. We do not get in these scenes a direct POV from Elwood/Turner but with the back of the character's head visible. Try as the film might, I just felt so removed from them that I was never invested in the story.

This aloofness extended to almost all the performances. I think that because we had the actors look directly at the camera when speaking to us or to other characters, it felt again like a gimmick. Even in moments that would call for more gripping drama, such as when Elwood finds himself in a hot car, everyone seems to be surprisingly slow and calm, almost catatonic. The stateliness made the film feel longer than its already long two-hour-twenty-minute runtime.

Another issue that I found was how the film would sometimes jump to what would be the future. We get bits of Elwood's future as a moving company president. We meet a fellow former inmate at somewhere in what I think was the 1970s, but I don't think anyone knew who he was. The impact is lost because we are so cocooned with just Elwood and Turner. There is a minor character whom we are told is half-Mexican, so the poor kid gets shifted between the black and white sections, with Nickel Academy leaders unsure where to place him. I was more curious about his story than on Elwood and Turner. 

It is a shame that Nickel Boys, despite its best intentions, failed to take me into this world. The abuses that the Nickel Academy detainees, down to the mass graves, is like the film itself to me: at arm's distance, unwelcoming. I never felt part of or invested in these Nickel Boys. For me, that was a wasted opportunity.  

DECISION: D+

Monday, January 20, 2025

The Brutalist: A Review

 

THE BRUTALIST

Architecture, in my view, peaked with Frank Lloyd Wright. Art Deco is the last great architectural movement to my mind. Everything past that is rather ugly. Le Corbusier and Philip Johnson are architectural satanists to me. As such, Brutalism is the nadir of construction, the cold, remote, soulless buildings hideous to my eyes. The Brutalist describes both the title character's architectural style and how his life is. The Brutalist is an apt description of this very long film: efficient but cold.

Divided into four parts: Overture, The Enigma of Arrival, The Hard Core of Beauty and Epilogue, we see the fictional story of Hungarian architect Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody). Toth has survived the Holocaust and has found refuge in the United States, where he reunites with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) and his goyim wife Audrey (Emma Laird). Attila, who has assimilated to the point that he passes himself off as a Catholic named Miller, brings Laszlo into his furniture business. An unexpected bit of luck has come their way when business scion Harry Van Buren (Joe Alwyn) commissions them to rebuild a library for his father, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pierce) as a surprise. Harrison comes unannounced home before the room is completed and is enraged by the remodeling and throws them all out.

Sometime later, however, Harrison has a change of heart when he learns of Toth's past. Now not only has he brought Laszlo back but commissions him to build a center in Harrison's late mother's memory. He also helps grease the wheels to bring Laszlo's wife and niece from Hungary. By this time, Laszlo and his right-hand man Gregory (Gordon De Bankole) are full-on heroin addicts, a way for Laszlo to dull the pain of his life. Once his wife Erzebet (Felicity Jones) and niece Zsofia (Raffey Cassidy) arrive in Pennsylvania, Laszlo continues pursuing his artistic vision, forever arguing with the money men and the Van Burens. Eventually, the project falls apart.

Now moving to New York, Zsofia and her husband opt to move to the new State of Israel while Erzebet continues her journalism career, and Laszlo works for an architectural firm. Harrison has invited Toth back to complete the project, and as part of that plan they go to Italy for marble. There, a shocking act by Harrison on Laszlo leads to a final break. Despite this, we learn that the project was completed but after a gap. An aged and silent Laszlo looks on at a Venice Biennale, recognized for his lifetime's work.

By the time we get to the fifteen-minute intermission an hour and forty-minutes in, I thought The Brutalist was too long. If I think on Mona Fastvold and director Brady Corbet's screenplay, I think much could have been cut or moved at a faster pace. The whole of Part 1 in most other films would have been done in about half an hour to forty-five minutes. Did we really need long sex scenes and a longer sojourn to Italy? 

I could not shake the idea that The Brutalist was inflated in its almost four-hour runtime. I also thought the acting was rather chilly and remote.

Much praise has been given to Adrien Brody as Laszlo Toth. It was efficient. It was effective. It was also calculated, mannered and dare I say, actory. It was as if I was watching someone act versus watching Laszlo Toth come to life. As we got to the end, and I saw Laszlo Toth, old, infirm and in a wheelchair, I thought he was overacting. It is a remarkable feat to think one can be overacting while sitting in a wheelchair. 

That sense of "BIG ACTING" from most of the cast permeated The Brutalist to my mind. Guy Pierce should be congratulated for having a strong American accent as the patrician Harrison Van Buren. He was good as the proud, powerful patron. Same for Jones as Elsebeth, crippled by the aftereffects of the Holocaust. I did think that Alwyn, whom I like as an actor, was a bit big as Harry, the son who starts well and ends morally blind. Nothing against Stacey Martin, but we could have cut Harrison's daughter Maggie for all the impact that she had in the film. Nivola and Laird too could have had their parts trimmed as Attila and his wife, who accuses Laszlo of making untoward advances towards Audrey.

The Brutalist does have some positives, in particular Daniel Blumberg's score. The music manages to blend jazz with classical quite well. 

Overall, though, I was left cold by The Brutalist. The film was well-made, but like the architectural style, The Brutalist does what it is supposed to do while not while not inspiring passion or joy.

Sunday, January 19, 2025

The Last Showgirl: A Review

 


THE LAST SHOWGIRL

Even now, when people think of Las Vegas, one pictures glamourous showgirls with feathers and sparkling outfits. That imagery is kept alive in Las Vegas tourism advertisements and the Vegas Golden Knights hockey team, which features a group of beautiful women in sequins and elaborate Golden Knights-themed headgear. Despite these women being part of the Las Vegas image, there are remarkably few if any Las Vegas Strip shows that feature these kinds of entertainers. The Last Showgirl chronicles the story of the end of this world through a woman whose life was the facade of these figures of beauty.

Shelly (Pamela Anderson) has been the headliner for decades at Le Razzle Dazzle, an old-school Las Vegas topless revue. She enjoys the glitz and glamour of the show, even if at times she finds it hectic. Shelly has two fellow dancers with whom she has something of a bond with. There's Mary-Anne (Brenda Song), who sees Le Razzle Dazzle as a job and nothing more. The younger and less experienced Jodie (Kiernan Shipka) sees it as her first step in her dancing career. Shelly maintains a cool but affectionate relationship with Mary-Anne and Jodie and is closer to former Le Razzle Dazzle performer Annette (Jamie Lee Curtis), who had long left the show and is now a cocktail waitress at the casino Le Razzle Dazzle is featured at.

Things seem to be going well until stage manager Eddie (Dave Bautista) arrives, somewhat invited, to a girl's night dinner. He tells them that owing to declining ticket sales and competition from another show at their casino, Dirty Circus, the casino will close Le Razzle Dazzle in two weeks. Naturally, the performers are devastated, but Shelly takes it especially hard. This is all she has ever done and ever wanted to do. She is disdainful of the new Las Vegas Strip shows such as Dirty Circus and Hedonist Paradise which Jodie auditioned for after the announced closure. Shelly finds them all vulgar and tasteless, offering nothing but sleaze and with none of the elegance of her revue.

Shelly now reevaluates her life, and that includes Hannah (Billie Lourd). Hannah is Shelly's daughter with whom she has a fraught relationship. They do love each other, but they also are so unfamiliar with each other. Shelly, facing the realities of her relationship with everyone she knows, wants to maintain her authentic self while navigating this strange new world. Will she find a place in the new Las Vegas? Will she mend all her relationships and the stage costume wings that she loves?

As I watched The Last Showgirl, I saw it as a paean to a fading if not faded world. Shelly is a relic, a throwback to not just a certain type of show, but a certain worldview. Her audition for a new show that bookends The Last Showgirl reveals a lot about the character: her struggles to adjust, her fears about moving away from the familiar but her determination to maintain those values that she holds dear. 

This is a go-for-broke performance from Pamela Anderson. I do not think that anyone considered Anderson a legitimate actress. Like Shelly is coldly told by the director she's auditioning for (Jason Schwartzman in a cameo), I think people hired Anderson during her Baywatch heyday for her physical beauty versus any talent she might have had. Now at 57, both Anderson and Shelly cannot rely on mere looks alone to move forward. 

Is it fair to say that Pamela Anderson is playing a version of herself in The Last Showgirl? I would say no. She is playing someone who has similar experiences that the character does, but Shelly is not Anderson. Shelly is someone who has not moved with the times, but not because she cannot. Instead, it is because the world she lives in is one she loves. We learn this throughout the film. She tells Hannah, Mary-Anne & Jodie as well as Eddie variations of how she does not regret giving her life to Le Razzle Dazzle. It might not have brought her fame or fortune, but it has brought her joy.

In Anderson's performance, we see a woman who struggles with her role as mother but who at heart is good. Her efforts to have a closer relationship with Hannah are effective on screen. However, she also shows her fears when she rejects Jodie when she arrives unannounced asking for a shoulder to cry on. At another point, she screams at Mary-Anne that she cannot be a mother figure to them because she already has a daughter. Later on, though, we see in a nonverbal scene Shelly comforting and even laughing with Mary-Anne and Jodie as they get closer to the show's closing.

Anderson has a thin, chirpy voice. However, that and the nervous energy that she shows works for the character. There are wonderful moments of acting from Anderson. One monologue has her expand on why she finds shows like Hedonist Paradise vulgar and tawdry. Another is when she and Eddie have a dinner date. Apart from a surprising secret being revealed, we see that Shelly is someone who will not be judged. As she berates the audition director, we may see both Shelly and Anderson commenting on themselves. 

Ultimately, I would say that Pamela Anderson gave a good performance as Shelly in The Last Showgirl. If people want to see it as Pamela Anderson playing a version of herself, I can see that. I also saw someone bringing her own life experiences into Kate Gertsen's screenplay. That, to me, is what actors can do to make their characters come alive.

In terms of directing performances, Gia Coppola did well. Both Song and Shipka were effective as Shelly's fellow dancers Mary-Anne and Jodie, making Mary-Anne's general cynicism and Jodie's more wide-eyed manner work. I think in her smaller role, Jamie Lee Curtis did excellent as Annette, somewhat self-destructive but doing her best to survive. As much as I may not like Dave Bautista overall, he did well as Eddie. He was strong in his overall quiet manner as the stage manager. It was the opposite of Anderson. She played to type as this bombshell who is seeing things end. He is never bombastic or loud. He's actually quite soft, even when Shelly makes a scene at the restaurant.

I thought Lourd could have been stronger as Hannah, the daughter who both loves and resents the woman who left her in the parking lot to do two shows. "It's a nudie show," Hannah tells her mother when she finally goes to see Le Razzle Dazzle. I think the part was a bit cliched, so I cut Lourd some slack.

If there is something that I strongly disliked in The Last Showgirl, it is the camera work. I got that Coppola was going for a more natural, almost documentary-like look in some scenes. I also got slightly dizzy with the moving camera and light flares. However, the closing scene of The Last Showgirl, where we hear Beautiful That Way as we get glimpses of both Le Razzle Dazzle and Shelly's imagined audience of Hannah and Eddie, is quite moving.

As a tribute to a type of spectacle fallen out of favor, with strong performances and an interesting story, The Last Showgirl works quite well. Like the Le Razzle Dazzle dancers, I think audiences will be entertained, and maybe even touched, by The Last Showgirl.

DECISION: B-

Friday, January 17, 2025

Jurassic Park III: A Review

JURASSIC PARK III

I suppose that after the success of The Lost World, we were going to get yet another Jurassic Park film. I thought The Lost World was terrible. I was, however, not prepared for how Jurassic Park III would be even worse. Dumb, unexciting and even insulting, Jurassic Park III is almost a desecration of the original film.

Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) makes it clear that he has absolutely no intention of talking about what happened to him on Isla Nublar or what happened in San Diego, which he helpfully reminds audiences that he was not part of. He also says that nothing will get him to Isla Sorna or Site B, which we learned about in the last film.

Famous last words, for Grant reluctantly agrees to merely fly over Isla Sorna in exchange for funding from wealthy couple Paul and Amanda Kirby (William H. Macy and Tea Leoni). Grant thinks that he is going to only point out the various creatures to the Kirbys. In reality, he is essentially kidnapped in order to help them find their son Eric (Trevor Morgan) and Amanda's boyfriend Ben (Mark Herelick), who disappeared while parasailing near the island. 

Amanda's boyfriend? Yes, for Grant and his assistant Billy (Alessandro Nivola) find out that they are actually divorced. Worse, they are not wealthy patrons of the sciences but upper middle class, Paul owning Kirby Paint and Tile Plus hardware store. Now it is on to find and hopefully save Eric once Ben's rotted corpse is found. The pilot and mercenaries that the Kirbys brought face dangers all around. Even after Eric is found, they still find themselves pursued. 

Billy has taken a pair of dinosaur eggs in a misguided effort to use them to gain more funding. Grant knows that the dinosaurs will keep after them to get the eggs back. From there, the survivors must find a way to reach shore. Will they be able to escape Site B? Will Grant's former love, Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) be able to help them despite being far away in her domestic bliss?

It is curious that Peter Buchman, Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne failed in their Jurassic Park III screenplay the same way that The Lost World failed in its screenplay. By now, we all should know that as soon as a character says that he/she will never go back to XYZ, they are definitely going back to XYZ. Even worse, director Joe Johnson and actor Sam Neill almost seem to openly mock this in how Johnson moved his camera closer to Neill when he overacted that bit of dialogue. It is as if they wanted to draw attention to how Grant was going back to where even Grant knew it beforehand.

As a side note, it is astonishing that Alexander Payne, who brought us the brilliant Election, Sideways, Nebraska and The Holdovers, had a hand in this debacle. 

Jurassic Park III is one of the laziest films that I have seen. It is probably the laziest film in the entire unfortunate franchise. One particularly ghastly moment is when they are trapped in a flooding river with a heavy rainstorm making things worse. As they battle for their lives, they grab onto a found satellite phone. When Grant picks up, he hears a robocall for a time-share offer. I figure those behind the camera thought that this would be a good gag. It just was both idiotic and cut what little tension Jurassic Park III was attempting to build.

Far from being tense and exciting, Jurassic Park III was dumb and laughable. I think Tea Leoni has been singled out for her performance, but as one to ridicule. She did not help herself when she got tangled up in Ben's cord, screaming and going into hysterics that came across as more comic than horrified. I want to say that she did the best that she could with such a badly written character, one who continued to call out Eric's name over a bullhorn despite being told not to by Grant and even Paul. There was little for Leoni to work with, but it does not absolve her from her at times laughable performance.

It is not as if everyone else covered themselves in glory. Neill got a nice paycheck out of this, but he looked totally unenthusiastic about being here. Yes, one can say that it reflected the character. However, in his scenes with Dern or when off the island, he looked as if he figured that it was in his best interest to devour the screen to give him something to do. I think Macy, like Leoni, did the best that he could. He did have that average man quality to Paul, but the scenes of the Kirby domestic drama in the midst of the mayhem did not help. 

To be fair, I did think well of Michael Jeter as Udesky, one of Kirby's mercenaries. It was a break from his usual roles of meek figures, and Jeter was effective as this more rugged figure facing off against these gruesome creatures. 

I genuinely wondered why Nivola's Billy could not have been the new lead, with Grant merely serving as mentor. He was fine, but not great, and for long stretches I genuinely wondered who he was. Morgan was nothing special, neither as clever or amusing as Joseph Mazzello's Tim or as courageous as Ariana Richards' Lex from the first film. How exactly he survived eight whole weeks on the island Lord of the Flies style the film won't say. 

Eight days I could believe. Two months managing to avoid getting eaten by the dinosaurs, scavenging food and water and with no one actually looking for him is a stretch.

As a side note, Jurassic Park III did a poor job of shoehorning Laura Dern.

These are some of the worse dinosaurs that I have seen. Grant at one point called the dinosaurs he encountered at Jurassic Park "genetically engineered theme park monsters", a strange turn from someone who initially had been impressed with the dinosaurs. Granted, he had a horrendous experience with them that might have soured his feelings. However, I found that the dinosaurs here looked like the auto-animatronic figures from a Disney ride. When we are supposed to see dinosaurs, I saw fake imagery.

Jurassic Park III did nothing with what had come before. It did not make the case for itself. I did not even get good dinosaurs or humans. The third time was most definitely not the charm. 

DECISION: F

JURASSIC PARK FILMS

Jurassic Park

The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Jurassic World

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Jurassic World Dominion

Jurassic World Rebirth

Monday, January 13, 2025

The Lost World: Jurassic Park. A Review


THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK

The original Jurassic Park became one of the biggest hits of all time. With that, a sequel seemed almost preordained. Thus, The Lost World: Jurassic Park. In a case of "you can't go home again", The Lost World is itself lost in a boring story, poor performances and nothing to justify itself.

Four years after the events on Jurassic Park, scientist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) wants nothing to do with anything about the island. Billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has other plans, despite having lost control of his company to his nephew Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard). Hammond wants Malcolm to go to the hereto unknown "Site B", where the Jurassic Park dinosaurs were created and now have free range over. Hammond wants to have Site B or Isla Sonra to be left alone. Peter wants to bring whatever creatures still there to another site in San Diego to compete with other animal parks like the San Diego Zoo and the San Diego Chargers.

Malcolm wants nothing to do with anything with Site B, but he learns that his girlfriend Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) has eagerly gone to chronicle whatever is on Site B. Determined to rescue Sarah, Malcolm goes to Islan Sonra along with videographer Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn) and engineer Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff). Unbeknownst to them, there is a stowaway: Malcolm's daughter Kelly (Vanessa Lee Chester). More unbeknownst to everyone, Ludlow also goes to the island, accompanied by white hunter Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite). Circumstances eventually force them to join together to stay alive when the dinosaurs inevitably go bonkers. Not everyone survives, but despite Malcolm's incessant warnings, Ludlow gets his creature.

Ludlow will not be denied his great discovery to showcase in San Diego. Inevitably things go awry as the dinosaur rampages through San Diego. Will Ian and Sarah be able to save the day?


I think that director Steven Spielberg had, for the longest time, resisted making sequels save for the Indiana Jones series (and I can make the argument that Temple of Doom is a prequel). He famously resisted making an E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial sequel despite pleas from viewers and studios. Jurassic Park, however, was too good to resist. There could have been a variety of things to take a follow-up to Jurassic Park. The ultimate decision from screenwriter David Koepp (freely adapting the Michael Crichton book) opted to make a film that is dull, lifeless and taking a fascinating premise and doing nothing with it.

There is something irritating about characters who say that they won't do XYZ when we know that they will. It would be nice, for once, if the character said either "Yes, I will go back to try and fix the mess you made" or "I'm not eager to go there, but I will". I think it is because we the audience know that the character will go back. Malcolm's motivation of going to rescue the damsel in distress is not interesting because we do not know who she is.   

Even worse is the character of Malcolm's daughter Kelly. This is the first time we got a mention of Kelly. I leave it to you to decide whether Malcolm's daughter being black needs explanation. It did not matter to me, but one is within their right to wonder. 

It does not help that Chester and Kelly are also awful. Kelly is a terrible character: annoying, whiny and quite dim. At one point, Kelly manages to help Sarah and Ian escape by doing a gymnastic routine to fight the rampaging dinosaurs. You would have to be unconscious to not be laughing uproariously at seeing this moment. I think Kelly had mentioned that she had been on the gymnastics team but if she had, I had pretty much forgotten about it.


Chester gave the worst performance in The Lost World. Robotic delivery and a blank expression throughout, Chester never conveyed any emotion apart from boredom. No one else, however, was all that much better. Goldblum looked equally bored in the film, never trying to do anything new. His expression never changed throughout The Lost World. How and why Julianne Moore is in this film one cannot fathom. Vaughn, I think, tried, but he appeared to overcompensate by being frenetic, at odds with the more sedate manner everyone else had. 

In retrospect, Howard may have been worse than Chester. Carrying a very bad British accent, Howard did not look bored like everyone else in the film. He looked confused. I do not think Howard changed his expression or vocal inflection, as if he was too busy concentrating on having a passable British accent to think about acting. Given how awful that British accent was, he should not have bothered even trying.

The Lost World did not make any sense. How exactly did Kelly manage to stowaway without anyone noticing? When the T. Rex starts rampaging into San Diego, which itself is already bad since the press conference takes place at night, it stomps across a customs office. We see the guards running in terror, but everyone at the customs office never notices this massive monster near them. For long periods of time, no one seems to notice what happened to some of the other characters. 

What sold the first Jurassic Park were the still breathtaking special effects. In The Lost World, they looked, frankly, fake. I was reminded of the Walt Disney World theme ride with the effects being on that level. The green screen looked bad and the animatronic figures equally so.  

As I finished The Lost World: Jurassic Park, I thought that no one had any enthusiasm for anything about it. Sluggish, dull and at times illogical, The Lost World should have remained lost.

Sunday, January 12, 2025

Better Man: A Review (Review #1925)


BETTER MAN

Frank Sinatra famously sang of New York, "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere". Conversely, British pop star Robbie Williams has made it everywhere except New York. To be fair, he might get recognized if he walked down the streets of the Big Apple; he probably though will get more respectable nods than screaming fans ripping his clothes off. If he came to my hometown, he could walk the streets in complete anonymity. Better Man, the biopic on the former Take That member, is not a bad film. It's reflective of Williams and his public persona: brash, outrageous, simultaneously attention-seeking and withdrawing. It also fails to make the case as to why anyone between New York and California should care who Robbie Williams is.

Working-class boy Robert Williams yearns to be someone. In particular, he yearns to be like the singers his father Peter (Steve Pemberton) so admires and imitates like Sammy Davis, Jr., Dean Martin and his beloved Sinatra. Pete, however, also loves performing and eventually leaves the family to pursue his dreams of being a singer and master of ceremonies. Robert, no academic, has the support of his mother Janet (Kate Mulvaney) and beloved grandmother Betty (Alison Steadman), but also appears headed for nowhere.

He also struggles with deep insecurity and feelings of unworthiness which he masks through an outwardly cocky, downright cheeky personality. His efforts to gain fame come to fruition when he wins a spot in a new boy band created by music impresario Nigel Martin-Smith (Damon Harriman). The fifteen-year-old Williams now rechristened "Robbie" (Jonno Davies, with Williams narrating in voiceover), may not be the best singer in the quintet though arguably the best dancer. He is not the creative member of the group, as that role is filled by his frenemy Gary Barlow (Jake Simmance), who has been performing for decades, is a skilled songwriter but has no coordination. 

Robbie Williams becomes a breakout star in Take That, his mix of brashness and pretty looks irresistible to fans and the press. He also continues to struggle with his feelings of low-to-no self-worth, which he compensates for with copious amounts of cocaine, booze and outrageous public antics. Eventually pushed out of Take That, he now must rebuild both his life and solo career. He gets a bit of both through his romance with Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno), a member of girl pop group All Saints. Despite his new love affair and a rising solo career, Williams is still tormented by immense self-doubt and increasing addictions. Will Robbie Williams find Angels to guide him back to a balance between being loved by millions and loving himself? Will he reconcile his past to his present and future?  

Better Man opts to use some tropes of a biopic on a musician while adding one new quirk. You have the biographical film subject's musical catalog to chronicle certain points in his life. You have the rise, fall and redemption arc (a point that Williams himself makes in a trailer). You hit the high and low points in the performer's career.

You also have the central character appear as a CGI chimpanzee. I imagine that there are reasons for this decision. Williams, by his own admission in Better Man (the title coming from one of his songs) is undeveloped. There is a British expression of someone being a "cheeky monkey", which Williams' persona certainly fits. It also is something that would make Better Man stand out from other jukebox musical biopics such as Rocketman

I also digress to wonder if such an outlandish element would please Williams' ego of standout out, of being so brash as to opt to make something in a jukebox musical biopic that would make it attention-grabbing.

I am not a fan of jukebox musical biopics where one takes the songs that the film's subject is about and using them to fit the narrative. I'm of the belief that songs should be written to fit the story rather than fit the songs into the story. The main difference between say a Rocketman and Better Man is that Elton John's songs are better known than Robbie Williams' songs. Say what you will about Rocketman using I'm Still Standing to sum up Sir Elton's life. At least that song is familiar to people outside the United Kingdom. How many people in America could sing along to She's the One?

How many people in America, moreover, would know who either Nicole Appleton or All Saints are? Oasis and the belligerent Gallagher Brothers who are Oasis' core, Liam (Leo Harvey-Elledge) and Noel (Chris Gun) would be more recognizable, but Nicole Appleton? Better Man wants to make the moment when she removes her mask at a party something that should make audiences gasp. I just was puzzled over why this seemingly random woman inspired Williams to sing this impassioned love song to her.

Same for when we meet the other members of Take That. To be fair, Williams' voiceover does give us at least their names and what he initially thought of them. However, like yet another musical biopic, the Take That members were so unimportant one did not even think they should have bothered. Just like both DJ Yella and MC Ren were pretty much irrelevant in Straight Outta Compton, the non-Gary Barlow members of Take That (Howard Donald, Mark Owen and Jason Orange) got a shout-out and save for the elaborate Rock DJ number were unimportant to things.

There are moments that did surprise me in Better Man. I was unaware that Take That was initially geared towards gay audiences. That does give Williams in his voiceover a chance to quip that he is not upset or distressed over stories that he has had sex with men. He's more upset that those stories say that he was lousy in bed. I was also surprised to see Williams' actual face appear once, when in seemingly archival footage of Take That merchandise, you see his pretty face on a group poster.

I will admit that rather than be moved or shocked when a coked-out-of-his-mind Williams took to the stage with the rest of Take That lying on the floor as they made their entrance, I actually started laughing. There was just something hilarious about this big monkey in an excessively large hat lying barely conscious on the floor as it rises to screaming thousand. I wondered why no one in the admittedly massive stadium audience seemed to notice that one of the performers looked as if he was dead.

Let me now touch on "the monkey thing". I did, eventually, get used to seeing Williams as a CGI chimp. It did not make it any more sensible, especially when he was a child. I thought that perhaps it would have been better if director/cowriter Michael Gracey (writing with Simon Gleason and Oliver Cole) had made the various negative images of Williams that Williams carries around into monkeys. By going all-in on "Robbie Williams is an ape man" deal, it ended up making his metaphorical battle with his past selves during his triumphant Knebworth concert look like something out of a Planet of the Apes film. It was not terrible, but it was odd.

Knebworth might capture why Better Man will not play well in the States. Williams seems obsessed with not just making it to Knebworth but being the main star at Knebworth. As he kept going on about "Knebworth", I kept asking, "Network? What is Network? Why is it so important that he be at Network?" Even for someone who is something of an Anglophile, "Knebworth" is something that I would not have heard of. Better Man, I think, is geared towards where his name is a marquee one, where Knebworth is a big thing. He might just as well have made it a goal of his to play the Neon Desert Music Festival.  

Despite Williams' near-total anonymity in the United States, I did not dislike Better Man. There were moments that did move me. His beloved grandmother's descent into dementia and death just when Williams was about to hit Top of the Pops (the British equivalent to American Bandstand, which itself is now obscure to those past Gen X). The montage of him, post-rehab, going to others to make amends and be at peace with himself is also affecting.

That, however, cannot fully make up for some awful and cliched lines and situations. It might be true that his best friend Nate (Frazer Hatfield) found Williams in a demolished home, using a device to suck the fat off his body. It still looks odd. When Peter Williams berates his son for saying he did not care about him, he yells "I have always been there for you, Robbie". Williams, lying on a pool, looks at him with his monkey eyes and says, "You've always been there for Robbie. Were you ever there for Robert?" or words to that effect.

Better Man, perhaps, is Robbie Williams' newest efforts to do something that, for whatever reason or reasons, he has been unable to do: become as big a star in the United States as he is in the United Kingdom. The film is interesting, though not great. Robbie Williams, working-class hero from Stoke-on-Trent, has achieved great things through a combination of luck, determination, talent and cheek. Better Man is not a bad film so it might be worth looking over. Try as he might though, Robbie Williams will never be his generation's Frank Sinatra.

Born 1974


DECISION: C+ 

Friday, January 10, 2025

Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy: A Review

ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE MUMMY

I have seen the comedy duo of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello meet the Invisible Man. I have seen Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein. Now here I am, seeing them meet another Universal Monster. I have been open about my dislike of Abbott & Costello, the former doing nothing but beating up the latter, who is a childlike idiot. Despite this, I found Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy actually funny, something I could not say before. 

"Pete Patterson" (Abbott) and "Freddie Franklin" (Costello) are in Egypt trying to get some money to go back to the United States. Overhearing Professor Zommer (Kurt Katch) saying that he needs good strong men to move his recently discovered mummy, Bud and Lou arrive unannounced at his house. They are shocked to find Zommer has been murdered.

Worse, the mummy that he found, that of Klaris, is missing. Owing to circumstances from Bud and Lou, the police now think that Bud is a murdered. Desperate to clear their names and stay away from the police, Bud and Lou think their luck has turned when they find a medallion which they hope to hock for some cash.

That medallion is from Klaris, who is the guardian of Princess Ara's treasure-filled tomb. Unaware that two rival groups want to find the medallion, Bud and Lou once again find themselves hunted. One group, headed by Semu (Richard Deacon) is a cult of Klaris worshipers bent on protecting Princess Ara's tomb. The other, headed by Madame Rontru (Marie Windsor) want Ara's treasure. Dragging both Bud and Lou to where Ara's tomb is, Simu and Rontru try to deceive each other for their own aims. Will the mummy return to wreak havoc on everyone? Will Bud and Lou survive meeting a mummy?

I have been immune to the charms of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, finding nothing of great humor from them apart from their "Who's on First?" routine. Curiously in Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, they do a variation of this wordplay routine when they are ordered to literally dig their graves. When Lou tells Bud to "take your pick", Bud picks a pick instead of the shovel that Lou expected Bud to take. From there, we get about a few minutes routine about how Bud's pick is a pick and not a shovel. We get another bit of wordplay when Bud attempts to explain Zoomer's mummy to Lou. The latter is clearly confused over why Zoomer's mummy is still around, growing more confused when told that some mummies are men, and some are women.

Having encountered our dimwitted duo meet two other Universal Monsters, I was leery of them going for thirds. However, I admit that Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy made me laugh. The constant moving of Zoomer's body, with poor Lou always finding it in the oddest of circumstances, made me laugh. There is another funny bit when, after being told that the medallion will bring death to anyone holding it, Bud and Lou keep trying to switch it to the other. 

Even things that normally would have my eyes rolling had me chuckling instead. Bud, for example, is so dimwitted that when photographing Zoomer's body for evidence, he ends up making it look as if he caught Lou murdering the doctor. Lou using his flute to unwittingly both send Bud up in the air with a rope and summing cobras was also funny. 

I think an element in Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy that lifts it in my view is that everyone is basically in on the joke. While Bud Abbott and Lou Costello technically have character names, they keep referring to themselves by their names of "Bud Abbott" and "Lou Costello". At this point, I think even they knew that it was not worth the effort to pretend to be other people. 

Abbott here, I found, is not as abusive to Costello as he has been in other Abbott and Costello films. There are times when Lou gets the upper hand, and while few it is nice to see a little more balance in things. To be fair to Abbott, here Bud is right to be frustrated at Lou. He ended up framed for murder thanks to Lou's idiocy. However, for the most part Bud's physical and verbal abuse towards Lou was small. I can recall only one time, early in the film, when Bud was his usual bullying self. "How stupid can you get?", he snaps at Lou. In his childlike manner, Lou replies, "How stupid do you want me to be?".

The sense of everyone treating Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy as a lark extends to the cast. Marie Windsor, primarily known as a film noir femme fatale, plays a bit against type as the treasure hunter. She is still evil, but her efforts at seducing Lou will bring at least a smile to your face. Deacon plays it straight as Semu, cult leader. It is a laughable suggestion to think that he is Egyptian or some kind of occult priest, but Deacon never sends up the premise. Droll to the point of parody, Deacon does not bother pretending that this is anything serious.

Peggy King, primarily a singer but with some acting credits, appeared in a musical number that has no ties to anything in Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy. Despite having a short runtime of 79 minutes, it does seem to not fit anywhere in the goings-on. That, along with a club number that opens the film and an elaborate dance number at the cult's lair that looks more Thai than Egyptian, are a bit hit and miss but not dealbreakers.

I still do not think that I will be an Abbott & Costello fan. However, it would be false of me to say that I did not enjoy Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. It is good to know that Bud and Lou love their mummy dearest.

DECISION: B-

Thursday, January 9, 2025

Dead Ringers: A Review

DEAD RINGERS

Twins, it is believed, are able to communicate with each other almost telepathically. I do not know if this is true. I do not know if this is true or not. However, the twin characters in Dead Ringers probably would agree that they have a greater bond than other siblings. With an exceptionally strong central performance and a strange premise, Dead Ringers does wonderful work in its dark tale.

Since they were children, twin brothers Elliott and Jessica Mantel (Jeremy Irons) have shared everything. They have a gynecological practice and are seen as both experts and trailblazers in the field of female reproductive health. They also take advantage of the situation: Elliot or Ellie, the more sophisticated and aggressive one, routinely has affairs or one-night stands with the patients. Beverly or Bev, shyer, less confident and more bookish, picks them up when Ellie is through with them. Actress Claire Niveau (Genevieve Bujold) falls into that pattern. Unlike other times though, she suspects something is off about the man she was seduced by.

For his part, Beverly has fallen for Claire, making the revelation of the deception hard for the both of them, though not for Ellie. Despite the initial lie, Claire continues an on-off affair with Bev. He now begins to struggle with his feelings towards both Claire and Ellie, medicating himself with her pills. He also starts going bonkers, creating bizarre medical tools and becoming unhinged in the operating room. Ellie attempts to pull his brother together, but will the bizarre love triangle of Elliott, Beverly and Claire bring the twins doom, destruction and despair?

Perhaps I am reading too much into things, but Dead Ringers could be about the duality of individuals, the light and dark sides of a person trying to maintain a balance. I probably am, as this is a story about twins. Still, the appropriately named Mantel Brothers are polar opposites in terms of personality, Elliot the smoother, more charming but amoral one, Beverly the more hesitant and studious one. In their relationship, neither brother built up an independent life separate from the other. Their ties that bind become at times shocking but make for fascinating viewing.

We see this early on when you see them as children. Their efforts at asking a neighbor girl for sex is tied more to their idea of scientific study than pleasure. Here, we see their detachment to concepts like love, their fascination with biology, and the seeds of their eventually destructive lives.

Director David Cronenberg brings a very cold, remote element to Dead Ringers, excellently matching the brothers' overall manner. There is a lot of grey and muted tones in the film. That, however, makes the times that there is color, such as the curiously bright red operating room clothes that the brothers and their team wear all the more eye-catching. It is not done to make things pretty. It is done to have them pop out.

Dead Ringers has the major benefit of Jeremy Irons in those dual roles. One soon forgets that it is the same actor giving two separate performances. In his manner, body movements and facial reactions, Iron quickly convinces us that he is both brothers. Irons' luxurious voice only makes those moments when Beverly is falling apart all the more impactful. You are convinced that the arrogant and cruel Elliot and gentler Beverly truly are different people. 

Sometimes when an actor attempts to play two roles in the same film, it can look false visually or performance wise. Here, Cronenberg does something very clever. He has the brothers simultaneously in the same shot for a surprisingly small amount of time. There are more scenes of them separate from the other. There are also times when, if the brothers are together, Cronenberg will shoot one brother, then move the camera to see the other, and back and forth. This is not a distraction. It enhances both the film and Irons' performance.

In her role, Bujolds makes her sympathetic in her desires for a child, aware as the first woman to catch on their scheme, and tragic as the one who fell for Beverly. 

The adaptation of Bari Woods and Jack Geasland's novel Twins manages to keep things simple but rarely feel long or dragged out. At times, Dead Ringers has an almost dreamlike quality to it. Some of its visions and dream sequences are mesmerizing. Though its Howard Shore score is relatively small, it is elegant and effective when used.

Dead Ringers is a dark and creepy film, but in a good way. It has a standout performance from Jeremy Irons to where you are convinced that he is two different people. Our dual natures of good and evil get a good exploration in Dead Ringers, a film that should be better known.

DECISION: B-

Friday, January 3, 2025

The Crow (1994): A Review

THE CROW (1994)

Whatever the merits The Crow may have, it will always be haunted by the death of its star Brandon Lee, killed on-set with only days before finishing his scenes. Under these circumstances, the filmmakers cobbled together a film that holds up remarkably well. Separate from that tragedy, The Crow works visually in its story of supernatural revenge.

In voiceover from Sarah (Rochelle Davis), we learn of the murders of Shelly Webster (Sofia Shinas) and her rock star fiancée Eric Draven (Lee). Draven had come back to their apartment to find four men beating and raping Shelly as warning against her advocacy for the tenants in their apartment. 

A year later, Draven manages to return from the dead. Horrified and angry about Shelly's murder, he now goes after the four men responsible for her death along with their boss Top Dollar (Michael Wincott), who wanted to push the other tenants out to get the building. Guided by the crow that brought him back, Draven tracks down the four killers: Tin Tin (Laurence Mason), Funboy (Michael Massee), T-Bird (David Patrick Kelly) and Skank (Angel David). 

He also shepherds Sarah's drug addicted mother and Funboy's lover Darla (Anna Thomson) to reuniting with her daughter. Police Sergeant Albrecht (Ernie Hudson), who attempted to save Shelly and stayed with her until her death, wonders if the dead Draven may have come back. As Top Dollar and his henchmen see the Crow and Draven targeting them, it becomes a battle royale to see who will find eternal peace.

It is impossible to know if what we ultimately ended up with is how The Crow would have turned out had Lee lived. I imagine that the film had to be reworked to make it cohesive, such as having Sarah's voiceover pop up from time to time and having the film have a lot of shadow (perhaps to hide Lee's absence). Given the difficult circumstances that director Alex Proyas faced, I think The Crow ended up holding up well. 

The film has an especially strong aesthetic in this dark world, dominated by rain and darkness. There was very little light that I remember, if any. The overall look of The Crow is well-crafted. While you do sense that some scenes were reworked to mask Lee's absence, such as Shelly and Eric's killings, they manage to make the flashbacks more cinematic and even gripping. This might also account for how despite being the lead, Brandon Lee does not appear to be a major part of The Crow.

He felt a bit spread out throughout the film, popping up when needed but also requiring scenes which focused on other characters. For example, we see more interactions between Sarah and Albrecht than between Sarah and Eric or Albrecht and Eric. This might have been the plan all along. I do give credit to screenwriters David J. Schow and John Shirley in managing to take James O'Barr's comic book as well as the revamped plans to make things work.

Again, it is impossible to know what turns Brandon Lee's career would have taken had he lived. Would The Crow had been the breakout role to make him a star in his own right? I cannot say for certain. I can say that, based on what I saw, Lee had great potential and promise. He had an intensity and focus as Eric, matching the character's drive and need for justice. His scenes with Thomson's Darla, where he firmly but gently urged her to take care of her daughter reveal that Lee was playing a complex character. He was driven by righteous vengeance, but he also had compassion.

Ernie Hudson is the de facto costar in The Crow. He was effective as this honest cop who cares about the people on his beat and wants justice for Shelly and Eric. Davis was winning as Sarah, the teenager who was Shelly and Eric's unofficial ward. I normally am not a fan of voiceovers. However, Davis made them work as she set up the story and gave us the summation. She and Thomson had a great scene when Sarah and Darla reconcile. It is unfortunate that it felt both brief and slightly distracting from the overall story of Eric's vengeance on those who destroyed his world. However, given what occurred during production, I will give this some slack.

The film is well-acted by everyone involved. Each actor knew his or her character and Proyas kept them to whatever level they needed to be, whether more grounded or more exaggerated. 

The Crow also has an appropriately dark look, visually impactful while still looking as if it were more fantasy. It also has a strong soundtrack that knows how to use its various songs well. There is the dark opening of The Cure's Burn to Nine Inch Nails cover of Joy Division's Deal Souls. The big song is Stone Temple Pilots' Big Empty, which you can hear briefly when the killers are driving. Here, I do not know if Big Empty's sense of loss fits where it was placed in the film, but it is not a distraction.

After seeing The Crow, I can see why it is so beloved by so many. I found it a surprisingly quiet and simple film, but that is not a negative. It actually makes the film more gothic, tragic and effective. All the elements in The Crow work well, more so given the difficult situation the film faced. One hopes that Brandon Lee can rest in peace knowing that The Crow has granted him immortality.

DECISION: B-

Thursday, January 2, 2025

Love, Lights, Hanukkah!: The Hallmark Television Movie

 


LOVE, LIGHTS, HANUKKAH!

Hallmark Channel is keeping things kosher with another Hanukkah-centered film. Love, Lights, Hanukkah! is curiously part of the channel's Countdown to Christmas series. I guess since this year both Hanukkah and Christmas fell at the same time, it works. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Love, Lights, Hanukkah! even with some flaws that would normally set my teeth on edge.

Restauranteur Christina Rossi (Mia Kirshner) is still grieving the death of her adoptive mother Sophia, who started the ristorante. The upcoming Christmas season brings mixed feelings: sadness at her mother's absence, joy in the decorating and upcoming Christmas Eve invite-only dinner. Sudden repairs at the ristorante force Christina to shut down temporarily, but it gives her a chance to find out about her past. The DNA results come in and she is delighted to find that she is indeed half-Italian.

She also finds out that she is half-Jewish.

With that, Christina searches out her Hebrew heritage, which leads her to a "close match" of Becky Berman (Advah Soudack). She and her brother Scott (David Kaye) are also restauranteurs who also took over their late father's restaurant. Becky and Scott want to know how close the close match is, so they all go for lunch with Ruth Berman (Marilu Henner). It is not long before Ruth puts things together and reveals a family secret: Ruth is Christina's mother! Ruth had impulsively married Giorgio, an Italian soldier, while she was studying in Italy. Giorgio's family forced them to get an annulment and cut off communication with Ruth, who could not tell Giorgio that they had a child.

With that mystery solved, Christina begins exploring what it means to be Jewish. This includes integrating Hanukkah with her beloved Italian Christmas celebrations. One thing she initially does not want to integrate into things is David Singer (Ben Savage). He is a Berman family friend but also a food critic who described Christina's lasagna as "predictable", something which she is still bitter about. In both their defenses, she had made that lasagna shortly after Sophia's death and he was unaware that she was emotionally distraught at the time. Despite themselves, Christina and David soon start seeing each other and enjoying each other's company. Will they get together through a Jewish mother's intervention? Will their seemingly separate careers allow them to bring these two lovebirds together? Are latke enchiladas kosher?


Love, Lights, Hanukkah! is a surprise in how it actually manages to make the romance between David and Christina natural. They do not officially date until late into the film. They also are seemingly unaware that they hold hands and wrap their arms around each other. Everyone else sees it, but David and Christina do not.

The movie also manages to introduce the conflict that keeps them apart quite well. David leads a peripatetic life and is on his way to Europe to research Jewish influences on Italian cooking. Christina wants to focus on building up her business. While not the most commonplace reasons to separate people, at least it is not without some logic.

Kirshner and Savage have good rapport with each other as Christina and David. I think it is because Karen Berger's screenplay did not force the relationship. In their scenes where it is just them, Kirshner and Savage have a strong chemistry and make the relationship natural. Their scenes are well-played.

Others though are quite shockingly weak. Kirshner is a bit too weepy and almost whiny when not with Savage, who is able to play his scenes with everyone well. As such, it cannot be all director Mark Jean's fault. I give credit to Henner when she steps away from the kitchen table on first hearing Christina's story. She plays the realization that her long-lost daughter has returned well, when she is alone. It is when she returns and tells everyone the truth that things look bad. For a shocking revelation of secret marriages and lost children, everyone seems pretty underwhelmed by the news. Of particular note are Soudack and Kaye, who do not look particularly shocked or upset or delighted to have a new half-sister pop out of nowhere.

As a side note, Kaye also appeared in Eight Gifts of Hanukkah also playing the loving brother to the female protagonist. I wonder if he is condemned to forever play "the nice, slightly wacky Jewish brother" in future Hallmark Hanukkah movies. He did have the few overtly funny lines in Love, Lights, Hannukah! whenever he proposed new Hanukkah dishes. His creations of Holy Guaca-latke and the Whole Enchi-latke will I'm sure appeal to that demographic of Jewish Mexicans who have yearned for kosher tamales.

Are tamales kosher? At my family's Christmas party, brisket was pretty big. Could we be descendants of Spanish Jews forced to convert? However, I digress.

Love, Lights, Hanukkah! was pleasant and respectful of the Judeo and Christian holiday traditions, where both sides got to show the other their specific customs. There is something amusing about David donning a Santa apron to make noodle kugel and listening to Christmas music. You have the Festival of Lights and the Feast of the Seven Fishes, which I figure is an Italian holiday festivity. The blending of holiday traditions, the importance of family, all blend surprisingly well in Love, Lights, Hanukkah!

The aspect about finding Giorgio felt a bit tacked on, but it was not a major element. 

Love, Lights, Hanukkah! is a nice, charming bit of comfort watching. Respectably acted, with no great disasters, this is a pleasant enough production.

One thing did puzzle me about Love, Lights, Hanukkah! How is it that David bragged about knowing how to say goodbye in 40 languages, but not once did he ever say "Shalom"?

8/10

Wednesday, January 1, 2025

Jurassic Park: A Review (Review #1921)

 


JURASSIC PARK

When Jurassic Park was released, it was seen as a fun, thrilling, exciting film with groundbreaking special effects. Whether anyone imagined it would be the start of a major franchise that would be the first of five sequels as of this writing (with one set for release later in 2025) I cannot say. The first Jurassic Park film, removed from what would come after, holds up extremely well, does not wear out its welcome and gives people what they wanted.

Billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has created what he delightfully calls an animal sanctuary. However, after one of the creatures kills a worker, lawyer Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero) will not sign off on Hammond's new venture on behalf of the investors. The only way to get Gennaro and the investors off Hammond's back is if independent scientists vouch for Hammond's park. With that, Hammond brings paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) to his island. Gennaro for his part brings mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) for that verification.

Why these particular figures? Hammond's new island, which he envisions as a nature/amusement park, has brought back the dinosaurs to life. Intoning with a sense of childish glee, he tells Sattler and Grant, "Welcome to Jurassic Park". Hammond, expecting a positive to enthusiastic response from the three scientists, instead encounters firm opposition to the park's existence from all of them, with Malcolm particularly vocal in his objections. Insisting that they will change their minds, all save Hammond go on a motorized tour, with Hammond's grandchildren Lex (Ariana Richards) and Tim (Joseph Mazzello) joining them. 

Tim in particular is an Alan Grant fan, which cuts no ice with him since Grant dislikes children. The tour is a bust, with the dinosaurs not appearing. However, there is chaos growing internally and externally at the park. A tropical storm is brewing, while park technician Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) has shut down the systems. Ostensibly, this is for maintenance, but in reality, he is stealing dinosaur embryos to smuggle to Hammond's business rivals. The two things collide when the dinosaurs become loose in the park and Nedry's elaborate computer security software prevents the others from regaining control. 

Soon, total chaos and dinosaurs break out. People start dying and others are in danger. Who will survive and who will not as the dinosaurs start taking over Jurassic Park?

One of the keys to Jurassic Park's success is in anticipation. Director Steven Spielberg builds up the suspense right at the opening, when we see rustling in the trees. We should know that we are not going to see dinosaurs right from the get-go, but the tension builds while we keep getting hints about what they can do. When, later in the film, we see a cow being dropped into a Tyrannosaurus Rex's holding cage, we do not see the dinosaur, but we see the aftereffects of what it did to the cow. The tension slowly builds here too, when big game hunter and Jurassic Park game warden Robert Muldoon (Bob Peck) coldly informs the group that the T. Rex is both smarter and more dangerous than given credit for.

This element in David Koepp and Michael Crichton's screenplay (adapting Crichton's novel) gives audiences hints of what is to come, keeping our interest going. Even after we initially see dinosaurs for the first time at about twenty minutes into Jurassic Park, we know that there will be more. Once we get the first sight of the Tyrannosaurus in all his glorious rage close to an hour into the film, Jurassic Park never fully stops in what audiences expect: visual spectacle and thrills. 

The anticipation continues when it comes to the characters. We know early on that Grant has a dislike to open hatred of children. Therefore, when we see Lex and Tim, we know that there will be conflict. This is added on by knowing that Tim is a big fan, someone who has read Grant's books and is well-versed in Grant's thinking. Tim would be what we would now call a fanboy, so knowing that Grant dislikes children does add two elements to the film. 

The first is a bit of comedy where we see Grant struggle between cool politeness and open contempt. The second is the evolution of his character into a protector of children. Certainly Grant, even for someone who pretty much hates children, is not going to see kids killed. It is an interesting twist that it is Grant, not Malcolm, who risks his life to distract the T. Rex in order to save Lex and Tim. As the film continues, however, Grant becomes fond of them, even allowing himself a moment of humor when he pretends to be electrocuted. It is a credit to Sam Neill that he made Alan Grant both a humorous figure and a man of courage.

This part of Jurassic Park perhaps has not been given much credit: even with the spectacle and visual power of the visual effects, the film does not skimp on the human characters. You have the gleefully wicked Nedry, wonderfully played by Wayne Knight with malevolent joy. Richard Attenborough shows his mix of arrogance, ego and ultimately humility as Hammond, who realizes too late that he cannot control nature. Dern is a showcase for the strong female character, one who can roll her eyes at Hammond's sexism when lives are in danger. However, we also see that she is not a Mary Sue: she too has fears and at one point breaks down in tears. That does not make her weak. It makes her human. In his mix of flirtation, moral indignation and fear, Goldblum does an exceptional job.

The big draw in Jurassic Park are the visual effects, a blend of computer-generated imagery and practical mechanical figures. Despite the passage of thirty years at the time of this writing, the effects in Jurassic Park look thoroughly realistic and appropriately terrifying. To be fair, the birthing of a new dinosaur may not be as completely impressive as it was in 1993, but that is a minor point.

Jurassic Park is also blessed with John Williams score. Appropriately stirring, thrilling and quiet when needed, Williams' music elevates the scenes when it is needed. Note that when the Tyrannosaurus Rex first attacks, there is no music. The lack of music here equally elevates the scene, allowing the tension to build to a fever pitch.

One of the strongest elements in Jurassic Park is that it takes the premise seriously. The T. Rex attack, for example, is played realistically: the kids panicked and terrified, the adults either stunned or cowardly. Extremely well-acted by Richards and Mazzello, this section is simultaneously thrilling and frightening. Richards and Mazzello carry the film well when they have to face the terrors alone.

Jurassic Park will continue to thrill viewers with its mix of brilliant special effects, moments of horror and humor and John Williams' score. A good popcorn film that works on every level, Jurassic Park will never be short of visitors, even on Coupon Day.

DECISION: A-

JURASSIC PARK FILMS

The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park III

Jurassic World

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Jurassic World Dominion

Jurassic World Rebirth