Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom — 'Sauring' adventure

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for relentless action violence and all manner of dino rage
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.22.18

This film is a cautionary tale that hearkens back to the immortal line from Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein, which has been paraphrased — in movies, TV shows and other books — many times since:

With a particularly nasty Indoraptor loose in her family's private Cretaceous museum,
young Maisie (Isabella Sermon, far right) hopes that Owen (Chris Pratt) and
Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) can keep her alive.

“Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge.”

Its function as a klaxon-blaring environmental warning aside, this fifth installment in the Jurassic series also is a rip-snortin’ rollercoaster ride. Director J.A. Bayona and editor Bernat Vilaplana maintain an impressive level of intense, edge-of-the-seat suspense for two full hours. Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow’s script is cleverly structured into three distinct acts, each laden with distinct goals, challenges and dangerous pitfalls.

At the same time, a thoroughly unsettling message percolates beneath the surface, until finally blossoming — nay, exploding — during the climax.

That’s a problem. The care with which Connolly and Trevorrow have built their plot suddenly sags beneath the weight of too much extraneous exposition during the final 15 minutes: one genuine surprise, a failure to resolve, and a lingering catastrophe that has been foretold by Jeff Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm (and it’s very nice to see him again).

We’re left with enough open-ended material to fuel two or three more films ... which, frankly, is quite irritating.

Up to that point, however, Fallen Kingdom is a lot of fun, in great part because Bayona, Connolly and Trevorrow wisely follow — and often reference — many of the ingredients that made Steven Spielberg’s 1993 handling of Michael Crichton’s original novel so thoroughly absorbing.

Stalwart heroes: check. Well-meaning scientists with their ideals shattered: check. Greedy corporate villains: check. One (and only one) comic-relief character: check. A child in peril: check.

Plenty of unexpected jump-attacks by swiftly moving dinosaurs: Check-check-check.

Big Hero 6: Rather insubstantial

Big Hero 6 (2014) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, and needlessly, for animated action
By Derrick Bang

This film has a serious identity crisis.

Although it begins as a gentle character saga about a boy and his plus-size Personal Healthcare Companion — read: big, poofy robot — co-directors Don Hall and Chris Williams rather abruptly changes things up in the second act, and suddenly we’re watching a frenetic action comedy that feels like an alternate-universe take on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Is there such a thing as too much comfort? After expressing some fairly trivial frustration,
Hiro discovers that his new Personal Healthcare Companion — dubbed Baymax — has
the "perfect" solution: an all-enveloping hug.

Frankly, it felt like whiplash.

Far more troublesome is this film’s frequent echoes of The Incredibles and How to Train Your Dragon: derivative chunks at times so glaring, that they’re impossible to overlook. The result feels less like an organic concept built from a carefully plotted narrative, and more like a movie designed by committee, and determined to hit crowd-pleasing notes ... a suspicion sharpened by the presence of eight (!) credited scripters.

Indeed, the out-of-left-field shift in tone is as clumsy as the mid-film transition that also spoiled the second half of Pixar’s Brave. And since John Lasseter has the executive producer’s credit on this newest Disney release, the buck obviously stops at his desk.

On the positive side, Big Hero 6 certainly is entertaining, and it’s laden with both laughs and moments of well-timed pathos. But the storyline remains something of a mess, and ultimately feels like a very clumsy attempt to build a new franchise.

The setting is a vibrant, tech-laden future in the massive Northern California city of San Fransokyo: very much a cheerful, gaily colored response to the polyglot Amero-Asian backdrop of Blade Runner. Fourteen-year-old Hiro Hamada (voiced by Ryan Potter, of the TV series Supah Ninjas) is a genius inventor but also something of a tear-away, spending his evenings hustling opponents at illegal underground robot duels.

These hijinks are a source of constant frustration to older brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) and their Aunt Cass (Maya Rudolph), the latter charged with the two boys’ care after the never-explained death of their parents. Hoping to channel Hiro’s energy in a more positive direction, Tadashi introduces younger bro to his colleagues at the prestigious San Fransokyo Institute of Technology, and particularly to its head instructor: world-renowned roboticist Robert Callaghan (James Cromwell).

Callaghan, seeing great potential in the boy, encourages Hiro to apply for admission. Our young hero, immediately star-struck by these nifty-gee-whiz surroundings, needs no encouragement.

The Artist: Artistry in every sense

The Artist (2011) • View trailer
Five stars. Rating: PG-13, and quite needlessly, for a fleeting vulgar gesture
By Derrick Bang


I know what you’re thinking.

Bad enough this film is black-and-white, and set in the late 1920s and early ’30s, but it has a French director and two French stars, and — worse yet — it’s silent? With only dialogue cards to convey the story? Seriously?

Having lost his career with the advent of talkies, silent film star George Valentin
(Jean Dujardin) sadly watches some of his former hits, and wonders if anything
can be salvaged from his former career. To make matters much worse, a young
woman who played a bit part in one of his previous pictures now has become
a sensation: first of the new breed of "modern" movie stars.

I can hear the clanking sound of eyes rolling across the land.

Well, get over it.

My Constant Companion, probably more dubious than most of you, would have preferred to stay home; she came along — quite reluctantly — because she’s a good sport (and because it’s part of her job description). She sat, arms crossed, as the film began: daring it to touch her in any manner.

Five minutes in, she was laughing with giddy delight. Half an hour in, she was at the edge of her seat, nervously clutching her hands together. An hour in, the tears began to flow.

Mind you, she’s not an easy sell.

Director Michel Hazanavicius, who so marvelously sent up James Bond-style spy films with his two OSS 117 comedies, has delivered a sumptuous homage to early Hollywood: a cleverly crafted, magnificently executed and superbly acted drama that deftly conveys cinema’s early years while using those very conventions to do so.

This isn’t merely a gorgeous film, although it’s that, as well; cinematographer Guillaume Schiffman’s work is luxuriously crisp, as always was the case with the best black-and-white films (which, darn it, simply looked better than many of today’s full-color cousins). The scene compositions, camera angles and staging always are flawless; Hazanavicius never has Schiffman go in for an unnecessary close-up.

Schiffman also works superbly with light and shadow, allowing various shades of gray to subtly dictate our response to a given scene.

Mostly, though, this film works because its story unfolds effortlessly — without, trust me, any force or contrivance — thanks to the consummate acting of stars Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo. They’re simply amazing. Hazanavicius places heavy demands on both; they must convey a wealth of emotions mostly through body movement and facial expressions ... and they do so.

Every time, in every scene.

Dujardin and Bejo act the way Fred Astaire danced: with an ease, grace and instinctive “rightness” that quickly works a magical spell that we’re all too willing to fall under. This is true cinematic “sense of wonder”: We are, as viewers, transported back to whatever moment it was, when first we fell in love with movies.