Jurassic World: Rebirth: It's deja vu all over again

Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense action violence, bloody images, mild profanity and a fleeting drug reference

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.6.25

The formula is tried and true, and this sci-fi thriller is a heckuva rollercoaster ride for those who’ve never seen more than one or two previous franchise entries.

 

Teresa (Luna Blaise, foreground) cautiously approaches a deserted supply pod, while
her companions — from left, Isabella (Audrina Miranda), Reuben (Manuel
Garcia-Rulfo) and Xavier (Davis Iacono) — wait with mounting anxiety.

(During one well-staged moment of peril, at Monday evening’s Sacramento preview screening, I feared the woman seated in front of us would have a heart attack. I’ve never heard anybody shriek so loud, or for so long, in a movie theater.)

As I noted, when reviewing 2018’s Fallen Kingdom, the essential elements never change:

 

Stalwart heroes: check. Well-meaning scientist(s) with ideals shattered: check. A soulless corporate villain: check. One (and only one) comic relief character: check. A child — or children — in peril: check.

 

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

 

All that said...

 

I have seen all six previous entries, and the formula has become trite to the point of cliché. Scripter David Koepp, generally a solid and skilled writer, took the paycheck and phoned this one in. Every step of this film feels like an inferior remake of 1993’s franchise-spawning first film, which had the strong benefit of having been adapted from Michael Crichton’s page-turning novel.

 

Alas, several of the characters here are wafer-thin, to the point where it’s easy to predict who will become dino chow, and who will survive. Indeed, given the amount of initial screen time, personality and back-story granted each of the 11 key players, I also nailed the order in which they’d perish. That’s just sloppy writing.

 

Half the time I was rooting for the dinosaurs...

 

In fairness, though, director Gareth Edwards, editor Jabez Olssen and the amazing special-effects team do a masterful job of generating the most excitement possible. The primary cast members, and their likable performances, make it easier to forgive the script’s shortcomings.

 

To cases:

 

A brief prologue reveals that a new crop of bunny-suited InGen scientists and genetic engineers, having learned nothing from previous catastrophes, continues to stubbornly develop ever-more-dangerous hybrid dinosaurs. Big surprise: Something goes awry.

 

Companion: Insufficiently developed

Companion (2025) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual content, strong violence and relentless profanity

Available via: MAX

By Derrick Bang

This is an intriguing companion piece to I’m Not a Robot, which recently won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.

 

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) and Josh (Jack Quaid) get a warm greeting, upon arriving at the
setting for their weekend getaway. Alas, a promised "happy outing" soon takes a sinister
turn...

Writer/director Drew Hancock's modest feature takes the core premise into more disturbing territory.  Alas, his film overstays its welcome; it would have made an excellent hour-long episode of the British TV series Black Mirror, but at 97 minutes Hancock flails his way through an increasingly contrived third act.

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is introduced while shopping for groceries. Her movements are oddly precise, almost dreamlike ... and, indeed — as we learn momentarily — she’s recalling how she “met cute” with boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid). They’re actually en route to a weekend getaway at an attractive home miles off the beaten track.

 

(A bit more opulent than the horror-clichéd  “cabin in the woods,” but the essential remoteness is no different.)

 

Longtime friends Eli (Harvey Guillén), Patrick (Lukas Gage) and Kat (Megan Suri) already are present, as is their host: the grizzled Sergey (Rupert Friend), much older than the others, who looks — and sounds — like a Russian mobster.

 

(One wonders how our youthful quintet ever met Sergey, let alone wangled such an invitation ... and Kat’s “explanation” is an eyebrow lift. But we gotta roll with it.)

 

As this first day passes, Iris’ submissive behavior around Josh becomes more obvious, in a Stepford Wives sort of way. She’s beyond submissive; it’s more a case of genuinely worshipping the ground on which he walks. When she describes what it’s like to have made Josh part of her life, she says, “It’s like this piece of you that you didn’t know was broken, and suddenly it’s fixed.”

 

Thatcher’s performance is unsettling and disturbing; is Iris a battered girlfriend?

 

Um ... no.

 

Iris actually is an “emotional support robot.” (This isn’t a spoiler, because the poster art and trailer reveal as much.) Her “love link” has been “established” with Josh, and thus she’s his — well — permanent, no-request-is-too-much girlfriend.

 

These artificial companions can be custom-modified in all sorts of ways — eye and hair color, vocal pitch, intelligence level, and more — via a tablet that Josh never lets out of his sight. Watching several of those options explored in rapid succession, at one point, is a clever bit of special effects.

 

Tellingly, such companions cannot lie.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, and other Roald Dahl Tales: Sadly uneven

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, and other Roald Dahl Tales (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, and much too generously, for creepy images and concepts

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

I cannot imagine a more perfect artistic collaboration, and blend of sensibilities, than Wes Anderson and Roald Dahl.

 

The fact that this joint effort by filmmaker and author has long been posthumous — Dahl died in 1990 — matters not a jot.

 

While Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch) relates part of his tale to a policeman
(Ralph Fiennes), both men briefly "break the fourth wall" and stare at the viewer, in
order to emphasize a point.

Dahl certainly has been well-loved on the big screen, with adaptations — sometimes more than once — of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Witches, James and the Giant Peach and Matilda. Anderson also delivered a terrific stop-motion version of Fantastic Mr. Fox in 2009.

Dahl was a highly visible presence of television during his lifetime, mostly due to the UK’s Tales of the Unexpected. This series adapted 26 of his short stories over the course of its nine-season run from 1979 to ’87; these morbid little tales — patently adult, and often with twist endings — blended dark humor with murder, infidelity, blackmail and all manner of other beastly behavior.

 

Few people remember the first TV series Dahl hosted, the U.S.-produced Way Out, which ran a mere half-season in 1961, following Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone in CBS’ 10 p.m. Friday slot. Dahl’s unapologetically macabre horror series was far too gruesome for that era’s viewers, and was canceled shortly after airing its 13th episode, “Soft Focus,” the notorious climax of which scared the hell out of everybody (and still packs a punch to this day).

 

The current quartet of adaptations — “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” “The Swan,” “The Rat Catcher” and “Poison” — debuted on Netflix one per day, late last week. They also draw from Dahl’s adult-oriented short stories.

 

As is Anderson’s habit, his approach is — shall we say — unusual.

 

Recognizing that Dahl’s precise and marvelous prose style is responsible for much of the atmospheric magic in his stories, Anderson has these stories narrated — retaining as much text as possible — by Dahl himself (played with appropriate eccentricity by Ralph Fiennes), and also by the characters within the tale.

 

Fiennes’ surroundings are impressively authentic: seated within a nook of Dahl’s re-created “Gipsy House,” his desk laden with many of the totems and ephemera that were part of the author’s actual working environment. (One must marvel at Anderson’s rigorous attention to detail.)

 

“Henry Sugar,” starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the title character, is the longest of these pieces, at 37 minutes. It concerns a bored and self-centered aristocrat who, as a result of a book he steals, painstakingly develops the talent to see through objects. What he ultimately does with this gift proves unexpected.