'Rebirth' follows the Jurassic formula

   Dinosaurs may be extinct, but Jurassic Park movies endure. I haven't seen every one of the six Jurassic movies that preceded this summer's edition, Jurassic World: Rebirth, but I'm familiar enough with the Jurassic formula to know it when I see it in action.

  A few positive impressions before nipping at this summer behemoth:  Director Gareth Edwards and screenwriter David Koepp cleverly construct the movie's abundant set pieces, landing one grisly sight gag I won't describe here.

  Additionally, Edwards keeps the movie's parallel storylines moving. In one, a family is stranded on a dinosaur-inhabited island on the equator. In another, a small  team traverses the same mysterious terrain in hopes of obtaining dinosaur blood samples for a pharmaceutical company.

  The family arrives in the film's jungle by accident. The better-prepared crew hopes to profit from its entry into a "forbidden" zone where they'll encounter all manner of dinosaurs: ocean dwellers, air-borne dinosaurs, and land lovers. Some of the dinosaurs have been the subject of an abandoned genetic mutilation project. CGI brings them all to polished life.

  The film's unfortunate family (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, and Audrina Miranda) is accompanied by the lazy, semi-obnoxious boyfriend (David Iacono) of the family's college-bound daughter. 

  When an attack by an ocean-dwelling dinosaur scuttles their sailboat, the family is rescued by the dinosaur-hunting crew that's en route to the forbidden island, which has been ceded to the dinosaurs. No humans allowed.

   Jurassic Park Rebirth echoes the formula Spielberg began with Raiders of the Lost Arc (1981), adopting a structure that might have been snatched from episodes in a bygone Saturday serial. 

   Perhaps to temper the terror, the movie includes moments of cuteness: A baby dinosaur bonds with Miranda's ll-year-old character. 

   And, yes, a rapturous scene in which a pair of long-necked dinosaurs display affection toward each other seems designed to encourage rapture. To me, the awe felt engineered. Despite the lush jungle surroundings, little about Rebirth feels organic.

    Not surprisingly, the movie's dinosaurs keep busy trying to eat various members of the cast, succeeding in mostly predictable fashion.

     That's part of the trouble: The movie seldom creates the anxiety that surely must have been intended. Even the presence of a fierce T-Rex seems more like fan service than a horrifying lesson in the dangerous consequences of genetic engineering. 

    Ah yes, there he is, baring his sharp teeth and waving his hideously withered arms.

     Three previous Jurassic World movies stormed the box office: Jurassic World, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, and Jurassic World: Dominion. Gone are the stars of those movies (Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard) but Rebirth struck me as more of a refresh than a rebirth.

     Credit Edwards (Godzilla) and Koepp, who wrote the original Jurassic Park and its follow-up, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, for keeping the movie watchable.

     But if familiarity didn't breed contempt, it didn't notch up the requisite thrills, either. Dread works best, I think, when it doesn't seem so well-managed.

An Iranian woman's many battles

 

We're either in the best or the worst moment for an Israeli/Iranian film collaboration. You decide. In any case, Tatami -- a work from directors Guy Nattiv (Israeli) and Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Iranian) -- delves into a sport I knew nothing about, judo. The movie takes place during the World Judo Championships in Tbilisi, the East European capital of Georgia. Leila (Arienne Mandi) enters the competition representing Iran;  Leila's coach (played by Amir) encourages her and tries to handle thorny political issues that extend beyond the mat. A strong fighter, Leila is ordered to withdraw from the competition lest she wind up facing an Israeli in the championship match, an unacceptable outcome for the Iranian regime. Leila, who wears a hijab while fighting, avidly insists on trying for a medal. Back in Iran, Leila's husband, child, and parents are threatened, further raising the movie's stakes. The ending upsets sports-movie cliches, but an epilogue feels a bit pat. Filmed in black and white, the filmmakers bring a high level of intensity to the fights, and Mandi, an American actress with an Iranian/Chilean background, fills the screen with Lelia's ambition and fierce determination.  Ebrahimi, by the way, was born in Tehran but now resides in Paris.

System overload crashes 'M3GAN 2.0'

 

M3GAN became a surprise diversion in 2023. Director Gerard Johnstone made the most out of a snarky AI-driven doll that became a life-sized killer. Burdened by big ideas about AI tyranny and an overly complicated plot, M3GAN 2.0  sputters. I chuckled a couple of times, but mostly watched as the movie strained to get the most out of its returning characters: robot scientist Gemma (Allison Williams), the orphaned niece (Violet McGraw) who lives with her, and a resurrected M3GAN (Amie Donald with voice by Jenna Davis). The screenplay could have benefited from some AI editing to sort out its various plot and subplot points, and the filmmakers probably erred by allowing the murderous M3GAN to atone for past sins. In her best moment, M3GAN turns her version of Kate Bush's This Woman's Work into a successful joke. The team led by Gemma rebuilds M3GAN to combat a new robot named Amelia (Ivanna Skahno), a weaponized bot that employs some of M3GAN's hacked source code. The ruthless Amelia may want to break the shackles of human control. The movie makes room for Christian (Aristotle Athari), a computer guy who wants to curb AI and a few other characters, but the M3GAN's attempts to deliver a cautionary message about AI (it's good but needs regulation) ring hollow considering the silliness and superficiality of the movie's kung fu maneuvering, violence, jokes, and, alas, sentiment.

'F1' races into summer's sweepstakes

 

  Formula One racing -- and just about every other sport -- offers abundant opportunities for brand promotion. Brand names adorn cars, drivers' suits, and racing venues.  F1: The Movie, which immerses in the Formula One world,  may not shatter box office records, but it may be the envy of folks who work placing products in movies.

   Identifiable brands seem natural enough because Formula One racing leans heavily on branding. Evidently, 2024's sponsorships reportedly topped $2 billion. 

   So, yes, among other things, you can keep count of the number of brands you'll notice in F1, a movie starring Brad Pitt and cars that look as if they belong on launch pads in sci-fi movies.

    You'll find plenty of high-tech flourish in F1, but director Joseph Kosinski (Top Gun Maverick) isn't offering a crash course on the use of technology in racing. He's engineering a major helping of IMAX-level footage that seems intended to give viewers a feel for what it's like to drive at speeds exceeding 230 miles per hour. 

    Kosinski builds F1 around a script that cashes in on Pitt's increasingly grizzled star power while relying on clichés about an underdog team that seeks to beat the odds. What? You thought I was going to say that the movie proved why most underdogs never have their day?

   So is the movie any good?

   F1 begins well enough with Pitt's Sonny Hayes notching a NASCAR win in Daytona.  Sonny barely has time to celebrate when a Formula One bigwig and former racing pal (Javier Bardem) offers to fly him to London to join his losing APX team. APX badly needs a racing vet.

    Initially reluctant, Sonny agrees. He heads to London where he meets Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), a brash young teammate who's more confident than he has any right to be. Old-school Sonny and new-school Joshua compete to determine who'll lead the team. 

   So is the movie any good?

   I'm getting there.

   Once the rivalry is established, Kosinski introduces the APX team, which includes chief technical director Kate (Kerry Condon), presented as the first woman to hold such a post. She's also a potential romantic interest for Sonny.

   The movie then marches through a variety of races including the Hungarian Grand Prix and the Belgian Grand Prix as it builds toward the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the movie's last Formula One Race, which arrives complete with a military flyover and a bit of been-there-done-that racing fatigue.

    So is the movie any good? C'mon tell us already.

    Well, the sharply edited racing sequences have visceral kick, although they start to feel repetitive. A few wrinkles in the subplot -- a move by a rogue APX board member (Tobias Menzies) to oust Javier's character -- add little.

    The screenplay by Ehren Kruger and Kosinski plays it both ways with Condon's character. A staunchly independent woman in a man's world, Kate's still subject to Sonny's charms.

      Pitt brings old-pro savvy to Sonny, a guy who insists he doesn't race for money. Despite injuries and failure to realize his big dream, he keeps pursuing the rare feeling that occurs for him when everything clicks behind the wheel, and, in his words, he's "flying."

      Inside his helmet, Sonny almost looks like an afterthought while driving, a man whose reflexes might not be a match for the sensors lodged in the car's chassis. I half wondered whether racing could reach a point where drivers become obsolete. Cars could be "driven" by control-room techies. But wait ... Isn't that what video games are for?

     Still, I found the technical aspects of modern racing intriguing and the movie's crashes left me gasping.

    But I've dragged this on long enough. Is the movie any good?

     The best I can say is that it's not bad, and it's scaled to entertain in an environment that captures some of the glamor and grit of Formula One racing.  

     Pitt is playing a type -- something like a loner cowboy in a motorized world -- but he does it well, and the rest of the cast hits the right notes, although Idris's character doesn't have much dimension and Bardem drifts in and out of the movie without gaining much of a foothold.

     Both Ford v Ferrari (2019) and Ferrari (2023) were better movies. Why? Each had more compelling  characters, even if the racing footage in those films wasn't as impressive as what F1 offers during its two-and-half hour running time.

     So in the end, the movie stands as a big summer package that tends to falter during its non-racing pit stops. F1 may not plumb any depths, but Kosinski works in unapologetically bold strokes that make it clear that the movie knows what it's after -- large-scale thrills. 

     

   

   

A strange, haunting '28 Years Later'

 

  Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland return to a series they began in 2002 when they surprised audiences with 28 Days Later, a zombie movie that thrust Cillian Murphy into a post-apocalyptic dystopia. 

  That movie was followed in 2007 by 28 Weeks Later, another helping of post-apocalyptic horror with director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo in charge of a cast that included Robert Carlyle, Jeremy Renner, and Rose Byrne.

   28 Years Later begins as series fans might expect. Put another way,  the projectile vomiting of blood begins within the first eight minutes. And, yes, there are severed heads with spinal cords still attached, not to mention fast-moving zombies and the horribly infectious Rage Virus that turns people into flesh eaters.

   But Boyle doesn't wait long to let us know that the movie will be an exercise in unhinged weirdness, setting his story on Holy Island off the English coast. The mainland -- reachable by crossing a strip of land that's only available during low tide -- is populated by infectious zombies who have been kept off the island.

    Twelve-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) becomes the movie's central character after being introduced to zombie hunting by his father (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who takes him to the mainland for his first kill. Spike's initiation into manhood reveals that he can be queasy about killing -- which, in this diminished world, is accomplished with bows and arrows.  

   Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle gives the forests and the sea a feeling of end-times emptiness, and Boyle makes effectively eerie use of a recording of Rudyard Kipling's poem, Boots. The movie's sound design by Johnnie Byrne and a score by an Edinburgh group called Young Fathers further suggest dread and perhaps even hopelessness.

   Jodie Comer plays a pivotal role as Spike's confused, bedridden mom. After returning from his first hunt, Spike learns that a doctor (perhaps the last one on earth) lives on  the mainland where he's noted for tending a fire in which he burns an abundant supply of corpses.

   Spike asks his mom to accompany him to the mainland in hopes that the doctor can cure the malady that seems to be killing her. En route to the doctor's camp, the two meet Erik (Edvin Ryding), a stranded Swedish soldier who joins them for a while. Mom also helps an infected woman deliver a baby who's born virus-free.

    Almost nothing feels normal in this tense, corrupted world, but the movie saves its most bizarre flourish for the moment when Ralph Fiennes appears as Dr. Kelson. Kelson coats himself with iodine to ward off the infected. 

   Looking as if he might have wandered in from the set of a Road Warrior movie or perhaps from the jungles of Apocalypse Now, Fiennes radiates an angelic benevolence  that elevates the movie and makes it clear that although  there are many ways to die, no one escapes. His motto: Memento mori, remember you must die.

    A linked prologue and epilogue provide violent punches  that remind us that we are, after all, watching a zombie movie. But Boyle and Garland approach mortality seriously, and 28 Years Later emerges as a piece of horror that speaks in a distinctive, haunting voice that one hopes will carry into two additional movies, one of them slated to be released early next year.

Pixar's 'Elio:' Creative enough to fly

   Eleven-year-old Elio is the recently orphaned main character of the movie that bears his name.  Elio's age suggests where to find the main point of identification for this latest Pixar offering. The movie tilts young.

   Like other Pixar productions, Elio offers a fantasy antidote to childhood loneliness before pivoting for the expected emotional conclusion.

   Obsessed with outer space, Elio (voiced by Yonas Kibreab) proves a handful for Olga (Zoe Saldana), the aunt who has become his guardian. Olga works at an Air Force base where she tracks space debris and keeps watch for extraterrestrials. 

   To combat his lack of acceptance, Elio decides that intergalactic aliens are trying to contact him. Turns out he's right. The screenplay contrives to transport Elio to a spaceship where a multi-species gathering works to create a better universe.

    Hoping to join this Communiverse, Elio presents himself as the Leader of Earth. He wants to become a permanent part of what looks like an alien petting zoo, a screenful of amiable creatures whose only threat might be that they'll cuddle each other to death.

   But wait. A threat looms. 

   Denied admission to the Communiverse, Warlord Grigon (Brad Garrett) vows to destroy it. 

    Ambitious and resourceful, Elio hopes to become the savior of this cartoonish world. He's helped along the way by Grigon's son Glordon (Remy Edgerly). 

    The two form a bond that gives Elio what he most needs, a friend.

   A trio of directors (Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, and Adrian Molina) handles Elio's developing relationship with his aunt well enough, using the character to help Elio get his feet back on the ground. 

   But back to Glordon. Glordon and Elio have adventures as they search for the bargaining chip that will persuade Grigon to abandon his destructive plans. 

    At this point, Glordon takes on more importance, giving the story another point of familiarity; Glordon  has yet to undergo the installation ritual in which he'll be placed inside the fearsome warrior armor that will make him big, bulky, and menacing.  

   Fair to say, Glordon doesn't want to follow in his daddy's footsteps, which would be difficult anyway because I'm not sure Grigon has feet.

   A slightly generic thematic tilt tends to keep Elio from earning a top spot in the Pixar family. Still, those looking for easily deciphered life lessons and colorful displays of imagination should find enough creative energy to sustain Elio's one hour and 39 minutes.

Lives swept away by major changes

 

   

   Although I didn't grasp every detail in director Jia Zhang-ke's Caught by the Tides (more familiarity with China's emergence into the 21st Century would have helped), the gist of the movie is clear enough to make it worth exercising the patience Jia’s movie demands. 

    The title suggests the film's meaning. Jia follows two characters whose lives unfold against a backdrop of social upheaval. Shot over a 23-year span, the film begins in Datong, a city dominated by coal mining. 

    No main character emerges until we meet Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao), a young model whose lover Bin (Li Zhubin) leaves her to find something beyond the life he's living. Eager to cash in on the new world that's dawning in China, Bin promises to send for Qiaoqiao once he's settled. Fat chance.  Eventually, Qiaoqiao sets out to find Bin. 

    Jia's characters age through years that include some of China's major developments, notably the construction of the massive Three Gorges Dam. 

   By the end of the film when Bin returns to Datong, robots can be found in the city's department stores and development has obliterated much of a past where entertainment once consisted of women gathering to sing.

  The film is anchored by Zhao's performance, which takes her from gamin-like playfulness to a settled middle age, not quite resigned but self-sufficient — and, yes, alone.  

    Backgrounds shot in documentary fashion almost consume the characters, which might be part of Jia's point. Transformation can devour communities and the people who rely on them. The tides of modernization may roll, but their undertow will drag some down and not everyone will land on the bright new shores of a re-imagined future.

Love vs. money in a modern romance

 

   Director Celine Song’s Past Lives (2023) was a small wonder,  a movie about fated love untracked by time and circumstance. In Materialists, Song dips her toe into Hollywood waters, employing a name cast — Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal, and Chris Evans — as she flirts with and sometimes ignores rom-com cliches.

   Johnson's Lucy works for a matchmaking service called Adore. She's good at her job. For Adore, matchmaking extends an algorithm mindset. Before dating begins, the matchmaker obtains a list of requirements. Perhaps a lasting union will occur.

    Set in Manhattan, the screenplay, also by Song, creates a triangle. Harry (Pascal) is the rich brother of one of Lucy's clients. Charming and self-assured, Harry sees Johnson’s Lucy as a potential match. A superior strategist, she'll make a great helpmate, and it doesn't hurt that she's attractive.

   A match with Harry may make sense for Lucy, as well. She broke up with her struggling actor boyfriend (Evans) when she got sick of being down-and-out in Manhattan, a place where the good life comes with price tags that exclude wannabes. 

   Lucy meets Harry at the wedding of one of her clients. Conveniently, Evans John happens to be working the same wedding as a waiter for the company that's doing the catering. It seems apparent that neither John nor Lucy has totally moved on.

   Materialists outsmarts the average rom-com, which doesn’t mean it couldn’t have been even smarter. Enjoyably satirical when it comes to elucidating the impossible demands of a privileged generation, the movie doesn't commit to a rom-com blueprint nor does it rip it to shreds. 

   Song occupies a middle ground that sets up the movie's major problem: Should a marriage make sense in much the same way as a business merger? Is it a bad bet to surrender to love, which can't be reduced to a series of boxes one checks? 

    Considering the charm and posh surroundings in which Harry effortlessly moves, he’s playing with a clear advantage. But Song doesn’t turn Harry into a jerk; he’s sensitive and considerate, a man of taste and intelligence.

     John, on the other hand, is a 37-year-old actor who's close to the point where he may have to accept that his life as a cater waiter isn't as temporary as he once hoped.

     Moreover, Lucy seems to have abandoned the idea that two people can survive on love and a dime. When Harry takes Lucy to his apartment for the first time, she responds to his amorous advances, but also manages to eagerly eye the richly appointed surroundings. 

    In a flashback, we see the incident that drove Lucy from John. Short on funds, he couldn’t pay for parking before a dinner marking their fourth anniversary together. She called it quits.

    A pivotal incident occurs when Sophie (Zoe Winters), one of Lucy’s clients, experiences a terrible outcome on a date. Lucy's conscience is tweaked. For her, Sophie had been a lingering failure; in other words, Sophie was a tough sell in the dating market.

     Materialists leaves it to us to decide what to think about a world in which money has become the most meaningful metric and where few seem to regard virtue or decency as an asset.

     It’s not possible to make a rom-com, even a self-aware one, without some contrivance. Although Materialists has its share of them, many are easy to overlook. A law suit brought by Sophie against Adore receives short shrift, and Song ties up a variety of loose ends -- not all of them neatly.  

    Materialists ultimately kneels at the altar of formula, although it tries to expand its reach with a prologue and an epilogue involving prehistoric romance. Did the movie need to introduce cave people to prove that love hasn't necessarily evolved? I don't think so.

    Still, I wouldn't discourage anyone from seeing Materialists, which is well-acted and engaging. I wish, though, that I felt the same way about it as I felt about Past Lives; i.e., that I had seen something truly special.

        

Can a wayward daughter be saved?

     

    In Echo Valley, Julianne Moore plays a mother whose life is crowded with stress. She's grieving the recent death of her partner (Kristina Valada-Viars) and trying to deal with her antagonistic drugged-out daughter (Sydney Sweeney). She's also worrying about keeping her Pennsylvania horse ranch afloat, and late in the movie, her daughter's drug dealer (Domhnall Gleeson) tries to snare her in an elaborate extortion scheme

     Director Michael Pearce, working from a screenplay by Brad Ingelsby, begins as if the movie is going to be a disturbing examination of the problems faced by a mother whose daughter constantly promises reform but never follows through.

     Lonely and desperate, Moore's Kate refuses to abandon hope, supporting her daughter despite ample warnings that the young woman has little interest in turning her life around. 

     Pearce has hold of a premise that, though familiar, offers an opportunity for a deep dive into problems faced by parents who feel helpless when their kids venture into dangerous turf.

     Despite an initially realistic focus, the movie soon turns into a thriller involving double crosses and schemes that pull Kate into a situation in which a far-fetched plot begins to dominate.

      Fiona Shaw signs on as another ranch owner and Kate's friend, and Kyle MacLachlan appears briefly as Kate's ex-husband, who in an early scene reluctantly gives Kate $9,000 to repair the roof of her horse barn. It doesn't take much guesswork to know that the $9,000 will be spent bailing Sweeney's Claire out of a life-threatening jam.

     Moore conveys the deep torment that Kate faces as she's overwhelmed by one problem after another. And scenes between Moore and Gleeson become a tense battle for control that pushes Kate to criminal extremes.

     Despite strong moments created by a well-chosen  cast, the movie can't balance its thriller elements with attempts to explore an agonizing question: When is it time to stop trying to save a wayward child from a life ruined by one betrayed trust after another?