'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.

A cyborg finds her true identity

Alita: Battle Angel boasts lots of CGI razzle-dazzle and a story that doesn't sustain.

Alita: Battle Angel revolves around an avalanche of CGI, production design, 3D and motion-capture acting, enough razzle-dazzle to satisfy those who want to be razzled and dazzled -- at least for a while. Director Robert Rodriguez and producer James Cameron, neither strangers to the world of effects, have teamed for a massive display of technical prowess.

I'm wondering then why screenwriters Cameron, Rodriguez and Laeta Kalogridis, working from a 1990 manga series by a Yukito Kishiro, couldn't come up with at least one scintillating line of dialogue.

To summarize my reaction to Alita: The visual environment created by Rodriquez and Cameron held my interest for three-quarters of the movie. After that? Not so much.

So who is Alita? She's a cyborg who has been tossed onto a scrap heap in Iron City, the lower-class part of a society that survived what every dystopian movie insists on, an apocalypse. Named by Dyson Ido (Christoph Waltz), a doctor who rebuilds cyborgs, Alita comes to life as a teenager with a bad case of amnesia. She remembers nothing about her origins.

Once she's mobile and active, Alita meets Hugo (Keean Johnson), another scavenger. A kid of the streets, Hugo has an interest in the futuristic sport of Motorball, which looks depressingly like the sport that director Norman Jewison and writer William Harrison cooked up in the 1975 thriller, Rollerball.

A super-charged version of Roller Derby wasn't especially interesting in 1975 and it's no more interesting 43 years later, even as Alita emerges as one of the game's stars. Guys and enhanced cyborgs are no match for her, especially when she gets a spiffy upgrade in the form of a sleek new body.

Villains, of course, are on call. They arrive in the form of Dr. Ido's former wife (Jennifer Connelly) and Vector (Marhershala Ali), the man who controls the game of Motorball. Vector promises that Motorball champions will ascend to a mysterious upper region to which all the downtrodden residents of Iron City aspire.

The arc of Alita's journey -- the discovery of her past and of her true destiny -- is, I think, meant to give the movie its emotional heft. But as a character, Alita (Rosa Salazar) has a juvenile quality that may not please those who prefer sci-fi served with an intellectual garnish.

It's not her character but her physical qualities that seem most interesting, providing you can overlook (and you probably can't) orb-like eyes that might have been inspired by a Keane painting.

A romance between Alita and Hugo skates along the surface, ignoring obvious questions such as how they're going to ... well... you know.

Cameron (Titanic and Avatar) reportedly has been interested in this story for 20 years. He enlisted Rodriguez to help execute his long-standing dream. Rodriguez (Spy Kids and Sin City) seems like a natural for a megaton cyberpunk fantasy. The whole thing should have resulted in a killer collaboration. Instead, we get a movie in which early promise eventually fades and the prospect of sequels -- yes, they're suggested -- fails to create much by way of anticipation. Scrappy at the outset, Alita eventually loses its kick.

A 'Spider-Man' that's long on creativity

A Marvel story that's (gasp!) actually animated and better for it.

Who knew? In the complex and baffling expanse of comic-book realities, a Spider-Verse awaits. We're talking about alternate universes or dimensions where many Spider-Men assume their crime-fighting burdens. To make Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse even more intriguing the familiar Spider-Man -- a.k.a. Peter Parker -- almost immediately falls victim to Kingpin, a gargantuan villain whose girth seems to represent a lifetime of accumulated evil.

Oh well, those of us who grew up before the current wave of Marvel comics broke across the culture may not have known all this, but it probably comes as no surprise the legions of fanboys who were nurtured by Stan Lee's cornucopia of comics.

As if to bow to the origin of all things Marvel, this edition of Spider-Man is animated by a gifted team that wisely has given the movie the texture of an actual comic book with visible Ben-Day dots, panels, and occasional captions.

It's a bit early in the review to introduce a footnote, but for the record: Chris Pine gives voice to the original Peter Parker, who, as mentioned, succumbs early. Liev Schreiber voices Kingpin.

Kingpin, by the way, has an associate named Dr. Octopus (Kathryn Hahn). She has something to do with the technology that allows the various multi-verses to mingle -- or some such.

Now back to the review:

This time, the main character carries a welcome ethnic banner. Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) has black and Hispanic origins. Miles feels a little out-of-place at the private school to which his parents (dad is a cop) have sent him.

School aside, Miles starts the movie as an ordinary Brooklyn kid. He transforms into Spider-Man after being bitten by a radioactive spider. The bite occurs in an abandoned subway station that Miles visits with his Uncle Aaron (Mahershala Ali), a free-spirited guy who Miles idolizes and who serves as a counterpoint to Miles conventional father.

A variety of other characters pop into the movie from other dimensions. They include Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn), Peter Porker (John Mulaney) and Spider-Noir (Nicolas Cage). Porker, by the way, functions as a cartoon addition to this gang of Spidery characters and has an inspired alternate name: Spider-Ham.

You may find yourself blinking in mild but amused disbelief at the alternate universe Peter Parker, a Spider-Man who seems to have aged a decade and who has acquired a paunch.

All of these Spider-folks add to an approach that sets the movie several cuts above the expected. Getting rid of live action has resulted in one of the most creative Marvel movies yet with a plot that centers on the alternate-universe characters trying to return to their home dimensions.

My appreciation for the movie's spirit of invention never wavered; Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse dazzles the eye and deservedly has put itself into contention as the year's top animated movie.

Credit goes to the directing team of Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman, as wells as to screenwriter Phil Lord, who produced with his partner Chris Miller. And don't forget the legion of animators and effects specialists who have created this amazing contraption. Sitting through the end credits will tell you it takes more than a village to make this kind of movie; it takes an army.

A revealing search for identity

Tender and tough, Moonlight stays with you.

To understand Chiron, the main character in director Barry Jenkins's Moonlight, it might be helpful to understand what this young man -- shown at three different stages of his life and played by three different actors -- doesn't have.

No father guides Chiron; his crack-addicted, single mom offers no real parental support; no group of friends provides companionship; and no protector helps keep the neighborhood bullies at bay.

Such observations make Chiron sound like a sociological statistic, a black kid suffering the deprivations of an impoverished life in Miami's ironically named Liberty City. Although Chiron's deprivations constitute a valid and appropriate description, they don't go far enough.

The most important thing that Chiron lacks is a voice. What makes Jenkins's movie impressive are the ways in which he has coaxed the actors who play Chiron to be expressive without articulating the myriad contradictory feelings that whirl inside the character's head. Chiron seldom speaks.

You can (and probably should) spend time unpacking the various complex meanings in Jenkins's movie: the drug dealer who becomes a genuine father figure in Chiron's life but who, because he sells drugs to Chiron's mother, is pained by his own hypocrisy; Chiron's discovery of his gayness; or the multiplicity of causes leading to the violent explosion that criminalizes Chiron and redirects his life.

All of those things are worth discussing, but Chiron's voicelessness underlies everything worth thinking about in Moonlight.

And by voice, I don't mean only the act of speaking. I mean Chiron's ability to define an identity that's unshackled from environment and circumstance.

In the movie's first section, we meet the youngest version of Chiron, as played by Alex Hibbert. A slight kid who has been issued the nickname "Little," Chiron clearly is an outsider.

In this section, Chiron encounters Juan (a terrific Mahershala Ali), a drug dealer who takes the boy under wing.

Born in Cuba, Juan sincerely cares about Chiron. Scenes in which he teaches Chiron to swim give Jenkins an opportunity to display a tender, lovely touch.

Not surprisingly, Juan's concerns land him in a territorial fight with Chiron's mother, a walking fury of woman portrayed by Naomie Harris.

When Chiron reaches his teen years, Ashton Sanders takes over the role. Of the three actors who portray Chiron, Sanders has the least physical resemblance to the others, but his acting leaves no doubt about the adolescent Chiron's connection to his boyhood self: his watchfulness, his ability to ask penetrating questions, his loneliness.

In this period, Chiron has his first sexual experience, and again tries to escape bullies. He hides from his tormentors until an irrepressible anger breaks through his muted surface.

Trevante Rhodes takes over the role when Chiron becomes an adult. By this time, Chiron has survived a stint in juvenile prison; he has bulked up, perhaps to armor himself against the world and against his own feelings. He's also living a life that mirrors the life lived by Juan.

I don't know if it's acting or physical resemblance or a combination of the two, but as this segment evolves, Rhodes reveals more and more traces of the Chiron we knew as a child.

Eventually, Chiron reconnects with a friend from childhood (Andre Holland), a reunion that leads to the movie's conclusion -- which feels like a well-earned respite from all the previous tensions, if not a triumphant moment of self-realization.

Whether you see Moonlight as a perfect movie or not, it's difficult to imagine that you won't be moved by the way Jenkins interprets and reimagines Tarell Alvin McCraney's play, In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue.

It's not easy to make a movie in which the main character is less actor than one who's acted upon, less talker than one who is talked at, but Jenkins creates a richly realized world and moves us through it with insight and small moments of grace.

Rebelling against the South's Rebels

Despite Matthew McConaughey's fiery performance, Free State of Jones is a bit of a slog.

Some background: During the heat of the Civil War, Newton Knight left the Confederate army, returned to his Mississippi home and formed a ragtag band of fighters to combat what he viewed as injustices inflected by the Confederate Army on poor farmers and blacks who had been enslaved. Knight's rogue army -- a.k.a. the Knight Company -- was composed of deserters and runaway slaves.

Knight was motivated to desert the Rebel army, where he served as a nurse, by the Confederacy's "Twenty-Negro Law." That law exempted Southerners who owned 20 or more slaves from fighting, thus establishing grounds for believing that the Civil War was a battle in which poor southerners fought to protect the bounties of the rich.

A bona fide man of personality, Knight evidently took seriously the biblical injunction to be fruitful and multiply. He had nine children with Serena, his white wife. Knight also had a common-law wife, a former slave, with whom he had five children.

So was Knight a prototypical hippie or an authentic champion of the poor?

That argument reportedly remains unsettled, but not for director Gary Ross, whose new movie -- The Free State of Jones -- treats Knight (Matthew McConaughey) as a heroic figure who believes in racial equality and in simple economic justice: A man deserves to own what he plants, etc.

I don't know whether Ross's interpretation of history is correct, but I do know that his movie possesses a pulse that beats only intermittently. Free State of Jones also suffers because Ross seems to prefer the lengthy accumulation of events to incisive character development.

Looking fierce, a bearded McConaughey blazes with passion as the committed Knight, but the rest of the cast -- including Knight's two wives (Keri Russell and Gugu Mbatha-Raw) -- aren't given enough chance to evolve.

Like nearly everyone else in the movie, they're swamped by Ross's need to cover ground -- from the waning days of the war through reconstruction to a jarringly presented 1948 trial in which Knight's great-grandson is accused of miscegenation, interracial marriage being illegal in Mississippi.

At times, the movie seems like an American take on Robin Hood with Knight's merry band of rebels living an idyllic life in the Mississippi swamps. At other times, the movie seems like a Western; Knight becomes the loner who protects the weak. At still other times, Ross uses photographs of the period to add authenticity. It's as if Ken Burns cropped up in the middle of the story to add his two cents.

There are compelling scenes, Knight discovering the body of a comrade in arms (Mahershala Ali) who has been hanged and castrated by Klansmen who can't accept the Reconstructionist idea that black men could vote. Unfortunately, such harrowing moments emerge amid what amounts to a general slog through an obscure slice of history.

Not widely known, Knight's story proves interesting enough to keep this lead-footed effort from totally foundering. But Ross (The Hunger Games) squanders an opportunity: Too many of the movie's scenes fail to spark in ways that would have taken The Free State of Jones to more memorable levels.