Tag: Sam Neill

Jurassic World Dominion (2022, Colin Trevorrow)

It’s not hard to pinpoint what’s wrong with Jurassic World Dominion, the inglorious (hopefully) end of a twenty-nine-year-old franchise. Director Trevorrow does a bad job directing, he and co-writer Emily Carmichael do a bottom-of-the-barrel job with the script, the actors all seem contractually bound and miserable (even the new additions, with one exception), and Michael Giacchino’s musical score is so terrible they should’ve stopped payment on the check. Otherwise, Dominion would be fine. Just needs a better director, an entirely different story and script, and—I don’t know—the music from the original Jurassic Park SEGA Genesis game instead of Giacchino.

The film opens with a news break, which Trevorrow and Carmichael are incapable of writing. Dominion’s what happens when blockbusters don’t even need to hire script doctors so they don’t embarrass themselves. Trevorrow’s only positive quality is his dogged determination in not letting each horrifyingly embarrassing moment of film slow him from reaching the next. Dominion’s third act is nowhere near as bad as it could be, but the first and second acts—all two endless hours of them—are crashing behind it and the debris distracts from the film at least not getting any worse. Except for Giacchino’s music. Giacchino’s music always gets worse, right into the credits.

Jasmine Chiu plays the newscaster. She wouldn’t be believable as a TikToker on “CSI: Sheboygan,” so introducing twenty-nine years of cloned dinosaur backstory is out of the question. Especially since her news report also sets up this movie’s villain—and the only person who seems like he’s having a good time—Campbell Scott. Scott’s playing a character from the first Jurassic Park, but the part’s recast (for good reasons). Now, Scott’s got a lousy part. He’s playing the not-so-smart head of a genetics company; they’re using prehistoric DNA to cure diseases and create monster bugs. The monster bugs are important. If Trevorrow were any good, there’d be a great Godzilla 1985 reference. But he’s not any good. Instead of an on-point Godzilla bug reference, there are desperate Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Jaws references like Trevorrow’s still sucking up to executive producer Steven Spielberg.

But Trevorrow directs Scott like he’s doing an incompetent, megalomaniac hipster Steve Jobs. It’s a string of terrible decisions and Scott’s willingness to commit to the bit and somehow get through. He’s never good; it’s impossible, with Carmichael and Trevorrow’s lousy script, for anyone to actually be good, but he’s never boring, bored, or defeated.

Everyone else goes through those emotions, though no one more despondently than Chris Pratt. He’s fifth fiddle in his own franchise, but he doesn’t even care. He’s got one good scene, and it’s from Congo. The rest of the time, he looks like he’s trying to disappear, similar to Bryce Dallas Howard.

Laura Dern and Sam Neill work pretty hard to make their parts work. Either Trevorrow didn’t direct them, or he told them to play their characters exactly the same as they did thirty years ago, only Neill doesn’t have the same American accent anymore. It’s a better accent, but it’s a different one. They get some genuinely terrible dialogue but get through all right.

Also back is Jeff Goldblum, who doesn’t get very much to do, even when he’s around. The second half of the movie is about putting the Jurassic World characters together with the Jurassic Park characters to they can fight the Thanosaurus at the end. Goldblum’s around, but it’s like Trevorrow and Carmichael are scared to write him. Goldblum seems ready to work but never gets asked to do any.

Isabella Sermon plays a cloned human who’s supposedly important to the monster bug plot. It’s all nonsense. Sermon’s fine, but fine in the way you’re being nice about a middling child actor. She was in the last movie.

Then BD Wong’s back, of course. He’s shockingly good in a silly role.

New characters this movie—besides Campbell (sort of)—are pilot DeWanda Wise and lackey Mamoudou Athie. The film would be an excellent showcase for both actors if Trevorrow weren’t terrible. But, instead, he flops with both. More with Wise because she’s got more to do—she and Pratt are chemistry-free action buddies. Athie’s just around for various exposition dumps and plot contrivances, but he’s not bad doing them.

Technically, Dominion’s fine. Good CGI. Good photography from John Schwartzman. Not good editing from Mark Sanger, but he’s working from Trevorrow’s footage, set to Giacchino’s music. There’s no way to edit Dominion into a good movie with those quality sinkholes.

Despite teaming up two generations of Jurassic adventurers, Dominion’s a bad, boring, anti-trip down memory lane. Even when Trevorrow’s aping old Park moments, they’re just so desperate they don’t get the nostalgia going; instead, they just further embarrass this entry.

All set to Giacchino’s godawful music, of course.

The Hunt for Red October (1990, John McTiernan)

Sean Connery, who’s so important to the workings of Hunt for Red October he could easily be “and special guest star” credit instead of top-billed, has his last scene on the bridge of his ship, giving a very Captain Kirk read of a quote. It’s something about sailing and it’s got to break the cultural barrier and touch the audience too, which says something about the target audience.

The film has an Oppenheimer quote earlier so I thought maybe they’d do something with him again but no. Connery goes out on a Christopher Columbus quote, which dates the thing more than all the Soviet and U.S. Cold War stuff. Though there’s a funny part where Connery mopes to first officer and confident Sam Neill about how the decades-long submarine cold war hasn’t had any battles or memorials, just casualties. So I guess if there were battles and memorials… it’d be… good?

It’s unclear. We don’t get a lot into Connery’s character—that scene ends up being more of a showcase for Neill than anything else—but apparently the core of the character is he wants to fights with sticks and stones, not nukes. Or something. Maybe he’s sad about his wife dying. Everyone acts like he’s super sad about it, but Connery’s barely in the movie and there’s no character development for him.

Meanwhile, Alec Baldwin gets all sorts of pseudo-character development though he’s only around to bring the plot threads together. There are three main ones, with a couple splinters; first, there’s Connery, who’s either defecting from the USSR and giving the United States a fancy new Russian submarine because reasons or he’s lost it and is going to nuke the Eastern Seaboard. Then there’s CIA analyst, desk jockey Baldwin who flies from London to Washington on a hunch for something tangentially related but not enough; luckily the script’s perfectly comfortable being entirely contrived, so pretty soon Baldwin’s on an adventure. Then there’s Scott Glenn and Courtney B. Vance. They’re on an American submarine and they’re tracking Connery’s sub before Baldwin even gets to the plot.

I’d hope someone realized if they were taking it seriously, one of those four actors would have to be the protagonist but Red October does what it can do minimize its need for a protagonist. Sure, it’s Baldwin. But not really at all. And not just because Baldwin’s performance is goofy. And the range of Red October’s performances seem to be who can best combine macho and stoic, with silver fox Connery (it’s a stunning hairpiece) the obvious top dog. McTiernan’s direction of the actors is middling, with no one ever paying off as much as they should. Baldwin excepted because he’s so absurdly miscast. The part’s crap, sure, but McTiernan especially should’ve realized when the male action hero talks to himself during tense situations it needs to create at least an empathetic response.

Instead, Baldwin’s whiney and exasperating and artificial. He does get into his action sequence at the end, however. Shows more energy than anything else he does in the entire film. Rolling with enthusiasm. Literally.

Connery’s got no meat to the part but he’s pretty good. Likable for sure. Red October works with him being omnipresent but not overbearing. Neill’s almost good but the part’s too shallow. The only thing worse than no personality in Red October is some personality dump in exposition. Tim Curry actually makes out best as far as personality just because he’s only got to play annoying and screenwriters Larry Ferguson and Donald E. Stewart can do annoying.

Scott Glenn’s the best of the leads. Even he’s not particularly good, he’s just good for the circumstances. The movie doesn’t need good actors, it just needs competent ones. It’s about a Russian submarine nuking New York—maybe—the stakes are inherent.

James Earl Jones is fine as Baldwin’s boss. Ditto Richard Jordan as a government guy. Fred Thompson’s good, of course, as one of the places Baldwin goes on his quest to find Connery and the grail. Whoops, wrong movie.

Vance is really good, which isn’t easy because the movie makes fun of him for being a Black man who knows classical music and is good at his job. Anthony Peck’s great as Glenn’s first officer.

It’s a big cast and it takes a lot for anyone to be actually bad. Not when Baldwin’s running around making it seem like a car commercial on steroids. Though Joss Ackland’s pretty blah as the Russian ambassador. He’s only got two scenes so who cares.

Technically, Red October starts better than it finishes. McTiernan holds back on the big underwater submarine special effects sequences, making it seem like they’re going to be great. Only then it turns out they don’t have the torpedo composites down so all the best special effects are the submarine suspense ones. Even the peculiar “race through the underwater canyons” sequence has solid effects… it’s just a complete waste of time.

The movie hinges on something it hides from the audience to get from the second act to third so it’s not like Red October’s aiming particularly high anyway.

Basil Poledouris’s music is low mediocre. A big disappointment. Ditto Jan de Bont’s photography; it’s never particularly impressive but there’s some terrible lighting in important scenes—neither McTiernan and de Bont seem to have a handle on the submarine parts of the movie, which seems like it’d be important but whatever.

The Hunt for Red October is a long two hours and fifteen minutes. A compelling lead—any compelling lead—would probably help things quite a bit. It does pick up in the second half, which is quite nice. It’s not like the pace improving makes it obvious the first hour is boring… the first hour is very boring as it unfolds, so the speed-up is welcome and unexpected.

If Baldwin weren’t such a flat lead, who knows. But there’d still be lots of other problems. Like Terence Marsh’s occasionally anachronistic, occasionally silly production design.

Finally, doesn’t matter, but the sound editing and design is excellent.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016, Taika Waititi)

I kept waiting for something to go wrong in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The first act is this exceptionally tight, efficient narrative—but with time for montage digressions as director (and screenwriter) Waititi gently examines lead Julian Dennison as his life goes through a pastoral upheaval.

Dennison is a tween on the edge of teen and has been bopping around the foster care system his entire life. He’s at his last attempt at a home placement—Rima Te Wiata is going to take him; she just happens to have a farm on the edge of the New Zealand bush (New Zealand bush being rainforest). So city boy to the wilderness.

We also meet intense but not empathetic child services worker Rachel House (and her suffering flunky Oscar Kightley); they’re going to both be important later on. Especially for absurdist—but good absurdist—humor.

And then there’s Sam Neill; he’s Te Wiata’s husband who she didn’t tell child services about (but they don’t care, apparently). He’s a gruff, tough, farming guy who’s not into the foster dad thing but loves Te Wiata. Waititi leans heavy on making Neill mysterious in the first act, but we soon find out the social awkwardness around Dennison isn’t just for dramatic impact; Neill’s an odd duck. It’s a particularly choice part because no matter what, there’s a hard limit to how much Neill’s going to have to do. The character’s got insurmountable constraints, which gives Neill and Waititi a lot of room to flex without having to worry about breaking through.

Also it’s not Neill’s movie. It’s Dennison’s movie.

Waititi splits Wilderpeople into chapters, with the first playing more like a short subject, complete with its own epical structure. The chapters end up working out, especially in the second act, which has Neill and Dennison thrown together by tragedy, on the run from House while trying to do right by Te Wiata.

Most of the film takes place over uncounted miles of New Zealand rainforest, with occasional stopovers at ranger stations or whatever, and Waititi makes the bush feel like a consistent, familiar setting without it actually ever being the same spot. Except when he does one of the really cool, digitally enabled composite shots—the camera pans in a circle, capturing the characters in the space at different times. Sometimes because they’re lost, sometimes because they’re found, sometimes because they’re on the run. Usually there’s great music accompanying it. If there’s not great music, then it’s just great sound. Wilderpeople, technically, is pristine work.

So while Dennison and Neill play fugitive—no one-armed references but a great Terminator one (though nothing compared to a First Blood riff, which is out of nowhere but absolutely phenomenal because Waititi makes it absurd, hilarious, and also exactly what the scene needs). Waititi’s rather good with the asides and outbursts. They always end up fueling something new in Wilderpeople, even at the very end.

The film’s a bit of a character study grafted to a wilderness adventure, complete with faithful dogs, stupid hunters, and bush folk vs. city folk wisdom. Oh, and Dennison having his “I like girls differently now” moment, after he meets Tioreore Ngatai-Melbourne. Ngatai-Melbourne’s only in it for a bit but she’s fantastic and gets to show Dennison’s able to maintain the high level of acting even without the precise structuring of his scenes with the foster family. Dennison’s great, full stop, but Waititi’s also made a film where it’s so strong on everything else it could get away with him being one note.

He’s not, which surges Wilderpeople ahead.

Along the way, we find out more about Dennison, Neill, and Te Wiata while they’re finding out about each other and themselves. Maybe if Te Wiata and Dennison weren’t so good in the first act when they’re doing their getting to know you scenes, Neill would be able to steal some of the thunder but he’s very much there to give Dennison a frequent foil. It’s an exceptionally well-acted film, with Waititi’s direction of those actors as integral as the performances to its success.

The third act falls apart a bit because of course it falls apart a bit; once the film hits a certain scale, it’s inevitable the conclusion is going to be rough. Waititi holds it together through a bit of a too fast segue to the superior epilogue.

Wilderpeople’s fairly great. Waititi’s direction, his script, Dennison, Neill, Te Wiata, House, Ngatai-Melbourne, editors Tom Eagles, Yana Gorskaya, and Luke Haigh—lots of spectacular work on display.

Restoration (1995, Michael Hoffman)

Restoration is two parts period drama, one part character study, one part comedy. It’s often tragic, both because of events occurring and because it takes place in 1665 England and 1665 wasn’t a great time to be alive given the state of medical knowledge versus, you know, disease. Or mental health. The general complete misunderstanding of mental health (though at least they don’t think people are possessed with demon) plays a big part in the dramatics, the comedy, and the character study. There’s always the possibility for comedy… until the plague shows up. Once the plague arrives, it’s full dramatics for a while. The film doesn’t lose its sense of humor, just—appropriately—doesn’t employ it.

The film tells the story of 17th century medical doctor Robert Downey Jr. (who does an amazing job playing English). Despite innate medical talents, Downey doesn’t like how it’s the 17th century and people die from terrible things all the time. It’s a downer. So when he lucks into a court appointment for the King (a delightful Sam Neill), he takes it. It means he gets to drink and carouse and not go bankrupt from it like if he were a working stiff. Things get complicated when Neill then makes Downey marry one of his mistresses (Polly Walker) to legitimize her because Downey immediately falls for her. This portion of the film, after the gruesome medical realities of the opening, is the most comedic. Especially after Hugh Grant shows up as a portrait painter who annoys Downey so Downey annoys him back. Downey’s also got a sidekick—an affable Ian McKellen—during this sequence.

But it’s 1665 and Downey’s in his position by grace of the King and when the King decides no more grace… down Downey falls. He ends up in the 17th century equivalent of a sanitarium, run by Quakers—Downey’s best friend, David Thewlis is a Quaker, which the film actually never plays for jokes when contrasting Thewlis and Downey in the first act. In fact, Downey’s played for the laughs. A fantastic Ian McDiarmid runs the sanitarium and Meg Ryan is one of the… well, patients. They call them “inmates” though; not treating them unkindly but bound by the Quakerism when it comes to trying to help them. Outsider Downey’s the one who has the idea maybe people suffering mental health problems can (and should) be helped. If one of the better off patients who’s clearly suffering from profound depression and happens to look like Meg Ryan… well, bonus.

The plague’s arrival changes everything—again—and puts Downey through multiple harrowing experiences, some small, some big, some internal, some external. Rupert Walters’s script is never particularly outstanding, but the plotting and pacing are fantastic. Restoration moves at a steady clip, knowing exactly when it needs some humor, knowing exactly when it needs some sympathy. Hoffman’s direction of the actors is quite good, making up for his mostly mediocre composition. He and cinematographer Oliver Stapleton do a fine job showing off the beautiful, ornate Eugenio Zanetti production design—the film’s got some great sets, gorgeous costumes, and so on—but Hoffman’s pretty obvious with all of it. He’s clearly more confident with the lighter elements than the more serious ones. It works out but it’s where Restoration feels like a missed opportunity. Hoffman feels essential when it comes to the performances, but not with the film’s visuals.

Downey’s character only develops because of the people he encounters in his life—Thewlis, Walker, Ryan, Neill, McKellen, Grant—but none of the supporting parts are substantial. Neill has a lot of screen time, but he’s a plot foil. He’s the King after all. Ryan’s kind of got the biggest supporting part, but not really any more screen time than any of the other supporting parts. Her performance (as an Irish woman) is fine; she’s very likable. She and Downey definitely work well together. But not a great part, as written.

Everyone’s good—Walker, Thewlis, Grant. No matter what they do, funny, sad, whatever, it’s all about how they play off Downey anyway. The film’s narrative distance is superbly steady in its tracking of Downey.

James Newton Howard’s score is good. Appropriately lush and dramatic. Restoration is a well-executed production.

The key is Downey, who’s essential to the film’s success even though he shouldn’t be—i.e. that quarter character study. Downey’s experience of the film’s events and how they affect him is the film’s greatest achievement. Downey’s performance sets the tone, everything else has to meet that level. Great performance in a solidly but not superlatively written or directed film. The film’s all about Downey, letting it hinge entirely on his performance. And he excels.

Thanks to Downey, and also Hoffman, Walters, Ryan, Neill, and everyone else in various degrees, Restoration’s consistently successful.

In the Mouth of Madness (1994, John Carpenter)

In the Mouth of Madness is a rarity. It’s a film with some terrible, terrible parts, yet it needs to be longer. There needs to be more terribleness for it to be better. And it can’t even be much better, because those terrible parts break it, but it would be somewhat better. It would definitely be a better viewing experience.

Here are the film’s problems, in no particular order. Gary B. Kibbe’s photography. Madness is Panavision aspect and Kibbe shoots everything spherically distorted. Well, not everything, but the most visually distinctive parts. One of the film’s more conceptual problems is what visually compels. Kibbe screws up the compelling visual narrative pacing. Maybe Carpenter told him to do it, in which case it’s Carpenter’s bad. But Kibbe’s photography is never great. With the sets, it sometimes looks like a shoddy attempt at a Shining rip-off and Madness isn’t that thing at all.

Next problem. Sam Neill. Fourth-rate Harrison Ford who everyone thought was just a second-rate Harrison Ford. He can’t hold his accent, which would be a hilarious bit for the film to acknowledge, but of course it doesn’t. Even though Madness eventually wants to be meta, it’s like Carpenter doesn’t really have any interest in it, which brings me to the next problem. The script. The script is awful.

Even though Carpenter goes for his traditional possessive titling on Madness, it’s not his vanity project. It’s writer and executive producer Michael De Luca’s vanity project. So while Carpenter can do a nod to this Quatermass here, that Corman there, this Lovecraft adaptation here, that whatever there, he’s still got this disastrous script. De Luca’s doing zeitgeist–Neill is hunting down Jürgen Prochnow’s Stephen King-esque author, not Prochnow’s Lovecraft-esque author. The script wants to be pop culture, the narrative needs literary musing, Carpenter’s doing this Lovecraft movie homage thing. Not to mention De Luca also models the structure after a film noir (Double Indemnity in particular) and Carpenter couldn’t, frankly, give less of a shit about that narrative structure. He goes out of his way not to acknowledge it.

And if you’re not going to acknowledge your femme fatale, maybe you shouldn’t have a femme fatale. Madness’s femme fatale is Julie Carmen. She’s Prochnow’s editor and Neill’s sidekick. Carmen and Neill have no chemistry, which isn’t really surprising since she’s awful. He’s awful too, but she’s awful in a different way. She doesn’t have a part. He’s just bad at his part. The film also breaks its narrative device to run off with her adventures; if the movie were a little better, it might be annoying but it’s not. The script’s already been inept at that point.

Prochnow’s bad, but it isn’t his fault. He’s just doing his schtick. It’s why he’s in the movie.

Stylistically, the front is stronger than the back. Once Neill and Carmen find Prochnow, Edward A. Warschilka’s editing starts to falter. It was one of the few excellent things about the beginning. By the end, Carpenter relies heavily on jump scares. They aren’t scary, they’re occasionally desperate, but at least he’s enthusiastic about them. There are some okay visual ideas but there’s no time for Madness to make them stick. It isn’t just the film needing another ten or fifteen minutes of visual presence to make an impression, it’s the order of the shots. Part of the film’s gimmick (Prochnow writing reality) means visual trickery. Carpenter, Kibbe and Warschilka just blaze through instead of making anything distinct.

Charlton Heston’s in a “guest starring” role and he gives one of the film’s better performances. If you’ve got a hackneyed Heston cameo and he gives the best performance, you know the film’s got problems. Bernie Casey’s good, Peter Jason’s got a nice scene. John Glover. He’s fine. Frances Bay should have a great small role and she doesn’t. Because the script’s crap and Carpenter never pushes against it.

Oh, and who thought giving Wilhelm von Homburg the film’s most important part would be a good idea? He’s awful, but of course he’s awful, he’s obviously awful and no one should’ve kept him in. You feel bad for him. But only him. Everyone else who’s awful, you blame them.

Just because it’s an apocalyptic downer doesn’t mean the entire thing should feel like a surrender, yet it does. Madness is a defeat.

Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992, John Carpenter)

Memoirs of an Invisible Man is pointless. Most of its problems stem from the film’s lack of focus–in some ways, given Chevy Chase is a stockbroker and leads a life of extreme comfort, it ought to be an examination of eighties yuppies. Only a few years late. Except it’s obvious director Carpenter doesn’t want to do that story; he’s less engaged in those scenes than any of the others.

Carpenter does surprisingly well with the romantic comedy angle. The sequence where Chase meets Daryl Hannah is beautifully shot.

The film’s also not about Chase being disconnected from the world before he becomes invisible–that aspect comes up in some terrible dialogue, very poorly presented by Sam Neill. Neill plays the film’s villain, a ruthless CIA operative who has a gang of poorly defined sidekicks and an asinine boss (Stephen Tobolowsky). If it weren’t for Tobolowsky’s terrible performance, Neill would give the worst one in the film.

A lot of Memoirs relies on Chase’s charm and, in some ways, he does deliver. Not often enough and not with enough quantity, however. The script’s really bad when it comes to defining his character; the first act is a particularly mess, then though Rosalind Chao is excellent as his secretary for two minutes.

Michael McKean plays his friend. He’s ineffectual, but not bad.

Another big problem is the narration. Memoirs is desperate for Fletch appeal; it doesn’t have it.

It moves quickly, the special effects are great, but it’s a stinker otherwise.

Escape Plan (2013, Mikael Håfström)

Given how much fun the actors have in Escape Plan, there are a couple big unfortunates. First is director Håfström; he isn’t able to direct the actors through the poorly scripted parts and he also can’t direct the one-liners. Plan is the first time Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger have ever done a buddy picture together. For a ten minute stretch, it’s like there’s nothing but one-liners.

The second problem is the script. It flounders when setting up Stallone’s character. He works with Curtis Jackson, Amy Ryan and Vincent D’Onofrio. D’Onofrio has a lot of fun in a tiny part–these three characters only show up for maybe five or six minutes of runtime–but he completely overshadows Ryan and Jackson. They’re just doing the script, D’Onofrio turns the weak script into loads of entertainment.

Another person having fun in an underwritten role is Jim Caviezel as the warden. The film concerns Stallone (as a prison break specialist) and Schwarzenegger (as a lackey for a Julian Assange type) breaking out of a prison. Caviezel turns the part into a whirlwind of overcompensation, meanness and pure fun. He’s like Willy Wonka at times.

Of the two leads, Schwarzenegger’s better. He didn’t suffer through the lame setup with Ryan and Jackson.

Faran Tahir is really good as another inmate.

Plan is really entertaining for the bulk of it, just not the beginning or the end. It needed a better script doctor.

It also needed better music. Alex Heffes’s score’s atrocious.

Jurassic Park III (2001, Joe Johnston)

Jurassic Park III is about a third of a movie. Even though it runs ninety minutes (minus however many minutes in end credits), there aren’t any characters and the running time is mostly spent on the action beats of a better movie. Instead of being a movie about genetically engineered dinosaurs left to their own devices and intruded upon, it’s a monster movie. And it’s a pretty boring one at that.

Johnston occasionally has moments of directorial flare, but few of them have to do with the action sequences. For the most part, the dinosaur action looks cheap and poorly conceived. I was shocked to read the film actually filmed in Hawaii. The terrible composite shots suggest it’s a soundstage creation.

It’s more a sequel to the second entry and references to the first seem inappropriate, regardless of Sam Neill and Laura Dern’s presences. None of the characters are likable—why do all these Jurassic Park movies need annoying kids? Trevor Morgan isn’t bad, but he’s useless. Unfortunately, many of the adults are useless; Alessandro Nivola is probably the prime example.

Why Johnston casted John Diehl and Bruce A. Young and wasted them is beyond me.

Neill’s not terrible, but he’s barely in it so who cares… I guess Téa Leoni gives the film’s “best” performance. Her or Dern in her cameo. And it’s hard to hate a film with Taylor Nichols in a bit part.

But why hire Don Davis, who composes fine scores, just to rearrange John Williams?

Jurassic Park (1993, Steven Spielberg)

Two big things I noticed about Jurassic Park. First, it’s still a superior use of CG. It really shows how digital effects do not get better with technology or budget or whatever; being used by a good filmmaker makes all the difference.

And Spielberg does a fine job with Jurassic Park. It’s an incredibly impersonal film, which the second thing I noticed really showcases. Sam Neill’s protagonist is so shallow, even Bob Peck’s character—who gets no back story—comes off deeper. Some of the problem is with Neill’s performance. He can’t keep his American accent—in fact, at the beginning it seems like he’s supposed to be Australian, but then he starts suppressing it, only to then let it come through. Laura Dern’s character is even more shallow, but she manages to make the character work with her performance. Neill gets better towards the end, when he finally stops whining about not liking kids.

Once the film gets going, it has a fantastic pace. Spielberg’s direction is strongest here in that regard—he knows how to make the film work and does; he also knows how to get good performances out of almost all the cast. Neill isn’t really his fault.

Besides Peck, Jeff Goldblum, Martin Ferrero and Samuel L. Jackson are standouts. Richard Attenborough teeters between endearing and good. He sells his most important scene.

The John Williams score is excellent, the Dean Cundey photography is good (but not singular).

Jurassic Park’s a fine, pseudo-smart popcorn movie.

Daybreakers (2009, Peter Spierig and Michael Spierig)

According to the gaggle of morons who saw the film in the same theater I did, the end of Daybreakers is stupid. Why anyone would release what’s essentially a film noir slash action slash vampire movie in American theaters is beyond me… at least outside of areas with high literacy rates (I live in a low literacy rate area, lucky me).

It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s violent, Daybreakers is the kind of movie no one makes anymore. It has a lot in common, in terms of execution (it’s well-directed, well-written, well-acted), with Carpenter’s Escape from New York. It’s a genre picture, there are effects, but it’s not for the pleebs. I can’t even imagine how Lionsgate tried to advertise it.

The film keeps its vampire conventions simple and traditional so it can play better. It’s future America with vampires is frightening banal. From the start, the world of vampires isn’t a leap of the imagination, it’s completely believable.

The Spierig’s direction is, just like it was in their first film, fantastic. Here they do a lot more, since it’s such a mix of genres. I’m actually glad Daybreakers isn’t a hit, since it’d be terrible to see them do a Matrix someday. Though I would love to see them do a romantic comedy. They’re fantastic filmmakers.

The acting’s all great, especially, shockingly, Sam Neill, who finally learned how to chew scenery. Willem Dafoe’s hilarious in his part of a good ol’ boy (written by Australians).

Wonderful stuff.

3/4★★★

CREDITS

Written and directed by Peter Spierig and Michael Spierig; director of photography, Ben Nott; edited by Matt Villa; music by Christopher Gordon; production designer, George Liddle; produced by Bryan Furst, Sean Furst and Chris Brown; released by Lionsgate.

Starring Ethan Hawke (Edward Dalton), Claudia Karvan (Audrey Bennett), Willem Dafoe (Lionel “Elvis” Cormac), Michael Dorman (Frankie Dalton), Vince Colosimo (Caruso), Isabel Lucas (Alison) and Sam Neill (Charles Bromley).

RELATED