Jur-ASS-ic World

I finally got around to watching Jur-ASS-ic World the other night. My lovely wife got me the Jurassic Park complete collection on blu-ray. It was a very thoughtful gift. A nice box set of four movies, and only one of which is any good. Well, that’s what I thought anyway. So, we sat down to watch the Chris Pratt starring reboot, expecting the worst and hoping for, well, not the worst.

It turns out Jur-ASS-ic World is actually pretty good. Of the four films in the series, it’s the second best after the original. The creators of this film managed to do something that most of today’s reboots are incapable of doing: feature nods to the original but do not slavishly adhere to old tropes so much that they create a remake. *coughStarWarscough*

The story is pretty simple: the new theme park, the aptly named Jurassic World, actually opened to the public. People have been able to visit real dinosaurs for years, and nobody has been eaten. It’s a roaring success, and in order to stay a success, the theme park has genetically engineered a new attraction so the masses won’t get bored with the same old dinosaurs.

A Spectre of My Former Self (James Bond 24)

Daniel Craig returns as Ian Fleming’s James Bond in Spectre, the latest in the long-running film series. After the incredible highs of the previous film, Skyfall, people were eager for the follow-up. And since the same writers, director, producers, and star were returning, it had to be great, right? Right?

Unfortunately, Spectre rehashes the same ground that was tread in the previous film, and does so with less finesse. While it certainly has fantastic action, the rest of the film comes away as forced, leaving us with a middling Bond film.

I’m going to make a lot of references to Skyfall in this review of Spectre. Since pretty much the entire crew came back for the sequel, I think it’s fair to do so. There was a lot to dissect in the latest Bond outing, so I’m going to break down my thoughts into three categories.

The Good

I was immediately pleased to see the opening gun barrel scene at, you know, the opening, after two films shunted it to the end.

As has been the case for all of Craig’s Bond films, the action scenes in Spectre are top-notch. The most incredible takes place during the pre-title sequence. Bond is thrust into the crush of people in Mexico City’s wild Day of the Dead parade. He takes out some bad guys, and gets caught on a helicopter which is careening out of control. The loop-de-loops were thrilling, and the visuals of the holiday festivities alone were worth the price of admission. Bond looked cool as hell in the skeleton outfit he dons in the opening minutes.