Jurassic Park 3D

Posted on April 4, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for intense science fiction terror
Profanity:	Brief strong language (s-word, SOB)
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Smoking, drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense and sometimes graphic peril and violence featuring children and adults, adult characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	April 5, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	April 22, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B00B4804KS

Back in 1993, what was astonishing in “Jurassic Park” was the special effects that seemed to bring dinosaurs back to life. Two decades later, rediscovering Steven Spielberg’s mastery of cinematic storytelling is the best reason to go see it again.

It is back in theaters with the best 3D conversion I’ve seen, avoiding the cheesy Viewmaster effect too often the result of adding 3D effects after a movie has already been filmed. Other than a couple of shots where the foreground is distractingly blurred, the effects are immersive and organic, and the dinosaurs-jumping-toward-you moments are sparing and effective.

My favorite moment in the film has always been when the characters are trying to outrace the charging T-Rex in a jeep. All of a sudden, we see a toothy dinosaur coming at them fast and angry in the side rear-view mirror. It takes a moment for the words on the mirror to register: “Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.” Spielberg has found a way to make us laugh and ramp up the tension at the same time. And it is even more compelling in 3D.

The movie holds up remarkably well, other than the computers and walkie-talkies used by the characters, which will seem to today’s audiences almost as prehistoric as the dinosaurs. On the other hand, its then-state-of-the-art special effects, a combination of mechanical creations and computer images, are still as immediately believable as the high-techiest creatures on screen today.

Spielberg has gone on to weightier and more prestigious projects, but this thrill ride of a popcorn pleasure is one of his best and a masterpiece of the genre. It shows his unparalleled gifts for pacing and for the visual language of movies, and his ability to make us invest in the characters. That is what makes all the special effects pack an emotional wallop. He conveys more with ripples in a glass of water — or a sneeze — than most filmmakers can with 15 pages of dialogue.

The story, based on a book by the late Michael Crichton, begins with hubris, the sin of pride so great that a man places himself with the gods and thus sets the stage for his downfall. John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) is a vastly wealthy man who dreams of extracting dinosaur and plant DNA that has been trapped for millions of years in amber and using it to reboot species of flora and fauna that have not been seen on earth. Spielberg grounds the story with a strong moral core that lets us enjoy the catastrophic destruction ahead without any inconvenient pangs of conscience.

Spielberg also makes sure we have someone to root for, lining up our loyalties with a quick introduction to characters we can both identify with and admire. Laura Dern and Sam Neill play experts in paleolithic animals and plants. They are (1) interested in science, not money (except to pursue more science), and (2) in love. That’s all we need to know. But just to make sure, he adds in a couple of children (Hammond is their grandfather), who not only get our automatic protective instincts going but give Neill’s character a chance to grow. At the beginning, he does not like children. At the end — spoiler alert — he does.

Go to see “Jurassic Park” in 3D. Go to take your kids who were not born when it was released. Go to see it the way it should be seen, on a big screen in a theater filled with happily terrified fans. Go to see Samuel L. Jackson before he was SAMUEL L. JACKSON. And for a young female computer whiz who could grow up to be Sheryl Sandberg. But most of all, go for the resoundingly satisfying delight of watching pure Spielberg movie magic.

Parents should know that this movie has non-stop peril, with characters injured and killed and some graphic scenes of injury, including a severed limb, brief strong language (s-word, SOB), drinking and smoking

Family discussion: How many different controls were in place to prevent the dinosaurs from hurting anyone and how did each one fail? What have been the biggest changes in science and technology since this movie was made? Learn about current experiments with gene splicing of animals by reading Frankenstein’s Cat by Emily Anthes

If you like this, try: your local museum to see dinosaur fossils and Spielberg’s “Jaws” and “Duel”

Watch “Star Trek” Free on Hulu This Week

Posted on March 26, 2013 at 4:45 pm

The original “Star Trek” series is free on Hulu this week and Slate has a great list of the essential episodes everyone needs to see.

But — what, no tribbles?

Upside Down

Posted on March 14, 2013 at 10:48 pm

Argentinean writer-director Juan Solanas has created a work of bracingly singular imagination that is sheer visual pleasure, with some mind-bending ideas and a deeply romantic sensibility.

We are told by Adam (Jim Sturgess) that throughout the universe, there is only one solar system with “dual gravity.” He lives in the “down” side of mirror-image parallel worlds. Interaction between the two worlds is strictly forbidden, with the exception of a tightly controlled transfer of energy by a vast, soulless, and predatory corporation. The laws of physics in this world also impose a barrier. Matter from one side quickly heats up and burns when it is placed in the other. People carry their gravitational pull with them, so that anyone who visits the other side will give themselves away by floating back toward their home turf.

Adam was orphaned following an industrial accident. His only family is his Aunt Becky, who sends him into the mountains to gather a very rare pink bee pollen that stands out in the wintry gray and blue of the bleached-out color scheme. On the highest peak, he glimpses a girl named Eden Moore (Kirsten Dunst) in the mountains of the up world. They are close enough to talk to each other. Within a few years, they are in love. He pulls her down on a rope and with her back up against a protruding crag to keep her from floating back up, they kiss.

But they are tracked down and she is badly hurt trying to escape. Ten years later, Adam learns that Eden has survived the accident and works for the corporation. He has to find her again. But it turns out the totalitarian regime and gravitational barriers are not their biggest obstacles.

Solanas has created two worlds of vast and stunningly intricate detail. Identical desks extend endlessly across both floor and ceiling in cavernous offices. Eden likes to drink upside-down cocktails, blue liquid served in a stem-up glass and slurped from below. And the consequences of reverse gravity are imaginatively (if not always consistently) explored. Adam remembers to use hairspray to help him pass as a top world resident, to make sure that his hair won’t hang the wrong way (up instead of down) when he goes to see Eden. But when he hides out in the men’s room, he does not think about the fact that his pee will hit the ceiling, not the urinal. His early experiments to help him pass for an “up” have a limited time span that adds a Cinderella quality to the story.

Timothy Spall provides zesty comic relief as Adam’s “up” world colleague and Dunst and Sturgess have a swoon-worthy chemistry that makes the story feel, well, grounded. The daring originality of Solanas’ vision more than makes up for some narrative lags and makes this one of the most promising debuts in recent memory.

Parents should know that this film includes peril, chases, and some violence, including shooting, with some characters injured. There is a fire and there are references to sad deaths and a brief image of hanging. A character smokes cigars and some drink cocktails and there is brief potty humor.

Family discussion: What kind of government is in place in this movie? Why is there income disparity between the two worlds?

If you like this, try: “Looper” and “Solaris”

Warm Bodies

Posted on February 3, 2013 at 9:48 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for zombie violence and some language
Profanity:	Brief strong language (b-word, s-word, f-word)
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Beer
Violence/ Scariness:	Zombie violence with some graphic and disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	February 1, 2013
Date Released to DVD:	June 3, 2013
Amazon.com ASIN:	B008220BLG

You don’t often hear the word “adorable” used to describe a zombie movie, but that is probably because you don’t often have a story about a zombie in love.

Oh, it’s still a zombie movie. Brains get eaten. In fact, that’s how our undead anti-hero, known only as R (Nicholas Hoult) falls in love. We meet him as a zombie who has a semblance of an inner life, already an arresting notion. The whole deal about zombies is that they are undead, soulless creatures who have just one remaining motive or compulsion — they need to eat, preferably brains. This gives them an important advantage over the rest of us, with our ambivalences, consciences, and that pesky ability to reason that requires us to consider a range of competing considerations. They also have an even more important advantage — being undead, they cannot really be killed.

R introduces himself via an internal narration that provides a comic contrast with his very limited mode of oral expression and compromised memory. R is all he can recall of his name. As he explains when he introduces his “best friend,” M (Rob Corddry), “by best friend I mean we occasionally grunt and stare awkwardly at each other.” He spends his days trudging stiffly through the airport, now the home base for the zombies, until he gets the urge to feed. A part of him longs to be human and a bigger part of him fears turning into one of the “bonies,” a further devolution from zombie, skeletal figures who are much more aggressive, eating their own skin. “They’ll eat anything with a heartbeat. I will, too, but at least I’m conflicted about it.”

There is one thing he likes about eating brains, “the part that makes me feel human again, a little less dead.” R eats the brains of a young man named Perry (Dave Franco of “21 Jump Street”), which give him access to Perry’s memories and to his feelings, especially his feelings of love for his girlfriend, Julie (the warmly appealing Teresa Palmer of “Take Me Home Tonight”). R and Julie — yes, there is a balcony scene, too. Julie lives in a walled, post-apocalyptic city ruled by her father (John Malkovich). The surviving humans are at war with the zombies. But R rescues Julie and as they are hiding out, his love for her begins to make him more human.

Hoult easily makes us understand why Julie is drawn to R, and his small, gradual awakening to the pleasures and pains of being human are beautifully chosen. Based on the book by Isaac Marion and with able script and direction from Jonathan Levine, this works as a zombie movie and as a romance. The massive losses have caused the humans to jettison some of their humanity for survival. Julie’s friend Nora (Analeigh Tipton of “Crazy, Stupid, Love”) to abandon her dream of being a nurse to be an armed forager. She has held on to a small store of make-up in hopes of a return to a more civilized life and tells Julie ruefully, “I wish the internet was working so I could look up what is wrong with you.” The movie’s nicest moments are when Julie must pretend to be a zombie and R must pretend to be a human. We see how superficial the differences have become and M and some of the other zombies find their hearts re-animated through the power of longing for love and Julie’s father has to open his heart despite his grief at losing his wife. R’s concerns about how he appears to Julie (“Don’t be creepy! Don’t be creepy!”) are only a slightly amplified version of what we all go through when we meet someone who inspires us to enlarge our spirits and be on our best behavior. And a simple “hi” turns out to be a poignant reminder of what being human really means.

Parents should know that this movie has fantasy/sci-fi violence, some graphic, with disturbing images, guns, brain-eating, knife, and weed-wacker attacks, some strong language (b-word, one f-word), a beer, and some lingerie.

Family discussion: What is the significance of the names R and Julie? What makes R more human?

If you like this, try: “Shaun of the Dead” and “Zombieland”

Dr. Who Christmas Special 2012

Posted on December 14, 2012 at 8:00 am

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