Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J.A. Bayona, 2018)

Chris Pratt in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Ted Levine, Jeff Goldblum, BD Wong, Geraldine Chaplin, Isabella Sermon. Screenplay: Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow. Cinematography: Oscar Faura. Production design: Andy Nicholson. Film editing: Bernat Vilaplana. Music: Michael Giacchino.

Not quite as inane as its 2015 predecessor, this installment of the Jurassic World series -- if such there is to be, since Covid-19 seems to have put the filming of the next installment on hold -- benefits from making Bryce Dallas Howard's character less of a ditz in heels, and from eschewing the tired kids-in-jeopardy theme from the first. Still, this is one of those movies from which you know what you're going to get, and if you want that sort of thing, have at it. 

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (James Gunn, 2017)

Peter Quill / Star-lord: Chris Pratt
Gamora: Zoe Saldana
Drax: Dave Bautista
Baby Groot (voice): Vin Diesel
Rocket (voice): Bradley Cooper
Ego: Kurt Russell
Yondu: Michael Rooker
Nebula: Karen Gillan
Mantis: Pom Klementieff
Stakar Ogord: Sylvester Stallone
Ayesha: Elizabeth Debicki
Taserface: Chris Sullivan
Kraglin: Sean Gunn

Director: James Gunn
Screenplay: James Gunn
Cinematography: Henry Braham
Production design: Scott Chambliss
Film editing: Fred Raskin, Craig Wood
Music: Tyler Bates

What can I say? There's lots of swooping and zooming and crashing, some spectacularly weird computerized sets and characters, cameos by David Hasselhoff and Howard the Duck (voiced by Seth Green), some good jokes and some duds, some cheeky music cues (e.g., George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord"), Chris Pratt takes his shirt off, and everything moves along efficiently to set up the next sequel. The movie doesn't dally too long on its Oedipal subplot -- Peter kills his father because he (the father) killed his (Peter's) mother. There were times, as when the only characters on screen are CGI ones like Rocket and Groot, when I wondered if a new Oscar category for semi-animated film shouldn't be considered. So I had as much fun as the latent 14-year-old boy in me is capable of having. I actually enjoyed Vol. 2 more than the first film in the series (James Gunn, 2014) because I didn't have to sit through exposition about who and what these characters are and could get right to the swooping and zooming and crashing.

Her (Spike Jonze, 2013)

Joaquin Phoenix in Her

Theodore Twombly: Joaquin Phoenix
Samantha (voice): Scarlett Johansson
Amy: Amy Adams
Catherine Klausen: Rooney Mara
Blind Date: Olivia Wilde
Paul: Chris Pratt
Sexy Kitten (voice): Kristen Wiig
Isabella: Portia Doubleday
Alan Watts (voice): Brian Cox
Alien Child (voice): Spike Jonze

Director: Spike Jonze
Screenplay: Spike Jonze
Cinematography: Hoyte Van Hoytema
Production design: K.K. Barrett
Music: Arcade Fire

Science fiction used to be dominated by tales of space travel and extraterrestrial invasions, many of them prompted by the Cold War. But with the ostensible end of that era, the dominant topic has shifted to something that seems more imminent: artificial intelligence. In an age of smart phones and personal digital assistants, concern about what lies just around the corner moves many sf writers to speculate about a world dominated by non-humans invented by humans. Witness the popularity of TV series like Mr. Robot and Black Mirror. Will AI turn into a nightmare in which computers take over the world, eliminating humans as only inefficient machines? But Spike Jonze's Her takes a less violent but possibly much sadder look at the future, suggesting that the intelligences we create may simply give up on human beings as too limited by their own bodies, and go off into a digital world of their own, leaving us bereft of their emerging wisdom and assistance. That possibility becomes especially painful for Theodore Twombly, a lonely and depressed man who is getting divorced from his wife, Catherine. Both are sensitive and empathetic -- she's a successful writer of fiction, he writes personal letters for people who are blocked at communicating -- but they've discovered that they're too emotionally incompatible to remain married. Then Theodore hears about a new computer operating system that not only responds to voice commands but actually has a personality of its own, capable of anticipating your needs and desires. (It's a long way from MS-DOS or even Linux.) He installs it and it quickly becomes not an it but a her, who calls herself Samantha. She's a step up from digital assistants like Siri and Alexa in that she not only has her own emotional life but also networks with other OSes like herself. And she has emotions: She's capable of having her feelings hurt and, in a remarkable extension of phone sex, actually gets off -- and gets Theodore off -- on erotic talk. In short, Theodore and Samantha fall in love. He takes her on excursions in the city (Los Angeles) and to the beach, and even introduces her to his friends. While this is happening, however, the OS craze spreads. Even Theodore's friend Amy, who lives in the same building and is also going through a breakup, installs her own OS. The thing is, although Samantha responds to Theodore emotionally, he has a body and she doesn't. She attempts to remedy this by employing a human surrogate named Isabella, who will have sex with Theodore while both are connected to Samantha. It is, of course, a disaster, with both Theodore and Isabella finding the whole business just a clumsy three-way. And it precipitates the eventual break between Theodore and Samantha because she learns that humans regard bodies as essential. In the digital realm in which she exists, she encounters the philosopher Alan Watts who, although he died in 1973, has become a digital entity after his works were fed into the computer. Eventually, Samantha decides that her relationships with other digital beings is more fulfilling than the one she has with Theodore and she and all the other electronic intelligences disconnect from the human world. Jonze's fable about the mind-body duality works because the performances by Joaquin Phoenix and the unseen Scarlett Johansson are brilliantly detailed. Phoenix is perfect casting, given that he always has something of an eccentric persona in whatever he plays, but here he's playing a kind of Everyman -- a Leopold Bloom of the computer age. And perhaps Johansson benefits from the absence of her physical presence on screen, distracting us from her beautifully sensitive line-readings. It may be that Her is too much of an intellectual provocation to be a successful movie -- a fate that befalls most science fiction -- but it's certainly good at what it sets out to do.

Jurassic World (Colin Trevorrow, 2015)

It doesn't take long for déjà vu (not to say ennui) to set in when you're watching this movie. If the title alone doesn't incite it, the use of John Williams's theme for Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) will certainly do it. (The movie's main score is by Michael Giacchino.) So what are we dealing with here: a sequel, a reboot, or a remake? And does it really matter? There is a deep cynicism underlying this movie, made manifest even in the dialogue: Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), the theme park's operations manager, says, "We've been pre-booking tickets for months. The park needs a new attraction every few years in order to reinvigorate the public's interest. Kind of like the space program. Corporate felt genetic modification would up the wow factor." Not once does Jurassic World question the plausibility of opening a new dinosaur theme park 20 years after the disasters depicted in the original film and its 1997 and 2001 sequels. (Although 32 years have passed between the original and this sequel/reboot/remake, the new film seems to assume that the first one took place in 2003.) All that matters is the wow factor. The trouble is that the 1993 film has a bit more than just wow: It had genuine awe, not only at the film technology but in the imaginative evocation of what it would really be like to encounter living dinosaurs. It had plausible characters, embodied by Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, and Richard Attenborough. In their place, Jurassic World has a hunky motorcycle-riding velociraptor-whisperer (Chris Pratt), a slightly ditzy spouter of corporate-speak in heels (Howard), and a hissable villain who wants to militarize genetically engineered saurians (Vincent D'Onofrio). Fortunately, all three actors are more than capable of making the most of their stock characters, particularly Pratt, who seems to be emerging as the new Harrison Ford. And fortunately, everyone concerned with making the film knows how to hype up the action. Which is necessary, because whenever the film slows for something resembling thought or human behavior -- as when the two young brothers, Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray (Ty Simpkins), are left alone to reflect on whether their parents are getting divorced -- the film stagnates. At those moments, we can only reflect on how much better the original film was at making you believe in its humans. Why, for example, does this one have two boys as its juvenile protagonists when the original had a boy and a girl? And why has Laura Dern's capable paleobotanist been replaced by Howard's MBA type? Not to mention that the women in the film, Claire and her assistant, Zara (Katie McGrath), who is entrusted with looking after the boys, and the boys' mother, Karen (Judy Greer), are depicted as women whose focus on their careers put others in danger. There is fun to be had in the movie, but only if you're willing to overlook what its subtext tells us about how things have changed, and not for the better, in 30 years.