OJ's Movie Review - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

"Taking dinosaurs off this island is the worst idea in the long, sad history of bad ideas." Was Jeff Goldblum right? Let's see...

   So Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is the follow-up to Jurassic World of 2015 and the fifth film in the Jurassic franchise as a whole. It's a franchise that brings me much nostalgia as I grew up watching the first three over and over again. 

   Here we've got Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard back as the main leads from the previous film and to be honest, they do just as fine of a job as they did before. I don't think I'm particularly invested in the characters, but that's the writing rather than the acting. I still can't decide whether Pratt suits a more serious role but I like Howard in a lot of things so I enjoyed her performance here. Other cast members include Ted Levine who I enjoyed quite a lot as Mr military man; I was a big fan of Monk back in the day and hadn't realized he was in this film so he was a highlight for me. As far as antagonists go, however, he was the only one that was interesting. Rafe Spall's character was pretty generic and B.D. Wong had so little screentime it seemed almost unnecessary. Talking of short screentime though, Jeff Goldblum returns to the franchise after last appearing in 1997's The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and even what little we had of him I really felt like I was watching Dr. Ian Malcom again and that was just great.

   Moving into the plot, I'd say it was quite a different sort of Jurassic film this year. As all the promotional material has informed us, the park is gone and so the majority of the film is set in mainland America. The parts set on the island are entertaining enough but I can understand why they would move on as the abandoned, overgrown facility aspect was explored extensively in the second and third films. Once we're off the island we're really only in one particular location which still gives the isolated feel and we've come to know. The story in itself had some interesting parts for sure; I enjoyed the concept of auctioning off the dinosaurs and some other ideas I had not expected in a Jurassic film, but whether it was because of unoriginal writing or too-revealing trailers I have to say a lot of this film was very predictable.

   One thing I do want to mention is the tone J.A. Bayona has given this film. He's done a few horror-type films in the past and he's brought some of that here which I think worked. But what I was really impressed with was how much it felt like a Jurassic film, in terms of sound design and set design; especially the opening scene, which is my favorite sequence of the entire movie, it really felt like something out of the 1993 original.

   Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is quite different and experimental for the franchise but in the context of films as a whole, it's rather unoriginal and predictable. In the end, I'd say perhaps my own expectations and connection to the franchise were too high but I am looking forward to where the next one goes. 

7/10

OJ's Movie Review - Solo: A Star Wars Story

The second Star Wars anthology film has arrived after a very rocky production period. But did it survive?

   From the beginning, I don't think fans were particularly looking forward to this movie. Then Phil Lord and Chris Miller were attached and we had hope, and then they were infamously unattached and it was at that moment we knew this wasn't going to go well. But seasoned director Ron Howard does, however, manage to deliver a cohesive and quite entertaining film despite the problems. It certainly wasn't like 2015's Fant4stic where it was incredibly obvious that the studio had chopped and refilmed 50% of the movie which ended up a complete disastrous mess. Here, Solo keeps continuity and kept me entertained, at least on a first watch anyway.

   The story was as you would expect a Han Solo origin movie to be; we have our main man played surprisingly well by Alden Ehrenreich, he starts a smuggler's life, meets Chewie and has a bit of an adventure in a fresh Millenium Falcon. There aren't any real problems in the plot really; it's just a paint-by-numbers Star Wars movie. So I think watching it for the first time you can enjoy it on the very base fact you're in this universe again which is fun and we do get an interesting look at the underbelly of society a bit more than we're used to. I've not rewatched it yet but to be honest, I don't feel the need to for a while; it was a checklist of various Han Solo attributes and how he aquired them and now I know, I don't feel any different about the character really. So plot-wise I'd say they played it safe which doesn't surprise me after the controversial Last Jedi, but there are a few narrative points they could've have fleshed out a bit more and I personally wasn't a big fan of the ending.

   The cast I actually enjoyed quite a lot. As I mentioned Ehrenreich plays Solo pretty well, I mean he's no carbon copy but he didn't have to be. He still has the odd familiar mannerism and way he says certain things which I liked but he still had his own sort of personality in there too. We have Paul Bettany in there as our villain and I actually liked him a lot; he was a sort of gangster boss who was serious but also a little unhinged which made me chuckle a few times so that was entertaining. And then we have Woody Harrelson's character who was okay but could really have been played by anyone. Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Social Justice Warrior of a droid was played well I thought but I wasn't a huge fan of the way they went with it - there seems to be a lot of sassy droids in this universe. A great character was Lando Calrissian played by Donald Glover; he was great, and really felt like a young Billy Dee Williams but really didn't have as much screentime as I would've thought.

   I would like to mention that the musical score I really enjoyed, especially whenever the Marauder characters appeared, I really liked what John Powel composed for those scenes. And also the practical effects were really impressive. They didn't look fake but they also had the same sort of feel and vibe as the original trilogy so those two aspects really added to my personal enjoyment.

In the end, I'd say I genuinely enjoyed Solo: A Star Wars Story but really I don't think was necessary at all and probably one to skip for the layman. I hope LucasFilm don't continue to do origins for well-known characters and rather expand on lesser-known stories like Rogue One or how about completely new ones? That's an idea.

7/0