Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025)

We're at the stage now when a new Jurassic Park movie no longer inspires the awe and excitement it used to. That started when it became Jurassic World, but each subsequent instalment since the first movie has felt like diminishing returns as various directors have tried to recapture the magic of the original. I actually enjoyed Jurassic World Dominion, which many disliked, so I was someone especially miffed by the idea of them attempting to reboot the series yet again.

Anyway, let's cut to the chase. You don't need too many plot details. A group of people head to an island full of dinosaurs to collect some stuff. Things don't go well. There's also a family caught up in the dino crisis, and viewers will know that everything will lead to a finale that makes use of the biggest and baddest beasties around. All accompanied by a score from Alexandre Desplat that knows it needs to work with the familiar motif established by John Williams.

Starring Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Jurassic World: Rebirth is a strange mess of a film, unable to give us anyone to truly root for while also under-delivering on the expected dinosaur spectacle. Director Gareth Edwards does well behind the camera, quite rightly avoiding the coy approach to big monsters that he has used in previous movies, but he's saddled with a David Koepp script that doesn't quite do enough to fill out the 133-minute runtime. It doesn't help that the plot is perfunctory videogame stuff, with people having to collect samples of creatures from land, sea, and air, and one big set-piece completely works as well as intended . . . thanks to our old friend, the tyrannosaurus rex. 

Johansson seems to go through the motions with minimal effort, Friend is quite shiny and smug, and Bailey tries to exude charm throughout, but it's only Ali who feels like an actual star happy to have fun in a silly blockbuster. Which makes it a great shame that he feels relatively underused. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo is locked in to his "concerned father" role, with nothing else to define him, and Luna Blaise, David Iacono, and Audrina Miranda do okay with what they're given, even if they're not given the greatest material to work with.

I guess it's difficult, at this stage, to deliver something truly unique and fresh in the Jurassic movies. So maybe they should stop making them.  If I'm feeling generous, I'll give credit to two exciting sequences here, both set on water. Again, as mentioned earlier, that's not enough for something with this runtime. Maybe newcomers will get more from it, but they would still get even more from first checking out the earlier films in the franchise. 

5/10

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Netflix And Chill: Leave The World Behind (2023)

Based on a novel by Rumaan Alam, Leave The World Behind is arguably just as well-known now for being produced by Barack and Michelle Obama as it is for being written and directed by Sam Esmail. It proved quite divisive when released just over a month ago, but I'm going to say that it's definitely worth your time, if only for the fact that none of the main cast members put a foot wrong with their performances.

The premise is quite simple. Amanda and Clay Sandford head away for a peaceful vacation, two teenaged kids in tow. Things soon start to get a bit strange though, particularly when some time at the beach is interrupted by a huge ship crashing into the shore. They get even stranger, and more tense, when G. H. Scott and his daughter, Ruth, turn up on the doorstep of the holiday home, claiming to be the owner in need of shelter after a major incident has caused havoc in the city. Clay is quite welcoming and easygoing about the whole thing, but Amanda immediately has her guard up.

If there's one major criticism I could directed at Leave The World Behind it's the fact that nothing seems as interestingly ambiguous as it could have been. The first half is much more interesting than the rest of it, although there's plenty of decent individual moments to still make it worth the 138-minute runtime. Of course, some of that may be down to my response to the casting, and the way that Esmail is happy to have certain characters be so cold and spiky that you automatically hope for others to prove their misanthropy wrong.

Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke are the Sandfords, and their children are played by Farrah Mackenzie and Charlie Evans. Everyone is perfect in roles that allow them to have a number of fun and interesting interactions with others onscreen, even if Mackenzie's character is motivated most of the time by a surprisingly understandable need to find a way to watch the final episodes of Friends, something familiar and comforting as the situation around her grows more chaotic and alien. Evans has the least to do, although even he gets to make an impact in the third act with the journey that his character goes on, but both Hawke and Roberts are as watchable as ever, with the latter seeming to relish a role that allows her to retain a cool and spiky demeanour for most of her screentime. As the Scotts, both Mahershala Ali and Myha'la are brilliant, dealing with a spiralling situation that they know is going to be exacerbated by the attitudes and prejudices of people acting rashly while driven by fear. Ali's character really knows the value of keeping people calm and pro-active, but he struggles to keep others on the same page. There's also a good little turn from Kevin Bacon, delivering one of his best performances in a while as someone else preparing for what he sees is a major storm brewing, to put it mildly.

The first big project from Esmail since his huge TV success (and I encourage everyone reading this to check out the brilliant and thought-provoking Mr. Robot), Leave The World Behind is enjoyably ambitious and messy. It's a melting point of talking points, with at least one scene sticking in your mind because of it being impressively terrifying for the cinematic strangeness and horrific implications, but doesn't ever really turn into something completely satisfying. I started to suspect that would be the case at about the halfway mark though, and I'm not sure of any other way the film should have ended. 

It may make you a bit more anxious than the latest world news and ongoing daily dumpster fires going on around us already do, but I still think people should give this a go. It doesn't ever become more than the sum of its parts, but some of those parts are simply brilliant.

7/10

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Alita: Battle Angel (2019)

Hey, I am as surprised as you might be to be saying this, but maybe more people should check out Alita: Battle Angel. It's not necessarily going to become your new favourite movie, it's certainly not going to placate you if you've been spending some time recently seeking out quality cinema with great actors delivering ear-tickling dialogue, but it's a fantastic bit of escapist fun, set in a world full of cool little details and wonderful production design.

The film starts off with Christoph Waltz, playing a Dr. Dyson Ido (and his surgical work now involves a lot of engineering or robotic parts), finding a discarded cyborg body that he then rebuilds and reactivates. The cyborg is Alita (Rosa Salazar), a young woman who strives to remember her past, and who ends up having a number of much bigger cyborgs tasked with ending her life.

Based on a manga (Gunnm AKA Battle Angel Alita) by Yukito Kishiro, Alita: Battle Angel comes to the screen courtesy of a screenplay by James Cameron and Laeta Kalogridis and direction from Robert Rodriguez. As ridiculous as it may seem, considering some of their achievements throughout their careers, none of these names are the draw they once were. People tend to actively mistrust Cameron nowadays, with good reason, considering how many times he has done his bit to sell us on Terminator sequels of ever-diminishing quality. Everyone is on good form here though, and it's refreshing to see Rodriguez back at the helm of something that is looking forward rather than trying to emulate the past (he does the latter well, but it's a well he's gone back to a few too many times throughout his career).

The cast help to sell everything, especially Salazar in a role that transforms her into the wide-eyed central character and Waltz as the fallible human who kicks things off. Jennifer Connelly and Mahershala Ali are enjoyable as the people who are manipulating events to direct Alita towards dangerous confrontations, Keean Johnson is the pretty male/potential love interest, and a couple of the main mean cyborgs are played entertainingly enough by Ed Skrein and Jackie Earle Haley.

But don't go thinking I am praising this as a near-perfect cinematic experience. While it delivers on the eye candy, and it really does (I was relieved to see that Rodriguez could still do well with action scenes), it's also full of good quality cheese. The script is silly and clunky, especially in the few moments in which it tries to have characters showing some real emotions. It's easy to forgive, however, as we're taken from one gorgeous sequence to the next (whether it's just a crowded street scene or a violent sporting tournament).

I'm not sure if we'll ever get any other instalments after this one, it didn't seem to do as well as expected at the box office, but I do know that I'll try to catch them on the big screen if we do. For sci-fi action blockbusters that enjoy pretending they have some depth to them, this is one of the better examples we've had in recent years.

7/10

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