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

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews
Or Amazon is nice at this time of year - https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/Y1ZUCB13HLJD?ref_=wl_share 

Prime Time: Mary (2019)

I think the best way to warn people against Mary, a painfully poor horror movie from the director of the stupid-and-why-can't-more-people-see-it-is-stupid Megan Is Missing (honestly, I have no idea how so many people were so affected by that film, apart from considering it an internet-savvy way of tapping into the modern equivalent of Satanic panic), is to describe it as a film that could have easily been put out by Dark Castle at the turn of the 21st century. The big difference is that Dark Castle would have delivered some much better production design and visuals, thrown around some blood and fun scares, and not made the mistake of thinking the silly premise could be turned into something serious.

The plot is quite simple to summarise. A family buy a boat, and that boat turns out to be, well, not very nice. It may even have an evil spirit on it. As the family are taken further out to sea, things get more dangerous. That's all you need to know. Oh, there's also some tension, of course, between the husband and wife, because one partner had an affair.

I can only assume that the script, by Anthony Jaswinski, seemed like something that might work better when adapted to screen. Or maybe those involved were just big fans of The Shallows (also written by Jaswinski). I can't think of any other reason for both Gary Oldman and Emily Mortimer to sign on for this. I really like both actors, but they are unable to do anything here to outweigh the dire material. Maybe they both had large, unexpected, bills that needed paid. People do what they have to do for a decent payday. And I am not saying that they are bad here, just to clarify, I am just saying that they're unable to polish this turd.

Others acting alongside Oldman and Mortimer are Stefanie Scott and Chloe Perrin (playing their daughters, Lindsey and Mary), Owen Teague, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, and Jennifer Esposito. Teague and Garcia-Rulfo are wasted, at least Scott and Perrin get one or two decent moments between them, and Esposito feels like a character drafted in from a more straightforward cop thriller flick.

Mary is more annoying for the fact that it could easily have been something pleasantly surprising and fun. But that would have meant someone at the helm who wanted to show that they cared about the thing. Director Michael Goi doesn't want to do that. He instead just meanders from one moment of melodrama to the next, occasionally stopping for a bit of horrible CGI to shake up one of the main characters, and keeps heading towards an ending that is as bad as everything else that precedes it. Although most of the problems stem from the script, a bit of restructuring and some time spent working on the overall tone could have made this less of an endurance test. The runtime is only 84 minutes, yet it feels like it goes on so much longer than that.

3/10

If you have enjoyed this, or any other, review on the blog then do consider the following ways to show your appreciation. A subscription/follow costs nothing.
It also costs nothing to like/subscribe to the YouTube channel attached to the podcast I am part of - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCErkxBO0xds5qd_rhjFgDmA
Or you may have a couple of quid to throw at me, in Ko-fi form - https://ko-fi.com/kevinmatthews