Category Archives: Drama

Jurassic World: Rebirth

Posted on by • Posted in Action Movie, Drama • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

Writing one logline to describe all 7 of the Jurassic Park movies is easy. “Very Dangerous Dinosaurs are safely enclosed in cages, then something goes horribly wrong, and the Dinosaurs are released and they kill and eat people, and people run for their lives”.

The 7th Jurassic Park movie, “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” starts out with a scientist within a highly secure and state-of-the-art Dinosaur research facility dropping the wrapper of a Milky Way candy bar on the floor while entering a clean room. What follows is a disaster that turns off all the security in the facility, and once again, the Dinosaurs are released. The good news is that even though the main idea is exactly the same as the other six movies, this time around, this story has more imagination and even better special effects than the previous six.

This film starts 17 years after the security disaster, and there is a major medical science discovery where it is discovered that the blood of 3 specific dinosaurs might contain the cure for all heart disease for the entire world. The story then follows the obvious path as a major medical company, out for a trillion-dollar windfall, a scientist and two adventurers, including Zora Bennett, played by Scarlett Johansson, and her long-time friend Duncan Kincaid, played by Mahershala Ali, travel to this dangerous island to retrieve impossible-to-obtain dinosaur blood. There is the typical evil, only caring about money, representative of a medical company, trying to make trillions on this magic dinosaur blood Martin Krebs, played by Rupert Friend, is typical of the bad people we see in movies like this one.

The big surprise in this movie was the appearance of a father of two daughters Reuben Delgado, played by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, who is the great lead actor in the very good Netflix series, ‘The Lincoln Lawyer”. Delgado’s daughters are played by Audrina Miranda and Luna Blaise. Some of the most spectacular special effects in this movie involve Deglado, his two daughters, and their boat captain running for their lives, with many of the scenes infuriating because nobody would take some of the risks they do in this film.

The good news is that this seventh installment is better than most of the previous 4 movies with a better story, even though the reasons for the chaos are still the same.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are an understandably low 51% because there is nothing new enough in this film that we have not seen before, other than the new types of genetically modified dinosaurs, especially one that looks like a combination of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and the creature from “Alien”. Hopefully, this small step in the right direction will create better Jurassic movies in the future, because with the money involved, there will be many more movies like this one.

Movie Review: F1: The Movie

Posted on by • Posted in Action Movie, Drama • Tagged , , , • Leave a comment

My first question about this film is why not just “F1”, rather than “F1: The Movie”, because we know it’s a movie, in this case about the dangerous sport of Formula 1 racing.

This film is mostly about an ongoing dialogue of watching incredibly expensive racecars, that cost between 12-15 million dollars, race at speeds over 200 miles an hour around an oval track, while the racing crew monitors every aspect of the car using impressive advanced technology. The problem with this movie is that there is too much showing of this technology and racing, and not enough of any noticeable story.

The acting starring Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes and Damson Idris as Joshua Pearce, who play the two drivers, and Javier Bardem as Ruben Cervantes, who plays the CEO of the racing crew, is all very well done. With all racing movies like this one, it is at times hard to understand why any person would be willing to risk their life just to race a car, but like all professions like this one, you have to have it in your blood – you don’t have anything else you want to do.

It is impressive the work that went into this film, including risking the two main actors who actually drove their racecars at over 180 miles an hour. Given the risk, it does not make sense to risk lives like this when all of the dangerous driving could have been replaced with relatively simple special effects.

I agree with the middle-of-the-road 84% ratings for this movie, which could have been much better with an improved story and screenplay. This movie is also way too long at 2 hours and 35 minutes, and could have easily told the same story in less than two hours. Mainly for the great racecar driving effects, I do recommend this film.

Movie Review: Materialists

Posted on by • Posted in Drama, Screenwriting • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

The new movie “Materialists” is about dating through the eyes of people who join expensive dating services, and through the eyes of professional matchmakers, in this case, the main character Lucy, played by Dakota Johnson. It is good to see Dakota Johnson in a very good acting role, and recovering from last year’s disastrous “Madame Web”. Johnson demonstrates in this film some of the best acting of her career.

Of all the difficult professions that exist in the world, being a high-end matchmaker with a fee as high as $50,000 has to be one of the all-time emotional worst. There are several scenes in this movie where a client sits in a restaurant quoting a long list of unrealistic expectations about the person they think they deserve. All of these clients forget that any dating service cannot accept a long list of expectations and then generate the perfect person like it’s an AI-human-being-creator. This is because any dating service, regardless of the cost, is only as good as the people who join. No perfect person exists anywhere in the world for anyone.

As part of this long list of wants and do-not-wants, there is a great deal of talk about how much people earn in salary, as if that is one of the most important requirements for the perfect long-term partner. One of the main messages in this very good movie is the long-term on-and-off-again relationship of Lucy and her very broke waiter, trying to be an actor boyfriend, John, played very well by Chris Evans. The contrast between Lucy’s current rich boyfriend Harry, played by Pedro Pascal, and John, along with Lucy’s eventual decision about them, is one of the best parts of this extremely well-written screenplay.

As several critics have said that screenwriter-director Celine Song paints a very bleak and depressing story about the realities of dating in this world, but most would agree that her point of view is more about the reality of trying to find love, and much less about just being negative about all of the heartache, and depression involved. Dating will always involve putting your heart and soul into the hands of a total stranger, and then trying to accept the consequences when a person you might potentially love does not feel the same way about you.

For me, the actor who steals this entire movie is Sophie, played by Zoe Winters. Her repeated comments about “dying alone” and one scene where the pain in her eyes when she hears that the previous person she went out with did not feel the same way about her are great acting moments in this movie. Later, Sophie’s conversation with Lucy after the latest in a string of 10 bad dates attacked her, included a moment when she breathlessly tells Lucy that she “deserves love”. In my opinion, Winters is worthy of an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress for these two scenes alone.

The one thing I hated about this movie is the chain-smoking that Lucy does with several other characters. Smoking happens in movies because cigarette companies finance the production despite the downside that includes too many people continuing to smoke or taking it up as a new, stupid hobby. As we all know, smoking causes a long list of Cancers, and showing smoking in movies should have been banned decades ago.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a very high 87%, with my rating 95% and a 100% rating for this category of movie, showing what it is like for so many millions of us, who try to find true love in our lifetimes.