Movie Review: Jurassic World Dominion


There had to be important multi-million dollar discussions about the future of the Jurassic franchise that started in 1993 with some of the most impressive special effects involving living Dinosaurs ever created in movie history. The discussions had to address the main problem with the entire Jurassic franchise. All of these movies are essentially the same. “There is a Dinosaur resort or reserve of some kind, where someone is a criminal or makes a mistake, and Dinosaurs that are supposed to be secured in high-tech cages, escape. Then people run for their lives”. The upside of the new Jurassic movie “Jurassic World Dominion”, is that in the real world, Dinosaurs are move commonplace, mostly not in cages and not released because someone made a mistake or is a criminal. So while admiring the attempt to at least change the constant-same-story-with-people-running-for-their-lives, unfortunately the story and screenplay here is convoluted, mostly boring and way too long.

In this story, there is a major corporation that creates giant grasshopper insects that threaten to destroy the food chain of the entire world. Why this was done, is not fully explained, which is typical of big budget movies I have seen lately. Why explain what we are doing – just show the special effects because nobody will care anyway. This film reunites the original cast, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum and Sam Neil from the first (and best movie in the series) Jurassic Park, released in 1993 and the latest cast that includes Chris Prat and Bryce Dallas Howard, who plays Claire Dearing. Towards the end of this story they all reunite while trying to find Dearing’s daughter played by Isabella Sermon. The reunion of all these actors seems to signify some kind of a symbolic end of this series, even though that we all know that Jurassic will be back in some form in the future. There is just too much money to be made from showing lifelike Dinosaurs trying to kill people.

I thought that the first 3 quarters of this film did not show nearly enough Dinosaurs and Jeff Goldblum’s part was too small, considering he has been the most interesting character in the entire movie series. The two side stories about the major corporation trying to cause world famine for reasons unknown and the kidnapping of Claire Dearing’s daughter for the most part did not work. Once again, the producers of this movie knew that because of the built-in audience, coming up with a great story was not really necessary. The thinking is, all people want to see are the incredible Dinosaurs and people getting killed and running for their lives. The screenplay is always just an afterthought. This is unfortunate, especially when you consider the huge amount of money involved in a movie franchise this important.

The Rotten Tomatoes for this film are an extremely low 33% and due to the bad story and too long convoluted screenplay I mostly agree with this rating and cannot recommend this movie.

Netflix Movie Review: Hustle


Some years ago, Actor/Producer Adam Sandler signed a huge deal with Netflix to produce a series of movies. Of the films I have seen so far, the new film “Hustle” is a very solid sports movie and by far the best that Sandler has created for Netflix.

Sandler plays a talent scout, Stanley Sugerman for the Philadelphia 76ers of the NBA and this movie does a very good job showing how difficult this job is, including traveling the world, staying in bad and mostly depressing Hotels, in an attempt to find the next new NBA superstar. Finding a great NBA prospect requires a great deal of knowledge of love of the game of basketball and I thought that Sandler did a great job displaying all of this within these 2 hours.

Most impressive here is the basketball prospect that Sander finds in Spain, Bo Cruz – played by actual NBA player Juancho Hernangomez. What I found most amazing about Hernangomez was that despite his awesome athletic and basketball skills he showed in this movie, he is only a minor low scoring player in the NBA. Proving to all of us, how extremally difficult it is to excel in the unbelievably challenging sport of NBA basketball. The relationship between Sugarman and Hernangomez, during the training and the advice and help that Sugarman gave to Hernangomez was very well told within this story.

I liked the relationship between NBA Scout Sandler and his very abusive boss, Vince Merrick, played very well by Ben Foster. It one thing to be very good at your job, its quite another thing to get the support of your boss, in this case the son of the owner played by the great Robert Duval. The workouts as Sandler tries to turn Bo Cruz into a great NBA prospect was very well done throughout this film. During the many NBA tryouts I thought that the trash talking of the other NBA prospect trying to get under the skin of Bo Cruz was also outstanding and more importantly, very believable.

Queen Latifa plays Sandler’s wife Teresa Sugerman, and one can argue that her casting as Sandler’s wife is an example of miscasting, but overall I thought this relationship was well depicted throughout this film.

I was surprised at how good a sports movie Hustle is and I agree with the very high 89% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and highly recommend this film. Sandler once again has proved that when he makes a serious movie he can be an extremely good actor.

Movie Review: Watcher


As foreign Hitchcock-like-attempted-thrillers go, this is one of the better ones I have seen in recent years. The story here is simple. I woman is in an apartment looking up at another building and noticing only at night that some strange man is constantly staring at her. It is not possible for her to see this man during the day, due to the angle, the light and the curtains, so the “only nighttime” part of this is very well done. This mystery grows over time to this man following her around, appearing on a subway with some news of other local murders of women in the area.

The cast is composed of mostly unknown actors, starring Maika Monroe as the main character Julia, with the film shot in Bucharest Romania. The director is an up and coming new talent, Chloe Okuno. The good news here is that even though this is a foreign film there are no subtitles – for those who hate reading subtitles. At times and in too many areas of this movie, the action is too slow and I found some of this boring, and nothing we have not seen before. The ending was rather surprising but I found it a satisfying conclusion overall.

I am very surprised at the very high 86% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, I agree more with the audience ratings of 72% with a mild recommendation.