Jurassic Park (1993)

Twenty years on I still remember watching “Jurassic Park”: A college kid wowed back to age 5: Real dinosaurs chasing people! So it seemed. Even now, Steven Spielberg’s popcorn ride still rocks with “How’d they do that?’ dazzle, long before we overloaded on CGI. You know the plot: Two dinosaur diggers (Sam Neill and Laura Dern) are invited by a P.T. Barnum-type (Richard Attenborough) to see his latest joy ride-slash-money maker: A Pacific island holding a live dinosaur theme park, with the extinct beasts brought back via magical DNA tinkering. The scientists stare in wonder, as do we as moviegoers. Not impressed: A sharp geek (Jeff Goldblum) who dishes on chaos and dumps on the old man’s grab for big smiles and bigger dollars. Naturally, it all goes to hell when a storm and tech glitches set the “controlled” beasts free and they hunt and kill, as dino DNA dictates. That’s part of Spielberg’s genius here: These animals are never the bad guys. They merely are. The glint of power in a rich Scotsman’s eye is plenty danger. This is amazing fun, always will be, with Spielberg mastering that thing he does: Turning childhood wishful fantasies into unshakable adult nightmares. A+