Jurassic World (2015) and Massive Film Round Up, Part III

Still catching up to significant and newish films watched… I open with current box office beast “Jurassic World” -– seen at a preview -– and then hit on older films. All quick. Run!

Jurassic World (2015) comes as close as any of the sequels to 1993 Spielberg classic “Jurassic Park” to capturing the sheer terror/joy of dinosaurs run amok in the modern world. Running the show here is indie darling Colin Trevorrow (“SafetyNot Guaranteed”) as director and one of four writers. Plot? Humans foolishly open an amusement park full of DNA-juiced dinosaurs who do what dinosaurs do. Hunt. Kill. Chris Pratt -– hot off “Guardians of the Galaxy” -– is the hero who knows what’s right. Kids get lost. People die. Dinosaurs roar loud. Our eyes fill. Our ears relent. It’s damn entertaining and smart with its knowing of the first film’s events as real and its place in Hollywood. Trevorrow knows how to sell action. But this “World” is Lost: It’s disgustingly sexist. Bryce Dallas Howard plays a Corporate Career Bitch who needs a man and a tragedy to crack her shell so she can swoon. Every other female is a basket case of tears and panic. Fuck that. Not after “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Trevorrow homages “Aliens” on screen, but it’s clear he never learned what made that film soar. There’s no Ripley here. Not by 65 million years. B

Bill Murray is at low-key best as a recluse who only thinks he wants to be a loner, until he learns – via a hand-written letter – that he is a father in director Jim Jarmusch’s epically cool Broken Flowers (2005). A-

Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) ignores the plot of then-new BBC hit show about a time-traveling alien and makes the hero a doddering old human grandpa (Peter Cushing!) with an eye for gadgets. Result: Goofy silly 1960s fun with pop art sets and a Doctor who doesn’t do much but wink. Often. B

Dracula Untold (2014) serves an origin story we didn’t need with Luke Evans as the warlord count who goes to the dark side. Unmemorable and visually bland. Against “Bram Stoker’s Dracula,” it sucks. C

The ever-lovely Julia Louis-Dreyfus takes center stage in Enough Said (2013) as a woman who falls for her new BFF’s ex-husband. A romantic comedy that is purely adult, smart, and hilarious. ‘Nuf said. A-

Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) feels like an unnecessary sequel. The first installment was dirty, wonderfully funny. But Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudekis had me laughing my ass off, constantly. B+

Clint Eastwood had two films in 2014: New war classic “American Sniper,” and musical-turned-movie Jersey Boys (2014), a flick that pops when the music is on, but flat lines everywhere else. Literally, when a college-age daughter succumbs off screen, one could think it was from boredom rather bad drugs. C+

The Maze Runner (2014) adapts a dystopian book about a teen boy trapped inside a closed-off world, surrounded by only boys. No adults. It feels very “Lord ofthe Flies,” and sure enough the fat nerd buys it. B

The less said about Johnny Depp and his mustache comedy bit in Mortedcai (2015), the better. Look at Gwyneth Paltrow’s face, she’s smiling so damn hard I kept thinking, “It’s CG!” Truly, honestly awful.  D-

Dickens novel turned musical Oliver! (1968) won Best Picture over not-nominated “Producers,” “2001,” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” Criminal? Yes. But the film -– overlong and overdone (the “Who Will Buy?” bit is asinine back lot studio shit) –- isn’t terrible. Jack Wild as Artful Dodger is amazingly gifted. When he’s on screen, my God, the film jumps. The kid playing Oliver? Dubbed. By a twentysomething woman. B-

Drama/comedy This is Where I Leave You (2014) has Jane Fonda as the mom of a rowdy lot. It’s funny, but when adult characters moan while sitting on the roof a huge house, I think, “White People Problems.” B-

I recently sat in awe of the “new” cut of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil (1958). The drowned opener is back, as are missing scenes that make the plot of murder, drugs, and blackmail along the U.S.-Mexican border finally click. Charlton Heston’s half-Mexican cop is angrier. Welles’ fat, evil cop Hank Quinlan is more perverse, and he’s long been one of cinema’s worst pigs. This 1998 re-edit – made to Welles’ specifications that were studio steamrolled – makes an already dark film shock with new grit. See it. A

50/50 (2011)

“50/50” dares to make a raunchy comedy about a 27-year-old man facing the Big C. Its odds are far better than the film’s title. Seattle radio producer Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is OCC about health and the planet: I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I recycle, he says. Yet, his doctor has grim news: A tumor on his spine means a half-shot at living. Mom (Angelica Houston) frets. Girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) reels away. Best pal (Seth Rogan) sees cancer as a means to pity sex and pot. Based on a true story (writer Will Reiser is Adam), “50” has plenty of drama (a fellow cancer patient dies, Adam’s father has dementia) to balance the rude humor and drugs. JGL and Rogen have fine moments together, as when Adam shaves his head, yet the latter’s Kyle is such a depraved misogynist that it begs the question: How are these men friends? If Kyle ever breaks his man-child streak and weeps for Adam, we never know. That sucks. As a preteen, a best pal had cancer. It profoundly affected me. Levitt rules as self-assured, in-control Adam is reduced to tears, reaching for his mom as possible death awaits. B+

The Help (2011)

“The Help” is impossible to hate or dismiss. If you have a sense of justice. But make no mistake about it, this is a Disneyfied dramatization of the long civil rights struggle by African Americans, and yet – a Hollywood tradition in “Glory” and “Mississippi Burning” and dozens upon dozens of other films – it chooses to focus on wealthy white characters. The people who should be our total and absolute focus are secondary.

Worse, for every heartbreaking scene of racism, evil decorated in twisted Southern American Christian pride, the filmmakers serve up a comedic aside or comeuppance to let us know, we will leave the theater feeling good. No, “Help” is not great. But by the sheer strength of Viola Davis’ acting and the scary notion that an entire block of American voters consider this era to be America’s finest, it must be seen. Flaws and all.

Let us get my major grind out of the way. “Help” is geared toward the widest American audience possible, so it will not cut bone. It will not show the true Jim Crow South, made horrifically real and alive in the book “Carry Me Home.” (Read that book. Do it. Now.) It will not dare go the route of Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X,” with a rightfully angry black man -- that is a fine, true Civil Rights film -- ready to tear down the institution that has torn him down his entire life. It mostly avoids blood and death, and follows a liberal, white, pretty girl, because that’s what Hollywood thinks we want. Looking at box office receipts, they nailed an “Easy A,” to bring up Emma Stone. (“Easy A” is Stone’s biggest hit film.)

Stone plays the hero: Eugenia, a … wait for it … newspaper reporter (liberal!) who starts out writing a housecleaning advice column but soon dives incognito into telling the stories of black maids/ nannies – The Help -- hired by wealthy families. Including her own. In a Hollywood story, a young black woman or man could never dream up this idea. No. Help, so to speak, has to come from outside. Just like the heroic FBI (!!!) had to help in a certain Gene Hackman film I mentioned above. (Talk about a crock of history.) And, I know, it’s all based on a book. A best-seller. Whoopdeefriggin’ do, my point still stands.

But I digress. Stone’s newly minted University of Mississippi grad Eugenia returns home to the town of Jackson as an aspiring writer, her eyes now open to the horror that she was raised in and never thought of for a second. Eugenia’s first choice for the book is Aibileen Clark (Viola Davis), the caretaker of her best pal’s daughter. Aibileen is, of course, scared of revenge from her white employers and local Klan, the latter of whom never actually appears. That would scare test screening audiences after all.

Eugenia asks upfront dumb questions: Do you regret raising the babies of others, whilst missing out on the lives of your own children? And do you have dreams other than being a maid? Well, no, shit, girl. Really? But here’s the beauty of this film: Davis rips the film from Stone with a fierce, devastating performance. She makes that awkward scene work. When Aibileen talks of her life, her body language vibrates with heartbreak, sadness, regret and, yes, anger, directed at herself and the world that belittles her based on skin color. (I can’t image being so treated, I’d rage forever. I would burn buildings down, no lie? Would you not?)

We also follow another white family, headed by a Stepford Wife-type monster, played by Bryce Dallas Howard. She is the villain, a young lady who speaks of Christian charity and yet proclaims Separate but Equal must always stand. The character veers close to caricature, but Howard – pouring out judgmental evil from her eyes – makes it work. Hilly, that’s her Southern Belle name, takes great pleasure in ridiculing her own maid, Minny (Octavia Spencer). And Hillies still exist today, no lie, and I have met them.

It is Minny who serves a dish of revenge, the comedic comeuppance, and brings about the film’s most controversial moment. It’s funny. I admit I laughed. I did. I also wondered if any such thing could have ever truly happened, in a state where murder upon African-Americans for the lightest infraction was the norm. The whole gag seems a modern, not historical, touch. I suppose from the book. I skipped reading it. Thankfully, the final scenes have Aibileen taking on her oppressors. No Eugenia about. It ends seriously, with quite a heart-breaker, and with an uplift.

So, see the film. Watch it for the scene toward the end where Eugenia walks into Aibileen’s home and sees a roomful of African American women. It is the first time I have ever seen a summer Hollywood flick that featured a roomful of African American woman, and that in itself says the struggles depicted here are not ancient history. They still exist. And be warned, when we have presidential candidates saying our Founding Fathers worked to end slavery and congressmen who shrug off the Civil Rights Act as passé federal oversight, and make a half-hearted apology that they were taken out of context. Jim Crow, institutionalized racism with state’s rights ... it could happen again. (That “Take our country back” mantra is a threat, do not doubt it. We have a black man in the Oval Office.)

But also know this: When you are watching and laughing along at the funny bits (and I am guilty) in a movie about this era, remember not many people were laughing during the real 1963. Not in the South. The emotions, I gather from stories told to me and read by that occurred before my birth, were far more grim. On both sides of the divide. Give me “Malcolm X.” It is far closer to the ugly truth. This could play on TV, Sunday night movie, uncensored, and not raise a pulse. B-