A couple of decent film offerings this week, beginning with Jurassic World: Rebirth. I’ve seen all the sequels to the 1993 original, which came out almost exactly 32 years ago.
This is the seventh incarnation, and has made almost double its budget in box office takings. It feels like it shares a fair bit of its DNA with the first movie, which is ironic given the plot centres around a hunt for three types of dinosaur DNA in a quarantined part of the world, to develop a lucrative new heart disease treatment.
Sure, you could pick holes in the story, but if you take it at face value, it’s a good old-fashioned popcorn movie that I had a roarsome time watching. You could predict which characters were going to bite the dust, almost in the order it happened, and none of it contained any big surprises, admittedly.
The product placement of Snickers and Heineken involves a few lingering shots of their brand names, but the opening sequence involving a discarded Snickers wrapper is good fun. Scarlett Johansson is extremely watchable, and having just glanced at the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, I’m a little surprised by its low score from the ‘proper’ critics.
I’m not sure if the hunt for a dinosaur in the sea, on terra firma, or high in the sky is the most terrifying. None of them look very tempting, and I’d have almost certainly missed with the dart gun in the heat of the moment. This feels like a nice ending to the franchise, if that’s the plan. There’s definitely something in the water.
Film of the week for me is F1 The Movie. I was a little daunted by its 155-minute duration, but I’ve seen 80-minute films that have felt longer. Brad Pitt bosses it to the extent that I think even Shania Twain would be impressed. Start your engines, as he plays Sonny Hayes, a huge “star that never was” in Formula 1 circles whose career was cut short by a horrific accident. After driving lots of other vehicles, he’s tempted back by his former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) to help save a Formula 1 team that’s teetering on the brink of collapse from huge debts.
Damon Idris excels as cocky young driver Joshua Pearce (who accuses Sonny of “swanning around”), and the score by Hans Zimmer is predictably stirring and brilliant. I saw this in IMAX, and it was 100% worth the upgrade. It really felt as though you were in the driving seat during the racing sequences, and whilst the plot is a fairly well-worn sports movie story of a struggling team hoping to triumph against the odds stacked against them, the cast lift the script off the page and make this a must watch. Loud, brash, and brilliant. The Las Vegas strip hasn’t looked as good since Pamela Anderson’s The Last Showgirl, and I loved the fireworks in the closing sequence. Quite like the look of Brad Pitt’s ice bath too!
Alex Cann's weekly film blog - 9th January
