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Jurassic Park

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Jurassic Park

Released: Summer 1993

Version: Video

Length: Approx. 127 minutes

Rated: PG-13

Main Cast: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Bob Peck (I), Martin Ferrero, Joseph Mazzelo, Ariana Richards, Wayne Knight, Cameron Thor.

If you’re looking for a good dinosaur movie, then look no further. This is the best one that I’ve seen so far. The sequels are good, but they don’t equal the pacing, the action or the coolness of the original!

We begin with a scene of what looks like a bunch of solemn faced workers waiting for something BIG to come through some trees. We hear sounds…and then IT appears. It’s a dinosaur!!!! But it’s in a cage and you can’t see it. They push the cage (it’s like a giant doggy-transport thing) into a docking mechanism in a much larger cage. They open the cage and somehow the animal manages to grab one of the workers and we see him scream and what-not. Nasty, but an interesting way to begin, even if it was a departure from the book.

We meet the lawyer, Donald Gennaro (Martin Ferrero), who represents InGen’s investors. InGen is John Hammond’s (Richard Attenborough) genetics company. Anyway, Gennaro is investigating Hammond to make sure the investor’s money isn’t being wasted. But rather than get into all the particulars, let’s just jump further along.

We get to watch the main heroes, Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and Alan Grant [Sam Neill] (a couple of paleontologists) as they fool with some electronics that show bones. Then Grant harasses a kid who disses raptors.

Soon a chopper flits in and lands, disrupting Grant’s and Ellie’s banter about babies. (It’s obvious that they like each other!) Anyway, it (for the grammar fools out there, "it" doesn't refer to the chopper) turns out to be Hammond, their benefactor. He wants them to come out and see his fantastic island and in return he’ll fully fund them for a few years. Yeah, man, and how!

So, in a chopper, we meet the last major adult actor of the film: Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), a chaotician. The guy is nuts but cool. After watching a dumb sequence of Hammond talking to himself, we watch as a bunch of chapters of a book are explained in a funny little animated cartoon. We discover how dinos are created! Wheee!

Next we watch them watch a baby raptor hatch. Hammond makes sure the animal will be weak and useless by helping it get out of its shell. That’s a major no-no and I’m surprised the scientist, Dr. Henry Wu (B. D. Wong), allowed it, but JP’s a fake film, so what do we expect, eh?

Now we jump to watching an ugly cow get lowered into a pen that has lots of sound effects. No raptors, but that’s what’s supposed to be in there. Ugh! It makes you wonder if they wasted all their budget on the brachiosaur that we saw soon after they landed on the island. This is also where we learn that the smartest animal ever is the raptor and that there’s a T-rex: this is called foreshadowing, for those who aren’t English majors. (By the way, there’s only three raptors…this is important, so remember that!)

It’s tour time! And we need kids, so Hammond brought in his grand-children, Tim (Joseph Mazzello) and Lex (AKA: Alexis, played by: Ariana Richards)  (No, Hammond is not Lex Luther’s grand-father! What are you on, anyway???). The kids try to hang with Grant, but he doesn’t like that and manages to get them to stay in a different car…the one with Gennaro.

On the tour, we see lots of leaves and a bleating goat. This is annoying for us as well as the characters of the film. Eventually, they find a sick trike (that’s lame JP-speak for triceratops) and they decide to poke its tongue and pet it. The triceratops must be heavily sedated to have this kind of thing happen. Otherwise, you’d think the animal could be dangerous. And if you know anything about the history of the film, you’d know that they cut a scene with the trike about to charge before it collapsed. I think there might have even been a baby. Bah!

Ellie decides that since she’s interested in fossilized plants, that she’s now a "Dr. Quinn" of the dinos and tries to diagnose what’s wrong with the thing. Luckily, Crichton must have changed his mind since he wrote the book and didn’t let her figure it out this time. Or maybe he wanted her to and someone higher up didn’t. I don’t know. Dr. Harding (Gerald R. Molen), a JP dude who tranquilized the beast, should know more about it than anyone.

Well, a storm blows up and everyone goes back to the cars, except Ellie who can’t give up being a dino-doc. They ride off…and we jump to a creepy nerd named Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight). He wants to make some money selling dino-embryos to a competing bio-genetics firm. We saw him meet a contact from said firm earlier, but didn’t really understand the significance until now. Back to what’s happening: Nedry programs the computers to "compile" and shut down the security so he can steal the things. Unfortunately, this shuts down the phones, and most of the dino cages…except for the raptors: phew!

I’m not sure if it’s a power failure or because of Nedry, but whatever it is, the cars stop outside the T-rex paddock. And now we see some good stuff. Bloody goat on car roofs and a giant lizard stompin’ a car. YES! Alright, that part is a little gross, but the T-rex is cool. Gennaro runs out right after the meat hits the car and heads for the can. The rex gets attracted to the kids car because Lex likes to play with a flashlight. And everyone knows that if you move, the Rex can see you. It’s just blind when something doesn’t move. This makes you wonder what it does in a forest: does the rex walk into the trees because they don’t move? Come on!

Well, this premise makes for an interesting scene in which the rex sticks his nose in Grant’s face and snorts his hat off. (before it sniffs Grant, the rex chases Malcolm and knocks him around and eats Genarro) I guess rexes can’t smell worth a hoot either. Well, after knocking the car off the road, the rex disappears. Grant goes into the tree and gets Tim out of the car. (Yes, Tim was stuck in there.) This leads to a creative sequence where Grant and Tim must get out of the tree before the car fall on them.

Okay, so Grant et al are "safe" now. Ellie and Robert Muldoon (Bob Peck) (a kind of games warden who rocks in the book and is kind of lame in the movie) go looking for Grant and the others. They find pieces of Genarro and a damaged Malcolm. The rex chases them some…and we jump back to watch as Grant and the kids bed down for the night.

I’m going to jump ahead because there’s just too many neat scenes and I don’t want to ruin them all for the 2-3 people that haven’t seen this movie. Hammond, Ellie and a tech figure out that Nedry screwed everything up and that everything has to be rebooted by turning everything off. This inadvertently releases the raptors…which eat the tech when he tries to turn the power back on. Ellie gets it on when Muldoon distracts the raptors. There’s a raptor in here that’ll startle you, so watch out. Also take note that it gets trapped behind one or two doors and maybe even a fenced in area.

The kids and Grant make it back and Grant goes to find Ellie, leaving the kids to chow down. As they eat, 'Lex spots some raptors and we get to enjoy one of the most tense dino-hunting sequences I’ve ever seen. The kids hide in a large kitchen and play keep away with the raptors. One of the raptors ends up locked in a freezer.

The kids rejoin the adults and they head to the computers to turn everything back on. Before they can do anything, a raptor tries to open the door and Grant and Ellie must hold it closed. Luckily for them, Lex know Unix (which for some reason looks like it has a 3-D visual interface…whatever!) and she turns everything on by skipping most of the modules on the screen. STUPID!

Onward! They climb up into the ventilation system to escape the raptor who has broken through the window. They eventually drop out on some fake dino bones that crash to the floor. Now, here’s a weird part. There’s two raptors surrounding the people. Where’d the second raptor come from? Remember, one is stuck in a walk in freezer and the other is presumably elsewhere in the compound! What the!?!?

Well, the T-rex is hungry too and the guest building seems to have a big door that was left open for it to go through; so it snatches one of the raptors as it goes for the humans and the other raptor leaps to its fellow’s aid. The people escape and ride off to the waiting chopper while making snide comments. The end.

I thought this was a cool movie. The swearing isn’t good for a Christian though, so be warned. And if you liked the book, beware that it does a lousy job of following it as a lot of the characters in the book that died don’t in this version of the tale.

STORY: 

VIOLENCE:  (OWWW! Those dinos eat humans in a grotesque way...)

SEXUAL CONTENT:  N/A

SFX:  (The dinosaurs, what else!?)

LANGUAGE:   

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Released: Summer 1997

Version: Video

Length: Approx. 129 minutes

Rated: PG-13

Main Cast: Jeff Goldblum, Julianne Moore, Pete Postlethwaite, Arliss Howard, Vince Vaughn, Vanessa Lee Chester, Richard Schiff, Peter Stormare. 

Here we go again, into one of Crichton's odd yarns. However, it is a quite entertaining yarn, even though Malcolm isn't as cool as he used to be.

We get to see how the kids from the previous movie have grown and what old Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has been up to. We soon find that Hammond has a nephew, Mr. Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), who seems to be the CEO/CFO of InGen, who wants to try to recoup the losses that Jurassic Park instilled. But we don’t find out what he’s up to until later in the movie. For the time being, we discover that Hammond is getting a small group together to send to Isla Sorna, another island that is where the dinosaurs were actually made. He wants this small team to study the animals and document their behavior. He tricks Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) into going by telling him that Malcolm’s current girl, an archeologist/animal behaviorist, is already on the island. Her name is Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), for those of you who want to know!

Malcolm has an African-American daughter, Kelly (played by Vanessa Lee Chester), whom he argues with a lot in this movie. She, of course, sneaks in one of the vehicles and ends up on the island too. Anyway, Malcolm, a photographer and eco-nut named Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn), and Malcolm’s friend Eddie Carr (Richard Schiff) all go hunting for Sarah. They find her with a family of stegosaurs. She takes Nick’s camera to go and get a close up of the baby. She ends up petting it and then her camera ticks off the adult animals when it makes too much noise rewinding. It’s pretty neat to see the stegosaurs attack as we’re usually only subjected to the carnivore’s actions.

The next scene has Sarah going on and on about observing the animals and not interacting with them so that they can study them and what-not. This is such a lame thing to say when she was just petting the baby stegosaur. Hello?! Does she not have a brain!!!

Eventually, we find out that Ludlow wants to capture some dinos and put them in a zoo type area to recoup InGen’s losses. So he hires a band of hunters lead by Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite) and they go hunting. This is some interesting stuff. They mixed CGI, animatronics, and live-action scenes all together and it’s pretty seamless. We also find out that Roland’s fee is the right to hunt a male T-rex…

Well, Nick and Malcolm and everyone else thinks this is wrong, so they run down to Ludlow’s camp that night and free the dinos. The creatures go crazy and destroy the camp. Roland wasn’t there because he was off trying to lure a T-rex into the open after capturing a baby T-rex and breaking it’s leg and tying it up. When Roland goes back to camp, Nick and Sarah take the baby and go back to their camp. This is a scene that is also done very well. How did they get a realistic dinosaur to wiggle and roar in someone’s arms??? They want to set its leg and that’s just what they do right before trouble arrives.

This leads us into one of the best scenes of the movie: the adult rexes come for there baby and dump the trailers that Nick, Sarah, and Malcolm are in, over a cliff. Eddie tries to help, but he gets eaten in one of the grossest scenes in the movie.

Soon, Malcolm et al are teamed up with Ludlow’s crew and they’re heading for the interior to get to InGen’s communications center because all their stuff was broken. Unfortunately, they have to go through raptor territory to get there. On the way, a T-rex comes along and harasses them. Why? Because it smells baby T-rex blood on Sarah. Well, this stuff is interesting because they show scenes from the first book in this movie, The rex sticking his head through a waterfall is one of them. They also pay homage to "King Kong" by having the T-rex step on at least one person.

Meanwhile, Roland is shooting another rex with tranquilizers. This becomes of import later on…just wait and see!

Okay. For some reason, the T-rex leaves the waterfall and they all get out of there. Then they head across a field on their way to InGen’s base. Unfortunately, this is where the raptors live. The raptors take out everyone except Malcolm and his friends and Ludlow and Roland. In fact, Ludlow and Roland stay behind at the camp that the rex destroyed…I don’t really know why.

Well, anyway, somehow the raptors managed to reproduce without males (there aren’t any feathered males in this movies that I can see!!!) and they end up chasing Sarah, Malcolm, and Kelly. This series of events is fun to watch. It’s cool to see dinosaurs leaping through windows, slipping on the ground and hunting their victims. The only really lame scene is where Kelly goes into an acrobatic demo and slams a raptor through a conveniently placed window.

While all this is going on, Nick calls for help and they get rescued. Whoopee! Movie over, right? WRONG!! We still have to deal with the captured sleeping rex. Ludlow takes it to San Diego to show to investors against Malcolm’s advice. They soon discover that something is wrong when they notice by radar that the ship is coming in too fast and they can’t raise it. It ends up crashing into the harbor…

Now this is definitely one of the dumbest scenes in any of the JP movies! Why? Well, watch and learn! We find out that the crew in the control deck have been mutilated and so has the majority of the rest of the crew. How did this happen when the adult T-rex is kept below deck? If it escaped and they somehow got it back below deck, then why isn’t the control deck damaged? (And, no, it wasn’t the baby’s doing. The baby was kept separate from the mommy…which brings up another point: how’d they get the baby again anyway???) We never find out.

The dumb cops let the T-rex out and we’re treated to a prehistoric Godzilla. It takes a drink from a pool and runs around downtown San Diego. This is really cool to watch! The rex wrecks a bus, chews a stoplight and eats a person or two. We also see some Asian’s running in terror and I’m pretty sure I heard one of them yell "Godzilla!"

Meanwhile, Malcolm and Sarah are getting the baby so that they can lead the papa back to the ship. Soon that’s just what they’re doing. It’s hard to say, but this scene is reminiscent of a comic book known as "Cadillacs and Dinosaurs."

They get the baby safely on board and we watch as the idiot Ludlow goes below deck to try to recapture it for his company. Unfortunately for him, right when he’s about to grab the completely healed animal (WOW! Those animals heal fast!!!) the papa rex shows up. Dad grabs Ludlow and hurts his legs so that the baby can learn to hunt and kill its prey. Sarah and Malcolm close them in…and the last scene revolves around them watching a new network that’s following the ships progress back to Isla Sorna.

I liked this film. If you like dinosaurs and action movies, then I highly recommend it. And if you watch the third movie, pay close attention to the dinosaurs it shows at the end. Why? Because there’s a pteranodon and it looks very different from the ones in the 3^rd movie.

STORY: 

VIOLENCE:  (It's too bad about Eddie...)

SEXUAL CONTENT:  N/A

SFX: 

LANGUAGE:   

Released: 07/2001

Version: Film

Length: Approx. ??? minutes

Rated: PG-13

Main Cast: Sam Neil, William H. Macy, Tea Leoni, Trevor Morgan, Michael Jeter, John Diehl, Laura Dern.

What a movie! This is a pretty cool movie. It has the worst plot of all three movies though. It seems more like an episode from a TV series (with the JP license tacked on) than a real movie. But the 1st is still the best! 

We begin with a group of fools boating near Isla Sorna. A guy and a kid decide to hang-glide while attached to the boat. When the boat goes into some fog, they run into trouble. Something makes the drivers of the boat disappear and the boat crashes. The hang-gliders have to land on the island! YOW!

Now we go to a scene with Grant visiting Ellie. She’s married and this scene is kind of boring. Next we go to a dino dig. Grant gets his protégé and they look at his protégé’s new gadget. It carves parts of the bones by using sonar or something. Anyway, he makes a raptor voice box thing that he can blow and make annoying noises with.

Soon we meet up with a guy who invites Grant to dinner. (I think this guy approaches Grant after Grant’s talk on how smart raptors are.) He has a proposition for our hero. Anyway, he goes on and on about his richness and all the things he and his wife has done. They want to hire Grant to take them as a guide to Isla Sorna for their wedding anniversary. Money talks and Grant agrees.

Shortly thereafter we fly over the island and Grant overhears them looking for a place to land. This ticks off Grant who didn’t want to land and had been told that they weren’t going to do so. Grant gets knocked unconscious. When he awakens, he finds that they’re on the ground.

One of the men is missing already and the wife of the rich guy keeps calling for him. They hear a roar and a bunch of guys come running out of the brush saying they need to leave. They start to take off when one of their men comes out ahead and tries to hail them, but it’s too late. A spinosaur runs out and eats the guy and the plane wings the dinosaur and crashes.

The spinosaur didn’t enjoy being grazed by propellers and it quickly smacks them out of the tree and starts stomping the plane. They lose another guy or two to the beast before escaping. Their escape is short-lived as they run into a T-rex. They get saved by the spinosaur though, because it doesn’t like Tyrannosaurs! Now we learn that the rich guy isn’t rich and is a loser who’s looking for his son. Yes, his kid was the one seen at the beginning of the movie! And the kid has been there eight weeks!!!

They find the hang-glider in a tree with a dead guy strapped in. He doesn’t look too good…they also find his video-recorder and they watch it. Now this part is really stupid. Why? Because in the video, we hear the guy saying that he’ll be getting un-strapped in a minute or so. So what happened? The dinosaurs didn’t eat him or he wouldn’t still be in the tree! DUMB!

Well, they stumble onto a raptor area and lose the last non-important character guy that the pseudo-rich guy had hired. Grant was separated from the group somehow and gets surrounded by raptors. It looks like curtains until some gas grenades come flying in and a short guy comes running through the smoke to rescue Grant. Guess who it is? You got it! It’s the kid! HAHAHAHAHA! He survived, but how??? And then there’s the question of the T-rex urine…don’t ask, just watch and wonder…

OK. Grant and the kid head for the coast because that was the original plan. On the way, they hear a satellite phone ringing. The kid realizes that it’s his dad’s and they head off to find him. They get reunited (by chance!) and then they wonder where the phone is because the dad doesn’t have it. Well, it turns out that it’s in the spinosaur, ala "Peter Pan." That means another chase sequence. Whoohoo!

Eventually, they go to a "bird-house" and run into some pterosaurs. The pterosaurs take the kid and try to feed him to their young-uns. Grant’s protégé saves the day and gets himself "killed" by the pterosaurs. They find a boat and go sailing for the coast. On the way, they hear the ringing again. It’s in spinosaur dung now and they go digging through it so that they can summon help.

They manage to get it unscathed. Then its back to the boat. It’s time for a "Jaws" scene here. A giant fin appears and the spinosaur comes again. Grant tries to call Ellie and her son answers. Somehow, Ellie figures out from the phone call that she can’t understand and her dumb son’s actions that Grant is on the island in trouble. Gimme a break!

Earlier, we find that the protégé dude had taken some raptor eggs. And so the last tense moment is when the raptors surround them and try to get their babies back. They get the eggs out and Grant uses the raptor voice thing to mess with the raptors’ minds. The creatures chat with each other and then take the eggs.

Grant et al, escape to the coast where the Navy, Marines, etc. are waiting. And guess whom we find in one of the boats? It’s the protégé dude! How’d he survive? How’d he get there before them!?!?!?!

Yep. This was a pretty cool movie. (Except for the lame-o kid.) See it in theaters if possible!

STORY: 

VIOLENCE:  (OWWW! Those dinos eat humans in a grotesque way...)

SEXUAL CONTENT:  (Whoa! Bra scene, baby!)

SFX:  (Dinosaurs and more dinosaurs!)

LANGUAGE: