Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

After the events in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, dinosaurs have mostly become a part of nature again worldwide.  There are instances of illegal breeding and even giant locusts.  Wait, what?  Giant locusts?  What's this?  Yes, the big issue now is that giant locusts - the size of cats - are wiping out crops that aren't grown with a particular seed brand.  Wow, that's not suspicious.  Now to catch up with all our characters.  Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is still working as a dinosaur-rights activist.  Owen (Chris Pratt) is a cowboy - maybe a dinoboy - as he wrangles dinosaurs.  Together, Claire and Owen have adopted Maisie (Isabella Sermon), who they have kept sequestered in a forest cabin far from town.  Elsewhere in the world, Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) visits Alan Grant (Sam Neill) at a dig in Utah.  She has been in contact with Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), who has invited her to the BioSyn compound in Europe.  Excellent, now our story can begin.

A band of mercenaries have found the remote cabin and absconded with Maisie and Blue's baby raptor.  Oh, yeah, Blue lives in the nearby forest and visits from time to time.  Claire and Owen contact Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) who now works for the CIA.  Of course, he does. He gives them the skinny on where Maisie might be headed and tells them not to get involved.  So, they are on the next flight to Malta.  Duh!  In Malta, programmable raptors chase after Owen as he rides a motorcycle through the streets.  Meanwhile, Claire browbeats Kayla Watts (DeWanda Wise), a freelance pilot who flies a hunk of junk, into helping recover Maisie.  As she happened to witness Maisie's arrival and departure from Malta, she agrees.  Convenient.  Off to the BioSyn Institute in Europe!

During all this, Ellie and Alan have arrived at the BioSyn Institute and meet Lewis Dodgson.  Dodgson was a very minor character in the original film as the guy who gave Nedry (Wayne Knight) the phony shaving cream can to store dinosaur DNA samples.  Wow, nice callback.  Next, they reconnect with Ian.  Ian suggests that Ellie and Alan go to a restricted level and get a sample of locust DNA.  Okay.  What was wrong with the DNA from the locusts caught earlier in the film?  I must have missed that.  Also, why hasn't Ian gotten it?  Of course, it turns into a fiasco.  Luckily, the number two man at BioSyn, Ramsay Cole, is on their side.  What?  Why didn't HE get the sample?  This is just one clumsy effort to bring back the original trio for a swan song in the series.  And why again are we having giant grasshoppers in a dinosaur movie?

Out of the blue, the movie introduces Maisie's mother, Dr. Charlotte Lockwood (Elva Trill).  Though she died more than a decade ago, it turns out that she was good friends with Ellie and made plenty of home movies that demonstrate how she was a genetic scientist who was deeply involved in the dinosaur project.  Also, she was born with a genetic defect that was going to cut her life short but she really wanted to be a mom so she impregnated herself with a clone of herself - that would be Maisie - but not before correcting the genetic defect.  Well, of course.

Dodgson proves to be a Bond-like villain who had a lair that conveniently self-destructs with alarming ease.  The astonishing incompetence is baffling.

The movie is really odd.  Why are dinosaurs running around in the snowy forests of the northwest?  Reptiles are not fond of the cold.  Are these warm-blooded dinosaurs?  Did I miss that?  More likely, the makers thought it would be cool to have dinosaurs trudging through the snow.  Sigh.  Along that same line, Europe seems like a terrible place to have a dinosaur sanctuary.  There just aren't any remote tropical islands anymore.

The movie hits all the standard tropes of a Jurassic Park/World film.  In many cases, it just repeats some old ones as an homage to the original.  Yeah, okay.  Whatever.  This is a long (2 and a half hours!) movie that has way too many characters and an extremely weak storyline.  Skip.

Wicked (2024)

The Wicked Witch is dead and the folks of Munchkin Country rejoice.  Glinda (Ariana Grande) arrives in her magical bubble to join the celebration.  There is song, dance, and a burning effigy.  Then, as she is about to leave, someone says, "Weren't you friends with her?"  Glinda grants that their paths crossed, long ago, when they were in school.  She then begins to tell the tale of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo).

Her mother had an affair prior to Elphaba's birth, making parentage questionable.  Of course, her 'father' didn't know that.  However, she was born green, which was maybe a hint.  She grew up as an outcast and also possessed magical powers that awoke when she was highly emotional.  When her younger sister was sent to Shiz University, Elphaba went along as an escort.  Though she was only there to help her sister settle in, Elphaba had a magical episode that got her an instant acceptance by the Professor of Sorcery, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh).  Thus, Elphaba became Glinda's roommate!  The musical numbers are quite fun and detail the initial dislike between the roommates that eventually grew into friendship.  As this is only part one, the movie concludes at a cliffhanger where they are drawn apart though not opposed to one another.

Erivo is excellent as Elphaba.  Her voice is great and her acting convincing.  She plays the hard-shelled introvert who has a mushy inside quite well.  It is generally hard not to empathize with her.  Ariana Grande was a surprise.  Her effervescent personality as Glinda was infectious.  Though it often seemed way over the top, it proved to be perfect for the character.  Here is a girl with every privilege and a huge ego that is nonetheless entirely likeable.  Her antics were often uproariously funny.  Jeff Goldblum played Jeff Goldblum, which works quite well for a con man who is the Wizard of Oz.  Michelle Yeoh was a support character and gave a good though unremarkable performance.

This was a far better movie than I expected.  Recommended.

Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai (1984)

While his dimension-hopping rocket car is being prepared for its maiden voyage, Buckaroo Banzai (Peter Weller) is busy performing emergency brain surgery at the request of a colleague, Dr. Sidney Zweibel (Jeff Goldblum).  Having successfully completed the surgery, he flies to the desert and arrives only moments before the count down finishes for his rocket car.  Woosh!  He breaks the sound barrier and then - thanks to the "oscillation overthruster" - he drives through a mountain, thus visiting the 8th dimension.  When he returns to the desert, he has a brain-like alien life form attached to the undercarriage.  Hmm.  The last man to travel to the 8th dimension - Doctor Emilio Lizardo (John Lithgow) - returned utterly insane.  The very day that Banzai succeeded in breeching the 8th dimension, Lizardo escaped from the asylum; this is no coincidence.  Lizardo was possessed by John Whorfin - a Hitler-like figure from Planet 10 who had been banished to the 8th dimension.  If Whorfin can get his hands on Banzai's oscillation overthruster, he will be able to release his followers from the 8th dimension and reconquer Planet 10.

 

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension has a comic book feel to it and also has a vibe of not being the first film.  Buckaroo has a band of allies, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, who get only the barest of introductions.  It's kind of like Ant-Man showing up in Captain America: Civil War; we all remember him from Ant-Man so he doesn't need a backstory.  There is a lot of that in this movie, from the Blue Blazer Irregulars to the unexplained watermelon.  There is even the oddity that Penny (Ellen Barkin) is the long lost twin of Buckaroo's deceased wife, a weird way of bringing back the same actress for the love interest even though she was killed off.  All of this was fully explained in the last film and is included here as something of an Easter Egg.  Except there was no last film.

 

The movie has a lot of oddball features.  Every alien is named John.  Surnames vary wildly and are often silly: Bigboote (pronounced Big Booty or Big Boo Tay), Small Berries, Yaya.  In addition to being a neurosurgeon and particle physicist, Buckaroo is also a rockstar and has a comic book series detailing his adventures.  His entourage all go by nicknames like Rawhide (Clancy Brown), Reno Nevada (Pepe Serna), Perfect Tommy (Lewis Smith), and New Jersey (Goldblum).  It is never explained why?  New Jersey has only just been recruited to the Cavaliers so we see him transition from Dr. Sidney Zweibel to New Jersey.  When asking him to join the crew, Buckaroo wanted to know if he could sing.  You need to be a member of the band.  Very quirky.  Buckaroo Banzai is a character who needs an origin story, something along the lines of Batman Begins.

 

John Lithgow is over the top, which is par for the course.  I've generally found him to be an overactor in the William Shatner vein of acting.  His wacky Italian accent, constant bluster, and random misquotes make Lizardo an unstable villain who is more likely to defeat himself than require a hyper-competent adversary like Banzai.  He is more comically demented bumpkin than evil mad scientist.  Lithgow is at his best in serious roles (e.g. The Crown, Interstellar, Rise of the Planet of the Apes).  It may be he has mellowed with age.

 

An oddball movie that is unfocused but still fun.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Since the catastrophe of Jurassic World, the park was completely abandoned and the dinosaurs roam free.  However, a dormant volcano on the island is threatening to erupt, which will kill all the dinosaurs.  Testifying to Congress, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) suggests that nothing be done and the dinosaurs be allowed to go extinct again.  Elsewhere, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) has become a dinosaur rights activist, citing the Endanger Species Act.  Yes, really.  Just when it looks like the dinosaurs will die off and stop the all-too-predictable disasters where dinosaurs eat park visitors, Ben Lockwood (James Cromwell) - a former partner of John "We spared no expense" Hammond - summons Claire and outlines a plan to rescue the dinosaurs, placing them on an uninhabited island with no human interaction.  Claire immediately signs up.  However, in order to rescue the raptors, she will need to recruit Owen (Chris Pratt).  Apparently, they split not too long after the last film but she nonetheless succeeds in dragging him along on her folly.  On the island, Ken Wheatley (Ted Levine) is in charge of a band of mercenaries who are rounding up the dinosaurs.  The task gets notably easier when Claire signs onto the tracking system and provides coordinates for all the dinosaurs.  No sooner has Owen managed to lure Blue the Raptor to him than the double-cross kicks in.  Abandoned in the island's jungle as the volcano erupts, Owen, Claire, and Franklin (Justice Smith) must find a way to escape.  The second half of the film has the bad guys selling the recovered dinosaurs for millions of dollars to international buyers.  Of course, some of the dinosaurs - notably the most dangerous one - escape and wreak havoc.  No, that's not a spoiler.  It was inevitable.

 

Having resurrected many species that had been extinct for millions of years, one can't help but wonder why everyone is so worried about them going extinct again.  They can just be reincarnated again.  On another topic, why don't the mercenaries carry guns than can kill dinosaurs?  They always have guns that just annoy them and tranquilizer darts that work only if the plot requires them to work.  Where's the elephant gun or it's new variant, the dinosaur gun?  Why are they always unprepared for an escaped dinosaur?  It gets old.  By the end of the movie, our 'heroes' have saved the dinosaurs and let them loose somewhere in Northern California.  Among the rescued dinosaurs are a T-Rex and a velociraptor.  That's terrific.  This should work out just peachy.  I'm sure they will live in peace with the local population.  Much better than letting them go extinct again.  Sigh.

 

The movie is full of action, loads of action.  Buckets and buckets of topflight CGI action.  It is also spilling over the brim with stupid.  Oh, so much stupid.  Probably the most egregious error: the island is doomed and the US government has declined to save the dinosaurs.  And it also has declined to even see if anyone else tried to save them.  When a ship full of highly dangerous dinosaurs heads to the US coast, no US Navy, no Coast Guard, no interdiction at all.  Sure, why not.

 

The movie concludes with Dr. Malcolm warning about genetic tinkering and that the genie is out of the bottle.  Jurassic World III: Rise of the Planet of the Dinosaurs opens in 2021.  Skip this one.