Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Spoilers!

So now the island that housed the disastrous theme park Jurassic World of the last movie has a volcano on it, and it's going to explode. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), turned from prim and proper business woman to free-spirited animal lover in the last film, is heading up an organization to save the dinos. The government decides to stay out of it, so she jumps at the opportunity when a private company run by Rafe Spall offers to help her relocate the animals. Then she ropes in Owen (Chris Pratt) because his favorite Raptor, Blue, is still on the island.

Should've bombed the island as soon as all the humans got off. Then they wouldn't have this problem.

But surprise! Rafe Spall isn't actually relocating the dinos to another safe island -- he's bringing them to the mainland and keeping them in the cellar of a massive estate that belonged to John Hammond of the original, original film. What could possibly go wrong? Oh and Dr. Wu (BD Wong) helped him and Toby Jones create a new, new dino by mixing Raptor with the Indominous Rex of the last film. The Indoraptor. Super creative name, yeah? They plan on bidding all of them off to the wealthy and ill-intentioned of the world. Things go exactly as you imagine they will.

And that's not really a bad thing in itself. The giant house wound up being a fun set piece for the last act; the first was getting on and off the island, and the second was adventures stowed-away on the transport ship. With a little tweaking it could have been a rollicking and pure-blooded adventure. But it gets distracted, by focusing way too hard on... trying to teach us a lesson? They were pushing us to feel sympathy for the dinos, which I guess they didn't realize is something we naturally feel. Dinosaurs are freaking awesome, and unless they're actively portrayed as evil beings, we not going to be eager to see them die.

I mean seriously -- look how freaking cute she is!

But they went all ham-handed on the tragedy of their situation anyway, and went so far overboard with it. At the end of the first act as they sail away on the ship, a Brontosaurus is left behind, literally calling to them from the dock as the ash and lava catches up to it. The music swells dramatically; the cloud engulfs the majestic creature; the fire lights its silhouette as it rears and seems to dissolve away.... and I was about to roll on the floor laughing. Feels bad. The harder I tried not to, the funnier it became. I did manage to laugh quietly, so hopefully I didn't annoy the person next to me.

There's also a big plot line involving Blue being a good dino, and one secondary bad guy (Ted Levine) who pulls teeth out of the dinos to collect for a necklace. In case the point about him being evil wasn't clear enough. But guess what they neglected to do? Yep, create sympathy for any of the humans. Maisie (Isabella Sermon) is the most because she spends time alone figuring out the bad guy's evil plot and running for her life. Claire and Owen are complete blanks except that they care about the dinos, which doesn't help me much. They had a bad break and allude to that, and by the end they're kissing again, but nothing happened to get them there.

If one shared near-death experience couldn't keep them together, why should a second? 

And the two sidekicks, Franklin (Justice Smith) and Zia (Daniella Pineda), I actually forgot existed whenever they disappeared from the screen. Everything they did could've been accomplished by Claire and Owen, or was unnecessary in the first place. Like, they have a whole sequence where they reboot the ventilation system to save the caged dinos from poisonous gas, but later their efforts have only stalled for time -- so the leak could've been slower in the first place with no different outcome. They didn't annoy me particularly, but were blank too, and if their time had been redistributed through a smaller cast -- but the problem wasn't lack of screen time, but of attentive writing.

The poisonous gas bit was inter-cut with Claire, Owen, and Maisie hiding from the Indoraptor, in what is probably the best extended sequence of the film. The dark house of endless rooms and museum-displays of fossils, the one dino tracking them down. It's the classic Jurassic Park stuff and only seemed lacking because it wasn't given time to breathe. It needed to revel more. Linger and seep in. It did that in brief staccato moments, but jumped around too much for the feeling to stay.

"Rafe?" "Yes, Toby?" "Are we the bad guys?" "I think." "Well, crap."

And it's probably just me but I wanted a lot more out of the villain. I like Rafe Spall. But he did his thing and then disappeared until it was time for his death scene. And speaking of deaths, literally all but one death goes as follows: person discovers dino danger; person tries very hard to survive; person survives by skin of teeth; person relaxes -- bam! -- person is dino lunch. Not that that's a terrible way to do a death scene, but a little variety would've been nice. Also, I felt weird watching bad guys get munched on. It was like the movie wanted us to enjoy it; to cheer or feel satisfaction over it.

In the previous movies, even a villain death was played for horror, not elation, right? We felt they deserved it, but it was still grisly and disturbing. It's also worth noting that no good guy is killed by a dino in this film. Not a single one. Not even a neutral, innocent bystander. It's not like even a hint of stakes were ever in place for anyone except the dinos -- that was just adding fuel to the fire.

Forgive me if I want to care about human characters in a movie where the human characters are the leads.

Fallen Kingdom builds on a decently solid skeleton, and that keeps it from falling into a distracted oblivion. That, and the innate likability of Pratt, Howard, and newbie Sermon. A quality level equal to Jurassic World was out of reach I think, simply because the "horror at the theme park" premise is tough to top -- but though it's not unworthy of the name, it clearly could've been better than this.

Sherlock - Series 4

Spoiler-free.

The dynamic duo, Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and the notorious duo Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss are back for a fourth and possibly final season. After being an adoring and happy fan of the series for a few lovely years, I gave favorable reviews to the third season in 2014, but lost my obsession. Two more years brought actual disappointment with a gimmicky and unmemorable Christmas special. Now another year has passed, and, a fourth season. This I went into willing, but not determined, to enjoy. And these are my resulting impressions:

This is the season cast? Lestrade barely got a cameo and Molly was a puppet. I miss Lestrade...

The Six Thatchers: Not a great start. What I wanted more than anything was to see the boys get back to their regular crime-solving ways; which they did, and which was portrayed on screen via screen text and montage giving us glimpses of wacky and intriguing cases, but never giving us enough information to actually understand what happened, or how it was solved. Things looked up as Sherlock takes up investigating a body found in an exploded car that had no right being there. This is the stuff I love and for a few minutes I felt the thrill that the first two seasons had in excess. Then Sherlock is distracted by the Six Thatchers case, and that turns promptly into drama for the rest of the episode.

The episode ends up having a ton of reveals, but none that satisfy the curiosity we had. It's less, "Oh that makes sense now!" and more, "Oh they tricked me." It's cheap misdirection instead of taking great pains to set up a hard problem with a clever solution and include enough clues to solve it. The villain was revealed out of nowhere, and then the necessary was done. Because it was necessary. But everything felt wrong; the whole episode felt like it was plodding through the motions, yet if it had actually been going through the motions, rehashing the formula, I probably would've enjoyed it more.

Three guesses as to who's gotten in the way of Sherlock's crime-solving. Hint: It's not the baby.

The Lying Detective: I had more hope for this episode, thinking that after the last one, the Case of the Week formula would be picked back up. Happily, I was right, mostly. This episode featured Toby Jones as a chilling villain who comes up against a washed-up Sherlock, who throws himself recklessly into the case. This one hit all the checkpoints; observations and deductions, Sherlock being an amusing sociopath, (on that note I loved Cumberbatch's performance in this ep, and the wide range of Sherlock's complexities displayed) and reveals that, if not as cleverly projected as the best have been, were also not insultingly impossible.

Actually, this episode had a truly great reveal at its end. Disguises so rarely work on me in shows and films, but this one I bought from the start and never questioned. It was all out in the open, undeniably possible to notice, yet I never did. Well done indeed. This episode even managed to pack a heftier emotional punch than the previous, simply because the drama and emotions were contained to their proper place as an enhancer of the plot instead of its driving force. It was used to increase urgency and reward in the end, and was welcome.

The Lying Detective was written by Moffat. The first ep was writ by Gatiss and the last was a combined effort. By that evidence it is clear that this isn't all Moffat's fault.

The Final Problem: Technically, I would say this episode is better than the first of the season, but personally it offended me so much more. It ignored established aspects of characters for the sake of The Mighty Moffat Twist; it established facts only to turn around and throw them in our faces later, and it put its characters through so much far-fetched mental torture in completely strange and unexplained ways and locations, that it all felt like fanfiction with a genre twist of demented sci-fi horror.

At this point it's not inaccurate to call it fanfiction, actually. Yes, Moffat and Gatiss created this show, but it was based on an existing character and existing stories. They were adapting; great, clever adapting too, with all those little twists and nods so well-calculated and fit into the plot. But the Sherlock stories have now veered away from the original Sherlock Holmes into this ignorantly pompous fabricated soap opera. It's their right as show-runners and writers, but this is not what I'm here for. I'm here for Sherlock Holmes; deductions, crime-solving, stunning intellect; fun! This episode was not fun. It was manipulative, brazen and haughty, smugly feeding its starved audience spam that's been grilled up like a steak, and basking in the contrived glory of how smart it is.

This show is in danger of having created some seriously sad irony with the episode title choice here. It could be the Last Mistake the show makes.

Maybe this will be the end of Sherlock. They end the season without the typical cliffhanger to torture fans with for the next few years (in case it's not renewed I guess) and scraped together some kind of open-ended resolution, but loose ends and plot holes abound. So little was actually wrapped up. What a mess. I feel as though I've been insulted for my loyalty. I was never unconditionally loyal to the show, only to the aspects of it that I loved and thought were good, but I have been more forgiving. Now the infractions are intentional and impossible to ignore, and I'm done picking through grimy rubble to enjoy what I can. There's barely anything left to be loyal to. The spell is broken. Goodnight, Sherlock Holmes.

Captain America: The First Avenger

Seeing Civil War in the theater sparked another re-watch of Steve's first adventure The First Avenger, and I figured it was about time I gave it a review. My opinion of it has shifted slowly over the past 5 years, as with each viewing my perspective was slightly different because of the films that came after it, but it has always been essentially the same -- a really quite good movie.

The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan!

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) is the biggest Boy Scout character maybe ever -- certainly in the MCU -- and as such it's difficult to give his character conflict. Because he knows what's right and does it, it's hard to find a tight spot to put him in that would create a compelling story. His origin story deals with that problem in a way no later movie could. Instead of it being about how he fights for truth and liberty and how he helps people, this movie focuses on his struggle to get to a place where he is actually capable of doing those "Captain America" things.

We know that his heart always is and always will be in the right place, and The First Avenger proves that. As a skinny sickly kid he determinedly stands up to bullies to the point where he seems almost insane to do it, and relentlessly tries to make it into the army. I guess he knows what his heart is capable of. And fortunately so does Dr. Erskine (Stanley Tucci) who sees his spirit and his goodness and gives him a chance. To the raised eyebrows of Colonel Phillips (Tommy Lee Jones) and Agent Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) he is chosen to be the first test subject for a serum that turns people into super-soldiers.

"There are men laying down their lives. I got no right to do any less than them."

Stanley Tucci is always a lightening aspect in any movie, and here he's delightful. As soon as Steve gets a body with strength to match his heart and soul though, Erskine is killed and the serum stolen by Richard Armitage! (This movie has so many great "hey, it's that person!" bit-parts. It's fantastic.) I love the proceeding chase scene. Suddenly Steve is who he was always supposed to be, and he immediately uses his new-found physical strength to do good. The scene action-wise is sometimes quite silly and no one had figured out Cap's fighting style yet, so it's missing the visual "oomph" it could have had, but I still love it.

The whole movie's production is often distractingly cheap in fact. Obviously there wasn't enough confidence in it to warrant the kind of budget a Marvel movie gets today. Green screens are obvious, fighting and stunts are cheesy and fake, and I remember the 3D as the worst I've seen. But, like Cap, this movie has its heart in the right place. It dwindles on the action and visuals side, but focuses admirably on character.

Not a perfect soldier, but a good man.

I didn't fall in love with Chris Evans' Cap until The Winter Soldier, but he's always done the part nearly flawlessly, and he hit on it so well with this first try. He's so convincingly kind and endearing and you can't help but feel so sad for him at times (when he's stuck selling bonds and drawing himself as a dancing monkey springs to mind) but he still exudes strength and bravery and is the kind of person you'd be afraid of if you were a bad guy. Hugo Weaving as the bad guy hams it up more than he should have, by the way. The movie has a strong comic book tone to it, but it's halfway in a way that fits with the later films, and halfway not.

Bucky, (Sebastian Stan) I didn't fall in love with until Civil War. When I first saw this movie I barely noticed him. He was a sounding board for Steve's early conflict, then he blended into the Howling Commandos, and his "death" completely convinced me. How things have changed. Now, the sounding board is the beginning of a very complex character. The two have a great friendship, and it's interesting to watch how it changes from Bucky trying to protect Steve from himself and from war, to becoming the one who needs to be protected, yet he doesn't hesitate to follow Steve, and never resents him. Stan has the "strong silent type" down pat but is also light and charming at the proper times. The bit where he tries to hit on Peggy and she doesn't even look at him is hilarious.

"I thought you were dead." "I thought you were smaller."

And even after Peggy got her own TV show, her character doesn't get any better than it is here. Strong and confident, and warm and lovely this Peggy knows her worth and doesn't care one bit if no one else does. I always liked Dominic Cooper's Howard Stark too -- one hundred percent rogue swagger and charm. Tommy Lee Jones is often the funniest bits of the movie while he helps the plot move along. And even though they're small parts, all the Howling Commandos are good, and I especially like that Neal McDonough and JJ Feild are a part of the group.

The one thing that has always bothered me the most about his film is how contrived and ambiguous the plane crash at the end was. I've tried to figure it out, but it seems like they just couldn't think of a hole-proof way of forcing Cap to make that choice and crash the plane, so they tried to cover it up by not explaining exactly why it was necessary to crash. It had to happen so it had to happen, but that always dampened the impact of that emotional moment for me.

Interestingly, the sweeter part of their romance is when they are apart.

The First Avenger is far from being a flawless movie, and most of its flaws are right on the surface for all to see, but with each viewing the characters become more and more endearing and deep, and show no sign of becoming obsolete as Marvel films continue to grow on the solid foundation they helped set. This early, light-and-breezy Marvel flick is a sincere and fitting origin for the most noble and patriotic of superheroes.