Jurassic World: Rebirth (12A, 133 mins)
Verdict: Escapism with teeth
The rampaging dinosaurs are back, which hasn’t always been a reason to hurry to the cinema.
Sometimes, you might have been forgiven for doing the same as their human prey and legging it in the opposite direction.
But Jurassic World: Rebirth is well-named. Of the six films that have been spawned by a monster hit, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993), this is easily the most fun, with the same snap and bite as the original.
The director is Gareth Edwards, currently only the second-most famous film director from Nuneaton (behind Ken Loach), but that could yet change.
He received richly deserved acclaim for a couple of other sci-fi blockbusters, Godzilla (2014) and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), and will surely get oodles more for this one. It’s terrific.
Significantly, the writer is David Koepp, whose credits include Jurassic Park as well as Mission: Impossible, Spider-Man and a couple of Indiana Jones pictures.
He has confected an adventure that grips from start to finish, so much so that I didn’t once roll my eyes when the dinosaurs did what they always do: creeping up in the background, slavering through their terrifying gigantic teeth, when some poor sap isn’t looking.
If they ever make a spoof, it should be called Jurassic World: Behind You.
The rampaging dinosaurs are back, which hasn’t always been a reason to hurry to the cinema
Sometimes, you might have been forgiven for doing the same as their human prey and legging it in the opposite direction
But Jurassic World: Rebirth is well-named. Of the six films that have been spawned by a monster hit, Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993), this is easily the most fun, with the same snap and bite as the original
As for the narrative background, the dinosaurs are no longer the attraction they were in previous films.
Humanity has got bored with them, so now they all live – on land, sea and in the air – in the equatorial band that most closely tallies with the conditions of 65million years ago.
Every government has slapped a veto on people going there, but that doesn’t stop the creepy boss of a pharmaceutical firm, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), from plotting an illegal mission to extract blood and tissue samples from the biggest reptiles.
These samples will apparently help him develop a cure for heart disease, not that his motives are remotely altruistic. He sniffs a colossal fortune.
He duly assembles a crack team, led by one of those female mercenaries that only exist in the movies and radiate sex appeal even while crawling through a sewer.
This is Zora Bennett, deliciously played by Scarlett Johansson. Joining her are Mahershala Ali as Duncan Kincaid, the noble captain of the boat that will get them there, and Jonathan Bailey as the trip’s obligatory nerdy-yet-dishy palaeontologist, the bespectacled Dr Henry Loomis, whose sexual chemistry with Zora is less a sub-plot than a tease.
Also along for the ride, albeit inadvertently, are a family who while sailing across the Atlantic unexpectedly encountered an ocean-going dinosaur about the size of Wembley Stadium.
As for the narrative background, the dinosaurs are no longer the attraction they were in previous films
Humanity has got bored with them, so now they all live – on land, sea and in the air – in the equatorial band that most closely tallies with the conditions of 65million years ago
This gives the story the cute little girl that it would otherwise have lacked.
So the Jurassic cliches are plentiful: as always, the most expendable characters (played by the lesser-known actors) get eaten first. But it doesn’t matter.
The special effects, especially in the thrilling ocean scenes, are truly stupendous.
And in any case, the film is derivative in all the best ways, with enjoyably distinct echoes of Jaws (surely by way of homage to Spielberg, one of the executive producers) and other long-ago classics.
In the sneaky Martin Krebs, I even recognised the DNA of Richard Chamberlain’s slimeball electrical contractor in The Towering Inferno (1974).
There is masses to savour in this film. It is witty, superior entertainment, and if a healthily full Screen 2 of the Vue multiplex in Worcester was anything to go by soon after the doors opened on Wednesday morning, it will get the audiences it deserves.
We all know the age-old question of dinosaur films: will-it-borus? This time the answer is a resounding no.
In cinemas now.
The Shrouds (15, 120 mins)
Writer-director David Cronenberg has often woven his own life into his movies, but rarely so weirdly or disturbingly as in The Shrouds , a futuristic body-horror thriller inspired by the intense grief he suffered following the death in 2017 of Carolyn, his wife of almost 40 years.
Charismatic French actor Vincent Cassel plays Karsh, an urbane Toronto entrepreneur mourning his wife Becca (Diane Kruger), who died of metastatic breast cancer.
He even yearned to join her in her coffin, so set up a company that enables the bereaved to keep an eye on their loved ones’ corpses.
Believe it or not, Cronenberg at first manages to parlay this exceedingly macabre premise into biting black comedy, when Karsh explains his business to a blind date.
Writer-director David Cronenberg has often woven his own life into his movies, but rarely so weirdly or disturbingly as in The Shrouds , a futuristic body-horror thriller inspired by the intense grief he suffered following the death in 2017 of Carolyn, his wife of almost 40 years
Alas, The Shrouds soon shakes off any humour, becoming madly convoluted as industrial sabotage, a digital avatar called Hunny, a paranoid ex brother-in-law (Guy Pearce) and Karsh’s dead wife’s libidinous sister Terry (also Kruger) collide in an increasingly bonkers plot that will appeal to Cronenberg fans but by no means everyone else.
Hot Milk (15, 93 mins)
Hot Milk asks a lot of its audience, too.
It is based on Deborah Levy’s 2016 novel of the same name, but Levy’s stories depend heavily on the interior lives of her characters, so to translate successfully to the screen they need a deftness of touch that largely eludes Rebecca Lenkiewicz, an experienced and accomplished screenwriter making her directing debut.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t pleasures in this tale of an Irish woman, Rose (Fiona Shaw), and her sullen, carer daughter Sofia (Emma Mackey), who go to Spain to find a cure for Rose’s paralysis.
Vicky Krieps also stars, as the enigmatic German who woos Sofia, and the acting is splendid. But it’s pretty heavy going.
Both films are in select cinemas now.
Back To The Future (PG, 116 mins)
Yesterday’s 40th anniversary of the release of Back To The Future offers a reminder not just of a classic comedy but also of the value of tenacity and self-belief.
Director Robert Zemeckis and screenwriter Bob Gale had their cherished project turned down more than 40 times before Universal Pictures finally took a chance on them.
They kept being told that time-travel movies don’t make money, and that the story wasn’t sexy enough to compete with raunchier 1980s comedies.
But they stuck to their guns – and to their DeLorean – cast Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd, and made a sci-fi masterpiece.
