Jurassic World Dominion

“Now eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs in your dinosaur movie, right?”

As the (alleged) finale of its franchise, Jurassic World Dominion clearly wants to be a bigger, better movie than its two predecessors.  It expands its scope by letting the dinosaurs run rampant across the globe, and what’s at stake is that reliable old chestnut, the survival of mankind.  But these attempts at escalation backfire, cheapening the dinosaurs as well as the plot.  By making the dinosaurs a part of everyday life, the movie robs them of their mystique; and by threatening us with an ending far too bleak for such a corporate piece of filmmaking, it renders the stakes non-existent. 

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Onward

onward

Day of the Dad

As others have observed, the overall trend of Pixar’s releases has been a gradual decline in creativity, with the freshness of Toy Story giving way to the banal likes of Cars and Inside Out.  The conceit of Onward is on the trite end of the spectrum; its serviceable and shallow fantasy-creatures-meet-modern-technology setup feels like it could have come from any one of Hollywood’s anonymous computer animation factories. Continue reading

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Jurassic world fallen kingdom

Those of you who read my Worst of 2015 know that I was no fan of Jurassic World.  Among its greatest faults was its insistence on bludgeoning its audience with slavish callbacks and references to the series’ first installment.  Jurassic World’s follow-up manages to escape the shadow of its revered progenitor, but creates new headaches in the process. Continue reading

Avengers: Infinity War

avengers-infinity-war-la-1ere-bande-annonce-est-epique-23941

It seems that every Marvel movie somehow manages to generate even more hype than the last, and Avengers: Infinity War is no exception.  It’s the movie that the last dozen-or-so films of its universe have been leading up to, focusing on the titular band of superheroes doing battle with Thanos (Josh Brolin), the much-ballyhooed big-bad of the Marvel universe.  Infinity War brings with it the creative challenges posed by its two predecessors: juggling a massive cast of characters, maintaining a brisk pace for a hefty running time, and keeping the stakes high in a franchise that has rather cheapened the threat of global destruction. Continue reading

The Fast and Fentress Worst of 2015

You’ve seen the best, now it’s time for the worst.  A quick note: the presence of a movie on this list doesn’t necessarily mean I didn’t enjoy it. Continue reading