Jurassic World

Jurassic World delivers exactly what you’d expect. If you want dinosaurs munching on terrified humans, if you’re dying to see a showdown between a T-Rex and a new, hybrid, more-terrifying-than-the-T-Rex monster-dinosaur, you’ve come to the right place. Jurassic World will take care of your needs. Jurassic World isn’t the revelation you might have hoped for (or maybe you didn’t hope for), but it does have some things going for it. It’s easy to like Chris Pratt, and, for those of us who adore the show Parks and Recreation, it’s pretty gratifying to see him suddenly become a movie star. Also, he’s just movie star material. He’s totally sincere, genuinely likable, and projects equal parts toughness and charm. As I was watching him in Jurassic World, playing a raptor wrangler who can communicate on some primeval level with his fearsome, predatory creatures, I thought: “He’s our next Harrison Ford!” And maybe our next John Wayne. Who knows. But he’s also distinct enough to be accepted on his own terms as a legitimate emerging movie star.

Chris Pratt’s likability is enough to carry a mediocre monster movie like Jurassic World. Pratt good-naturedly undercuts the uptight Claire, the executive (played by Bryce Dallas Howard) who runs Jurassic World but, predictably, doesn’t see the dinosaurs as real living things and lacks the proper respect for them. Claire is a woman who’s too dedicated to her work, which means she’s scheduled for a cinematic come-uppance. Her nephews, Zach and Gray (Nick Robinson and Ty Simpkins) are sent to the park ostensibly to teach Claire a lesson about the value of family. Fortunately, there’s quite a good bit of humor written into her character, and she and Pratt have good chemistry together. They’re both good actors making the most out of not-so-good material. As for the movie’s attempts to preach to us about things like family values or the need to respect nature (important lessons no doubt, but hardly credible in a movie that revels in the exploitation of animals and the sadistic slaughter of random humans), the movie only half-heartedly pursues its tired sermonizing, for which I was grateful.

In fact, I think the best thing about Jurassic World is the way it lacks conviction for all those treacly, feel-good moralisms that blockbuster movies push on audiences. One of the coming attractions shown before the movie was that of the adventure film Everest, in which a group of climbers presumably must battle the elements as they descend Mount Everest. Flashing across the screen were BIG THEMES: Love, Family, Passion, Survival. “Never let go” the narrator reminded us, as if we ever had a chance to forget one of Hollywood’s favorite admonitions. Jurassic World plays along with these almost obligatory BIG THEMES, but it never buys into them that much. That’s not because Jurassic World is smart, even though it wants to be. It may simply be a case of lazy writing. Regardless of the reason, in this particular instance, I liked the movie more because it failed to fully endorse those convictions. You get the feeling that someone making this movie—perhaps one or more of the film’s four credited screenwriters, or the director, Colin Trevorrow—wanted to ditch all the standard family schmaltz and just make a sick, depraved monster movie: an ecstasy of Id.

We probably won’t get anything that depraved from a Steven Spielberg-produced blockbuster, since this stuff is always marketed to children. (Not sure I would take a young child to see this one, parents.) However, I will say this about the adolescent characters in Jurassic World: They’re surprisingly not annoying. Nick Robinson is an incredibly likable actor. (If you haven’t seen it, go back and watch 2013’s The Way, Way Back, in which he starred.) And Ty Simpkins is one of the few boys in recent movies to not be either a smart-ass or a completely selfish little monster. He’s believably worried about his parents’ impending divorce, and yet he’s also thrilled/fascinated by the theme park and has obviously read up on dinosaurs before arriving there. In the original Jurassic Park, the kids are incredibly irritating (as they are in most movies of this sort). But you can never feel invested in their well-being, because you know Spielberg won’t actually kill one of them off. They’re safe, and their peril is always just a plot device for the adults to either get killed themselves or “learn something” about the importance of “something.”

One of the things that surprised me about Jurassic World was its blatant theft from James Cameron’s Aliens. Remember the scene in Aliens when the Marines first go into the complex, and we see their vital signs—right next to their names—lapsing on the screen as they’re being bombarded by aliens? Jurassic World duplicates this, twice. Aliens was a much savvier film politically, though. It was easy to see connections to Vietnam, for example. But in Jurassic World, all the talk about “completing missions” and references to the military feels thin. These quasi-political observations have been thrown in for good measure; nobody’s tried to work them into the movie in a thoughtful way.

But I’ll settle for the lightness of tone that we get in Jurassic World. I never felt pummeled or beaten down by it, and the showdown between the two big dinosaurs will deliver for fans of the series. Those of us who could go either way can sit back and enjoy the performances of Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, both of whom are far better than their material.  

With Vincent D’Onofrio, Irrfan Khan, Omar Sy, B.D. Wong, Jake Johnson, Lauren Lapkus, Katie McGrath, Judy Greer, and Andy Buckley.

Grey Gardens

Grey Gardens (1975) is a descent into domestic insanity that one isn't likely to forget. I was fortunate enough to catch a screening of it at Sunray Cinema here in Jacksonville. (It's playing this week, so if you have the opportunity, go see it.) This now-cult classic documentary showcases the lives of 79-year-old Edith Beale and her 56-year-old spinster daughter, Edie. They were kin to Jackie Kennedy (I believe Edith was Jackie's aunt on the Bouvier side), and that famous bloodline is the basis of their notoriety in Grey Gardens, because the deplorable state of their living conditions would otherwise be too normal to warrant media attention. 

The film opens by showing us a series of newspaper clippings reporting on the state of the Beales' dilapidated Long Island mansion, Grey Gardens, which is infested with raccoons and overrun by cats (and fleas) and allegedly has no running water. The Beales live an existence that up until then was seen only in campy drama. They are as pathologically stuck in the past as a character in a Tennessee Williams play (namely, Blanche DuBois), or the embittered Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. Edie parades herself around in bizarre apparel, always crowned with a different variety of head scarf, and she rants to the camera with an astonishing lack of self-awareness. Her mother, Edith, always seems more lucid. 

Edie blames her mom for standing in the way of her plans (for a career and for marriage), although old black-and-white photos reveal a once stunning young woman with great presence. Who was really standing in her way? And Edith, who sits enthroned on a lumpy bed piled with junk and always occupied by at least one sluggish cat waiting for some canned liver pate, used to be a singer. She even has records, and she can still carry a tune. (One of her daughter's rants is a slam against the man who did Edith's arrangements, whom Edie apparently disliked with a vengeance.) 

The filmmakers--Albert and David Maysles--captured something quite profound in Grey Gardens. I'm not even sure what that something is. On the surface, watching--or maybe enduring--a movie like this feels tantamount to thumbing through one of the sleazy tabloids you see at the grocery store. But the Maysles brothers never lose sight of the dignity of their subjects. Their intent is not mockery, nor is it vulgar nosiness. I don't know exactly what their intent was, but watching the film, I never felt that they were trying to be unkind to the two Ediths. These women look as though they were plucked from a John Waters movie (Waters' own Edith, the looney, snaggletoothed Edith Massey of Pink Flamingos and Desperate Living, etc, certainly comes to mind), and like John Waters, the Maysles are lovingly fascinated by their subjects. (But, also, probably, aware of their potential marketability.) Waters has always possessed a healthy appreciation for insane people and their behavior. 

The Beales are apparently wealthy enough to live on their own terms, despite the wretched conditions of their estate and the relative reclusiveness they have invited on themselves. And as much as Edie complains about her mother (often threatening to leave), we see a twisted kind of dependence at work here, and that's where Grey Gardens feels particularly relevant, particularly universal. We all know someone--maybe it's ourselves--who is dependent on someone else. The complexity of those kinds of dependent relationships, which so frequently fester among family members, is what gives Grey Gardens such depth. The self-sustaining eccentricity of these ladies doesn't just serve as vile entertainment; it's reflective of so much more: our obsession with success and fame and youth, our often oppositional fears of alienation and dependence, and our inability to be honest with ourselves which (and here's where it really echoes A Streetcar Named Desire) necessarily binds us to a manufactured kind of truth instead. The world of Grey Gardens is a fragmented one, a mosaic of madness, cobbled together out of fleeting moments of sanity, a great many self-lies, the invisibility of being almost-famous, the collective inventory of junk that clutters the mind as well as the home, and hallowed, hollowed memories that reverberate through the mind like spectral sirens. It's a world all their own, and yet, it's a world that could easily be ours too. 

Lovers and Other Strangers

Lovers and Other Strangers (1970) is a surprisingly endearing comedy about a groom who gets cold feet three days before his wedding, adapted by Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna from their play (with the help of David Goodman). The central characters of the film are Mike and Susan (Michael Brandon and Bonnie Bedelia). Mike wakes Susan up in the middle of the night and tells her, “Remember when I asked you to marry me and you said I could take it back if I wanted to? Well, I’m taking it back.” He rants and rants about why they shouldn’t get married, and Susan listens coolly until he’s finished; then she softly reminds him to pick up his tuxedo in the morning while she straddles her fingers peacefully along his back. I love that reaction. Susan doesn’t have a meltdown, screaming “Don’t you love me anymore?” But she’s also not letting Mike off the hook. She simply understands that he’s nervous and that he may very well change his mind again.

The whole movie is a kind of examination of the clash between modern and traditional values and the way married people mythologize marriage, often because they’re so unhappy. When Mike’s parents (played brilliantly by John Castelana and Bea Arthur) offer up countless examples of married couples who are horrible to each other and miserable, they proudly assert that all of those couples are still together. Divorce, it seems, is unthinkable, and total misery is better than ending a marriage.

What strikes me about Lovers and Other Strangers is its comic ease and its well-drawn characters. This is a film very much of its time and absolutely immersed in the sexual politics of the 1960s, but it never feels militant or preachy because the characters are so well-drawn and the conversations they have feel authentic and complex. When Anne Meara, playing Susan’s sister, has to work to get some sexual attention from her husband (Harry Guardino), her needs spark a big fight about their own roles in their marriage. Meara is sexy and intelligent even as she lets her husband think he’s winning the argument, because basically he’s a big child who needs to feel that he’s in control and that his wife submits to him. Meara deftly walks through this minefield, and we marvel at her comic timing and the ways in which she alternately reacts to her husband and manages him.

Mike and Susan’s marriage is also not the central focus of the film. It’s really about the ways various people in their circle grapple with the choices they’ve made and with the urges and impulse they have. One of the funniest threads of the movie involves Mike’s friend Jerry (Robert Dishy) repeatedly trying to score with Susan’s flaky but smart cousin Brenda (Marian Hailey). Jerry hesitantly agrees to take Brenda out. (He only wants a sure thing.) Brenda, who’s shy but has deep reserves of emotion and devotion if only she can find the right guy, keeps quoting the hip books she’s read (like Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex), and Jerry presumably takes a lot of cold showers.

Robert Castellano and Bea Arthur play Mike’s parents, the most miserable couple in the film. And yet, there’s tenderness between them, a tenderness perhaps born of familiarity. Lovers and Other Strangers taps into the mystery of marriage. It also reminds us that one of the worst things we can do is put expectations on other people who are getting married. They have to create their own marriage, and saddling them with demands is really quite selfish. (Mike’s brother, Richie, is taking a lot of heat from Mom and Dad for breaking up with his wife, played by Diane Keaton in her first movie role.) And in the end, it appears that Mike and Susan are best suited for marriage because they walk through life with a sense of humor and a healthy lack of expectation. This is a movie that I really loved, full of spark and insight and surprisingly not dated.

With Cloris Leachman, Gig Young, Joseph Hindy and Anne Jackson. Directed by Cy Howard.