Jurassic Park

1993 dinosaur movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An old guy uses science to make some real walking and breathing dinosaurs, just like Walt Disney did with Abraham Lincoln and a bunch of other presidents for his Hall of Presidents. And like Disney, the old guy's got plans to make billions of dollars by opening up an amusement park where guests can feed llamas to a T-Rex or ride on a Bronchiosaurus. And no, I'm not even sure if there is such dinosaur as a Bronchiosaurus, but it looks right. Somebody told me that T-Rexes aren't even real dinosaurs anymore, but I think paleontologists are just looking for something to do and rearranging bones.

First, I like that poster. It's simple yet iconic. Second, let me tell you a little story that you won't really care about. It's important though because aside from giving this a bonus point for wacky Jeff Goldblum, I'm giving this a bonus point for what occurred in this story I'm going to tell you. My lovely wife and I saw this in a theater in Knoxville, I think, and we both liked it. When we were back home again in Indiana for a break, it was playing at the lovely, bat-infested theater. Admission was two bucks, the experience was grand on the big screen, and we decided we would go see it again. I asked my brother to tag along, and he refused, presumably because the movie cost too much money to make. We said, "Come on, Mark. It's giant dinosaurs eating lawyers and chasing annoying children!" but he still refused. It was an opportunity to see a flick in the Indiana and maybe have a wild animal bite at you while you get to spend some time with family, but still, he just wasn't interested. I'm not sure if he's seen the movie since then. Big budgets and the needs for blockbusters are difficult things to overcome some times, but this has enough story, some scenes with just exquisite suspense, and a few solid performances to make it a very good movie. And this breaks the world's record for the most Richard Attenboroughs on the screen at the same time which is something. I really like the dinosaurs, the best thing about them being that I can't tell which ones are giant animatronic things ("Are these characters auto-erotica?") and which ones are made with computers. The brachiosaur look a bit rubbery, but all the dinosaurs beat those silly-looking apes in the new Planet of the Apes movie. And that T-Rex looks so good when we finally get to see him, although it is in dark and rainy circumstances. That scene has so much gradually-building dramatic tension that it keeps you on the edge of your seat even after you've already seen this. And then you see the T-Rex in the daylight, and he doesn't look bad at all. Of course, some big bad movie music has to pop up during that T-Rex scene, and that made me roll my eyes. Things were so perfect when it was just dinosaur grumbling and squelchy steps in the mud. I don't need big movie music to feel something. But at least Spielberg does something interesting with all the money he uses to make movies. Speaking of that, I'm pretty sure Jeff Goldblum is animatronic at times here, too. He's got an almost deplorable excess of personality, but as always, he's fun to watch. My favorite moment in the entire movie is when he sees a dinosaur and grabs his own nipple. I wonder if that, and all his stammered uh's, is scripted or if he's just improvising. Wayne Knight (Hello, Newman) is too wacky to be in this movie. His curly hair is too distracting, but his demise is another perfectly suspenseful moment. Neither Sam Neill or Laura Dern get in the way, even they turn into action heroes. A scene where Neill imitates a brachiosaur confused me though. I saw a guy at the zoo doing that with a lion once, but you'd think a scientist would know better. The weakest links are the children. I have a theory that Spielberg has a facility, probably in the basement of his mansion, where he stores the same types of children to use in his movies. I'm sure Drew Barrymore will write about it in a memoir one day. I did like when one said, "That dinosaur doesn't look very scary. He looks like a six-foot turkey," and is handled well by Neill's character who references his intestines being spilled. I wish Spielberg would have had the balls to kill them both. Actually, in my version of this movie, all the human characters would have died, a penultimate scene would have featured two dinosaurs jumping up and giving each other a reptilian high five, and a meteor would have hit the island killing all the creatures. That's a twist that would make M. Night Shamalamadingdong shit his pants.

Oprah Movie Club Pick for May: Schinder's List

1993 Best Picture

Rating: 18/20 (Jen: 18/20; Dylan: 11/20)

Plot: Businessman Oskar Schindler saves a bunch of Jews during the Holocaust. He's rewarded with a tree and a bunch of rocks and, long after he's gone, a movie that nobody will want to see because it isn't even in color.

So here's my question: Why were so many details changed? They're not significant details--the girl in the red dress, based on a real person apparently, survived the Holocaust--but doesn't it damage the integrity of the film? Even a minor rewrite is still a rewrite of history, isn't it? Isn't that what Inglorious Basterds is kind of about? It makes me question the historical accuracy of other things that happen in the movie, like when Fiennes character is shooting at people from his balcony.

Here's something else I wanted to bring up. Here's what filmmaker Terry Gilliam had to say about Schindler's List: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAKS3rdYTpI

It's a two minute clip. I know Cory made us watch a five-hour movie this month, but you can spare two more minutes to see what Mr. Gilliam has to say, right? I have my own thoughts, but I wanted to see what you had to say.

Another question: Spielberg refused to take any money for making this, and he doesn't sign any memorabilia related to the movie. That's noble and all, but a stronger move would have been to keep his name off the screen during the closing credits. Or at least not end his movie with a powerful scene of Schindler's Jews giving him rocks and then immediately splash "Directed by Steven Spielberg" on the screen after it.

I saw this in a crummy theater in Terre Haute when it came out, back before they'd invented devices that would enable my wife to check Facebook during the movie. Now I'm not completely sure about this, but I think that makes her almost as bad as a Nazi. Of course, Dylan only rated this an 11, not even twice as good as Dr. Strangelove, so he's probably going straight to hell. He called it "boring," and it is too long, arguably longer than it needs to be. If I had to cut anything at all, I'd maybe lose the big chunk where Goeth is going through a "pardoning" stage after that lengthy conversation that Qui Gon has with Goeth's maid. I guess I know what a scene where Goeth gets a manicure adds to the Schindler's List experience, but it could have been cut without losing much. It certainly is a long movie, but most of what you see on the screen needs to be there. I don't think our director wants humanity to get away without seeing some of this imagery. It's the same reason why people should have to read Night, almost like an act of penance. Also, this much time is needed to make what Schindler does realistic and comprehensible. You lose some of the space this movie gives the Schindler character, and you lose the real person that he was. And speaking of that real person, I'm happy this leaves in some of his defects. What we find out first about the man is that he was a selfish womanizer, and I think that's important. Neeson's so good here, both with those aforementioned flaws and the more emotional bits as Schindler transforms into the person who deserves to have a movie made about him. Fiennes makes a scary villain, a much scarier (and nosier) one than Lord Voldemort could ever have been. Just as Neeson gives the titular character some real flesh 'n' blood, Fiennes also gives his character, a character who puts a face and name on the evil and gives us something more specific to hate, some unfortunate humanity. And he's so matter-of-fact about it all. It's frightening. It's a brave part for him to grab at the age of 30-something, mostly because he's so good at being pure evil that people might not want to see his face on the screen ever again. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (CORRECTION: No, he did not. And neither did John Malkovich.), and if there was an Academy Award for Best Paunch, he would have gotten that, too. As evil as that character is, he did give me a pick-up line that I'll probably use once I leave my wife for getting on Facebook during Schindler's List and will need to find a replacement wife--"I realize you're not a person in the strictest sense of the word. . ." I don't think many women would be able to resist that.

One other question: Did they really say "fuck" that much in 1940's Poland? This is a legitimate question. It's a word with a fuzzy history.

Spielberg gives us a lot of pictures that are impossible to get out of your head. The handheld camera work during a lot of this startles. True, some of these visuals just seem too easy, the kind of stuff that a director who knows his name will be the first thing you see after the last image of the film might think will get him that Academy Award. The camera lingers on children, and piles of shoes or pictures, concentration camp atrocities, and dying extras get more than enough screen time. The ghetto scene is absolutely brutal. The little boy with the ears trying to find a hiding spot and the shot of him spotlighted in that desperate situation he decides upon is impossible to forget. Of course, there's the girl in the red coat. Ashes, the slow river of blood fighting through snow, the ominous crematorium chimney. One of my favorite moments is in the hospital when the nurse poisons some patients. One woman's grateful expression and that nurse's look of defiance when the SS arrive are both so beautiful. It's powerful film-making, and there aren't a lot of people who can watch this and feel nothing.

One more thing--I think it's a little sad that I have to look up the name of the accountant/factory-manager. It's Itzhak Stern. Maybe it's just me being bad with names.

My thoughts about Gilliam's thoughts: What are you going to leave this movie remembering the most? Is it a Holocaust movie or a movie about how one person can make a difference? Do you think about how evil humanity is as the credits roll or are you remembering the goodness of one human being? If it's the former with those three questions, Gilliam might have a point.

OK, your turn. What do you want to say about our Oprah Movie Club selection for May?

Urine Couch AM Movie Club: War of the Worlds

2005 H.G. Wells adaptation

Rating: 12/20 (but that could change if I ever saw it again when not being interrupted to actually do the job that I'm paid to do when I watch these Urine Couch movies)

Plot: Al Qaeda's ticked off again and dreams up an elaborate plan to take American lives and knock down our buildings--bury wobbly tripod things and wait subterraneanly for the perfect moment to bust out of the soil, destroy churches, and vaporize some fools. A noted Scientologist tries to keep his mopey son and young Drew Barrymore safe from the death rays and gut-slurping. George W. points to anybody harboring tripod things and promises retaliation.

The idea with the Urine Couch AM Movie Club, in case I haven't made myself completely clear, is that I'm watching a movie I probably wouldn't watch on my own. There's just not much going on at Indianapolis's dumpiest motel in the middle of the night, and after I get my paperwork finished, I can chill on the Urine Couch and watch whatever HBO, the other HBO, TBS, TNT, or USA has to offer.

It sure looks like this movie took a lot of money to make. For one, Tom Cruise costs something like fifty million dollars. And before you ask: Yes, I'm aware that there is a couch connection here. Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah's couch while promoting (I think) this motion picture. He also jumps on a couch and does a triple flip over a tentacle thing to evade harm. That or he trampolines off Oprah. If that's the case, this movie just got more expensive because Oprah wouldn't allow somebody to use her as a trampoline in a film without a hefty fee. So there's a Tom Cruise/Oprah Show couch and the Urine Couch. And to complete the couch trifecta, a customer who had called me the previous day to ask if she could have a working telephone and, you guessed it, a couch moved into her hotel room, came in to ask for toilet paper and then not leave for a while. I couldn't really get a grasp on this movie because the viewing was interrupted multiple times by needy customers and a shady guy in a truck without a license plate that I had to chase off the property a few times.

It's too bad actually because I was kind of liking this movie, especially the first half. The apocalyptic alien attack imagery with the zapping and the flashing storm clouds and the bursting was really impressive. There are a handful of exciting set pieces, and Spielberg shows off his talent for using little things to create big moments and creating tension in unique ways. The scene where the first of the tripod things pops out of the ground in front of a church and starts turning the fleeing citizens into dust is really impressive. There are so many panicking people, and either the computer graphics were seamless or a really immense little neighborhood was constructed and then destroyed. Looked really good to me, and I was watching it all on a cheap little television. I imagine it would have been even more impressive on the big screen. And it was impossible not to think of 9/10 (Wait a second. That date doesn't look right.) while watching some of this. Not sure if that was intentional or not. I also liked the look of a big chunk of the movie that took place in Tim Robbins' basement, too. I liked Tim Robbins' character, too, but this is still where the movie gets a little too silly for me. The suspense is thick throughout most of the first half of this movie while Tom Cruise runs around (I liked him in this movie, by the way) even though you know that Spielberg is not Hitchcock and that the star isn't going to die before the movie reaches its halfway point. A lot of the family stuff gets in the way, and things get really ludicrous near the end. And then mega-ludicrous when Spielberg decides that the big unnecessary tragic moment that is tossed into the middle of the movie was a bad idea and that he still has a chance to wave his magical movie wand and undo things. I might be exaggerating a little, but it might have been the worst ending ever. Only in Hollywood. Another Spielberg mistake: Showing the aliens. It was unnecessary, and they looked pretty silly. Shouldn't they all look like E.T. anyway? That would have made as much sense as the rest of the last third of this movie.

So in summary: War of the Worlds is a pretty bad movie with one really excellent scene (with a solid John Williams score, I should add) and a handful of other OK scenes and one of the worst endings in movie history.

Duel

1971 television movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A guy with a red car is terrorized by a truck driver in a scary-looking truck.

Steven Spielberg's first feature-length film (released in theaters about a decade later after being shown on television) is a pretty dang good psychological thriller with some deft camera work, a haunting score, and a building sense of realistic tension. The truck, since Spielberg wisely never shows much of the human behind the wheel, becomes the antagonist, and like all good thrillers, it (unexpectedly) is a great, menacing one. As weird as it sounds, the truck's performance is very good, and I'm sure that the truck could have gone on to have a very good career in acting if not for the typecasting and the addiction to heroin. There's a point in the movie where the whole big rig vs. Dennis Weaver conflict becomes a bit too silly, but the movie's just the right length and never drives into overly-precious territory. I wish I would have had Convoy ready to pop in as part of a double feature after this one. Or Maximum Overdrive!