MY MOVIE SHELF: The Lost World: Jurassic Park

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 216  Days to go: 218

Movie #161:  The Lost World: Jurassic Park

I actually always thought the name of this movie was Jurassic Park: The Lost World, not the other way around, so this kind of screws with my alphabetization but I absolve it since I bought them in a packaged set. I have very particular rules for these types of things, which honestly probably makes it fortunate I’ve never worked in a library.

The Lost World picks up a few years after Jurassic Park, when our intrepid chaotician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) finds out Hammond (Richard Attenborough) still hasn’t learned his lesson and instead of napalming the whole Jurassic Park site and experiment, has instead allowed an heretofore unknown Site B of free-roaming dinosaurs flourish on a nearby island from the original park. What could go wrong?

Malcolm is immediately in a frenzy over the idea of this, much less Hammond’s plan to send an observation team to the site. Naturally, though, Hammond has once again ignored the voice of reason and already has a team made up of Eddie Carr (beardless Richard Schiff) and Nick Van Owen (a regrettably macho Vince Vaughn — tough guy is not his forte) prepping for departure as well as Ian’s own girlfriend, paleontologist Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore) already on site. This freaks Ian right the hell out and is the only way Hammond gets him to go on this crazy adventure, but of course there has to be a kid involved, which is how Ian’s daughter Kelly (Vanessa Lee Chester) winds up stowing away in the communications trailer.

Once again, the scientists are initially interested solely in the academic aspects of observing and analyzing the dinosaurs in their natural habitat, but when Hammond’s son-in-law brings a second team to trap and transport the animals back to civilization, things go haywire once again.

Lots of people don’t really like the Jurassic Park sequels, but I do. Instead of being simply a carbon copy of the original, The Lost World hits similar notes on the island to its predecessor, but then ups the ante by bringing a T-Rex and its young to mainland San Diego, where the elder beast wreaks havoc on American soil, when it becomes up to Ian and Sarah to lure and trap the animal on a barge set for transport back to the island. (Still not sure why nobody bombs the hell out of said island, but what do I know.)

A T-Rex loose in San Diego might be a pretty effective plot twist (complete with dog house hanging from its mouth), but don’t discount the island terror either. First there’s the arrogant hubris of big game hunter Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite) intent on capturing a tyrannosaur as has prize. He captures a baby to lure the parent into his trap, but when Sarah finds it and takes it back to set its broken leg, the T-Rexes track down and attack their camp. The entire sequence of the slowly cracking glass underneath Sarah’s weight is thrilling and awful to witness, but at least the high-hide being at perfect biting height doesn’t lead Kelly to her doom. Next there’s the little lizard dinosaurs attacking that d-bag Dieter (Peter Stormare) en masse, for which we get just a trickle of blood joining the flow of the stream to let us know his fate. This is nothing to the rapid attack of the raptors through the high grass, though, which surpasses even Kelly’s acrobatic gymnastic defeat of them later on. With no evidence of their presence but a ripple through the grasses as seen only from above, they pull their prey (the fleeing members of Injen’s second team) down with a vicious flash. It’s visually striking and so, so scary.

Hubris, naturally, is never rewarded in these films, as Arliss Howard (Peter Ludlow) gets to be carnivore training for little baby T-Rex. Your arrogance will be punished in the most brutal and karma-appropriate way, sir. Count on it.

Honestly, I don’t buy the relationships in The Lost World of Ian and Sarah, or Ian and Kelly, or Sarah and Kelly for that matter. And, as noted, Vince Vaughn will never make a reliable tough guy. So in that sense, the film falls decidedly short of Jurassic Park, yet on a purely action-adventure level, I think it succeeds just fine. The only place it perhaps fails (aside from the positively robotic and forced cameo performances of Hammond’s grandchildren) is in doing more world-building in a world that was already sufficiently built in the first film. Regardless of the fact that it deals with a second site, I think perhaps the film takes a little too much time getting us to the island this time. Thankfully, that won’t be quite as much of a problem the next time around. (Spoiler.) Stay tuned!

MY MOVIE SHELF: Jurassic Park

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 217  Days to go: 218

Movie #160:  Jurassic Park

So much of Jurassic Park is exposition and world-creating, it’s hard to believe it’s as successful a monster movie as it is. But, oh man, is it ever successful. I remember seeing this in the theater and just having the pants scared right the hell off of me by the tension and the set up and the gruesome payoffs.

In the matter of storytelling, exposition is often required, but the film is well-constructed to frame the exposition in unique and satisfying ways: the instructional film, the park ride’s audio, the malicious description to a bratty kid of how a velociraptor would eviscerate him, and a cast full of scientific expert characters meant to educate the hobbyists and children (as well as the audience).

Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum are those scientific experts, Dr. Alan Grant, Dr. Ellie Sattler, and Dr. Ian Malcolm. Each with their own area of expertise, they provide insight into the biology and behavior of dinosaurs, as well as the unpredictability of life. Their expertise butts heads with the hubris of resident mastermind John Hammond (the late Richard Attenborough), as he fails to see how reckless and dangerous it could be to bring humans and dinosaurs together.

Every monster movie also needs the corrupt and/or negligent fool (Wayne Knight) whose self-interest puts the people in danger, as well as a couple of supporting role heroes (Samuel L. Jackson and Bob Peck) who will inevitably make the ultimate sacrifice. But no monster movie is complete without the requisite monsters, and Jurassic Park has quite a few.

There’s the venom-spitting carnivore that gets Knight’s character — a messy, fitting end to him and his misdeeds — that is a personal favorite of mine, and an underrated villain as far as I’m concerned. But, of course, the real marquee monsters are the T-rex and the velociraptors.

The T-rex is imposing and terrifying, stomping through the terrain and terrorizing all the lesser animals, screaming her blood-chilling roar. She gets herself a goat, a human victim, and goes after Dr. Grant and the kids (Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards), only being foiled by her tricky motion-sensor vision. The best and most terrifying aspect of her approach, however, is the tremor going through the water cup (which I read Spielberg created by stretching a guitar string under the Jeep and plucking it) — though the chase seen through the side mirror is iconic and amazing as well, for the ingenuity as well as the flawless depiction of the massive creature.

The raptors, on the other hand, are small and lithe. They move quickly and silently, pouncing on prey almost undetected. Their threat is a more panicking one, if only because it uses your imagined fears against you and then usually proves them to be true as well. Who could forget the sneak attack on Muldoon (Peck), prompting his oft-quoted “Clever girl” line? Or the tense and spectacularly scary kitchen scene in which the raptors engage in a battle of wits with the children and only just lose out.

The movie is wonderful, on all levels, from the strong-minded and brave presence of Dern’s Ellie Sattler, to the shocking (haha) turn of events on the electrical perimeter fence. And the movie doesn’t shy away from the awe-inspiring beauty and grandeur of these animals, making it at least somewhat understandable why someone would act as Hammond does. The beasts are truly both great and terrible, which is why the T-rex, in its way, is hero as much as villain.

Honestly, it’s not all that different from various portrayals of Godzilla in that sense. But that’s another post.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Elizabeth

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 281  Days to go: 273

Movie #96: Elizabeth

Let’s talk about the word “virgin.” As we’re all aware, and as this movie depicts, Elizabeth I was known as the Virgin Queen. But as this movie also depicts, that moniker had nothing whatsoever to do with the queen’s sexual experience.

One of the best and most memorable classes I ever took was a Mythology and Religion course my very first semester in college. Despite what most people realize — or, to be sure, what most Christians advertise — religions dating back far before the advent of Christianity feature tales of virgin births. All kinds of ancient beliefs, from across the globe, present the mythos of the virgin birth as a tenet and foundation of their cultures. What we learned, however, was that the word “virgin” didn’t always mean what it means today. Language, culture, evolves over time. “Virgin,” at that time, meant any woman who was no longer under the rule of her father but not yet under the rule of a husband. So, a single woman, basically. And since religions and cultures the world over have oppressed women and shackled them with a moral obligation not held to men, it was assumed that no woman who wasn’t married would be having sex, which is how the term “virgin” came to mean someone who has never had sex. Hence, the term “virgin birth” really meant nothing more than “unwed mother.” Puts a lot of things in perspective, don’t you think?

Anyway, just as virgin meant unwed there, it means unwed here. Queen Elizabeth I was not sexually inexperienced — certainly not according to Elizabeth the movie, but also suggested by many historical texts — she simply refused to marry.

Elizabeth starts during the reign of Elizabeth’s (Cate Blanchett) sister, Queen Mary Tudor (Kathy Burke), killing off all the heretic Protestants in England, of which Elizabeth is one. (Thus inventing the grossest alcoholic drink imaginable, the Bloody Mary. “Mix my precious vodka with grainy, bitter tomato juice, please. And while you’re at it, stick a plant in the glass.”) Many advisers to the queen are urging her to have Elizabeth executed as well, so she will not ascend to the throne and kill off all the Catholics. (The amount of killing done in the name of one God or another — and honestly, a Catholic God and a Protestant God aren’t all THAT different — over the entire course of human history, I swear. Do we have nothing better to do?) Mary delays and eventually dies of her false-pregnancy-inducing cancer, and Elizabeth succeeds her.

The tense religious divides in England at the time created a lot of political upheaval as well, and the movie focuses largely on the constant pressure on Elizabeth to marry and align with either France or Spain (marriage to an eccentric, orgy-loving cross-dressing Vincent Cassel, perhaps?) to secure England’s safety and the constant threats to Elizabeth’s life and throne (the 9th Doctor, Christopher Eccleston, is here masquerading as the Duke of Norfolk, and he’s out for blood, which is funny considering the 10th Doctor’s preference for Elizabeth).

Blanchett is positively stunning in her ability to downplay her natural beauty in favor of Elizabeth’s hard and stoic face, and yet still charm her court with quick wit and a sharp mind that is almost playful at times. I love Shakespeare in Love and I adore Gwyneth in it, but I really really really wish Cate had won the Oscar for Elizabeth, and not just because she wore that outstanding sheer black John Galliano dress that year, with the unbelievable hummingbird and floral embroidery across the back.

Elizabeth in the film is pulled apart emotionally by the stress of reigning over England, of making sound decisions, and of her desire to be with her favorite (and lover) Lord Robert Dudley (Joseph Fiennes). She eschews a lot of marriage pressure from advisers like the lovely and recently departed Richard Attenborough as Sir William Cecil in favor of spending time with Sir Robert, but when she finds out about Robert’s wife, she discards him (leading him to accidentally kill one of Elizabeth’s lady maids played by Kelly Macdonald by having her put on the queen’s dress so he can fuck the queen vicariously, I guess, but the dress was poisoned, so he also kind of accidentally saved Elizabeth in this instance, although that didn’t stop her from cutting him off but good. “You love me so much you’d have me be your whore?!”) and starts following the council of Sir Francis Walsingham (Geoffrey Rush), who is loyal as fuck, going so far as to sex-murder the French threat Mary de Guise (Fanny Ardant) and torturing the holy hell (haha) out of an unfortunately coiffed Daniel Craig as a vicious, murderous priest. Eventually treason is committed by Norfolk and slew of others and Elizabeth has them all beheaded except for the fallen, traitorous Dudley “to always remind me of how close I came to danger,” because Elizabeth was a badass and better than all of them. She had the heart of a lion.

To further state her point (in case the heads on spikes didn’t do it), she has lady maid Emily Mortimer cut off all her hair and gussy her up in a wig and all her queenly trimmings with heavily caked white makeup on every inch of her skin, and pronounce her marriage to England. She will have no other master. It’s just about the ballsiest thing ever done, and I can’t properly express how much I want to be Elizabeth in that moment — strong, confident, powerful, and does not give a fuck.

It’s been a really long time since I’ve seen Elizabeth — it’s not really one of the most rewatchable films ever made, great and deserving of your respect as it is — but I enjoy the hell out of it. Even with all the players and all the plots, the movie never loses its way and manages to be full of intrigue and suspense and betrayal. It’s a commanding film about one of history’s most revered and influential leaders of all time — a woman who, at the age of 25, took the highly contested throne of a country in turmoil and reigned for 44 years, turning England into one of the richest and most-influential kingdoms in the world, LIKE A BOSS — and I absolutely love it.