Opened 30 Years Ago: THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (2/14/1991)

 

Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster 30th anniversary
 remote reunion in January 2021

THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS opening in Toledo, OH,
weekend of 2/15/1991

In Theaters: JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM (2018)

JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM
(US - 2018)

Directed by J.A. Bayona. Written by Derek Connolly and Colin Trevorrow. Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Rafe Spall, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, Jeff Goldblum, James Cromwell, Toby Jones, Ted Levine, BD Wong, Geraldine Chaplin, Isabella Sermon, Peter Jason, Robert Emms, Charlie Rawes, Kevin Layne, John Schwab. (PG-13, 128 mins)

Five films into a 25-year-old blockbuster franchise--let's count this all as one series--and it's understandable that coming up with fresh ideas might be a little difficult. JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM, the follow-up to the 2015 reboot/sequel JURASSIC WORLD, recognizes this, and while it includes numerous visual callbacks and shout-outs to previous installments (including the brief return of an iconic fan favorite), it basically opts for the insane route, with a second-half shift into territory that's so illogical and ludicrous that it can't help but make itself oddly endearing. There's enough sly moments throughout--Bryce Dallas Howard's introduction begins with a close-up of her high heels that's so blatant that it can't be anything but a middle finger to everyone still bitching about her footwear from JURASSIC WORLD--that I'm actually willing to give the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt. Feel free to argue the plot holes and inconsistencies all you want, but I think they're well aware that they've made what will probably be the dumbest movie of 2018. I can't recall another director harangued more for getting a lucky break than Colin Trevorrow was with JURASSIC WORLD three years ago. Though the directorial reins have been handed off to Guillermo del Toro protege J.A. Bayona (THE ORPHANAGE, THE IMPOSSIBLE, A MONSTER CALLS), Trevorrow remains onboard as a producer and co-writer. With that in mind, it's very much Bayona's film, especially with its improbable second-half location change, but the director seems more than willing to help his franchise predecessor troll the trolls with bits like that high-heel intro, and a later shot where Howard's character arrives on an island and Bayona is sure to spend more time than necessary showing the audience that she's wearing boots.

When a raging volcano threatens the dinosaurs still living on Isla Nublar, the home of the ruins of Jurassic World, Congress must decide whether to intervene and rescue them or allow them to perish once again. Arguing in favor of letting them go extinct is Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), who briefly appears at a congressional hearing to repeat the same arguments he leveled at spare-no-expense multi-billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) a quarter century ago. Congress eventually decides the US will not intervene, but then former Jurassic World PR head and current dinosaur conservationist Claire Dearing (Howard) is summoned to the northern California mansion of Hammond's previously unmentioned business partner Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell). Lockwood is dying and the day-to-day operation of his empire is left largely in the hands of his right-hand man Eli Mills (Rafe Spall), who hires Claire and two of her staffers--paleoveterinarian Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda) and dweeby IT expert Franklin Mills (Justice Smith)--to join a covert operation to rescue numerous dinosaur species and move them to a protected island sanctuary. Also necessary to the team is dino-whisperer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), who reluctantly goes along since one of the creatures they want to rescue is Blue the Velociraptor, with whom he's shared an emotional bond since it was born. Of course, once they're there, they realize they've been tricked (who saw that coming, other than anyone who's seen a previous JURASSIC movie?) and that, unbeknownst to the benevolent Lockwood, Mills' team of contracted mercenaries led by Wheatley (Ted Levine) aren't there to save the dinosaurs, but to gather the most valuable ones to sell to the highest bidder as part of a moneymaking scheme engineered by Mills and wealthy asshole Eversol (Toby Jones). Wheatley's job is to return the dinosaurs not to Lockwood's island sanctuary but to his estate, where a three-story, military-industrial-sized bunker exists underneath to house both the new captures as well as other hybrids, like the new "Indoraptor," engineered by original Jurassic Park scientist-turned-improbable supervillain Dr. Wu (BD Wong). Wu stole some DNA samples from Jurassic World with the intent of selling the newly-created creatures as military weapons, an idea first suggested by Vincent D'Onofrio's character in the previous film.

Once the story moves back to the Lockwood estate, JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM more or less becomes THE OLD JURASSIC HOUSE, with Mills and Eversol holding a dinosaur auction for stock types like Slovenian arms dealers and hulking Russian mobsters, presumably taking a break from buying abducted girls from underground human traffickers before running afoul of Liam Neeson. But instead of Neeson, they're forced to contend with dinosaurs who escape from the holding area on one of the lower bunker levels and proceed to rampage through the mansion. Lockwood's precocious granddaughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon) ends up teaming with Owen and Claire, who are being held captive but break out with the help of a Stegosaur in the adjacent cell as the Indoraptor prototype wreaks havoc and pursues everyone through the mansion. This allows Bayona to showcase his gothic horror/del Toro influence and somehow turn JURASSIC WORLD into an "old dark house" throwback.

There's also a completely batshit revelation about Maisie that goes nowhere and must be a set-up for the inevitable sixth film in the franchise. JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM is a spectacularly dumb movie with dumb people making spectacularly dumb decisions (we've already established that the Indoraptor is super-intelligent and ready for military use, but yeah Wheatley, sneak into its paddock to yank out a tooth for a trophy while it's unconscious--there's no way it's playing possum with you; and why would Jurassic World have been built on an island with a such a large and dangerous active volcano?), but amidst the idiocy, Bayona still brings his own sense of style and a personal touch. There's the gothic interiors of the Lockwood estate, Maisie being a young girl with no friends and largely left to use her vivid imagination (young Sermon recalls both Ana Torrent in THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE and CRIA CUERVOS, and Ivana Baquero in PAN'S LABYRINTH), and the presence of Geraldine Chaplin--a Bayona regular and fixture in Spanish art cinema since her professional collaboration and romantic relationship with filmmaker Carlos Saura in the 1970s--as Iris, Lockwood's nurse and Maisie's nanny. Given his past films and his experience, Bayona has more of a knack for this kind of genre fare than Trevorrow (whose only feature film prior to JURASSIC WORLD was the 2012 Aubrey Plaza indie comedy SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED) demonstrated and despite being an idiotic franchise installment, it still ends up coming across like a film by its director rather than an assembly-line product and audience obligation. JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM is so stupid that it has to be by design, but it seems hesitant to fully commit to its own lunacy or go far enough in fashioning itself as an auto-critique. Sure, Trevorrow and Bayona call out the tireless keyboard warriors with the Howard shoe shots, but they also drop the ball a few times. As much as Maisie sneaks around the labyrinthine Lockwood manor in the dumbwaiter, you'd think it would foreshadow an inevitable moment where a smaller dinosaur hides in it and attacks someone trying to use it to get away. I was all ready for JURASSIC WORLD: DINOS IN THE DUMBWAITER but it failed to transpire. It would've fit right in with a movie that has all manner of dino species milling about inside a loading dock patiently waiting for a door to open so they can get out. I don't think anyone who made this film took it seriously. This is supposed to be a comedy, right?

On DVD/Blu-ray: THE CONGRESS (2014) and GUTSHOT STRAIGHT (2014)

THE CONGRESS
(Israel/Germany/Poland/Luxembourg/Belgium/France/India - 2013; 
2014 US release)

Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman's WALTZ WITH BASHIR (2008) was a unique, gut-wrenching animated documentary with Folman addressing traumatic, long-suppressed memories of his time serving in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1982 Lebanon War. It was powerful enough to be banned in Lebanon, and Folman immediately began conceiving his next film, THE CONGRESS. Shot in 2011 and loosely based on Solaris author Stanislaw Lem's 1971 novel The Futurological Congress, THE CONGRESS is split just about evenly between live-action and animation, a hard sci-fi mindbender headlined by Robin Wright as a fictionalized, alternate-universe version of herself. A single mother of two--snarky daughter Sarah (Sami Gayle) and mildly autistic son Aaron (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who suffers from a rare disease that's slowly robbing him of his hearing and vision--who lives in a refurbished hangar next to an airport, Wright has been out of the Hollywood scene for some time and has a reputation as an unreliable, temperamental diva with an abundance of burned bridges in her wake. Her concerned, fatherly longtime agent Al (Harvey Keitel) laments the squandered potential after THE PRINCESS BRIDE and comes to her with an offer from Miramount Pictures: sell her digital likeness for a massive, one-time lump sum payment and have that likeness function as an undetectable CGI "Robin Wright" for 20 years worth of acting while she's free to live her life and never worry about working again ("Keanu Reeves and Michelle Williams just did it!" Al insists). Miramount head Jeff Green (Danny Huston, clearly basing his performance on what we imagine Harvey Weinstein to be) lays it on the line for Wright: she's got a bad reputation, she's not getting any younger, and her son has some serious health issues that will require her attention.  "You gotta be what, 45? 48?  You can be 34 forever!" he promises. Wright agrees to have her body and the gamut of her emotional responses scanned and captured and then Folman jumps ahead 20 years. An aged Wright is venturing to an event known as "The Congress," which takes place in a world where one must morph into animated form to visit. Six other "Robin Wright"'s are at The Congress, and she learns that the digital manifestations of herself that have been used in movies also "exist" in this animated realm. She finds she's been the star of a blockbuster sci-fi franchise called REBEL ROBOT ROBIN, and that the powers-that-be at Miramount have another plan for "Robin Wright."  Movies are done, she's told by the animated recreation of Green. Miramount has gotten out of the movie business to become a pharmaceutical empire. Celebrity is a substance to be consumed. "Robin Wright" will now be available to her fans in liquid form.

There's some heady themes running throughout THE CONGRESS, a trippy and wildly ambitious film that unfortunately gets lost up its own ass time and again. The idea of "experiencing" your favorite celebrity recalls--and predates, considering it was conceived before--Brandon Cronenberg's ANTIVIRAL, but it's not really explored by Folman, and the notion of the digital actress is straight out of Andrew Niccol's underrated and virtually forgotten Al Pacino bomb S1M0NE, while the ability to traverse real and animated worlds owes a bit to Ralph Bakshi's COOL WORLD. As Wright enters the world of The Congress, the film incorporates numerous animation styles that alternately channel Bakshi, Rene Laloux (FANTASTIC PLANET, LIGHT YEARS), the 1981 cult classic HEAVY METAL, and the work of PINK FLOYD: THE WALL animator Gerald Scarfe. Folman is aiming at so many targets that THE CONGRESS eventually collapses in on itself and becomes a ponderous, patience-testing slog. He has some pointed observations about the banality of modern pop culture, the struggle of aging actresses in an industry that worships youth, and a sense of societal disconnect in the way that the world of The Congress is ultimately shown to be the product of Wright's subconscious. There is no reality--only what people construct in their mind after taking a pill available to everyone in the dystopia of 2033--everyone literally lives in their own world. The film looks superb--the production design of the live-action sequences is eye-catching and the animated sections have some surreal, midnight-movie appeal--but Folman has a pronounced lack of discipline and focus here and can't really decide what his film is about. Genuinely emotional moments are scattered here and there, and there's a good performance by Paul Giamatti as Aaron's sympathetic doctor, but a second-half subplot with animated Wright falling in love with activist Dylan Truliner (voiced by Jon Hamm), and joining him in a rebellion to break out of the animated world goes nowhere, and while Wright is fine, her casting makes no sense. Do we know all that much about the real Robin Wright?  The idea of presenting herself as this horrible Hollywood asshole who closed every door that was opened for her seems pointless without comedic motivation, like seeing Ted Danson or Michael J. Fox playing boorish versions of themselves for laughs on CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM. Usually, in those instances, the whole reason is to play off and have fun with a celebrity's image (like, say, BEING JOHN MALKOVICH). What's the point of Wright playing this scripted, dramatic version of Robin Wright, unlikable and with a fading career, if it says nothing about the real Robin Wright?  Has anyone ever read a negative Robin Wright story in a tabloid? She may as well be playing a faded actress named "Jane Smith." This is the kind of meta role that could've used an 45-or-older actress with a history of being difficult on a movie set, like a Sharon Stone or a Madonna, or maybe an actress like Catherine Keener, by all accounts a nice woman who's great at portraying cold, brittle bitches and it could've made a statement about the pitfalls of typecasting. As it is, THE CONGRESS is a stylish and extremely well-made film but in terms of story, it's just blowing a lot of hot air and it's ultimately a long, slow road to tedium. A major disappointment after Folman's triumphant WALTZ WITH BASHIR. (Unrated, 123 mins)


GUTSHOT STRAIGHT
(US - 2014)

There's enough intriguing, quirky touches and flashes of a legitimately interesting film in GUTSHOT STRAIGHT to make you wish it was something more. Its biggest fault is that there really just isn't much of a story, and what's there has been done countless times in the past. But director Justin Steele commendably avoids going for yet another belated Tarantino knockoff and does a really nice job of capturing the seedy side of Vegas that you don't see much of in movies anymore. He catches a lot of location footage on the fly, as evidenced by tourists looking at the camera in a welcome throwback to the old-school guerrilla tactics on the mean streets of Times Square in the '70s and '80s, and he has scenes take place not in the flashy, tourist-friendly establishments, but in the aging and past-their-prime Vegas casinos that have seen much better days. The film stars CSI's George Eads (also one of 30 credited producers) as Jack, a perpetual Vegas small-timer in a porkpie hat who tries to pass himself off as a high-roller but always loses big. He's $10,000 in the hole to loan shark Paulie Trunks (a surprisingly well-cast Steven Seagal) and sees no way out until a chance meeting with rich gambler Duffy (Stephen Lang). Duffy presents Jack with a business opportunity that happens to be worth $10,000: "I want you to fuck my wife," Duffy says, adding "$20,000 if you let me watch." Understandably skeeved out by the proposition, though he's tempted once he sees Duffy's wife May (AnnaLynne McCord), Jack declines and when he rejects $50,000, a scuffle ensues and Jack ends up killing Duffy in self-defense. May takes charge of the situation, telling Jack that Duffy was abusive, that she was a prisoner, and she'll deal with disposing of the body. Jack goes about his business until he realizes he left his wallet at Duffy's house, and when he tries to sneak back in the next night, he encounters the outwardly gregarious but incredulously sinister Lewis (Ted Levine), who wants to know where his brother Duffy has gone.

GUTSHOT STRAIGHT is the sort of indie-noir that filled the new release shelves of video stores 20 years ago in the wake of sleepers like RED ROCK WEST and THE LAST SEDUCTION. There's bits of HARD EIGHT mixed with BODY HEAT and INDECENT PROPOSAL and the cast is populated with colorful character actors and recognizable faces (there's also Vinnie Jones, doing his patented "fookin' 'ell, mate!" shtick as a Paulie Trunks strongarm, and a useless one-scene bit by WAYNE'S WORLD's Tia Carrere), but there's just not much here and Jerry Rapp's script is lacking. The climax doesn't make much sense, Jack is too arrogantly full of himself and too stupid for the audience to really get on his side, and it's painfully obvious from the start that May is your standard-issue femme fatale. The film plays out as if the actors are working from a checklist rather than a script, which may explain why it never feels like Jack is in serious danger, and that overwhelming, crushing feeling of there being no way out is essential for a film like this to really work. There are worthwhile elements to GUTSHOT STRAIGHT--where most films today hold off any credits until the end, this has got one of the best opening credits sequences of the year, a total homage to the fun and catchy opening credits of the 007 franchise. I'm not sure why it's in this movie, but it works beautifully. Levine and Lang are always effective at playing creeps, and Seagal, in rare character actor mode, steals the few scenes he's in, breaking out a not-bad Vito Corleone voice as the feared mob figure with an inexplicable soft spot for the hapless Jack. If you watch enough of Seagal's recent starring vehicles, then you know it's a small victory if you can get him to simply show up for work awake, let alone turn in an actual performance. According to Eads in the DVD's making-of segment, Seagal was only on the set for one day, so maybe he was excited about not having to stick around, but he's very good here. He gets a terrific monologue about why he's called "Paulie Trunks" and has a few genuinely funny, possibly ad-libbed lines and though his screen time is limited, he makes every moment count. GUTSHOT STRAIGHT has a lot of positives in its favor, and there's much here for Steele to build upon, but it just needed a stronger foundation than the weak script provides. (R, 89 mins)