Jurassic World: Dominion (2022)

Score: 4 / 5

It's an odd hybrid of a film, to be sure, but that kind of fits with the whole Jurassic Park thing. They've always cleverly blended genre, and while this latest pushes its premise much farther, I'm glad the films are evolving a bit beyond the tried-and-true method they've perfected over five films already. When Fallen Kingdom ended, I was an absolute mess because the final sequence is everything I've wanted from the franchise since it was suggestively promised to us in the second half of The Lost World: dinosaurs freely roaming the earth again. While the film obviously needs a story, it does a really fabulous job of showing news reels and montages of this sci-fi nightmarish fantasy from the opening sequence to the finale. We don't need to imagine the Mosasaur gobbling surfers or Pteranodons perching above Columbus Circle because we can finally see it on the big screen!

Set four years after the previous installment, dinosaurs have now bred widely and are spread across the world. Sometimes it's like seeing a bear or moose in the wild; sometimes it results in chaos, wreckage, and death. But rather than explore this generally, the film's primary concerns seem to be with attempts to control or profit from this phenomenon. Enter Biosyn Genetics, a rival company of InGen (from the previous films) who have established a scientific sanctuary in Italy to study dino DNA and, hopefully, find medical and agricultural breakthroughs. Unfortunately, the company is headed by Lewis Dodgson (who we might remember from the first film as Dennis Nedry's accomplice in stealing from Hammond), whose criminality is put on display when a plague of prehistoric locusts is unleashed on the world, bred to devour all crops not genetically linked to Biosyn (get it? "Bio"logical "sin"s are sort of their MO). Fallout from this ecological disaster spurs the plot of Dominion, and thankfully allows for the return of some familiar faces.

Paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), in researching the suspect crops, approaches paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) for help. Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen (Chris Pratt), raising the cloned Maisie Lockwood in the Sierra Nevada, are brought out of relative isolation when Biosyn captures the Velociraptor Blue's asexually produced offspring and Maisie in one shocking raid. When the heroes approach Biosyn, they meet up with a friendly face in the form of Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), now working as a sort of corporate ethicist for Dodgson. Weird, sure, but it's a lot of fun to see the whole gang together.

I'd have preferred a less plot-forced approach. We skip around the world so many times, from snowcapped North American mountains to rooftops in the Mediterranean, that it feels more like a Marvel movie than a Park movie; then again, there's a reason this trilogy changed its title to World, and this is exactly that reason. We aren't given ample time, yet again, to really know Maisie or understand her character. She's mostly a MacGuffin, one whose thematic implications are fascinating but never really developed or explored in this trilogy. There are also two new characters including a pilot who feels more like a mercenary (DeWanda Wise) and the disillusioned head of Biosyn communications (Mamoudou Athie) who aren't developed at all and who seem merely to set up whatever comes next from the franchise. (What's the bet it'll be a limited series exclusively for streaming?)

Thankfully, we get a bit more development of Henry Wu (B.D. Wong) here, who is arguably the real villain of the franchise, and Dodgson (Campbell Scott) is actually a pretty great villain for this episode because he links it all back to the beginning. Scott himself delivers an unnervingly effective performance to undermine what could easily have been a rote character, much like Goldblum, using odd words and phrasing, unexpected tonal shifts, and even distinctly uncomfortable body language to suggest the weirdness of his character; one imagines he studied Musk, Jobs, or Zuckerberg quite a lot for the role.

If it wasn't clear already, there is a lot going on in this film. I wish it took the careful time to explore all its ideas like the first Jurassic World did: glass spheres for prairie strolls, kayaks on a dino river, a petting zoo are all genius and well-presented. But here, we're given mere seconds to take in all the information from a dinosaur black market, dino meat street vendors, dino fighting pits. These scenes dissipate much too quickly and without -- I think this is the significant bit so I'll repeat -- without caring enough to make the scenes believable and therefore tense. All five previous films are keenly aware that every single moment has to have the dread or tension that death is actively nearby. This one ratchets up the action and spectacle, but there's never really the worry that Owen or Alan will get eaten or squashed. And that's a difficult failing to overlook. But, if the franchise continues (and I hope it does), then perhaps this film will be remembered more fondly as the launching pad for some really interesting and exciting work. As it is, it probably ties with the third film as my least favorite of the franchise, which admittedly isn't saying much because I can hardly wait to watch this one again!

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Score: 2 / 5

Here we go again. The opening title card is the same as before, and the opening sequence again plays out over the familiar song "Danger Zone." This is a legacy sequel in spades, one that feels determined to work best for nostalgia's sake. Even though the late Tony Scott isn't directing this time, new director Joseph Kosinski seems to do his best mimicking the style of the earlier film, though his tone is much more somber this time. Frankly, I don't much like the first one, and while this film feels more serious and features much better-filmed practical effects, it also is just more of the same (without any queer coding to distract from its emptiness). I'm just not a fan of the whole Top Gun thing.

We begin with Tom Cruise's character, call sign "Maverick," working as a test pilot for the US Navy, a more believable career for him after the first film ended with him preparing to teach the top-tier titular program's students to become the Navy's best fighting pilots. He is summoned on a mythic "final job" mission to return to teaching a group of recent Top Gun graduates for a crucial mission. He doesn't really want to, but it persuaded to join. Unfortunately, he quickly learns that one of his students will be "Rooster" Bradshaw (Miles Teller) the son of "Goose," Maverick's former wingman who died in an accident Maverick caused. He has never forgiven himself, and is sure that Rooster hasn't either.

The actual plot is about as irrelevant and vague as it was in the original. There is an enemy, but great care is taken to never identify the enemy (in the first, we can probably assume North Korea or China; in this, it's almost certainly Russia). There is a mission to be done, though it's basically opaque. There's an impossible flight plan to destroy some target and almost certainly die in the process (is it the trench climax from Star Wars: A New Hope, or perhaps a Mission: Impossible task?). And, on the home front, Maverick needs to navigate his way around these young hotshots, harden them for the impossible, and also hopefully kindle romance with the local single-mother bartender (Jennifer Connelly). Because he's him, and this is us, and why not?

The cast is uniformly, well, uniform. Serviceable but generally unremarkable, and that's the result of writing and direction. A film so narratively castrated can scarcely harness the kind of energy wartime action dramas need to capture our attention. The lack of specifics in plot, in any capacity, makes the film feel more like a dreamy, vaguely patriotic attempt at rousing dangerous ideological pockets of our culture, much like the first film was so jingoistic and vainly pious for its own good. (Then again, the performatively macho presentation of the first has since been subjected to much critical suspicion, resulting in famed attempts to queer the material. It's funny and diverting, but ultimately a troubling exercise unless you take the whole film as camp, which is also diverting but I think fruitless.)

It's a summer blockbuster, taken for its entirety, and some people will love it. I enjoyed some of the didactic zingers and the general nostalgic sentimentality for what they were. Even though the actors are largely irrelevant, Connelly works hard to feel important and Cruise just sort of is important anymore, so they command the screen well. Teller often plays off Glen Powell, and I'd like to see them square off in a better film together, as their repartee is delightful. Val Kilmer returns for a single scene, and it's emotional enough when he reveals why he selected Maverick for this job; Jon Hamm and Ed Harris also pop in occasionally for apparent reasons. Movies like this tend to cast recognizable, grizzled older white men to bark orders and repeat lines like "But that's impossible" and "You're here to follow my lead," and that's all they do here too. There are some breathtaking sequences of airborne dogfights and low-altitude chases that are infinitely better than their counterparts in the original -- and a sexy beachside football match to rival the original's volleyball playoff -- and while it's still not movie material I love, I appreciated the authenticity and lack of VFX (and excellent editing!) in telling those parts of the story.

Gaia (2021)

Score: 4 / 5

What a delicious film. Its story may not have the heft of a confident storyteller -- despite its ambitious and timely ideas from screenwriter Tertius Kapp -- but under the direction of Jaco Bouwer it manages to perform itself visually. It doesn't take long for us to feel the film, before we really understand what is happening, and that's the mark of great collaboration. Especially with cinematography (here by Jorrie van der Walt). This is the sort of transportive filmmaking even popular and "great" directors spend entire careers trying to achieve. And here it is in an independent release from South Africa in the middle of a pandemic. The big American studios should take note.

Two forest rangers, Gabi and Winston, are patrolling a river in the protected Tsitsikamma Forest, using a drone to survey the surrounding area. We're blessed with a God's eye perspective almost immediately (actually, it's the drone, so...deus ex machina?) as the two isolated rangers paddle slowly through the jungle. When the drone crashes, Gabi is determined to retrieve it and not litter; Winston warns her of the dangers of the jungle. She forges ahead alone (bad idea) and almost instantly begins to suffer the consequences, triggering a trap and getting stabbed right through her foot before wandering into a remote cabin (bad idea) to rest and treat her wound. Meanwhile, Winston hears her scream of pain and ventures into the jungle after her (bad idea) as night falls (bad idea) and encounters terrifying humanoid creatures before becoming apparently infected by fungal spores.

When night falls, a fairly straightforward adventure/survival story shifts into full-blown horror. The forest is alive, a designation realized soon enough through the red lighting and editorial manipulations of our expectations. Stunning visuals show mushrooms and other fungi growing quickly, unfurling their tendrils and oozing forward in almost sentient ways, to say nothing of the creatures which appear not unlike the pirate crew of Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean films due to the amount of mushrooms and moss and things growing on them. Winston, experiencing it all firsthand, catches on really quickly that this is bad; Gabi is slower to understand, sheltered as she may be, but she suspects that the red light and impossible sounds in the jungle indicate the presence of a more cosmic threat. And then the owners of the cabin show up -- a father and son survivalist pair who are utterly terrifying -- and that's when the movie kicks into high gear (as if it wasn't already).

Taking its visual (and, to some extent, narrative) inspiration from the mushrooms, the film's visuals get increasingly trippy and the editing wanders and returns sometimes quickly enough that you feel you're experiencing far more than just a survival story, even as you're not quite sure what exactly is happening. Barend and Stefan, the survivalists, become less terrifying because they seem to know what the mysterious presence in the jungle is and how to navigate around it. When the crazy person becomes understandable or even smart to us, we know the designed horror of the story is settling in; it's all about displacing us from the comfort of audienceship. In many ways, it's a bit like the horrors of Apocalypse Now and Deliverance and even The Mosquito Coast in the characters' isolation and dance with madness. But it also primarily works as an ecological horror film, and would pair nicely (if a little too well) with In the Earth. I also thought a few times of Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Beach House, so if that range of films gives you any idea, this movie is pretty intense and a little bonkers.

Add in the religious and arguably pagan fervor of the survivalists (specifically the father Barend) and the increasingly unhinged dream sequences -- though it's not always clear if they are dreams or not -- and the film reaches for really profound and heady concepts. But no matter how weird the movie gets, its messages are clear (unlike, in that regard, In the Earth): the warnings that we have irreparably damaged the earth will be made manifest and the consequences returned to humankind one way or another. There's an urgency to the proceedings, no doubt fueled by our collective fear of biological annihilation since the COVD-19 pandemic, wherein even isolating oneself in nature is dangerous. People seeking solitude and safety may find something far worse than the crime or disease of urban life: an indifferent and predatory world chewing you up, spitting you out, and forgetting that you even existed.

We Need to Do Something (2021)

Score: 2.5 / 5

It's a brilliant premise. The film opens with a family entering their bathroom to take shelter. It's a large space, thankfully, for the family of four, and it's clear they're not the happiest family all together. Their phones ding repeatedly with tornado warnings, interrupting daughter Melissa (Sierra McCormick) as she worriedly tries to text her significant other. The mother Diane (Vinessa Shaw) tries to comfort the young son Bobby (John James Cronin), who seems exceptionally frightened, though we're not quite sure if he's scared of the storm or his father Robert (Pat Healy), whose aggressive and bitter jabs at the family reveal that he's not exactly a nice guy. But, within the first ten minutes of the film, the storm feels a bit more intense than it should, with a sustained white light and the sound of something like a jet crashing. Or, you know, maybe the earth opening up. We can't see anything of the outside world. Which is why it's so scary when Robert can't get the door open again.

Could a tree have fallen in front of it? Is the rest of their home still there? Who knows, because the tiled bathroom also doesn't have usable windows or an easy way to punch through the walls. It's telling that this movie was produced during the COVID-19 pandemic, because its most immediate pleasure (and horror) is that of being stuck at home with your family. Especially family with whom you have some bad history. It would work well as a psychological drama in a locked space. Some of those can be really effective, such as Hitchcock's Lifeboat or Rope, or even recent films like Locke and Buried; it's a terrifying and theatrical experience of being intimately connected with trapped people while we also feel trapped. That sounds like a pretty great movie to me. But We Need to Do Something takes a sudden, drastic turn, and while I really admire its ambition and its absolutely unpredictable plot, I wish the screenplay did a little bit more to flesh everything out.

It starts when a dog -- or, at least, what we think is a dog -- starts sniffing around by the door. The family can open it enough to get an arm through, and they try to get the dog to approach. Maybe that will alert rescuers to their location! The dog approaches and makes some noise, but then it suddenly speaks in a demonic voice (voiced, oddly and effectively, by Ozzy Osbourne), and this sudden turn to supernatural horror is nothing short of breathtaking. I was so stunned I had to pause the movie and get another drink already. Is this locked-in-the-house thriller now also a Satanic panic or Lovecraftian horror film? My suspicions and terror were further roused when a venomous snake materializes in the bathroom. 

There is no relying on "the man," as Robert quickly becomes unhinged and violent. There is no relying on the outside world, as the family has absolutely no idea what's happening. This absurdist streak manifests mostly in partially effective dialogue between the family meant to create drama, but as such it becomes often unexpectedly funny. Sometimes the humor is so dark I felt shame in chuckling, and sometimes it's so wacky that I audibly guffawed, but it's never laugh-out-loud comedy. It reminded me a bit of Sam Raimi's early work, not least because Healy's bugged-out angry/scared eyes as he loses it felt so akin to Bruce Campbell in The Evil Dead. The man of the house actually can't handle the things he's expected to handle (or, more accurately, the things he feels are his duty under pressure). 

There is some backstory, mostly shared in dreamy flashbacks about Melissa and her girlfriend, and that didn't quite work as well for me. There is some school bullying that spurs them on to witchcraft, and the suggestion might be that their retaliation on the bullies may have brought about their current situation. Apocalyptic as it feels, though, it could just be a sort of "sins of the father revisited" circumstance in which this family is being uniquely punished (think of a less festive and more paranoid Krampus). But there's just not enough of that story -- whatever it is -- to know for sure. Instead, we're left with the chilling feeling that this dark and insane story could just be a reflection of the way we all experienced the trauma of pandemic lockdown. That's where the ending is both satisfying and infuriating: we think it's about to be over finally, but more horror awaits us just outside the door.

Crimes of the Future (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Its opening sequence reads like some of the auteur's best work. A little boy in a nasty, dirty bathroom, curls up beneath the sink and begins eating. But this is not a vampire from The Brood or an offspring of The Fly; he eats a trash can. Not its contents. Literally the can itself. It's weird, certainly, but not quite horrifying. That adjective comes into play a moment later, when the boy's sad and disgusted mother enters and kills the boy. A brutal way to start a film, and all the more intriguing because there is no exposition, no rationale, no history. And, noteworthy, we never revisit the scene in the film.

Cronenberg is of course the master of body horror (or "the body beautiful" as he calls it), and Crimes of the Future is very much a return to form after two decades of drama and history and thriller films (almost all of which are also excellent). From his twisted mind, we're introduced very quickly and without any panache to a world in the vaguely distant future that feels grim, grimy, and altogether nasty. Think a less urban Blade Runner aesthetic. Humanity has apparently begun to mutate in this polluted waste of a world so that some humans continuously grow new organs, and most humans no longer experience pain. As a result, of course, new occupations have arisen. In what seems to be his fantasy of the middle of the end of humankind (it's not the beginning because of the world-weary nature of the proceedings and the characters, and it's not the end because humans are apparently generally handling the world fairly well), there has sprung up quite a market for human organs. Technicians have developed biological machines to help humans sleep and eat more organically (as if those weren't two of the most organic functions of humans anyway).

As different people have evolved differently, there seems to be an intense stigma specifically against humans who have evolved to the point of being able to eat plastics. Hence the opening scene. These considerations could make for a film with massive scope, somebody like Michael Bay or Roland Emmerich might make a global disaster movie; somebody like Steven Soderbergh or Ridley Scott might make an epic that is also intimate. Cronenberg, in his signature style, makes a distinctly political premise markedly antipolitical in execution, meaning that this movie that indirectly references the plastics that have polluted our world and that already exist within human bloodstreams and takes it to a logical conclusion: if saving the earth (and humanity) that was is less and less likely, as it is, perhaps we need to look forward into adapting our world to accept and cater to this plastics behemoth we've created.

It's frighteningly accessible to our pandemic world, too; learning to live with the constant threat of annihilation and how to not only survive but use that threat to somehow better ourselves. Enter Caprice (Lea Seydoux) and Saul (Viggo Mortensen), an ex-surgeon and performance artist respectively, who kind of hate what they do but fill a particular need and niche for themselves and their audience. Saul continuously grows new organs (and yes, the idea of increased and unwieldy cancer problems as a result of pollution and plastics is present), and for a profit, they perform surgeries in front of a crowd to remove those organs. It pushes Saul's body to horrific limits, opening the body to new possibilities as the film tells us; since pain isn't really a concern anymore, the body can be molded in much more violent ways than we see today with body modifications and performance/body art.

Where the movie makes its most intriguing (and, for me, horrific) turn is that these surgeries are notably erotic. Calmly wicked, subversive and raw, the new openings in Saul's body provide ample locations for penetration; several scenes in which Caprice slides her fingers or hand inside feel uncomfortably sexual. Perhaps it's this reality -- all captured with a sensual eye by the camera -- that entices Timlin (Kristen Stewart) to fall in love with the artistic duo. She's a bureaucrat gopher in the National Organ Registry, investigating and keeping tabs on new organ growths, which naturally brings her into a potentially compromising situation with Saul. On the other hand, the plastic folk are almost anti-sensual, as plastic (and toxic) in their interactions as in their diet, led by a mysterious and inscrutable Scott Speedman (I don't recall his character's name) who is determined to prove the government's stance on human evolution is wrong.

There is a lot of heady material here, and many lenses can be applied to the film to tease out its many ideas on everything from evolution to sex, from environment to government, from social corruption to economic failure. And yet the film places equal -- if not greater -- emphasis on the subtle, mostly nonverbal, human experience of all these things, as if to say, "this is our reality now, if exaggerated, so what do we really feel about it?" Alarming, calming, horrific and beautiful, this is Cronenberg at his typical best, and while it's confusing and cerebral stuff, it's also a fascinating and fun time at the cinema.