Female Film Critics 24/375
Early in Jurassic World Rebirth, a brontosaurus lies tangled in light poles near the Brooklyn Bridge while New Yorkers wind past it like just another wreck in the roadway. That’s the problem with this film in a nutshell. The seventh film in this long-running franchise has no sense of wonder anymore about these phenomenal creatures, just a feeling that no one knows what to do with them.
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In Jurassic World: Rebirth, those darn, genetically altered dinosaurs just keep terrorizing the Delgado family, unwittingly having sailed into the hazardous equatorial zone, and the money-hungry Parker Genix team purposefully there to extract genetic blood samples from one aquatic, one aerial, and one terrestrial specimen. The researchers’ purportedly magnanimous, actually money-driven, goal is DNA information needed to formulate a life-saving heart medicine that will save millions of lives while making the Genix company and their representatives enormously wealthy.
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It’s been five years since “Jurassic: World Dominion,” so many of the once-extinct dinosaurs that were let loose around the world have died off, unable to survive in the hostile environment caused by climate change. This seventh Jurassic installment revolves around the perilous quest to extract DNA testers from the aquatic Mosasaurus, herbivorous Titanosaurus, and flying Quetzalcoatus – while cinematographer John Mathieson duly chronicles the various participants’ adventures.
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Visually,Jurassic World is a hit, returning to focused thrills, instead of chaos that allows you to appreciate the true beauty of the incredible CGI and the stunning landscapes of Thailand. Spielberg’s influence is evident throughout several frames, providing a little nostalgia for fans. And perhaps what director Garth Edwards does best is create tension. After a slow 40-minute set up, the film keeps up the momentum and engagement with back-to-back, nail-biting confrontations with the dinosaurs that are sure to make audiences squirm and want to yell at the screen. If you can look past the lack of depth to the story and characters, you might be enthralled by the entertaining adventure.
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Leave the World Behind is a paranoid, tension-filled, futuristic nightmare. The story begins in a Park Slope, Brooklyn apartment, where early-rising advertising executive Amanda Sandford (Julia Roberts) awakens her professor husband Clay (Ethan Hawke) and teenage children – Rose (Farrah Mackenzie) and Archie (Charlie Evans) – with a surprise: she’s rented a luxurious Airbnb on Long Island for the weekend.
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Some films are just plot fodder, some lift up characters. Some represent a genre, and when that type usually has little appeal, the film has to call you with something else that makes watching seductive. Swan Song is that film. It nestles into the world of science fiction, and if that’s a type you ordinarily avoid like the plague, here is a reason to watch it: Mahershala Ali.
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Written and directed by Benjamin Cleary, making his feature film debut after winning a 2016 Oscar for his short film Stutterer,”this story is set sometime in the future, when advertising artist Cameron Turner (Mahershala Ali), who has been suffering headaches and seizures, is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Acknowledging his fatal prognosis is the first step, according to Dr. Scott (Glenn Close), who offers Cameron a unique opportunity to shield his family from grief.
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In Swan Song, Cameron Turner is dying of cancer, but rather than reveal his diagnosis to his wife, Poppy and son, Cameron opts to undergo an experimental new treatment to clone himself and let the replicant continue living his life. During the final stages of the treatment under the supervision of Dr. Scott, Cameron has to face the reality of his decision and confront whether he’s ready to say goodbye to his loved ones — and life as he knows it.
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In his first starring role, Mahershala Ali hopes Swan Song trumpets his talents as a leading man for quite a while. In this near future thriller, Ali plays a loving husband and father diagnosed with a terminal illness who secretly clones himself to save his family the grief of losing him…and giving the viewer lots of moral and ethical questions to ponder.
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This fascinating, true story of an unlikely friendship begins with Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali), an elegant, educated Jamaican-American classical pianist who lived in an apartment above Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall. In 1962 when his record company sends him on a concert tour of the Deep South, Dr. Shirley hires a gruff, gluttonous, street-wise bouncer from the Copacabana nightclub to be his driver/road manager.
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