For the week of October 19th, Universal Studios is responsible for many of the most notable titles. First and foremost, the blockbuster sequel Jurassic World is hitting Blu-ray. Whatever I say here isn't going to make a dent in the film's success - it's already the highest-grossing film of 2015 and has jumpstarted a whole new chapter in the Jurassic Park series - but if nothing else, I can lament that this newest Jurassic iteration falls so far short of its narrative and cultural expectations. Sure, maybe it's too much to expect Jurassic World to reach the high-bar that the first Jurassic Park film set (75% of that 1993 classic ranks alongside Jaws as director Steven Spielberg's finest mainstream filmmaking), but Jurassic World struggles to be even as fitfully entertaining as Joe Johnston's adequate threequel Jurassic Park III, and that's its biggest sin. In theory, the Jurassic World setup makes sense: we open twenty years after the events of the first movie (for better or worse, Jurassic World mostly pretends that The Lost World and Jurassic Park III never happened) as the park is opening, a situation that makes for a whole lot of cannon fodder when a genetically modified dinosaur (the Indominus Rex, which is like a turducken of different dino attributes) breaks free and begins wreaking havoc among all the visitors. So far, so good. However, despite the film's ample budget ($150 million that the studio is admitting to), the scale of destruction feels curiously small. Outside of a setpiece where the pterodactyls get loose and terrorize hundreds of tourists in the park's main drag, director Colin Trevorrow confines the action to a few small groups: those in and around operations manager Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), animal trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), and Claire's two nephews (Ty Simpkins and Nick Robinson), who make the not-at-all-stupid decision to separate from the tour at almost the exact moment when all hell breaks loose. Now, Jurassic Park similarly occupied itself to a manageable cast of characters, but considering the people here are screenwriting types instead of sympathetic individuals (the Mad Scientist, the Quirky Billionaire, the Geeky Know-It-All, the Stick-in-the-Mud-Who-Needs-to-Let-Her-Hair-Down, the Military Hawk), we never get close enough to anyone to care when they start screaming and fleeing and getting eaten. Only Pratt, who's his usual charming self, comes out of this thing looking good, and even he's slightly miscast - because the part only needs a Josh Brolin-esque badass, Pratt's comedic brilliance goes mostly untapped.
Likewise, when I first heard that Colin Trevorrow was going to direct, I was intrigued; nothing about his first film, the charming little sleeper Safety Not Guaranteed, suggested he'd be ready to pick up the mantle from Steven Spielberg. Now that I've seen Jurassic World, I'm still wondering what Spielberg saw. Other than some half-hearted attempts at self-parody (à la The LEGO Movie) in the early goings, Jurassic World is wholly personality-free, with Trevorrow content to frame the shots nicely and then get out of the way for the second-unit team. The movie has a lot of action but no real memorable suspense sequences (forget that it can't touch the first film's five or six crackerjack setpieces: there's nothing here as noteworthy as the trailer-sliding-off-the-mountain bit in The Lost World), and it never does anything satisfying with its two most interesting conceits. As theoretically cool as the genetically modified super-dinosaur and Pratt's brotherly rapport with a group of raptors are, the Indominus Rex is a walking plot-device designed to help screenwriters Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Derek Connolly, and Trevorrow brute-force their way through different story beats, and the raptors only get one delirious scene where they partner with Pratt before the movie virtually drops that angle entirely. More and more, it's looking like Spielberg should have championed John Sayles and William Monahan's unproduced Jurassic Park 4 draft, with its human-hybrid dinos and Rainbow 6-style action sequences - that script may have been fundamentally insane, but it also swung for the fences in ways that Jurassic World wouldn't dare. Ultimately, the biggest problem with Jurassic World is that it's too content to be average. I cannot count the number of times someone has said of Jurassic World, "Whatever. It's fine," and my aforementioned complaints aside, I'd have to concur. It's at least watchable, and it's not overlong or virulently, unpleasantly misanthropic. But that's not good enough. When you spend the GDP of a developing nation on a movie, you owe it to your viewers to create something that elicits more than a couple of trailer-worthy shocks and a shrug-worthy, "That happened." Big doesn't have to be dumb or shallow or forgettable, and considering this last summer produced such blockbuster all-timers as Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and especially Mad Max: Fury Road, we deserve more than Jurassic World's competent nostalgia-stroking. Sure, it's fine, but moving forward, I dare this franchise to be more.
Martin Liebman had a far different opinion, writing that "This fourth film in the Jurassic Park franchise is easily the second best in the series and not too far behind the first. It's a thrill ride worthy of the Jurassic name and one of the most purely entertaining movies of the last several years...The movie doesn't really have any major warts, either. It's a freshened up take on a simple idea that manages both familiarity and novel excitement at the same time. In other words, it's darn near the perfect sequel. The question, then, is how do the storytellers raise the stakes? Simple. They go back to the well but mess with nature in a whole new way. That begs another question: what's the angle? Why in the world did the park reopen in the first place, who was dumb enough to think it a good idea, who was naive enough to trust that, this time, it would work? The movie answers these questions satisfactorily, if not a bit generically, particularly as it pertains to the latter, the reason why it's all been set in motion again. For a movie that could be critiqued for its lack of originality in the core plot - dinosaurs escape, humans go on the run and on the defensive from a prehistoric rampage in the modern world - it's the explanation that threatens to ruin it. And, regrettably, it's Vincent D'Onofrio's character who suffers the most in the film, who feels almost tacked on rather than organically mixed up in the mayhem. His performance seems stifled as a result, a shame because he's a great actor but one who, here, cannot escape the clutches of his poorly written villain-in-human-form. Contrast his performance with that of returning cast member BD Wong, whose work is terrific and, arguably, the film's performance highlight. His evolution from the first film to this one is, well, evolutionary to say the least. Both the character and the actor elevate the movie a fair bit, even considering that it threatens to get lost in the mayhem and behind the top-billed performers. All of the film's primaries are terrific, particularly Chris Pratt in a hybrid Alan Grant/Robert Muldoon role and Bryce Dallas Howard who isn't afraid to get dirty and who performs the film's best wink to the original with aplomb."
Jurassic World's relative failings as a summer blockbuster register all the more strongly this week because Universal is also bringing the 30th Anniversary Edition of the Back to the Future Trilogy to Blu-ray. At thirty years old (twenty-five if you're counting from 1990's Back to the Future III), Back to the Future belongs on a shortlist with Jaws, The Dark Knight, and the original Star Wars trilogy as one of the most engaging populist entertainments ever made. Working with his longtime screenwriting partner Bob Gale, director Robert Zemeckis fashioned a sci-fi adventure that's always in motion; the screenplay for the first film should be taught in screenwriting classes, so deftly does it handle the typical three-act structure. Every detail pays off; every setup leads to a narrative significant resolution; but the reason that Back to the Future doesn't feel, as Jurassic World does, like a craven marketing exercise stems from Zemeckis and Gale's attention to character and theme. While we thrill at teenage Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox, in the role he'll be remembered for) and his attempts to escape from 1955 to his life in 1985, Fox is so genuine (especially in his interactions with Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown and Crispin Glover's painfully awkward George McFly) and his predicament so elemental that we instantly connect with him: Marty is struggling not just to return home but to justify his entire existence. That kind of motivation gets us where we live, and it's a testament to Zemeckis and Gale's filmmaking powers that Marty's character arc feels as loose and relaxed as a summer day. If all we got was the first Back to the Future, we'd have an embarrassment of riches, but leave it to Zemeckis and Gale to create two sequels that are almost as good as the first.
Part II comes the closest. For its first hour, Zemeckis follows Marty and Doc into a thirty-years removed version of 2015, and although little of this futurescape resembles the present-day (if we're keeping score, Kubrick got closest to the future with 2001: A Space Odyssey), Zemeckis' eye for visual gags and FX trickery is at its wittiest and most playfully conspicuous (best in show: Fox's quadruple performance as the young and old versions of Marty PLUS Old Marty's teenage daughter and idiot son). However, Marty's return to an alternate 1985 results turns the film from fun into essential (special props to Tom Wilson's terrifying performance as a debauched, power-mad Biff Tannen), particularly once Marty finds himself going back again to 1955 in order to fix the future while staying hidden from the Marty in the first movie who needs to complete his mission so all Martys will be born and oh no look I've gone cross-eyed. The time-travel mechanics fly fast and furious in Part II - it might be the best pure time-travel movie ever made in terms of its respect for the space-time continuum - which makes the shift into Part III all the more striking. After all the mayhem and frenetic setpieces, Zemeckis and Gale slow things down considerably for a Western comedy, of all things, that finds Marty trying to retrieve Doc from 1885. In fairness, they probably slow things down too much; this is the least high-stakes Western since Cat Ballou, and the complicated time-travel mechanics decrease in favor of 1885 callback jokes to the 1955, 1985, and 2015 realities we've seen. But Part III does eventually conclude the series in spectacular fashion, and it ends up giving us something we never thought we'd see: a sweet, gentle romantic-comedy with Lloyd's madcap Doc Brown as the unlikely suitor for Mary Steenburgen's local schoolteacher. Lloyd and Steenburgen have lovely chemistry together, and Zemeckis is content to stay out of their way and let the characters chat. It's more than enough to make you wish he'd drop the digital toys of A Christmas Carol and The Walk and let his actors do the work. Essential viewing, all three of these.
As Martin Liebman wrote of this new edition, the set "contains several new supplements on a dedicated fourth disc. As with the film, video, and audio reviews, please refer to Jeffrey Kauffman's above-linked review for more details on the older extras, which are scattered across the three main discs. Various screen captures from the new supplements are included in this review. This set comes housed in a DigiBook-style case, with rigid cardboard sleeves comprising the "pages" and serving as disc holders. Quotes and pictures adorn every page. The package is about the same height as a standard Blu-ray case and not much wider...It's a shame that Universal didn't take the opportunity of the franchise's thirtieth birthday, and the significance of the October 21, 2015 date, to offer an updated audio/video presentation rather than a repackaging with only some good added supplemental content and fresh digital copy codes. Alas, perhaps the future holds something more special, but as it stands this is the best bang-for-the-buck Back to the Future release currently available on Blu-ray. There's no real reason for owners of the previous set to upgrade, even considering the added bonuses, but those itching to own the films in high definition should start and end their search here."
Even Shout Factory is getting in on the Universal Studios game, licensing Universal's Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight and Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood for its Scream Factory outlet. For seven years, HBO's Tales from the Crypt remained one of the network's flagship series, but that success didn't translate as well to the big screen: only Demon Knight and Bordello of Blood made it to the big-screen, with the latter feature's anemic performance pretty much putting the nail in the coffin (or crypt, as it were) of the show's theatrical pretensions. Pity, really, because there's a lot to like in both entries. Demon Knight is absolutely the more successful film of the two. Working from Mark Bishop, Ethan Reiff, and Cyrus Voris' script, director Ernest Dickerson (Spike Lee's longtime cinematographer from Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads and She's Gotta Have It through Malcolm X) fashions a stylish, bloody, and very goofy homage to classic siege pictures like Assault on Precinct 13 - holed up in a rundown hotel, a group of small-town nobodies (including CCH Pounder, Thomas Haden Church, Dick Miller, and Jada Pinkett Smith) find themselves the unwitting allies to William Sadler's Brayker, a holy warrior trying to hold back the Apocalypse (in the form of Billy Zane's The Collector and a whole lot of flesh-hungry demons). Pretty much nothing here will surprise you (especially if you've seen The Thing, which Demon Knight rips off as much as Assault on Precinct 13), but Dickinson keeps the madness coming at an enjoyable clip, and he gets great work from Zane and Sadler, the former trying to out-crazy his Dead Calm lunatic and the latter shining in an uncommonly heroic leading-man turn. Bordello of Blood can't help but suffer by comparison - demons trying to end the world pales alongside sexy vampires luring men to their deaths with the promise of tawdry sex (Bordello of Blood is far more cable-ready, shall we say) - but even it gets at the heart of what made Tales from the Crypt so much fun. The best effects are practically achieved, the cast is game for anything (even models Angie Everhart and Erika Eleniak are pretty good, with Everhart jumping into the viscera), and the humor is overt, thanks to a rare star performance from Dennis Miller. In 1996, the snarky-smart Miller was at the apex of his popularity, and to call him "good" here would be overstating things somewhat. He plays Dennis Miller, albeit with a different name (Rafe Guttman) and occupation (private eye), so anyone expecting a Robin Williams-like dramatic shift should look elsewhere. But he's very funny, and his improvised riffs elevate Bordello of Blood from the Cinemax-lite thriller it might otherwise be into a more self-aware piece of camp - what Miller is doing here isn't a million miles removed from Chris Pratt working his Andy Dwyer-shtick into Guardians of the Galaxy (full disclosure: Pratt does a much better job of marrying humor with performance).