Flick of the Day: Jurassic Park

When I was 7 years old, in the summer of 1993, I was brought to the cinema to see a new film. Unlike today, I knew absolutely nothing about what I was about to see. As one gets older, very few things surprise you on the silver screen. You become overpowered with the amount of previews and reviews and blogs and advertising spots to such an extent that you are never surprised by what you see in the cinema and very often have built up your own expectations to such an extent that the film can never live up to it. What made that film I saw in the Forum Cinema in Glasthule so exciting was that I had no expectations, I hadn't read the book or seen the trailer. That kind of experience is something that sadly I cannot relive again and am unlikely to experience again. However, what I can do is re-watch that film and experience the excitement once more of entering Jurassic Park.

On a stormy night in some remote jungle location, a team of workers and security personnel are delivering some unseen creature to its new enclosure. A terrifying accident occurs and a worker is killed. John Hammond, played by the elder statesman Richard Attenborough,  the visionary showman and founder of InGen is forced to bring in outside advisers for his new theme park. This is a park unlike any that have come before. This is a park filled with animals that have not existed on Earth for 65 million years. Hammond invites the gruff but brilliant palaeontologist Dr. Alan Grant, played by the always excellent Sam Neill, and  palaeobotanist Dr. Ellie Sattler, played by Laura Dern. Along for the weekend are Jeff Goldblum's oddball mathematician Dr. Ian Malcolm, an oily lawyer named Gennaro and Hammond's grandchildren Lex and Tim. The grand scale of Hammond's vision soon becomes apparent and how through the wonder of scientific hokum they have managed to recreate living, breathing dinosaurs on a tropical island off the coast of Costa Rica, Isla Nublar. Were this just a trip to the zoo, albeit a quite magical and dangerous zoo, it would not be half as entertaining as it is. The arrival of a tropical storm, as they are wont to do on tropical islands, combined with sundry errors on the part of Hammond's team of wizard like geneticists leads to the inevitable outbreak of chaos. What follows is a hugely entertaining game of survival as the visitors to park seek to escape with their lives.

Given how much cinema has become overrun with their usage, it is easy to forget how much of a novelty the CGI effects used in Jurassic Park were upon its release 20 years ago. It was only true judicious use of this ground-breaking technology combined with life-sized animatronics that Steven Spielberg was able to deliver on the vision of Crichton's best-selling science fiction adventure. Looking back now, the CGI hasn't dated horribly and still looks impressive while Stan Winston's animatronic creations help give the various dinosaurs character as they run amok. The scene involving the raptors on the loose in the kitchen is still as thrilling as it always was.

Given the visual hoopla on display, it would be easy to fall into the trap so many disaster movies fall into of casting shall we say sub-par performers in the leading roles. I am thinking here of some of the cast of bridge trolls that populate the god-awful 1974 Charlton Heston starring Earthquake (Tagline "When The Big One Finally Hits L.A."). Spielberg thankfully fills the cast with some fine actors. Sam Neill, perhaps the finest antipodean talent of a very talented generation of actors, is superb as the rock around which the cast is built. Laura Dern has since gone on to develop a fine career as character actor and Dicky Attenborough brings gravitas as he always did. There is even an arm-tingling performance from Samuel L. Jackson and a deliciously slimy turn from Wayne Knight as the duplicitous Dennis Nedry. Jeff Goldbum remains one of my favourite actors to this day and he has great fun playing the wacky Malcolm.

The summer blockbuster has changed immeasurably in many ways since Spielberg invented the genre with Jaws in 1975 and in many ways for the worse. Gone are the days when films need to be based off anything as substantial as a best-selling book. I think the nadir has to be basing a film on a theme park ride but who am I to judge? In any case, Jurassic Park still stands out today for its technical prowess and lashings of adventure. Why not watch it once more, luxuriate in the excitement of your youth? I know I will.

Flick of The Day: Django Unchained

Ah, Quentin Tarantino, what genre will he bring his usual mix of exploitation cinema, sharp dialogue and stylised violence to next? Such is the question we have asked ourselves every few years since he burst onto the scene in 1992 with Reservoir Dogs.  His best film remains 1994's Pulp Fiction, a walk on the dark side of the Los Angeles underworld. Since then we have had Tarantino does Kung Fu, Tarantino does Exploitation and Tarantino does World War 2 with varying degrees of success. All of them had their moments of greatness but so often the director's sense of style has overburdened the film's storyline. It becomes too much.  His latest opus is a slavery themed western and is perhaps his best film in over a decade. It is perhaps the perfect match between genre and director.

In 1858 on a dark and cold Texas night, a group of chained slaves are wandering through the darkness after their new owners. Into this scene steps Dr King Schultz played by the excellent Christoph Waltz, a German ex-dentist and bounty hunter on the trail of three n'er do wells named the Brittle Brothers. One of the slaves is in a position to help the good doctor as he can put a face to the names on his list. This slave is Django, played by Jamie Foxx. After our first bout of brutal violence, Django falls into the hands of Dr King and together they set off after their bounty. A bond soon develops between the two and on their travels Django reveals that he has been separated from his wife, Broomhilda. Having captured the evil Brittles, they vow to work together to save Broomhilda from the evil clutches of Calvin Candie, her new master and owner of the Candyland plantation played with wilful abandon by Leonardo DiCaprio.

The spaghetti western as envisioned by masters like Sergio Leone, is a genre close to my heart and is obvious from the opening frame that Tarantino both loves and understands the mechanics of such films. They are an epic battle between the irredeemably bad and the indisputably good. In our case, the good are Django and King Schultz while the bad are undoubtedly Calvin and his evil house servant Stephen, a fine turn from an unrecognisable Samuel L. Jackson. Another telling trait of the Italian westerns made by Leone & Co from the 1960's onward were that they very much approached the old west from a revisionist position, it was a dark, bloody and lawless place full of bad men. This is definitely something which Django Unchained plays up. While at times beautifully shot and filled with gorgeous scenery, this is ultimately a brutal tale of revenge and Tarantino as is his wont doesn't shield us from this violence.

Much has been made of both the level of violence and its supposed effect on society and indeed that somehow the film belittles the horrors of slavery through its copious use of the N word. I fail to see how it does anything other than shove the sheer terror that was slavery in the antebellum south into our faces and says look this is how it was. It is brutal and feels terribly real all the same.

The western and Tarantino are a perfect match because his usual excesses feel at home here and they never grate as they might in a different genre. This is above all an enjoyable film and it wears its running time well without overstaying its welcome. A definite must see.

Flick of The Day: Pulp Fiction

I realised the other day that it is now 17 years since Quentin Tarantino unleashed Pulp Fiction on the world and felt compelled to view it again, to see if it was still as ground breaking, if the dialogue still sparkled with the same lustre, if it was still as effortlessly otherworldly cool as it seemed upon its first release.

Pulp Fiction (Two-Disc Collector's Edition)

This is the film that spawned so many Tarantino imitators, exhibiting as it does all of his traits: literate snappy dialogue, pop culture references galore, an ironic sense of humour, non linear storytelling and violence. The story such as it is, takes place over a number of days in the Los Angeles criminal underworld. There are seven narrative sequences and we view them in a non linear order. This is played out by an ensemble cast to die for, each perfectly suited to their roles. John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson are a pair of heavies in classic black suits. Jackson quoting scripture and Travolta with a chip on his shoulder and a penchant for Cheeseburgers. Uma Thurman is the drug addled gangster's moll. Harvey Keitel is the fixer known as The Wolf. Bruce Willis is the over the hill pugilist. Ving Rhames is the Kingpin. Christoper Walken appears in a blink and you'll miss it flashback scene which at first glance appears to be there merely to show off but then later it slots neatly into the overarching narrative in a beautiful symmetry. This is just a small fraction of an extensive cast.

The dialogue is justly lauded, with the screenplay which Tarantino co wrote with Roger Avary winning the Oscar in 1994. There are numerous quotable lines, the "Royale with cheese" being the most infamous. My personal favourite is the interplay between John Travolta and Samuel Jackson.

"Jules: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa... stop right there. Eatin' a bitch out, and givin' a bitch a foot massage ain't even the same fuckin' thing.
Vincent: It's not. It's the same ballpark.
Jules: Ain't no fuckin' ballpark neither. Now look, maybe your method of massage differs from mine, but, you know, touchin' his wife's feet, and stickin' your tongue in her Holiest of Holies, ain't the same fuckin' ballpark, it ain't the same league, it ain't even the same fuckin' sport. Look, foot massages don't mean shit."

A fine script combined with some career best acting performances and a soundtrack perfectly suited to the ambience of the film equals a minor classic and perhaps the most influential film of the '90s. It revitalised Travolta's flagging career, gave Bruce Willis some much needed acting kudos and set Tarantino on the inexorable rise to stardom. 

Watching it again, 17 years on, I was struck by the fact that this still marks the high point of his career as a director. He has never eclipsed it. Jackie Brown was fine, although retreading similar ground to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Kill Bill had its moments but was uneven and the story was spread too thin for two films.The less said about Death Proof the better and while the opening half an hour of Inglourious Basterds was excellent, it went steeply down hill from there. Not a whole lot to show for one of the most prodigious talents to emerge from the Indie scene of the early '90s. That said, this is an enviable high point.