Steven Spielberg

The BFG

Director: Steven Spielberg (2016) BBFC cert PG

Prepare to be charmed into submission by the giant heart of this moving and magical family adventure.

Combining the cinematic skill of Steven Spielberg and the resources of Disney, it’s a respectful and delightful adaption of Roald Dahl’s ever popular children’s book (pub. 1982).

A seamless mix of live action, motion capture special effects and beautiful design bring to vivid life the tale of young Sophie who is spirited away to a mysterious world by the BFG, the Big Friendly Giant.

English actress Ruby Barnhill offers an honest, engaging and sweetly unaffected debut, undoubtedly benefitting from Spielberg’s expertise in drawing out the best in his child performers.

Conscientious in her observance of the witching hour, brave and bookish Sophie is snatched from her orphanage after failing to obey the three rules of not staying in bed, going to the window or looking behind the curtain.

Here there are shades of the dark festive feature Gremlins (1984) which was executive produced by Spielberg.

Once in giant country she overcomes her initial fear to establish a deep bond of trust with her new friend. Played with wounded dignity by last year’s best actor Oscar winner Mark Rylance, the BFG has enormous and expressive ears and lives in a fantastical grotto.

He spends his time mangling words, catching dreams and being bullied by a tribe of stupid and even bigger giants. Despite being 50 foot tall cannibals, for all their size there’s sadly not meat on the bones of their characters of Fleshlumpeater and his gang.

These action moments lack the director’s usual invention and feel almost rote by his own high standards. Plus there’s little sense of giant country being more than a field and a hill.

Rebecca Hall and Rafe Spall offer reliable support and there’s an entertaining and  possibly treasonous turn from Penelope Wilton as Queen Elizabeth II.

With Spielberg having gathered his usual editor, cinematographer and composer, quality glows through this beautifully crafted adventure. Between them Michael Kahn, Janusz Kaminski and John Williams have 10 Oscar wins, 9 of which were for Spielberg films. This may not be their greatest individual or collective work but it’s fiercely, soaringly professional. Rylance of course won his Oscar for Spielberg’s Bridge Of Spies (2015).

The BFG is Dedicated to its late screenwriter Melissa Mathieson who sadly passed away during production. She also wrote Spielberg’s masterpiece E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and it’s not hard to find familiar elements of lonely imaginative children being befriended by strange creatures.

Spielberg is far more interested in exploring the growing relationship between the girl and the giant than the scant story, choosing to focus not on plot but on the way in which the unlikely friends affect an emotional change in each other.

It’s worth pondering whom of Sophie and the BFG really occupies the parenting role. Sophie encourages the BFG to challenge and improve himself. She mothers this boy who describes himself as old as time; a boy who has never grown up.

There are also visual nods to Peter Pan in a beached pirate ship and Tinkerbell-like fireflies. Spielberg’s take on J. M. Barrie’s tale resulted with the lamentable Hook (1991). This is a superior and more faithful adaption and can be seen as an apologia for that noticeable blot on his CV.

Dreams are presented as sparkling sprites which the BFG catches before trapping them as lighting in a bottle and firing them into the minds of the sleeping public. His cave is a magical dream factory.

This is the BFG as an avatar for Spielberg, his most personal and visible on screen self. The filmmakers biography resonates with the BFG. A lonely child and victim of bullying who seeks to be left alone to work his magic and make people happy. Plus cinema here is presented as a campaigning cultural force when the BFG is able to access government and influence policy.

In this reading the giants become interfering studio executives. Or possibly film critics.

A one time former prodigy of cinema, the BFG finds Spielberg in the mood of a mischievous and avuncular grandfather. This is his glorious gift to the grandchildren of the world.

★★★★☆

@ChrisHunneysett

 

Jurassic World

Director: Colin Trevorrow (2015)

Strap yourself in for a prehistoric thrill-ride of fearsome fun as the theme park dinosaurs return in this bone-snapping action sequel.

Despite being very familiar this is a supremely confident and wildly entertaining monster movie, a determinedly old fashioned, family-friendly adventure with no sex, drugs, booze or rock and roll swearing to scare the parents.

Filmed on a budget conservatively guesstimated at a monstrous $150million, it’s a fast-paced and smartly scripted blend of expert SFX, exciting action and lovely comic moments. It’s everything last year’s Godzilla should have been but wasn’t.

Twenty years on from Jurassic Park (1993) Jurassic World is Jurassic Park IV in all but name. Rather than hiding from or ignoring the original film by rebooting the franchise, it openly and affectionately embraces it’s memory.

Dialogue openly refers to the previous disaster and T shirts and jeeps from the original park are incorporated into the action.

The central mall of the park is named after the avuncular scientist John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) who first extrapolated the dinosaur DNA from amber leading, to the resurrection of the dinosaurs.

It’s set once again on the idyllic tropical island of Nublar, off the coast of Costa Rica. A new Jurassic World theme park has risen from the cold bones of the old one.

It’s bigger, glossier holiday experience with scientists experimenting with genetics to create beasts that are larger, more deadly and more cool. This maintains audience interest and attendance, boosts profits and keeps the shareholders happy.

Uptight corporate chief Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) is the park operations manager in charge of the safety of 20,000 customers. They are ferried around on monorails not dissimilar to the youthful utopia of Logan’s Run (1976).

Claire is horrified when avarice and hubris combine to unleash a Frankenstein’s monster to destroy this Babel of vacationing people.

The new star attraction Indominus rex escapes it’s heavily-guarded compound and rampages across the island towards the unsuspecting holidaymakers.

Genetically modified Indominus is driven by carnal desires to eat, hunt and mate. Fashioned in a test tube and reared in isolation, the beast is essentially insane; a reflection of the minds of those who created her.

It represents humanity gone wild, similar to the creature of the Id from Disney’s Forbidden Planet (1956).

Adding to her woes, Claire’s two young nephews Zach and Grey (Nick Robinson, Ty Simpkins) are lost on the island.

So she recruits hunky velociraptor trainer Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) to help her rescue them, defeat the beasts and restore the ordained natural order.

Employed as a dinosaur whisperer with his own pack of semi-trained velociraptors, Grady’s a tequila-loving, board-short sporting dude who lives in a beachside shack and repairs classic motorbikes in his spare time.

Meanwhile head of security Vic Hoskins (Vincent D’Onofrio) sees a financial opportunity in the chaos.

There’s a lot of bone crunching action as various red-shirts are despatched and the customers take a beating from mother nature in the form of  brilliantly rendered dinosaurs.

The work of dinosaur consultant Phil Tippett is brought magnificently to life by the effects powerhouse Industrial Light and Magic. Both worked extensively on the original film.

After his work on time-travel flick Safety Not Guaranteed the director Colin Trevorrow was handpicked by executive producer and director of Jurassic Park I and II, Steven Spielberg.

Barrelling through his story, the young protege has clearly been studying his master’s work. He fills the film with lovely moments using dripping blood and reflective surfaces to provide slow reveals and create tension. Plus he has a nice line in jokey misdirection.

An extensive sound department provide a terrific range of prehistoric roars and wince-inducing snapping and crunching noises.

There are quibbles if you want them. Official walkie-talkies frequently go on the fritz but cell phones work perfectly.

Though broken-family resolution is a common theme in most of Spielberg’s work, women’s careers, childlessness and impending divorce are directly identified here as the reasons for placing the boys in peril.

Based on the film’s trailer, Avengers director Joss Whedon’s offered unsolicited comments of Jurassic World’s presumed hoary sexist stereotypes. But his ‘she’s a stiff, he’s a life force‘ criticism is unfair and ill-judged

Whedon may have more justification being irked at the similarity the tech-savvy character Lowery Cruthers (Jake Johnson) has to space-pilot Wash in his sci-fi adventure Serenity (2005).

B.D. Wong is the only original cast member credited with returning but I believe there’s a one-line cameo from a now very famous face – if appearing only in silhouette.

There’s an unfortunate informal hierarchy among the supporting cast is but I doubt this is the result of any racism in the script/casting – more of an insight into the relative value the producer’s place on the different markets in the global market place.

It’s no reflection on the actor’s involved China and Asia are clearly more important markets than Africa.

While Indian actor Irrfan Khan appears as slick billionaire Simon Masrani and Asian-American B. D. Wong plays brilliant scientist Dr. Henry Wu, French-Senegalese Omar Sy is lumbered with playing Owen’s colleague Barry, an example of a ‘black best friend’ role recently derided by Brit actor David Oyewolo.

For a film set in Central America and filmed in Hawaii, there’s a lack of local faces except for a young, bored and undertrained ride operative.

It’s worth noting the script doesn’t suggest wealth and intelligence is a guarantor of morality.

As the self-confessed alpha male Grady, Pratt reins in the juvenile cocky exuberance from Guardians of the Galaxy (2014) and is all the more engaging for it.

He’s well cast in a role that demands he be smart, funny, charming and rugged; a leading man and action hero. It’s a shame then his character development is non-existent. He’s exactly the same at the beginning as at the end.

However his sparring partner Claire goes through a fundamental change through her experiences.

Beginning in a flawless starched white uniform and ending with a far more organic look, Bryce Dallas Howard (daughter of director Ron) essays her character from perfectly presented management wonk to a gun-toting lioness and defender of her young.

Howard and Pratt share an enjoyable chemistry that is closer to squabbling jungle adventurers Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner in Raiders Of The Lost Ark (1982) rip-off Romancing The Stone (1984).

Without doubt the second best in the Jurassic Park franchise, Jurassic World is also the third best Indiana Jones movie.

It could easily be read as an extended audition by Pratt for a mooted reboot of Raiders (directed by Spielberg), donning the fedora of Harrison Ford as the whip-cracking professor Indiana Jones.

There’s a subplot where the military want to co-opt the scientific work and use it to replace soldiers and drones with dinosaurs. (A pigeon was awarded the Victoria Cross in WWII so it’s possibly not even the military’s most stupid moment.)

With a direct reference to The War on Terror, heavily armed soldiers are flown in and use an ops room for remote attacks as they try assert their dominance over nature.

Grady’s attempt to thwart the army’s desire to weaponise genetically modified dinosaurs is no different in essence to Indiana Jones racing to prevent Nazi’s using the Ark of the Covenant to win WWII. Both seek to use powers they can’t fathom.

Based on the novel by Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park became the highest grossing film of all time, surpassing Spielberg’s own E.T. the Extra Terrestrial (1982) before being superseded in turn by Titanic (1997).

Two more sequels followed: The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) and Jurassic Park III (2001) though only the first sequel was directed by Spielberg.

Unsurprisingly neither were as groundbreaking, well-received or as successful as the first. 

In 1996 Universal Studios opened in Universal Studios Hollywood and now following the recent fad for theme park rides turned movies, Tomorrowland, Pirates of the Caribbean, it’s now evolved into a movie again.

As a summer entertainment this meaty monster movie will be sure to tear chunks out of the box office competition.

★★★★★

Big Game

Director: Jalmari Helander (2015)

A President, terrorists and wild bears are the targets in this goofy action adventure romp which provides a forest full of explosive entertainment.

The son of a famous hunter, 13 year old Oskari (Onni Tommila) is sent into the remote mountains of his native Finland.

Armed only with a sharp knife and a bow and arrow he can barely control, the determined teen must spend a day and night hunting wild bear in a traditional coming of age ceremony. Guns are not allowed.

Meanwhile high above, Air Force One ferries the unnamed US President (Samuel L. Jackson) to a G8 summit in Helsinki. The plane is shot down by terrorist Hazar (Mehmet Kurtulus).

He’s the psychotic son of a Sheik who’s so enjoyably evil he shoots a man in the back with a surface-to-air-missile, and then is rude about the quality of the Chinese made weapons.

Ejected to ground in an escape pod, the barefoot and hapless President is found by a startled Oskari.

However the boy has commendably little respect for the authority of the Oval Office. Even with Hazar in pursuit, Oskari will only take the President to safety after his bear hunt is successfully completed.

Another survivor loose in the wood is the girdle-wearing, pill popping Chief-of-security Morris (Ray Stevenson). He once took a bullet for the President.

Meanwhile back in the Pentagon‘s command bunker, a tank-top wearing, sandwich eating analyst called Herbert (Jim Broadbent) is offering advice to the Vice President (Victor Garber) and General Underwood (Ted Levine).

They’re rapidly falling to pieces quickly at the situation, having definitely picked the wrong day to quit smoking, drinking etc.

Arching an eyebrow alongside the men is the token woman with a speaking role; the CIA Director (Felicity Huffman).

As the script builds betrayal upon betrayal, the most well-intentioned is the most affecting.

Among the the sky-diving, missile attacks and shoot-outs, the special effects aren’t terribly special –  and some of the outdoor locations look suspiciously indoor.

At every possible interlude rousing blasts of orchestral music are accompanied by sweeping helicopter shots of the glorious mountains.

The director coaxes a guileless performance from the young Finnish lead actor and Jackson enjoys himself playing against type as a man definitely not in control of events. Kurtuluş has fun channeling Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) from Die Hard (1988).

With it’s young hero suffering daddy issues and familiar visual gags and stunts, it’s easy to recognise inspiration drawn from the ’80’s work of Steven Spielberg; specifically E.T. and The Temple Of Doom – but the tone is closer to that of Richard Donner’s The Goonies (1985). (Story and Executive produced by S. Spielberg)

However exciting and fun as it all is, the message one is not a man until you’ve killed something is far from typically Spielberg.

★★★☆☆