Jurassic Park

I have no idea how many times I watched this when I was a kid, but I realized while watching it I pretty much had every line memorized. I knew exactly what everyone was going to say before they said it. Of course, that's also a function of the screenplay being little more than a collection of phrases. Nobody is even close to being a character, which wouldn't be a bad thing except that the screenplay obvious thinks that it's doing a lot of things to establish characters. Basically, it's just a downright awful screenplay. I'm not even going to get into it; it's just terrible on every level.

Which is kind of too bad, because Spielberg really was at one of his peaks when he directed this. The fluid way the whole first half of the movie flows from scene to scene is really well done, and as close to being subtle as probably would be possible in a blockbuster about dinosaurs. And once it gets down to business with the monsters, the action scenes are still seriously scary. I mean, I actually felt my heartbeat elevate. And despite the fact that none of the main characters ever actually gets killed or eaten, unlike in the new Indiana Jones movie, there is a serious feeling of danger--you actually feel like the main characters are genuinely having their lives threatened. Frankly, after reading the screenplay, Spielberg should've just cut all the dialogue and decided to revive the silent film. The dialogue is so bad it actually ruins the tension a number of times.

My only other complaint about the movie is that it's a little too efficient. I guess this was before it was okay to stretch a movie very much longer than two hours, but I really think the movie could've used some more time on the island before everything went to shit. I guess that's why the score goes nuts when they first see the Brachiosaurs: Spielberg was trying to milk every possible bit of emotion out of that scene because it was the only scene in which he got to really show the wonder of the island. I just don't think it quite worked, or I mean it doesn't quite manage to make up for the fact that it's the only scene like that.

Kung Fu Panda

Something about watching kids' movies makes you, an adult person (or at least, me), watch them even more closely for the moral message, because somehow it just feels like ultimately the point of a kids' movie is it's moral message. Maybe it's because I don't really think kids are complex enough to handle a movie without a clear moral message--although I think this reveals a certain bias on my part (that I'm a little uncomfortable about being aware of) toward judging movies based on their moral message. On that level, I guess Kung Fu Panda is fine. I saw the big reveal of what the Dragon Warrior scroll was going to be coming from pretty much the second it was set up as the ultimate prize. And from a critical perspective, I'm a little curious about the fact that after getting it Po is suddenly able actually do incredible Kung Fu. And I'm a little wary about how much this movie (and, I can't help it, "movies like this," whatever that actually means) just gloss over the amount of actual hard work required to become very good at some skill. But, whatever. This movie was probably the most genuinely fun kids' movie I've seen since Spy Kids (I'd count Pixar, but Pixar movies always go for the heartstrings at some point, and I've decided arbitrarily that is grounds to exclude them from this short list). Jack Black and a lot of the visual gags are really really funny, and the action sequences are just delightful. And it's really hard not to be completely won over by a movie when, during the climactic battle, there's a little girl behind you screaming "Go Panda! Go Panda! Go Panda!"

True Stories

For about ten or so years there, David Byrne was pretty amazing. He still manages to pull off some pretty great stuff (see "Empire" from Grown Backwards) although he never has and never will match the consistency of his output from then. True Stories is almost like "The Big Country" from More Songs about Buildings and Food turned hilarious and stretched out into a feature length movie. It pulls off the same feat of being trenchantly of "the blandness of middle America" while at the same time being just as critical of the reflexive nature that criticism has for coastal people (he pulls this off, I think, by having the song/movie be from the perspective of a narrator who is obviously not from the place he's describing (and I think, though I may be projecting my actual knowledge of Byrne onto this, just as obviously from one of the coasts) and having that narrator adopt a faux-naive tone--or he seems to at once know more than he's letting on and not to know nearly as much as a he thinks he knows), but the movie/song isn't just critical. Both manage to also be kind of celebratory of the very differences they exploit to lay their criticisms. Also, they're very funny and moving. Byrne was just kind of brilliant.