Crisp Criticism - "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom", "Tag", "Lean on Pete", "Sicario: Day of the Soldado"

by
Julien Faddoul

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

When the island's dormant volcano begins roaring to life, a campaign is mounted to rescue the remaining dinosaurs from this extinction-level event.

You think the people in these movies would realise how ill-advised the concept of cloning dinosaurs would be by now. Then again, you'd think modern-day audiences would realise how boring it is to watch CGI animals chase around awkwardly reactive actors, but the box-office receipts say different. The trajectory of this franchise has become ridiculous to the point of paralysis: the characters' behaviour is senseless, the plot twists are laughable, the attempts at serious science are embarrassing and for no discernible reason a great deal of the action takes place indoors. A very stupid movie.

wd – JA Bayona

w – Derek Connolly, Colin Trevorrow   (Based on the Characters Created by Michael Crichton)

ph – Oscar Faura

pd – Andy Nicholson

m – Michael Giacchino

ed – Bernat Vilaplana

cos – Sammy Sheldon Differ

p – Patrick Crowley, Belén Atienza, Frank Marshall

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Isabella Sermon, Rafe Spall, James Cromwell, Justice Smith, Daniella Pineda, Geraldine Chaplin, Ted Levine, Toby Jones, BD Wong, Jeff Goldblum, Michael Papajohn, Robert Emms

Tag *

A small group of former classmates organize an elaborate, annual game of tag that requires some to travel all over the country.

Never uninteresting, but ultimately rather wan comedy based on a piece from The Wall-Street Journal. The film itself doesn’t really appreciate its own premise, making the plot so needlessly implausible that its factual basis becomes no longer pertinent.

d – Jeff Tomsic

w – Rob McKittrick, Mark Steilen   (Based on the Article by Russell Adams)

ph – Larry Blanford

pd – David Sandefur

m – Germaine Franco

ed – Josh Crockett

cos – Denise Wingate

p – Todd Garner, Mark Steilen

Cast: Ed Helms, Jake Johnson, Annabelle Wallis, Hannibal Buress, Isla Fisher, Rashida Jones, Leslie Bibb, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner, Jaren Lewison, Braxton Bjerken

Lean on Pete **

A teenager gets a summer job working for a horse trainer and befriends the fading racehorse, Lean on Pete.

Haigh’s typical eye for surrounding detail counterposes some of the more unconvincing emotional beats here; rosy remorse, let’s call it. But the film never takes the conventional road and the cast is wonderful.

wd – Andrew Haigh   (Based on the Novel by Willy Vlautin)

ph – Magnus Nordenhof Jønck

pd – Ryan Warren Smith

m – James Edward Barker

ed – Jonathan Alberts

cos – Julie Carnahan

p – Tristan Goligher

Cast: Charlie Plummer, Chloe Sevigny, Travis Fimmel, Steve Buscemi, Steve Zahn, Thomas Mann, Amy Seimetz

Sicario: Day of the Soldado *

An FBI agent teams up with an operative to prevent Mexican drug cartels from smuggling terrorists across the U.S. border.

Less of a sequel and more of a new chapter in an anthology, this installment almost totally dispenses with the intriguing moral ambiguity of the first film and authorises its main characters as ostensible action heroes of some kind. The point of the first film was that morality is futile when it comes to the war on drugs; here both the writing and direction are too weak to make any real point at all.

d – Stefano Sollima

w – Taylor Sheridan

ph – Dariusz Wolski

pd – Kevin Kavanaugh

m – Hildur Guðnadóttir

ed – Matthew Newman

cos – Deborah Lynn Scott

p – Basil Iwanyk, Thad Luckinbill, Trent Luckinbill, Edward McDonnell, Molly Smith

Cast: Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Isabela Moner, Catherine Keener, Matthew Modine, Christopher Heyerdahl, Jeffrey Donovan, Ian Bohen, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Jake Picking, Michael Love Toliver, Bruno Bichir