Jurassic World Review: An Exercise in Cynically Racking up Nostalgia by Undermining Its Roots

In the twenty five years since its release, Jurassic Park has still remained a staple for 1990’s cinema because of its innovative visual effects and to this day, it’s astonishing that it still happens to look every bit as beautiful as it does. But as the franchise had only grown to become as big as it did, the meaning behind Crichton’s original creation had slowly been fading away. Surely enough, it’s hard to deny that the original Jurassic Park still remains a spectacle for the eyes because of what it had taken in order to make you truly believe that you were seeing actual dinosaurs on the screen through the film’s innovative use of both computer-generated imagery and animatronics. But there comes a point to which one can only get too caught up by the image of the spectacle that Jurassic Park had set into place and Jurassic World only emphasizes that danger all the more, because it cynically exploits that nostalgia one would have had for the original film without ever finding its own way to carry itself through. It cynically boils down what Crichton would have wanted to say about the eventual spectacle of nature’s own ways only to what audiences would buy in as “dumb fun,” and to me, that never felt right – it just felt ugly.

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Love, Simon – Review

✯✯✯✯

It feels like natural instinct to go ahead and say that Love, Simon would not look appealing because the trailers would already make it appear more like a cheesy romantic comedy – but for the many years that we have already had many straight romances flourishing, why not a gay one for once? I’m not only saying this as a queer but because I was never expecting much out of Love, Simon to begin with because of said factor. But on that level, I was surprised to have found a more thoughtful experience than I would have initially expected because I had always been skeptical of how the subject matter would be handled for a film that was geared towards teenage audiences. And if this is a sign that more people are willing to allow these voices to be heard, then I am perfectly okay with that.

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The Kings of Summer – Review

✯✯½

What’s offered by The Kings of Summer is a premise that could very well be so much more than what it presents on the screen because it has a pleasant idea going for it. Yet what glares from start to finish is the film’s lack of originality. While I’m not one to deny that the film is sporadically entertaining from time to time, the emotional detachment to which I had felt from the main characters hindered any sort of enjoyment to the film as a whole. That’s among many problems to which The Kings of Summer presents, it’s a film that so desperately wants the viewers to relate with the protagonists’ desire for freedom yet what we are offered is something that just fails at delivering the simple message it wishes to present. Continue reading →

The 5th Wave – Review

✯½

Young adult science fiction seems to be a case that just presents the same sort of stories with the same overdone drama on repeat. The 5th Wave is another one of those cases, and especially in moments where it tries so desperately to be different, it’s rather evident that it’s only continuing to fall back on its own face. There wasn’t so much of an attempt to set itself apart present and all that came out of The 5th Wave was just something utterly generic and horribly bland, nothing else but the intense feeling of boredom was running down my face. Continue reading →