Jurassic Park (1993)

4/5

Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park is a classic 1990's creature film, and perhaps the most memorable one in history. Based on Crichton's book, it melds science with fiction to create a terrifying but believable alternate world. Entrepreneur John Hammond (Attenborough) extracts dinosaur DNA from ancient mosquitoes to create an amusement park filled with dinosaurs. Before announcing it to the public, he invites experts in the field of paleontology (Neill, Dern) and chaos theory (Goldblum) for a preview showing, along with his grandkids. Unfortunately, things go very wrong when the dinosaurs escape.

What makes this movie so unforgettable is not the special effects, awesome (in the traditional sense of the word) though they may be. The cererbral concept, the thought of creating dinosaurs, is exhilarating and thrilling. Its story is a classic tale of man's hubris leading to destruction, of greed leading to demise, of fear and courage. An epic battle plays out between the kings of old and the kings of new, brawn vs. brains.

Throw in Goldblum's spot-on neuroses and Spielberg's unerring eye for cinema and you get a movie that stands the test of time. It's invigorating and endearing because it puts its story and its characters front and center, allowing the CGI to be eye candy and window dressing. Special effects won't always seem so incredible, but good stories never grow old. And Jurassic Park tells a phenomenal story.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/

The Vow (2012)

3/5

The Vow tells the ridiculous but apparently true story of a woman (McAdams) who wakes up from a car accident with short term memory loss. She remembers her mom (Lange), her dad (Neill), her sister (McNamee), and her ex-fiancé (Speedman), but not her recently-wed husband (Tatum) and his weird cadre of hipster friends (which is a plus in my book). The rest of the movie is spent trying to restore her memory and win back her love. The script was predictable but appropriately tender. There were scenes with awkward cheesy teen romance and others where we felt intimately close to everything going on.

Much like The Time Traveler's Wife, The Vow is about two imperfect people who do the best they can in an impossible situation. Both tell stories of people who are victims of circumstances beyond their control, whether it's time travel or amnesia, who end up causing pain to the people who love them. McAdams, with that mesmerizing sparkle in her eye, plays to perfection the exact same role she always does: the fiercely independent, slightly selfish artist whose love knows no bounds. The supporting cast, including Tatum, varied between acceptable and above average. Lange stood out the most, delivering a fantastically moving moment near the end of the film.

Although similar in almost all respects to The Time Traveler's Wife, The Vow fell behind in a number of areas. First, its cinematography was nothing to write home about. Second, the medicine was surprisingly less believable than the science of time travel. (I honestly don't think anybody in Hollywood knows what intubation or extubation looks like.) The Vow is a solid romance and a must for fans of Rachel McAdams. But for everyone else, the predictable story and middling technical aspects will leave you wanting more.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1606389/

The Piano (1993)

4/5

This movie is emotionally complex, well-shot and well-edited, with richly developed characters, amazing acting (Anna Paquin as the daughter in by far her best performance), and a wide variety of potential analytic paths. The movie deals with a woman who chooses not to speak a single world (played beautifully and poetically by Holly Hunter), but loves to express herself through playing the piano. She is married off by her father to a man in the middle of nowhere, but falls in love with another man after giving him "piano lessons." The finale is filled with incredible emotion and suspense--while watching it, I had no idea how it would end, which is a testament to the film's ability to create a world that is wholly its own. It is not predictable because we have not really seen a movie quite like it before.

It does have some problems though, as with any movie. There are a lot of loose ends that are never tied up, minor characters that are never really fleshed out, and a manner of speech that take a little while to get into. Characters' actions are never fully explained, leaving us as the audience the task of figuring out why they do certain inexplicable, provocative things that they do. Even so, it is highly recommended if you like romances, but not if you don't.

Note: This film played with French subtitles in place of English subtitles where signs were shown or the Maori language was spoken. Even so, I understood about 90% of those subtitles and they did not hinder my enjoyment of the film. It was also shown on the beach, so there may have been audiovisual distractions from time to time.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0107822/