Film review: Jurassic Park: Rebirth places the focus on the real stars — the dinosaurs

Irish Examiner

16 hours ago

It is hard to believe the world might grow weary of living dinosaurs, but such is the world of Jurassic Park: Rebirth (12A), which begins 32 years on from the opening of the theme park that offered the miracle of resurrected Triceratops, Tyrannosaurus rex, et al.
These days, alas, the kids are inured to the wonder of the dinosaurs, who, dying off due to climate change and disease, can only be found in the wild in a no-go zone around the equator.
Enter Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), a pharmaceutical company fixer who requires dino DNA for a revolutionary new heart medicine, and who commissions the mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) to assemble a team to source the DNA of three of the biggest dinosaurs that ever lived.
Complicating matters is the fact that the three behemoths are seagoing, airborne, and land-dwelling; also, the samples need to be taken from living creatures.
Having thus raised the stakes a little higher than previous Jurassic Park movies, director Gareth Edwards unleashes his crack team on a remote island — Zora pulls in her old sea-captain pal Duncan (Mahershala Ali), and dino expert Dr Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) — and tosses them into scenarios that fans of the franchise will recognise as a kind of Jurassic Park greatest hits, albeit one that includes dinosaurs that have evolved/mutated into beasts that are strongly reminiscent of the nightmarish creatures from the Alien franchise.
An early nod to the work of animation genius Ray Harryhausen tells us that Edwards is deliberately harking back to past glories, and for the most part it works.
Scarlett Johansson is enjoyably self-deprecating and hard-nosed as the mercenary-in-chief, and there's strong support from a charismatic Mahershala Ali and a quietly diffident Jonathan Bailey, who deftly juggles the twin roles of hapless boffin and Johansson's love interest — although, as always, it's the terrifying dinosaurs who are the real stars.
Vincent Cassel and Diane Kruger in 'The Shrouds.'
The Shrouds
★★★☆☆
Cinema release
The Shrouds (16s) stars Vincent Cassel as Karsh Relik, a man who has pioneered 'Gravetech', a coffin-cam technology and the ultimate memento mori that allows mourners to observe their loved ones decomposing in their graves.
Obsessed with his dead wife Becca (Diane Kruger), Karsh is horrified when his cemetery is vandalised, and suspects corporate sabotage —a view shared by Terry (also played by Kruger), Becca's sister and Karsh's confidante.
All of which sounds morbid, to say the least, but is par for the course for writer-director David Cronenberg, who once again explores many of the motifs that have characterised his work: body horror, doppelgängers, the unholy blend of human and machine.
It all feels rather stilted, however, and particularly Cassel's performance and dialogue delivery, and the story itself has the clumsy, fumbling feel of a man trying to remember how this thing used to work.
Beat the Lotto
Beat the Lotto
★★★☆☆
Cinema release
Beat the Lotto (G) is a documentary by Ross Whitaker detailing how a syndicate of gamblers, assembled in 1992 by Cork man Stefan Klincewicz, attempted to scoop the Lotto by buying up every single possible combination of six numbers.
Featuring contemporary TV footage and talking heads interviews with the syndicate members, the film does a surprisingly good job of ramping up the tension in a story we already know the outcome of, as the Lotto, alerted to the unusual patterns of play, goes on the offensive.
That said, Whitaker is less successful at framing the syndicate as plucky outsiders who took on the system and won; despite their almost child-like excitement at being on the inside track, these are men who seek to strip away the fantasy of winning the Lotto in their pursuit of a cast-iron plunger.
As journalist Mark Little points out, the perfectly legal heist marked the death of a certain kind of economic innocence as we belatedly learned that the luck of the Irish was no substitute for a clear-eyed appraisal of the odds.