The latest film releases include Jurassic World Rebirth, 40 Acres, Heads of State, and In the Mood For Love. Weighing in are Shawn Edwards, film critic at Fox 4 News and co-founder of the African American Film Critics Association, and Alison Willmore, film critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.
Jurassic World Rebirth
Researchers try to harvest dino DNA — at their peril. The cast includes Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Rupert Friend.
Willmore: “You've got Scarlett Johansson as a mercenary who gets hired by an evil pharmaceutical company to extract DNA from certain dinosaurs. … They’re gonna make some drug — I don't know why it's going to help human coronary disease, why they need dinosaur DNA for that? But who knows why anything works in these movies anymore. … They have to go find an air dinosaur, and a sea dinosaur, and a land dinosaur, the biggest of them all. And they also have to deal with … the mutant dinosaur, has six limbs, has an extra pair in there, it’s a grim-looking thing.
But they have succeeded in making a dinosaur movie that is boring, even with all of this dinosaur action, even with a whole family in peril, randomly introduced, who I found just intolerable. They really just cannot make these action sequences that exciting. … I do feel like these movies are facing a lot of creative exhaustion.”
Edwards: “In the film, there's a line where a character says, ‘Twenty years ago, dinosaurs were all the rage, now no one cares.’ That line perfectly sums up this latest Jurassic movie, which is the sixth sequel, because there really isn't a reason to care, and the movie never gives you one. I mean, it's just all superficial action. And the worst offense is the dinosaurs are starting to look fake. They look worse than the dinosaurs when the original Jurassic Park, like three decades ago, [came out].
Thankfully, Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali do their best to try to save this. But then the film throws in a miscellaneous family … that bloats an already bloated movie of nothingness, and adds to the confusion. … It gets even crazier. But the worst offense of all: This movie is boring and does not push the franchise forward at all.”
40 Acres
Years into a global famine, a family defends their farm from invaders. The movie’s title refers to Union General William Sherman’s promise after the Civil War – that all freed slaves would receive 40 acres and a mule.
Edwards: “This promise of 40 acres and a mule, I mean, that's the touchstone that sets off this really politically-charged film that deals with cannibals and land rights and zombies. But it's all involved with a family that's headed by Danielle Deadwyler. And after watching 40 Acres, I firmly believe that she is the best actress working today. … These performances actually prove my point, and it's criminal that she's never even been nominated for an Oscar, because there's a power and a beauty to her work, which is on full display in this realistically shot apocalyptic nightmare that's overstuffed with symbolism. … There's an unknowingness that creates this tension, and the slow pace adds to the burn. It's very nimble filmmaking, especially from a first-time feature director. The director goes by the name of RT Thorne, and he's a music video director, and he really creates this authentic and realistic sense of terror and dread. But at the center of this is Danielle Deadwyler’s performance. She's fabulous in this film.”
Willmore: “Danielle Deadwyler is just really terrific as this incredibly competent, and also extremely, I won't say paranoid, because she's very justified in it, but just has incredible trust issues that you start to understand are coming from both the immediacy of their survival situation … but also her own personal feelings, her own past, plus the history of being Black in America. And I think the film just handles all of those things as part of her characterization so well. … This film did a great job of bringing together these themes of people from communities who have very good reason not to feel invested in the remaining tatters of society, and how that matches up with … needing to be with other people.”
Heads of State
The American president (John Cena) and English prime minister (Idris Elba) fight for survival when Air Force One is shot down over enemy territory.
Willmore: “It was just good enough for me, as something to pop on streaming, which it's going directly to streaming, on an afternoon when you're taking a break from the heat, mostly because I really like John Cena and Idris Elba. … You have Idris Elba playing this long-suffering professional. He … was like a military veteran who has gone on to become the unpopular prime minister of the U.K. … And then you have John Cena as a former action movie star-turned-president of the United States, something that is entirely plausible.”
Edwards: “Heads of State is a surprisingly satisfyingly good bad movie. I mean, it's what I like to call cinematic comfort food. Yes, it's a typical buddy cop movie, except John Cena and Idris Elba are politicians, and they do have a fair amount of chemistry together. … I actually like the verbal jousting. Was it well-written? No, it wasn't that great. But they pull it off to make you still want to pay attention to the movie. … The movie’s politics are eerily similar to things that are going on right now, and the tone oddly swung anti-MAGA. I was not expecting that at all.”
In the Mood For Love
It’s now the 25th anniversary of this romance/drama. A married journalist moves into a Hong Kong apartment and falls in love with his neighbor. It’s screening this week at Laemmle theaters in Glendale and West LA.
Willmore: “This is a stone-cold classic. … Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung in this movie are like two of the most beautiful people ever captured in film. And they have this amazing almost affair, right? … They're both married to other people, and they realize they’re neighbors in this apartment building, they realize that their spouses have been having an affair, and this brings them … into closer and closer contact, while at the same time they're very determined to be like, ‘We're not going to be like them. We are not going to replicate this.’ So it creates this incredibly, wonderfully wistful tension of these two people who just really want to be together, but they have created this hesitation in themselves, this withholding.”
Edwards: “This is a true classic. This is a true masterpiece. You could create a laundry list of directors that have tried to mimic the tone and the style with this film in the past 25 years. It is one of the most gorgeous films ever made, and it's also a great entry point to diversify one’s cinematic palette.”