Jurassic World

    "Jurassic World" got stank reviews but I went and saw it anyway. 
    Then I went and saw it again.
    And if anybody out there needs someone to go see it with, I'll go see it a third time.
    It's true that, except for the beautiful views of the island of Kauai where the movie was filmed and the computer-generated dinos, "Jurassic World" isn't piece of cinematic art.
    But then a few weeks ago I went to the Drexel, our local art film place, and saw "The Clouds Of Sils Maria", which got 4 1/2 stars and rave critical reviews and at the end of the movie I exclaimed to anybody close enough to hear, "What the heck was that about?" and the lady sitting in front of me turned to me and replied, "I don't know, but I want that two hours of my life back!"
    I will admit, though, that there was an awesome scene in "The Clouds Of Sils Maria"  of the Moloja Snake, which is a vast cloud formation that daily winds its way above the Engadin Valley in St. Moritz, Switzerland, so that from a distance it looks like a giant white snake is winding its way through the valley.

        So while I did enjoy  watching the scene of the Moloja Snake, and I guess it was kind of educational,  I'm not sure "The Clouds Of Sils Maria" was worth the price of the six-dollar movie ticket.
    Eh, maybe it was.
     "Jurassic World", on the other hand, was unequivocally worth the cost of the two tickets I've sprung for so far as well as the third I may yet end up shelling out for.
    I mean, the characters in "Jurassic World" may not be emotionally complex or nuanced - well, at least not the human characters;  the dinosaurs, on the other hand kind of are.  Especially the raptors, who throughout the film appear to be struggling with nature-nurture issues,

especially over whether they should obey or eat their human trainer.

    So there's that dramatic tension and suspense.  Spoiler alert for the very slow: 

    The hunky, rough-edged, ex-marine dinosaur trainer played by Chris Pratt does NOT get eaten by his raptors,

    ...nor, thank goodness, does the smart, hyper-organized, uber-competent park manager played by Bryce Dallas Howard (Hilly Holbrook in "The Help"), who looks downright fetching throughout the movie, especially the scenes where she's running for her life from the terrible  Indominus Rex  with the speed and agility of an olympic sprinter while wearing a skirt and 6-inch heels.

    Anyway, back to what I was saying, if one can get over the fact of the plot being just a weence farfetched even beyond the  premise of the original "Jurassic Park", and if one can suspend one's disbelief that a dinosaur could be possessed of a personality (which premise even the character of the park manager has a problem accepting  at first in the movie, as exhibited in the scene where she snaps at the raptor trainer, "Look, we're talking about an animal  here!),  the dinosaurs of "Jurassic World" do have lots of personality.

    Which is more than I can say about the characters in a  Sundance and internationally acclaimed film festival award-winning comedy called "The Overnight" about a young married couple who are invited to dinner at the home of some new friends and end up spending the night. 

      I went to see this movie because the Columbus Dispatch review proclaimed it "hysterically funny" and Rotten Tomatoes called it "witty and unpredictable" and Wikipedia described it as "an increasingly humorous and zany series of encounters".
    It wasn't funny.  At all.  There were lots of scenes that looked as though they were supposed to be funny but nobody in the theater was laughing.  Still, I'm predicting the  "The Overnight" will win an academy award even though it's  just a big dull mess  of a movie and  far less believable than an amusement park full of cogitating dinosaurs running amok.
    So whatever you do, when it comes to a theater near you, don't go see  "The Overnight".   Or "The Clouds of Sils Maria", either. 
    But if you want to go see "Jurassic World",  give me a call.