Nobody had much to say when I posted my pan of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, as it appeared 16 days before the 6.22 opening. This completely mediocre Universal release has since blown the roof off. It made $17.5 million yesterday in the U.S. alone, on its second weekend of release. Right now the worldwide tally is $826,454,064 ($222,225,335 domestic). It’ll probably crest the billion-dollar mark within the next seven days, and then how much higher? 2015’s Jurassic World wound up with $1.672 billion.

And for all this dough and hoopla Fallen World isn’t very good. And that’s not an ironic counterpoint. This is Universal’s fifth Jurassic flick so far, and audiences don’t seem to mind the adherence to mind-numbing formula. Universal has been churning them out like sausage, like the Universal regime of the ’40s and ’50s manufactured those Abbott & Costello “meet the monster” films.

Now that everyone has presumably seen Fallen World, reactions would be appreciated. I’m reposting my 6.6 review (“Dinos Ripped My Flesh“) for something to bounce against.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is another serving of idiot-brand dino sausage. Same software, same template, aimed at popcorn rabble. Did I hate it? No and yes. But we all know what the shot is. Universal continues to push the same dino buttons because millions of easy-lay types have paid good money to see the sequels. The Jurassic franchise is downswirling, and Chris Pratt is devalue-ing himself. No good can come of this except to the benefit of Universal stockholders.

There’s a single, stand-alone moment that gets you — i.e., the sight of a long-necked, cow-like dinosaur moaning in despair, all alone as volcanic lava bombs rain down upon Isla Nublar as the last ship departs. The island is being consumed by the Mount Sibo volcano and this poor sad dinosaur is stuck on the pier, awaiting a fiery death. It’s the only formula-free bit in the whole film.

It’s very dispiriting to see director Juan Antonio Bayona, whose sublime crafting of The Orphanage (’07) made it one of the finest horror films of the 21st Century…it’s very dispiriting to see such a gifted director succumb to by-the-numbers, corporate-format, hack-level filmmaking.

Read more

The late George P. Cosmatos, father of Mandy helmer Panos Cosmatos, was a European lowbrow action director. His peak efforts were two mid ’80s Sylvester Stallone hits — Rambo: First Blood Part II (shot for $25 million, earned $300 million worldwide) and Cobra. Cosmatos also directed the generally respected Tombstone (’93).

It was my understanding that Cosmatos was a guy you hired to handle principal photography and nothing more. In early to mid ’85 I worked for publicists Bobby Zarem and Dick Delson**, whose biggest client at the time was Stallone, and so I had a certain perspective on the post-production efforts for Rambo. To the best of my recollection Cosmatos was nowhere around. (Maybe he assembled a cut early on.) Rambo went through five editors — Larry Bock, Mark Goldblatt, Mark Helfrich, Gib Jaffe and Frank Jimenez — but as far as I could tell Stallone was calling the shots.

There’s nothing wrong with being a reliable, low-rent journeyman — not everyone can be David Lean. It’s fair to say that Cosmatos commanded a certain respect in this realm over a 25-year period (’71 to ’97), during which time he directed seven films besides the above — Sin (’71), Massacre in Rome (’73), The Cassandra Crossing (’76), Escape to Athena (’79), Of Unknown Origin (’83) Leviathan (’89) and Shadow Conspiracy (’97).

Cosmatos’ first noteworthy industry gig was as an A.D. for director Otto Preminger on Exodus (’60). Three years later he went before the cameras as “acne-faced boy” in Zorba the Greek (’64). Cosmatos collected and sold rare books as a pastime. He passed from lung cancer in ’05.

Cosmatos was politically adept with good industry relationships, but you can tell from the trailer for Sin [after the jump], a low-budget Raquel Welch programmer that Cosmatos wrote and directed, where he was at aesthetically. The video narration track for Cobra also speaks for itself.

** Delson passed last January at age 81.

Read more

It was announced Thursday night that Michael Moore‘s Farenheit 11/9, a shut-down-Trump doc, will open in theatres on Friday, 9.21, or roughly three months hence. I don’t know how many screens, but it’ll be distributed by Briarcliff Entertainment, a new company formed by Moore and Tom Ortenberg. A 6.28 Hollywood Reporter story says this won’t be the same Farenheit 11/9 that was announced as a Weinstein Co. release in May 2017. (Whatever that means.) It’ll probably screen at Venice, Telluride and/or Toronto…right?

Read more

In this, the summer of Brolin…carry on.

Earlier today a coding error distorted the design of an all-media invitation to see Dwayne Johnson‘s Skyscraper (Universal, 7.13). These things happen, no biggie. But the image suggested what things might feel or look like if Johnson were to accidentally sample the wrong kind of LSD during the making of this film, which everyone is calling is calling Die Hard meets The Towering Inferno. If this were to happen, director Rawson Marshall Thurber would need to find a calming LSD guru to calm Johnson down, and who better to handle this delicate task than Cary Grant, aka Captain Trips?

(l.) Skyscraper producer-star Dwayne Johnson; (r.) North by Northwest star Cary Grant.

 The following happens inside Johnson’s on-set trailer. Subdued lighting. Queen tunes are playing gently out of a Sonos speaker. Knock-knock. Grant enters.

Grant: Hello, Dwayne. I got here as soon as I could. You’re looking wonderful.
Johnson: Oh, hey, Cary. Good to see ya, man. (clears throat) Uhhhmm.
Grant: How are you feeling?
Johnson: I don’t know, man. I really…it’s hard to describe.
Grant: Don’t try — that’s the first thing. Don’t attempt anything. Just settle in.
Johnson: But I have a movie to make, man. I gotta muscle up and do the job.
Grant: Rawson is doing the job. He’s the director. All you have to do is be yourself.
Johnson: Uhhggghh….
Grant: You’re there, you’ve got it.
Johnson: Hmmmmm.
Grant: If you want to let it out, do that. And if you don’t, don’t.
Johnson: But this is the biggest bombastic movie I’ve ever made. Everyone will be comparing me to Bruce Willis. I have to deliver. I gotta be better than Bruce, I mean.

Read more

“The only other big studio release worth taking seriously so far this year (besides A Quiet Place) is Sicario: Day of the Soldado, a potent and sharply focused sequel that arguably has more to say about the U.S.-Mexican border situation, and does so in a more nuanced way, than the original. Denis Villeneuve and Roger Deakins may have provided a few hyper-visual sequences that surpass anything on view here, but the sacrifice of Emily Blunt‘s protagonist provides Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin a lot more time to richly develop their characters, a trade-off that proves quite beneficial.

“Not many Italian directors have made a successful leap to Hollywood, but Stefano Sollima looks to have the necessary chops.” — from “Halfway Through 2018, Slim Studio Pickings and Precious Few Indie Gems,” written by senior Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy.

HE is looking to run more “friends of Soldado” quotes throughout the weekend, but with particular attention to non-pro viewpoints (i.e., ticket buyers). HE will be catching it a second time at an Arclight screening today, sometime around 5:30 or 6 pm. I consider it an honor to buy a ticket.

From Mark Ebner’s “Grey Zone’ podcast about Skip Chasey, aka “Master Skip,” an out-and-proud leather man and spiritually grounded leather fellow in the City of the Fallen Angels. A 6.29 Variety report states the following: “According to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office, Duncan Gilbert, 48, died on Nov. 19” — seven months ago — “at Chasey’s home during ‘recreational mummification bondage.’ The agency first learned of the death this week, after it was first reported on journalist Mark Ebner’s podcast, “The Grey Zone.”

According to the coroner’s report, Gilbert was wrapped “head to toe in plastic wrap and gaffer’s tape, with small breathing holes at the nose and mouth.” It happened at a pivate residence on Holly Knoll Drive (north of Franklin) in Los Feliz.

Just passing this along. Hollywood Elsewhere has no comment. I wouldn’t know how.

Listen to “Season 3 Episode 3: "The Death By Mummification Show"” on Spreaker.

My heart goes out to the family, friends and colleagues of the five victims of today’s Capitol Gazette shooting — Gerald Fischman, Rob Hiaasen, John McNamara, Wendi Winters (all editorial) and sales assistant Rebecca Smith. Another ghastly tragedy and all too common, as we’re all sick of acknowledging. Another lone gunman, reportedly driven by rage and resentment. (He reportedly felt that the Gazette had misreported a harassment compliant against him by a former high-school classmate.)

Post-posted, 9:28 pm: A sincere apology is hereby conveyed to a journalist-critic because he believes I’ve dishonored his family. I repeated in this short piece my longstanding dislike of martial-arts action scenes and the whole Asian martial-arts genre. But rather than quibble with the guy I hope he’ll accept this apology. What I wrote was simply an opinion about a certain kind of fare. An expression of aesthetic disdain that I’ve conveyed many times. (I also loathe Bollywood films.) I’m nonetheless sorry for hurting the journalist-critic’s feelings and those of his family.

Earlier: Mile 22 (STX, 8.17), the latest Peter Berg-Mark Wahlberg action flick, looks pretty good. Generic but efficient. Back in the ’90s and early aughts Jerry Bruckheimer and Joel Silver used to own this genre. Their names were synonymous with this kind of thing. Remember the Black Hawk Down hoopla? Now it’s “eh, Berg and Wahlberg again…fine.”

I tend to pull back when I spot an Asian actor, stuntman, fight choreographer and martial artist in the cast. Films of this sort have to appeal to the Asian market, of course, but I really don’t care for martial-arts fight scenes. I never have.

Sidenote: When I first heard this title I thought of “Mila 18,” a 1961 Leon Uris novel abut the Warsaw Uprising. In August 2017 Harvey Weinstein announced that he’d produce a film based on the novel, and that he himself would direct. But that went south, of course.