This one's all about movies.

Jurassic World Rebirth, NYT 100 best movies, AMC A-List, and more

Yesterday, I woke up to the news that the AMC Lincoln Square had flooded during the city’s downpour. I didn’t find the news on social media — I got a frantic message from my friend Juan, who was attending a screening I was set to host of the new I Know What You Did Last Summer. I also received an e-mail from the Karpel Group, who hired me for the event, but that was at least 20 minutes after Juan’s text. Thankfully (for my bank account), the AMC was open and running later that afternoon — which duh, we come to this place for magic. If the magic can’t even reopen a movie theater after a light flooding, then it’s not very practical magic, is it?

The film itself was fun as hell. Good scares, some actual laugh out loud lines, and my GOD Tyriq Withers is hot as hell. I audibly moaned during one of his shirtless scenes, I’m not sorry. Also, Sara Pidgeon and Madelyn Cline? Young mothers. I don’t know if you recall but the first I Know What You Did Last Summer is not great, it just has one iconic kill scene (Sarah Michelle Gellar’s), Anne Heche acting DOWN, and a cast of the best young white actors of late ‘90s Hollywood. The sequel I Still Know What You Did Last Summer is a camp classic, however. No tongue that rises against that film will prosper!

Another thing about AMC before I get to today’s main topic (my review of Jurassic Park Rebirth and the lack of Spielberg films on NYT’s 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century¹): the AMC A-List.

As a grown adult with an expired driver’s license, I sometimes need to bring my passport with me to get into bars or clubs. No one checks the expired license that much that I need the passport for thinks like ID check at an AMC, but sometimes I can’t find my wallet. A lot going on in my ADD-addled brain, okay?! This is all to say that having to pull out my ID when I show my AMC movie ticket is slightly annoying. It’s not a BIG deal, it’s not like I’m about to e-mail The Ethicist about it. They’re busy with serious things over there. The answer to this would seem to be uploading my own photo the AMC app. But do you have any idea how difficult that is?

My photo, clearly lit, taken in my apartment’s white vestibule like a passport photo, was continuously rejected. No matter how many variations of photo I took. Eventually, I asked an employee what the deal is. And it turns out you have to crop the hell out of the photo you take before you upload it. Like, CROP CROP.

I look horrible. So I guess it is like an ID photo after all.

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I’m still thinking about Jurassic World Rebirth two weeks later. Not because it was particularly good, because it wasn’t! It was fine. Fine for a summer blockbuster that just happened to be slapped into the Jurassic Park franchise, but awful for a Jurassic Park film. These films used to be about the awe of seeing a dinosaur. The same way that subsequent Scream movies have struggled to capture that specific Wes Craven Scare, the films post-The Lost World have failed to exhibit any of the childlike wonderment that comes with witnessing REAL-LIFE DINOSAURS. The characters should be as astounded as the audience.

I wrote about my first time seeing Jurassic Park in theaters for my essay collection, Pure Innocent Fun:

“There are several milestones on the journey to adulthood that you experience in your adolescence. Your mom letting you stay at home by yourself instead of at a neighbor’s or relative’s house is one of them, but none is bigger than the solo trip, the first time an adult in your life entrusts you to go somewhere on your own. My first such sojourns were out of necessity. If my mom wanted cigarettes, she’d send me to the corner store to pick them up. This eventually evolved into me going on light grocery runs when she didn’t feel like doing it, mostly when she wanted someone else to have to use our food stamps instead of her.

I can barely remember my first visit to Northtown Cinemas in 1989, aside from brief flashes of The Little Mermaid at age three, but I can vividly recall the first time I attended a movie without adult supervision, and that was on June 11, 1993—when Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park was released. If you’re a gay millennial man, then you were obsessed with either Disney or dinosaurs. So while I loved Disney films, I loved dinosaurs.

From the moment I first learned what dinosaurs were in school, I became obsessed with them. I had fossil figurines that I assembled in my bedroom. I read books on the various species of dinosaurs. I watched all four seasons of the ABC sitcom Dinosaurs religiously. During the weekend of Jurassic Park’s release, I was already talking about the film non-stop. The trailer itself already felt cinematic — dinosaurs hatching in eggs, T-Rex and raptors on a rampage. Not to shit on CGI of today, but if you watch any action movie these days 90% of it looks fake. Nothing about a superhero showdown in a Marvel or DC movie looks remotely realistic. But when that T-Rex escapes from his cage and tries to eat kids Tim and Lex, who are trapped in an unmoving jeep, it’s still incredibly visually arresting. And scary. It terrified me as a kid as much as it entranced me.

I loved Jurassic Park so much that I needed to see it again and again, so my Gran began to drop me off Northtown by myself every weekend as long as it was in theaters. Jurassic Park had introduced me to newfound independence. I spent time at the movies alone every weekend, watching one of my favorite films, reciting every line and seeing my favorite dinosaurs rampage through a theme park for two hours.”

In Jurassic World Rebirth, the public has grown tired of seeing dinosaurs and therefore money-hungry billionaires (sound familiar?) have sought to generate their own dinosaurs by splicing together the genes of existing dinosaurs. This is how we end up with a disgusting CGI behemoth like the D-Rex. I do not want to look at a D-Rex! It’s ugly! The T-Rex was scary, yes, but he was also a cute toy to own. Also, he’s a real dinosaur. Real dinosaurs have managed to be pretty damn cool for as long as humans have discovered their fossils, so I don’t know what the fuck Rebirth is smoking.

If we were using dinosaurs’ current predicament in the film’s world to launch into a film reinvigorating the coolness of dinos then maybe we’d have someone to work with. I’m not saying I needed to see Denver the Last Dinosaur here, but any moment that focused on just how fucking cool it is to witness dinosaurs moving around would be nice. There’s a couple in the film but not nearly enough. Take for instance, when Jonathan Bailey discovers a Pterodactyl’s nest. We’re immediately whipped into a fight with big flying dinosaur instead of actually living in the coolness of the moment. It’s all about big, smashy set pieces in this film.

Even the introduction of a cute dino baby that’s existence is purely to sell toys manages to flop. The dino baby doesn’t even do anything interesting. What are we even doing here? I at least admire the effort from Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which introduced the idea of dinosaurs being sold on the black market. It was attempting to do something interesting in this fantastic world. Not this film, though! It’s fallen so far from the magic that Spielberg created that people tend to forget just how amazing Jurassic Park is. And how amazing Spielberg is, because his only entry on the NYT’s 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century list is… Minority Report. No A.I. Artificial Intelligence. No Catch Me If You Can. No West Side Story, which is the best movie musical since 2002’s Chicago (also not on the list!!).

For the most part, I don’t have a lot of problems with the list, which only exists for clicks. And in turn, has offered clicks and engagement to everyone covering the list. I was absent on the day we discussed the list on Keep It, so I’ll share my own personal ballot here:

American Pyscho (2000)

Chicago (2002)

Drive My Car (2021)

Get Out (2017)

Inside Man (2006)

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)

Michael Clayton (2007)

Salt (2010)

Volver (2006)

Weekend (2011)

If you thought I’d make a list and not include the Angelina Jolie masterpiece Salt on it, then you don’t know me at all! In the comments, you can try to guess which Steven Spielberg film would’ve taken its place if I’d been asked to submit a real ballot!

As for some of my offbeat choices: I watched Weekend every night for a month one dark summer. I haven’t seen 25th Hour, shockingly, so maybe that would replace Inside Man, but not enough people discuss how perfect that film is for my liking, so I’m fine to include it.

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Our latest episode of Keep It features an interview with Ari Aster about his new film Eddington. You can listen or watch.

One thing we neglected to mention in discussing Emmy noms was how Rebel Ridge became a frontrunner for Best TV Movie. The benefits of not giving it a theatrical release, I suppose! And also, Mountainhead has mostly been praised for its performances and not its reductive (rich white people with questionable morals!) script.

Pitchfork gave Justin Bieber’s Swag a 7.3. The review is mostly about Bieber parting ways with Scooter Braun and doing whatever the hell he wants now. As I said yesterday, it doesn’t really matter if the album is good or not.

Jax Taylor is “stepping away” from The Valley to focus on recovery. LOL. Sis, you were fired! Good riddance.

Trailer drop for After the Hunt, the new Luca Guadagnino film starring Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stulbarg, Chloë Sevigny, and Ayo Edibri. It looks like a banger. The trailer highlights Edibri’s character’s (Maggie) racial identity, which is a benefit of Guadagnino’s colorblind casting. The original script from Nora Garrett didn’t specify race.

I’ve extolled the virtues of “Juna,” but this Clairo song came up on random shuffle the other day. Oh, she’s been innit…

1. Frankly, there’s a couple other glaringly absent Spielberg movies if we wanna keep it a buck.