Jurassic World

When I was a kid (back in the 80’s and 90’s) I was a big fan of dinosaurs. I remember watching the animated film “The Land Before Time” on my VHS player and analog TV several times a week. I remember fighting and arguing with my classmates in recess time over which dinosaur would win in a fight, the t-rex or the triceratops? A brontosaurus or a pack of velociraptors? I always wondered how it would be like to see these animals in real life (even though I was terrified of all the carnivorous ones) and constantly nagged my parents to take me to a museum with dinosaur fossils. Unfortunately, my parents never took me to see dinosaur fossils but they did take me to the cinema to watch a movie called “Jurassic Park” and my obsession with dinosaurs  has prevailed ever since.

Although twenty-two years have passed since the first Jurassic Park movie was released and fourteen-years since the release of Jurassic Park III (which honestly everyone thought was going to be the last one) Hollywood decided to exploit one more sequel and challenge the high expectations from fans with the 2015 movie “Jurassic World”.  When I first heard of this “controversial news” and saw the official movie trailer I was very sceptical, but my inner kid was nagging me with such an excitement that I could not ignore and so I bought 2 tickets for Jurassic World in Britain’s largest cinema screen, BFI London IMAX. Some may ask why didn’t I just watch it on a regular screen? Well, as an adult I did consider the financial benefit of watching the movie on a regular screen but then my inner kid explained to me the opportunity that I would be missing out on “3D dinosaurs on Britain’s largest cinema screen!” and so I decided to ignore my boring adult logical thinking and be a proper kid again (a kid with a credit-card).

The storyline of Jurassic World is extremely similar (if not the same) as the first movie. Large corporations have practically re-invested and reconstructed Jurassic Park (now called Jurassic World) with a few new attractions such as a gigantic water tank ( that resembles Sea World) were they keep a marine dinosaur that eats everything it sees. Dinosaurs are now treated and trained like zoo animals and the scientists are genetically engineering “super dinosaurs” for commercial and military reasons. As it is to be expected, the ego-maniac entrepreneur that believes money can play the role of “god” is proven wrong when a genetically modified super dinosaur escapes from the enclosure and starts killing everything in its path.

As it turns out, my inner kid was right and the only thing that was amazing from this movie was the “3D dinosaurs on Britain’s largest cinema screen!”. The special effects and design of the dinosaurs is really well done. The realism that the director was able to create was beyond my expectations and considering that dinosaurs have always been about the view and the action, watching it on 3D IMAX helps you capture the real experience that the movie has to offer. I believe that if another fourteen years pass until another remake of the movie is done I will be happy to see it, not for the storyline but for the feeling that I get from being as close as possible to live dinosaurs.

Raul Robles

The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game is the latest biographic movie of the 20^th century British mathematician, Alan Turing, who was of major importance to decode the enigma machine, responsible for the encryption of German communications during World War II.   

Pic 1: Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch)

The movie starts in 1952 in a police interrogation room, where an under investigation (charged for homosexuality) Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), leads the audience through a flashback to the war years. Turing hold nothing from the detectives, and soon we are in the early Second World War, the allies losing badly, the United Kingdom facing a severe supply problem and a total incapability to crack the, otherwise easily intercepted, German radio communications.

Moved by the challenge of a unsolved and apparently, impossible to solve, problem, Turing left his academic life in Cambridge to join the cryptography team under the direction of commander Alastair Denniston (Charles Dance), in charge of decoding the enemy messages. Soon both the genius and the very particular personality of Turing take over the scene, fuelling a riot between his co-workers.

Pic 2: Turing with his machine

The next couple of years are an interesting mix of sweat, blood and tears, in their desperation to achieve a result that keeps eluding them even after the changes in the team, made by Turing, in which he recruited is wife-to-be Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley) and the development of Turing machine, a proto-computer that, in Turing’s view, was the only possibility to break enigma coding capabilities.

Drama, tension, treason, tragedy but also joy, friendship, achievement and an almost love story, fill the searching years for a solution that was eventually achieved and which changed the course of the war. During this process we sporadically go even further back in time, to Turing’s childhood, where we are introduced to a badly adapted but brilliant Alan Turing, with a strong but tragic friendship and the building up of Alan’s strong although eccentric personality.

Pic 3: With Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley)

Some took offense in the cinematographic liberties taken by the Norwegian director Morten Tyldum and accused him to distort history, but the majority of the critics were pretty receptive and the movie received high ratings in the speciality sites as IMBd (8.2/10), Rotten Tomatoes (7.7/10) and Metacritic (73/100) among other reviewers both on and offline. The gross income was also impressively high reaching recently the mark of 180 million dollars worldwide (to cover production cost around 14 million dollars) what makes The Imitation Game the most profitable independent movie in 2014. It was also nominated for several prizes including 5 Golden Globe Awards and 9 British Academy of Film and Television Arts nominations, including “Best Film” and “Best Director”.

I’ve found it a very interesting movie, both for the veridical (even if adulterated) story of an, at least, unique character and for the entertaining experience of the movie itself. Tyldum and his team were able to make a fluid and entertaining movie, with content and some deepness, with emotion and drama without excessive sadness or melancholy. Probably due to the amazing performance of Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing a, not easy life in a not pretty tale, was able to preserve a colourful and dynamic atmosphere that never brings the movie to a standstill swamp of boredom, keeping the things interesting from beginning to the very end. The movie brings also space for reflection about how society treated and still treats, incomparably bright, although maladapted or different in any way, individuals like Alan Turing.

Rating:

Readers Rating - Entertaining - 


Thank you to all for rating this movie!

Nuno Soares