JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM

This film is utterly without merit, joy, wonder or intelligence  It is a shameless cash-in on a tired franchise, without any of the majesty of the original.  Even worse, it teases us with memories of that film with an early cameo from Jeff Goldblum and a late cameo from BD Wong. Worst of all, it wastes the talents of arthouse director J A Bayona, who made the exceptional A MONSTER CALLS. 

In this new instalment, a few years after the dinos go bonkers on Isla Nubar, a volcano threatens to make them all extinct again. Goldblum's rational scientist argues for this but reformed park exec Bryce Dallas Howard now wants to rescue them as living creatures deserving of our help. In doing so she enlists the help of ex-lover and dino handler Chris Pratt, and is funded by James Cromwell's dying billionaire and ex partner of the park's original founder.  Of course, the moral of this series was always that the real monsters weren't the killer dinos but the evil capitalist bastards who sought to exploit them. And so it goes with this non-surprising plot-twist.

The whole thing is over-loud, over-long, emotionally involving and lacking in intelligence. Avoid.

JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM is rated 12A and has a running time of 128 minutes.

THE WOLFMAN - anaemic

Joe Johnston, hack director of such memorable fare as HIDALGO, JURASSIC PARK III and THE ROCKETEER (oh yes!) creates another cine-clunker with his ill-conceived remake of the Curt Siodomak classic, THE WOLF MAN.

The story is simple. Innocent Lawrence Talbot is bitten by a werewolf on Blackmoor while investigating his brother's savage death. He has to fight to stop the beast, while battling with his own lycophagia, all the time being hounded by the police and the psychiatrists, and with the help of his brother's attractive fiancée, Gwen.

Neither gory enough to be convincing as horror, nor well-acted enough to be convincing as familial drama, the movie occasionally plays as a campy spoof. It's surprising to me that the production design is so hi-rent - with richly textured costumes, and decadent gothic sets. And yet, the make-up design for The Wolfman is distinctly unconvincing, running a close second to Ang Lee's bouncing luminous green HULK as the most implausible filmic creation. You watch the sub-par transformation scenes, and the Teen-Wolf-laughable Wolfman bounding across London and you're taken out of the movie immediately. And as for the acting, despite the high quality cast (Anthony Hopkins, Geraldine Chaplin, Benicio del Toro, Emily Blunt, Antony Sher), the performances seem flat and uninspired. Only Hugo Weaving, as a mis-placed Inspector Abberline, looks like he's having any fun at all.

What a waste of a fine cast. What a waste of the beautifully decorated sets, period costumes, and lush Danny Elfman score. What a waste of my time and money.

Additional tags: Joe Johnston

THE WOLF MAN is on global release in all bar Russia, Australia and Poland where it opens next weekend, Israel where it opens on April 1st and Japan where it opens on April 23rd.

THE ORPHANAGE/EL ORFANATO - a supernatural thriller dripping with guilt

THE ORPHANAGE is a handsome, patient, supernatural thriller from debutant director Juan Antonio Bayona. A young mother returns to the orphanage in which she grew up, only to find that her own son has been abducted. She suspects a weird, fraudulent social-worker, and then connects her son's imaginary friends to the ghosts of the children she grew up with. In desperation she calls in a medium, only to tip her supremely rational husband into leaving her.

On one level, the movie plays a tense thriller that edges close to horror in a tour-de-force scene featuring Geraldine Chaplin as a medium sensing screaming children in a darkened house.

But the real heart of the movie lies in Belén Rueda's performance as the frightened, desperate, grief-stricken mother. Her performance, and indeed the entire film, drips in a sense of guilt and shame. The guilt of having been adopted and leaving behind her comrades; the guilt of whether she sufficiently loves her adopted child; the guilt of choosing to forget uncomfortable facts in her past.....

As I said, THE ORPHANAGE is a good movie. But the marketing campaign is rather misleading, playing as it does on Gulliermo del Toro's well-deserved reputation for richly imagined, genuinely horrific thrillers. THE ORPHANAGE is good but it's still some way off the sheer brutal horror of THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE let alone PAN'S LABRYNTH. Having said all that, it's definitely worth a look.

THE ORPHANAGE played Cannes, Toronto and Frightfest 2007. It opened in Sapin, Greece, Finland and the USA last year. It opened in Venezuela, Denmark, Colombia, Mexico, Germany, South Korea, Russia, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Brazil, Iceland, Argentina and Norway earlier this year. It is currently on release in Singapore, the UK and the Netherlands. It is released on DVD in April.