Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.
Just like it’s predecessor, Jurassic World appears to be going out with three films in its series. Three of Jurassic Park‘s stars are making return appearances. One of the other big players (Richard Attenborough) has since passed, so this may well be the best we can hope for. Jurassic World: Dominion is an opportunity to look at the filmographies of four actors and the film’s director to see what the best they’ve produced has been. The fifth actor, and star, won’t be getting a mention this week, nor likely will get a mention anytime in the future. So let’s look at the best work by Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Neill, and Colin Treverrow.
Jurassic Park (1993)
Steven Spielberg had already been wowing audiences for the better part of two decades. His flair for science-fiction and action-adventure were unparalleled. It’s no wonder that this adaptation of Michael Crichton’s popular novel spawned a massively successful movie franchise, only two of which Spielberg directed. None has been able to eclipse the original, a tense, exciting excursion into the realm of dinosaurs.
For Jeff Goldblum, he’s done some crazy films before and since, but his most relatable and subtle work happened here. As Ian Malcolm, Goldblum was the voice of reason, the kooky chaotician who allowed his pragmatism to guide him through the film. For Goldblum, Dern, and Neill, it wasn’t just a sci-fi adventure, it was a serious job and they each brought a level of humanity, sensibility, and wonder to their roles. A film that’s as sensational as this and that looks almost as amazing now as it did when it was released almost three decades ago, you can’t hurt to have it on your filmography.
No original review available.
The Piano (1993)
Few individuals were able to pull out a one-two punch in a given year. Spielberg did it with Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List and Neill did it with Jurassic Park and this film. Directed by newly-minted Oscar winner Jane Campion, The Piano may well still be her masterpiece, a searing look at a mute woman and her young daughter brought to the wilds of New Zealand where she struggles to survive in a loveless marriage. Holly Hunter plays the mute, Anna Paquin plays her daughter, Harvey Keitel as the lover Hunter takes on, and Neill as her wealthy new husband who bought her from her father.
Hunter and Paquin are terrific, both winning Oscars for their roles, but both Neill as the lonely husband and Keitel as the man who rescues her piano from the shoreside where Neill has left it to rot, and subsequently becomes her paramour. There are no easy answers for Hunter and the distance she puts between her and the lovelorn frontiersman she’s been forced to marry. The entire film is built on a complex narrative that doesn’t relent in either its passion or its bleakness. If Schindler’s List hadn’t come out in 1993, this might well have been the deserving winner of Best Picture that year.
The Help (2011)
It’s hard not to see The Help as a bright spot in a number of careers. While it wasn’t a great film, it was a timely and impactful one with a stellar female cast. One of whom is Bryce Dallas Howard, daughter of actor-turned-director Ron Howard, who probably could have directed this film considering its rather vanilla style. The film is about a group of maids in Jackson, Mississippi who tell the awful stories they have about their mistreatment at the hands of their rich white employers.
Howard plays the villain of the piece, Hilly Holbrook, a socialite and bully who fires Minny (Octavia Spencer) for using the guest bathroom during a thunderstorm. She later convinces one of her friends to fire Aibileen (Viola Davis) as retribution for the tell-all book Skeeter (Emma Stone) published. It might seem like a convoluted plot, but it’s told in a straightforward way and Howard infuses Hilly with such vitality that hating her is easy, which isn’t easy for an actor who hasn’t always shown a lot of talent. Spencer, Davis, and Jessica Chastain were all nominated for Oscars, though Howard should have been in the running as should have Stone, both of whom delivered strong performances along with the likes of Allison Janney, Sissy Spacek, Cicely Tyson, and Mary Steenburgen. Only Howard in this group of women doesn’t have an Oscar nomination or an Oscar as all of the others now do due to Chastain’s recent Oscar win.
Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)
Indie cinema is a traditional breeding ground for dramas and comedies, but it used to be an effective tool for genre films to get exposure. Safety Not Guaranteed is one such modern example, a film that relies as much on the independent “style” of storytelling as it does on its inventive premise. The film was written by Derek Connolly and directed by Colin Treverrow. It starred Aubrey Plaza, Mark Duplass, Jake Johnson, Karan Soni, Kristen Bell, and Mary Lynn Rajskub.
The film is built around a crazy-sounding add in a Seattle classified section that reads “Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke.” A newspaper writer (Johnson) enlists two of his paper’s interns (Plaza and Soni) to seek out the person who wrote the ad (Duplass) and write a story about it. Plaza falls in love with a man who seems crazy and whose actions suggest either a serious endeavor or a paranoid delusion. It’s a down-to-earth and funny film with a surprising conclusion.
Little Women (2019)
Laura Dern is the daughter of Hollywood royalty: Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, both Oscar nominees. Dern, herself, is a recent Oscar winner for her performance in Marriage Story she’s starred under some of the most prominent film directors including Peter Bogdanovich, David Lynch, Steven Spielberg, Noah Baumbach, and Greta Gerwig who is responsible for this most recent adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s popular novel Little Women. I got into detail about the film’s literary origins in my full review, so I won’t dwell on that here.
Saoirse Ronan stars as headstrong Jo March who wants to become a writer and is actively pursuing a career. The story she is preparing to publish runs in parallel to the one Alcott tells, positioning Jo as an embodiment of Alcott. Her sisters are played by Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, and Eliza Scanlan. Timothée Chalamet plays the neighbor boy Laurie who’s in love with Jo, Meryl Streep plays their traveling Aunt March, and Dern plays the role of the girls’ mother. It’s a well acted piece with a lot of modern touches that solidify Gerwig’s status as one of the modern generation’s best directors.
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