'Jurassic World: Rebirth', a pedigreed adventure film (★★★★✩), and other new releases this week
Call it a reboot , a re-creation, a covert remake, or a calamari, whatever you want. The important thing isn't the label, but the fact that this new Jurassic film, the seventh, is conceived by two guys who know what entertainment cinema is and, above all, what pedigreed cinematic genres are. One is the screenwriter, David Koepp, who signed the script for Jurassic Park with Michael Crichton more than thirty years ago, and has written valuable scripts for other films by Spielberg, De Palma, Soderbergh, and Fincher. The other is Gareth Edwards, who, with only four previous feature films under his belt, has demonstrated a mastery, if not masterful, at least remarkable, of fantasy cinema.
Edwards and Koepp have made the effect of Jurassic World: Rebirth comparable to watching a rerun of The Mysterious Island , that enduring fantasy in which the talents of Verne and Ray Harryhausen united and the primal magic of cinematic spectacle shone brightly in every scene. The pleasure of watching it is the same as that 1961 milestone, but, obviously, we are no longer in 1961; we have been, for more than half a century, in the era of Spielberg, the eminent miracle worker. And Edwards' film is a loving (and logical) tribute to him.
The ecstasy of a vast valley populated by docile dinosaurs directly refers to the founding title of the saga. A long fragment of the first part is pure, pure Jaws . And there are a handful of sequences sprinkled with the bloodstream of Indiana Jones's exploits, with jungles, rivers, rapids, swamps, waterfalls, precipices, vertiginous climbs, and so on, and in each of these spaces a thrilling cliffhanger , so hooked on the previous one that it's impossible to take half a minute to breathe.
Read also 'Jaws': 50 Years of the Bloodiest Beach Swim Astrid Meseguer
And as in Spielberg's films, the digital effects, although overwhelming, are always on point and at the service of what is essential: the narrative, understood as a lesson in classic adventure cinema, where Jurassic World: Rebirth dialogues with The Treasure of the Golden Condor , The African Queen or When the Marabunta Roars , among other wonders never damaged by the passage of time.
Diamantini ★★★✩✩Director: Ferzan OzpetekInterpreters: Luisa Ranieri, Jasmine Trinca, Loredana CannataProduction: Italy, 2024. 135 m. Melodrama Photo novelBy Salvador Llopart
In front of about twenty actresses, Ozpetek says it's all about homages. Old acquaintances, stars of his previous films. There they are, around a table, eating, talking about their own things. A gyneceum, as he himself says, convened by the man behind Haman (1997) and The Ignorant Fairy (2001), films in which the secret life of feelings ceased to be secret and emerged into the light. For whom or what are they there? They don't know, and it seems the director doesn't either.
Cinema within cinema, once again. Seamlessly, we're transported to the world of a 1970s sewing workshop, which, given its atmosphere, seems more like a post-war studio. There we find them all again: seamstresses from Rome, specializing in period dresses, film stylists. A tribute to all of them? To cinematic tailoring? There's some of that, but not only that. Stories of workplace abuse and humiliation in the workshop, and of entrepreneurial effort, too. As if female success were an extreme form of emotional devastation. The successive climaxes are preceded by silences, with evocative glances. Stereotypical characters in whom the wounds of love, alas, never cease. Nor the betrayed feelings.
The actresses, as I said, give their all. But Ozpetek's film, as a whole, offers little. A homage? Yes, but a homage to the soap opera, if anything, with a feminist veneer. A parody, even, of the old fotonovela, that genre now extinct from newsstands—like newsstands themselves, actually—very popular until the 1980s. Hyperbolic stories of love, jealousy, and betrayal in stills, like a collection of frozen images. Seen as a parody, Diamanti has its charm. Even its courage. But I fear it comes off as a parody despite itself. It's the same; perhaps better. A suggestion, before I finish: the sister protagonists should be lovers. To transgress even more. And a reproach: where is Margherita Buy? The protagonist of a good portion of Italian films of the last thirty years—including The Ignorant Fairy —is conspicuous by her absence. I spend the film looking for her as if she were Wally, and no, she doesn't appear. Too bad. The tribute, and the irony, would have been complete.
Capitol vs. Capitol ★★★★✩Director: Javier HorcajadaProduction: Spain, 2025 (63 min) Documentary MAGA enragedBy Philip Engel
Trump and the assault on the Capitol are a bit like Tejero becoming president after storming Congress. It had to be another Spaniard, Javier Horcajada, who compiled the YouTube videos of the coup plotters to compose a disturbing mosaic about one of the greatest recent traumas in the history of democracy, one that had not yet received due attention. The result is not as resounding or overwhelming as his From My Cold Dead Hands —another found footage montage about the gun cult in the US—but it remains essential.
Brief history of a family ★★★✩✩Director Lin JianjieInterpreters: Feng Zu, Guo Ke-YuProduction: China, 2024 (99 minutes) Drama Strange adoptionBy Jordi Batlle Caminal
A wealthy couple begins to warm to their son's high school classmate, abused by a violent, drunken father, and eventually adopts him as a member of the family. The delicate staging, dominated by a certain coldness, and the tenderness of the scenes between the mother and the young guest stand out in an ensemble that suddenly shatters the warmth and harmony with unexpected plot twists and a less-than-convincing final twist.
A dinner... and whatever comes up ★★★✩✩Director: Olivier Ducray, Wilfried MéanceInterpreters: Isabelle Carré, Bernard Campan, Julia FaureProduction: France, 2024. 77 m. Comedy Let's play!by Salvador Llopart
When the plot is familiar, as it is in this case, as we are dealing with the French adaptation of the play, The Neighbors Upstairs , and then the film ( Sentimental , 2020), both by Cesc Gay, we can only highlight the quality of the acting. Its mastery overflows. They all understand their roles perfectly: virtuosos in, let's say, bourgeois indignation. Also in the curiosity to go further. One night, some neighbors arrive for dinner and, in the process, shatter the world of the main couple. The encounter takes place between hypocrisies and desires. All that's left is to play. Or not.
Black Dog ★★★★✩Director: Guan HuInterpreters: Eddie Peng, Tong Liya, Jia ZhangkeProduction: China, 2024 (110 min.) Drama City of dogsBy Philip Engel
A Mongolian neo-western about an ex-convict who returns to his desolate home village on the edge of the Gobi Desert on the eve of the Beijing Olympics. Everything is in ruins and filled with stray dogs. It recalls the world of Jia Zhang-ke, who has a small role, although it also bears curious similarities to some shots in Wes Anderson's films, from Isle of Dogs to Mr. Fox's Wolf . From the patriotic blockbuster The Eight Hundred to this dusty canine drama, Hu proves himself a highly versatile filmmaker.
Detective Conan: One-eyed Flashback ★★✩✩✩Directed by: Katsuya ShigeharaProduction: Japan, 2025. Animations Screaming passionBy Salvador Llopart
Poor dubbing artists if they have to maintain the characters' heightened tone! Everything is a scream: the protagonists and the story. An anime with expressive, forcedly effective frames; with disfigured faces and dizzying plots. Inflated—inflamed—with hysterical, screaming passion, as I said. Once again, Detective Conan—who already has nearly thirty films under his belt—that genius mind trapped in a child's body, facing off against a criminal. Although in this installment things are more choral, more collaborative, you still get caught up in the plot.
lavanguardia
