Tag Archives: Sam Neill

Jurassic World Dominion

Another boring weekend with not much to do; I decided to check which recent-ish movie is now available to stream. After looking at various options, I settled on Jurassic World Dominion. Hence, another movie review.

The original Jurassic Park trilogy was revolutionary for its time, renowned for its animatronics. I saw them when I was a child growing up in the 90s. I was never a huge fan of the second trilogy, but saw the movies over the years as time pass, nothing more. Somehow Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard couldn’t recreate the same magic for me, as the original cast did. I didn’t have high hopes from Jurassic World Dominion to begin with but I found it surprisingly average.

Jurassic World Dominion, PC: agedxh.qc.to
Jurassic World Dominion, PC: agedxh.qc.to

The movie is set in a world where Dinosaurs now roam free. But otherwise the movie brings nothing new. A greedy corporation builds a Dinosaur preserve and tries to use the dinosaurs for personal greed. Things go wrong, a bunch of people (including the villain) get eaten by dinosaurs but our heroes save the day. In the end there’s a fight between 2 Apex dinosaurs. Same old.

The new villain in the movie is Tim Cook who uses Android devices. I wonder why they specifically chose him as he is not a particularly interesting or charismatic character in real life.

The return of the original stars

I will be frank; the return of the original cast carries the movie. Paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill), paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), and chaos theorist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) still have amazing chemistry between them and it shows. There are many references to the original movies including a car-dinosaur scene and a reference to Jeff Goldblum’s bare chest. These throwback scenes make the otherwise average Jurassic World Dominion fun to watch.

Chris Pratt’s acting is just average and Bryce Dallas Howard has her perpetually terrified face down pat. If not for the original cast, the movie might not even be worth a one time watch.

I can recommend Jurassic World Dominion as a one time watch, for old times sake.

Invasion has grand ambitions but falls short

Invasion is a Sci-Fi show on Apple TV+. I actually wanted to watch Foundation but it proved too complicated and big for me, so I settled for this. The show has great special effects, good production values & a huge budget. But eventually, it ends up disappointing because of flaws in the story and the annoying characters.

Entitled American Soldier annoyed with the eponymous Invasion, PC: Series TV Online

The story is about the invasion of earth by Aliens. It follows 4 characters around the world affected by the invasion. Like other similar shows and movies, you just know the paths of these characters will merge at some point in the show. I won’t go too much into the story, because it’s the characters who sink the show.

The Characters

Sherrif Tyson is a typical old-school/small-town Sherrif who realises during his retirement party that his career has been too lacklustre. Tyson is played by Sam Neill, who is the only big-name actor in this show. All the trailers of this show focussed mostly on his characters and misled people into thinking that the show revolved around him. Instead, he appears only in one episode, climbs a few ladders, grunts a bit a then dies.

Maliks are an Islamic immigrant family living in New York. The wife is plain-looking and homely, so the husband fucks and impregnates an attractive American woman. As revenge, the wife abandons him twice to die. First time the aliens almost kill him, second time she abandons him to gun-toting vigilantes. The family pretends to be victims of Xenophobia, but the wife proves the entire point of it by stealing an American family’s SUV & abandoning injured patients. At one point another American family provides them shelter, but the Maliks leave them to die. The children only squeal and shriek.

More Characters

Trevante is a typical entitled American soldier posted in Afghanistan. Trevante displays his American values from the very first scene by insulting and abusing Afghans, even those who help him and save him from certain death. He frequently demands locals to help him, steals things from them, all the while abusing them. Trevante continues his entitled behaviour even when he lands in London, demanding Britishers to give him an entire plane to fly him to the US.

Mitsuki is arguably the most irritating character in this show. She is a low-ranking engineer at Japan’s space exploration agency. Being an Asian and a Lesbian at the same time, she satisfies demands for inclusivity and diversity in the show. At work & off, she has no qualms cutting corners and breaking rules to get what she needs. After being fired for indiscipline, she is caught hacking into some servers. She gives her boss a lecture about love & he promptly hands over his all-access card. Mitsuki goes on to hijack the biggest radio telescope of her country without any repercussions. She even develops an AI program to decode Alien language in hours. All the while shedding tears for her presumably perished lover.

Caspar is a British epileptic kid who discovers that the seizures he has been having all his life are actually mind-syncs with the Aliens. He always gets his way because his mixed-race girlfriend shows everyone some shitty sketches he made. They casually convince Trevante to escort them to a hospital to induce a seizure in Caspar. The hospital, full of patients in need of help drops everything to do just that. Eventually, when his eyes roll into his head one last time, you can’t help but hope that he’s dead.

Eventually, the Aliens are defeated in typical American fashion. The Americans fire a nuke at their mother space ship and the alien creatures just drop dead on earth. Even I, an inferior human knows not to create designs with single points of failure.

Eventually, I am glad the season is over and I hope they don’t renew it for a second season.