Jurassic Park making my top five films of all time really surprises me, it never really dawned on me how much I really love this film. Of course when you break the movie down what’s not to love when it has:
- Dinosaurs
- Chaos theory
- Genetics/cloning
- Did I mention it has dinosaurs?
When I set out to identify the five films that I hold higher than all others I didn’t want to choose technically brilliant films, by which I mean I recognise the genius and high quality of Citizen Kane, but watching that film is a rarity and I generally don’t care to watch some of the more ‘important’ films over and over. Other great films are so because of their emotional content and are important because they highlight causes or open our eyes to someone else’s position. Once again I acknowledge how great and important the films are but from a pure entertainment point of view there are different standards.
Which brings me back to Jurassic Park, a film I consider to be one of the last “wondrous” Spielberg films. I vividly remember the first time I saw the sequence in the film that introduces the dinosaurs (excluding the raptor at the beginning). There was absolutely no cynicism as I sat and watched Brachiosaurus come to life.
The film holds up to repeat viewings, the T-Rex alone is worth rewatching, I mean they built a T-Rex!! That’s a full sized T-Rex. It’s just an amazing feat of animatronics and physical effects, a worthy highlight in Stan Winston’s career.
It doesn’t matter that the human actors take backseat to the dinosaurs, they all perform great but it is hard not to be overshadowed by two Velociraptors fighting a Tyrannosaurus whilst a banner floats to the ground with the words, “When dinosaurs ruled the Earth”.
I know some people will dismiss Jurassic Park but for me it is easily a film that I can watch over and over.
PS: for those of you who have been following it for the last week or so, my tooth has finally been removed, this evening.
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