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Baumer's Top 50 of 2015 5) Creed 4) Jurassic World 3) Trumbo 2) It Follows...number one on pg 13

By baumer, in The Speakeasy

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baumer Cinematic Universe

baumer

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Jurassic World: So you can pick up their scent?  Track their footprints?

                         I was with the navy, not the Navajo

 

Jurassic Park was good.  It gave us plenty to be in awe over and it gave us one very good character in Dr. Ian Malcolm.  But to me something was missing.  Jurassic World does everything that Jurassic Park didn't.  It ups the ante and with all due respect to Spielberg, who is by far my favourite director, Colin Trevorrow made a much better film that he did.  Jurassic World is why I love movies.  It's the kind of film that I can sit down and just look at the film with a child like glee.  There are a litany of reasons why this film works so well and instead of giving you an all out review, I'll just make a list for you......starting off with a picture:

 

jurassic-world-super-bowl-13.jpg

 

Perhaps the most iconic scene from any film in the last 5 years.  

 

Chris Pratt was the perfect choice for Owen.  Cool, intense, sexy, passionate and in terrific shape.

Bryce Dallas Howard was also perfect as Claire, the corporate, stuck up, tight ass who eventually we grow to love.

The high heels.  I'm not sure if they meant for this to become such a big issue but you have to love a woman who can outrun a T-Rex in heels.

The Raptors following the guys on motorcycles.  

 

jurassic-world-parody-1276x627.png

 

The humour.

The adventure.

The T-Rex and the Indominous Rex.  There hasn't been a better battle in monster movie history.  Toss in Blue and his buddies and then the thing in the water for good measure, and you have the best 15 minutes in film this year, next to a forest scene at number one.

The nostalgia.  

The homages to the original and yet it manages to stand on its own.

Chris Pratt is fucking awesome and cool and bad ass.

Bringing back the Asian dude from the first.

The script was quick witted and smart.  "Monster is a relative term.  To the canary, the cat is the monster. We're just used to being the cat." 

"Never turn your back on the cage"  I loved the script and I loved the humour.

 

Jurassic World is a damn near perfect film.  I had a blast all six times I saw it and I'd pay to see it again on the big screen, even though I own the BR.

 

Trivia:   The story idea for this film was created by Steven Spielberg and Mark Protosevich who got together privately on several occasions (without studio observance) to confer the notion of doing another installment in the Jurassic Park franchise.

 

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baumer Cinematic Universe

baumer

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Trumbo:  I'm in this for the pussy and the money and they're both falling off the trees.

 

I'll get to the crux of Trumbo in a minute, but it has to first be pointed out that John Goodman is absolutely outstanding in his small supporting role.  He has made a career out of playing gruff and not so scrupulous figures.  In Trumbo, he plays Z movie mogul Frank King.  Frank King was a shlock movie producer who churned out films as fast as you could write them.  There were films about zombies and flesh eating diseases and clowns and most of them were shitty film made by shitty writers and directors.  When Dalton Trumbo, arguably the best writer in Hollywood at the time, came to work for him after he was blacklisted, he at first wrote bad scripts for King.  King forbade hiim from writing anything decent because that is not the kind of film he produced.  And then one day, he came to him with what he said was a good script and he implored King to produce it.  Frank agreed and it and it went on to win best screenplay.  The film was called the Brave One.  Frank King was larger than life and when it was discovered that Dalton Trumbo was working for him under a psuedo-name, he was threatened to be exposed.  King laughed it off and said that "most of the people who watch my movies don't even know how to read, and they certainly don't give a shit about what political party you belong to."  I'm paraphrasing of course, but you get the picture.  John Goodman was one of the best things about Trumbo and it's not a shock to me that two of his films made the top 10 on my list.

 

Dalton Trumbo  was a communist.  He declared such in the 40's and even though he was the highest paid screenwriter, he and 9 others were declared blacklisted, they were known as the Hollywood ten.  They were not allowed to work unless they denounced their communism and it got so bad that A listers like John Wayne were clearly against them and said such publicly.  

 

Bryan Cranston is mesmerizing as Dalton Trumbo and he is my choice for best actor this year.  I still want Leo to win, because he is due, but if it really was for best performance of the year, and not "here's an oscar because we fucked you so many other times," then Cranston would win.  You won't even recognize him in the role.  He's quietly intense when he needs to be and he is bombastic when called upon to be such.  It's a remarkable performance.  This film is blessed with a terrific cast who each has their moment to shine.  Diane Lane is still radiant into her 50's and Elle Fanning shows up as his teenage daughter in the later stages of the film.  

 

And finally there is the Kirk Douglas connection.  Spartacus was being made and it wasn't going as Douglas hoped it would.  Knowing that Trumbo  was blacklisted, he came to him and asked him to rewrite Spartacus.  Spartacus and Trumbo basically mirror each other.  Trumbo the man took on an entire industry and stood his ground and never deviated from what he believed in.  Spartacus did the same thing.  He defiantly took on an empire.  After seeing Trumbo, you won't look at Spartacus the same way again.  Kirk Douglas has my respect.  And this film has it as well.

 

Trivia:   Dalton Trumbo won two "Best Writing, Motion Picture Story" Academy Awards during the 1950s but was unable to accept either of them, since both movies' credits had used "fronts" (real people who agreed to take credit for the scripts while Trumbo was blacklisted). The first movie for which Trumbo won an Oscar was the Audrey Hepburn-Gregory Peck romantic comedy Roman Holiday (1953). For this movie, Trumbo's front wasIan McLellan Hunter (who actually was also a screenwriter in his own right); Hunter was also later blacklisted. In 1993, after both Trumbo and Hunter were both dead, the Academy attempted to retrieve the Oscar that had been presented to Hunter and present it instead to Trumbo's widow, but Hunter's son, Tim, himself a director (River's Edge (1986), Tex (1982), etc.) refused to relinquish it, so the Academy instead presented Mrs. Trumbo with a new statuette. On Roman Holiday's 2003 DVD release, Trumbo was credited in place of Hunter. The second movie for which Trumbo won an Oscar was the family drama The Brave One (1956). For this film, Trumbo's front was named Robert Rich; unlike Ian McLellan Hunter, Rich was not actually a screenwriter himself but just a nephew of the movie's producers. The Academy re-presented that Oscar statuette to Trumbo in May 1975, roughly a year and a half before Trumbo's death.

 

 

file_611801_trumbo-picture.jpg

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