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Jurassic World Rebirth

Director – Gareth Edwards – 2025 – US – Cert. – 134m

***

A group of mercenary hunters and a traumatised family find themselves on an equatorial island populated by mutant dinosaurs – out in UK cinemas on Wednesday, July 2nd

The difficult seventh movie, made on a shorter production schedule than its predecessors – according to the production notes – and probably made too quickly for its own good. First there were three Jurassic Park movies, then there were three Jurassic World movies, and now there’s a seventh Jurassic. What to call it? Jurassic Beyond? Jurassic Outside? Jurassic Environment? Jurassic Habitat? Jurassic Equator? Jurassic Island? Jurassic Laboratory? Jurassic Lab? Jurassic Experiment? Jurassic Mutation? (Those took me a mere five minutes.) No: unable to think of a word to replace Park or World, this one is saddled with the marketing-led Jurassic World Rebirth. Which no doubt will do the job, but when Michael Crichton coined Jurassic Park for his novel’s title and Spielberg ran with it, no-one outside of palaeontologists and dinosaur-geeks (I number myself among the latter) knew what ‘Jurassic’ was. It didn’t matter: it was Spielberg and dinosaurs, that sold it, and the film more than lived up to the lure and the promise.… Read the rest

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Dead Calm

Director – Phillip Noyce – 1989 – Australia – Cert. 15 – 96m

*****

A bereaved couple taking time off on their yacht answer a distress call from another boat and become embroiled in a game of cat and mouse – out in UK cinemas 1989

Royal Australian Naval Officer John Ingram (Sam Neill) arrives home in Oz to discover his beautiful wife Rae (Nicole Kidman) has been involved in a car accident which was fatal for their young child. She’s in the hospital in critical condition; the camera descends into her eye. She remembers with horror her child fatefully undoing his seat belt before being thrown through a windscreen.

Having thus traumatised the audience, this then jumps to the couple on their yacht, the Saracen, where they are getting away from it all for several weeks. The weather is as flat as the title suggests. Rae bathes in the sea like an initiate in some baptismal rite awaiting a fresh start – until another vessel turns up – the Orpheus, with its one survivor Hughie Warriner (Billy Zane) claiming the rest – including several nubile, “open-minded” young women on a “photographic assignment” – have died of botulism from tuna that Hughie didn’t eat because he hates the stuff.… Read the rest

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White Squall

UK PAL Laserdisc review

SURROUND SOUND MOVIE OF THE MONTH

Dir Ridley Scott (1996) Starring Jeff Bridges, Caroline Goodall, John Savage, Scott Wolf, Balthazar Getty, Ryan Phillipe Dur 124min Dist Encore; £26.99 Cert 12 DS Widescreen

1961 and a group of final year High School students sign up for a yacht cruise halfway round the world and back under a disciplinarian Cap’n (Jeff Bridges), the type of leader who’ll scare a boy into climbing the rigging even though he knows the lad’s brother died from falling out of a tree and breaking his neck. They slowly come together as a crew but then tragedy strikes.

Despite visually prettified opening, Scott’s visuals capture minutiae of nautical detail building to a crescendo in the terrifying storm sequence, where amazing sound effects engulf the living room. Great cinematography, unwatchable without widescreen, is well served by the crisp image transfer. Woefully underrated on theatrical release – this is one hell of a disc!

Film 5/5

Picture 5/5

Sound 5/5

Reviewed for Home Entertainment.

Trailer: