Jurassic World: Dominium, Elvis and Nitram

 

In those famous words from The Blues Brothers, we are "putting the gang back together". And some gang it is. Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard from the first two movies in this trilogy are joined by Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum from the original franchise. So it could have been a lot of fun. Unfortunately the film was let down by some of the worst dialogue you will ever hear. It is also predictable and terribly corny. However it is admirably filmed, some great sets and the actors, especially the old timers, did their best despite the script.

Somebody called it a "frenetic, dazzling, exhilarating mess of a movie". I guess it was hard what to include and what to leave out. For instance we get the whole song of Tutti Frutti performed by Little Richard. Why??? And then it almost completely misses out Elvis' time in the army and all those movies that came after. No GI Blues ? But I did like Elvis in conversation with BB King and those scenes at the Handy Club on Beale Street in Memphis. Am I one of the few who knew about W C Handy? His compositions as The Father of the Blues were the basis of Louis Armstong's LP which I still have somewhere.

I thought Austin Butler was fine as Elvis, the vocals and all the sound was great. Tom Hanks was eerily horrible as Colonel Tom Parker. The film did settle the question why Elvis never toured. Parker had no valid passport! His ripping off the money from the singer's sales and performances was awful. 

 

 I went into this film with only a rough idea of the ending, just knowing that Martin (Caleb Landry) did something bad. So I was unprepared for the terror demonstrated in the final part at the gun shop when he goes to buy a huge arsenal of weapons. He gets away with no licence as he was not registering the firearms. I'm not sure why they made the lead actor less attractive than Martin in real life. But I found his relationship with the reclusive Helen ( a fine Essie Davis) to be the best part of the film. Her death obviously had a part to play in Martin's deterioration and the final horror. But it was Judy Davis as the mother who made the movie for me. She is a brilliant actress and she was superb here. It was worth seeing for her performance alone.