Instead of shooting actual lizards or resorting to stop-motion magic, director Steven Spielberg’s team used CGI to render the most dynamic dinosaurs ever captured on film.

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Those stunning creations are the main pleasure to be mined from ‘The Lost World: Jurassic Park,’ the 1997 sequel to Spielberg’s monster mash. The film just hit Blu-ray as part of a ‘Jurassic’ trilogy, a hefty collection including all three films (so far) as well as a copious array of extras and 7.1 surround sound.

What’s even more obvious seeing the film anew in High-Def is how little Spielberg brought to the project. It ranks as one of the weaker films in his otherwise exemplary canon, a pedestrian affair not worth the master’s attention.

‘The Lost World’ breaks the land speed record for setting a sequel plot in motion. The film opens with cagey chaos theorist Dr. Ian Malcolm (the droll Jeff Goldblum) learning the dinosaurs who almost ate him for lunch last time aren’t as extinct as he hoped. Dino researcher John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) also deposited some dinosaur DNA on a second, formerly unknown location. No fences. No theme park attractions. Just an undisturbed locale where the creatures could live – and be studied – in a natural setting.

John assembles a small research team to do just that, including Ian’s paleontologist squeeze (Julianne Moore). That forces Ian to swoop in with the hope of getting her out of their before she ends up as T-Rex food.

The team, including a brave photographer (Vince Vaughn) and tools guru (Richard Schiff), initially rebuff Ian’s warnings about their expedition.

“Ooh, ahh … that’s how it all starts. And then there’s running and screaming,” Ian says in that Goldblum speak which makes any line reading better. But John’s greedy nephew (Arliss Howard) has other plans in mind for the dinosaurs. He wants to bring a few back to the states to populate a new exhibit at the San Diego Zoo and make a mint in the process. Darn those greedy capitalists!

A more committed Spielberg should have barked, “re-write this … and this … and this” long before cranking up his camera. Giving Ian a daughter smacks of demographic desperation, and it doesn’t help that she’s so transparently plugged into the narrative. But so much here runs afoul of common sense that you’re forced to shake your head while waiting for the next cool dinosaur dust up.

For instance, why would the researchers let several dinosaurs loose to thwart the nephew’s team? Don’t they know people could get killed? It’s just one example of a script which doesn’t waste a droplet of sweat on the details that matter.

The best sequence arrives mid-film, as our heroes are trapped in a vehicle dangling off a cliff. It’s the kind of jaw-clenching excitement we got in spades from the first ‘Park,’ and nothing else in this ‘World’ can compare.

The ‘Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy’ set includes a six-part ‘Return to Jurassic Park’ documentary series with new interviews, a feature on special effects wizard Phil Tippett and a discussion with the author whose work inspired the franchise, Michael Crichton.

Captain America: The First Avenger is the next step in Marvel’s massive attempt at crafting a cinematic universe for their comic book creations.  Marvel’s days of licensing out their characters for stand-alone Hollywood movies are thankfully over, with Jon Favreau’s excellent Iron Man ushering in a new era of comic book moviemaking.  The visionary approach taken by Marvel is that with each movie they make, they are crafting a larger mythos, a new universe for their classic characters to play in, not unlike the Ultimates line of comics they launched years ago.  We’re getting films less concerned with being stand-alone entities, that instead have more freedom to tie into, reference, and cross over with each other.  In other words, this is the way comic book movies should be.

Chris Evans, who previously played a Marvel’s Human Torch in Tim Story’s lackluster Fantastic Four films, fills the boots of Steve Rogers, the scrawny, strong-willed nobody destined to become the Cap himself.  With the Nazi menace sweeping Europe, Rogers attempts over and over again to sign up to go fight the good fight for good ol’ Uncle Sam, however his sickly physical attributes consistently result in his rejection.  Rogers’ determination to enlist catches the eye of Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci), a German scientist who has found asylum in the U.S., who wants to use the good-hearted Rogers to test his super-soldier serum.  The experimental drug turns the scrawny Rogers into a super-man, however he ends up being used as a marketing tool to sell war bonds on the home front under a persona called “Captain America,” rather than fight the enemy at their doorstep.  But when one of his best pals gets caught behind enemy lines by a rogue Nazi organization called Hydra, Rogers springs into action on his own, and soon Captain America and his Howling Commandos tear a swath in the European countryside, battling the wicked Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving) and his Hydra troops.

What excited me most about the prospect of a Captain America movie was that we’d be getting a mainstream movie with lots of unironic flag-waving, a patriotic flick with zero moral complexities, something we don’t really get anymore.  In essence, I was stoked to see a film that captures the spirit of the poster above, with an American comic-book icon punching the wicked bullies of the world right in the jaw.  Director Joe Johnston delivers this with a mix of Marvel lore, as Cap visually evokes the propaganda joy of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon’s original Cap comics, going so far as to integrate them into film itself.  Johnston, who is usually a journeyman you plug in when Steven Spielberg decides he isn’t available, hasn’t been this much fun since The Rocketeer.  It seems he is most alive when working in the forties American flag vs. Nazi scum scenario, though this is an occasion where he has gotten to build on subject matter he’s explored before.

The tradition that Captain America comes from is the World War II guys-on-a-mission flick.  Think movies like The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, or Quentin Tarantino’s anachronistic throwback, Inglourious Basterds.  Captain America is similarly anachronistic, though it does so in order to build it’s Marvel universe, as opposed to make a grand comment about the power of movies the way Tarantino was.  Here we get classic stuff like Cap sneaking behind enemy lines to liberate P.O.W.’s, infiltrating an enemy train with his boys, and taking on the Hydra compound.  But instead of one or two big missions, we get a good sized one, and bunch of bite sized ones.  The film has a lot of story to tell, so it’s understandable why they would go this route, however an action montage in which we see a highlight reel of Cap and the boys on their adventures isn’t what I’d call satisfying.  The bigger missions we get are still fun an exciting, and the film is otherwise consistent in the sense of high-adventure, thanks to Johnston’s competent hand.

Because Captain America is an icon that emerged during a propaganda push in the Golden Age of comics, his presentation in a mainstream Hollywood movie has been subject to some scrutiny.  Early on, Joe Johnston seemed to assure the politically-correct Hollywood crowd that Cap wasn’t going to be a “jingoistic flag-waver” in this film.  With a big movie like this, Hollywood understandably wants those dollars from foreign markets. Foreign distributors insisting that the studio keep the Captain America title, as opposed to the considerably less-descriptive “The First Avenger,” is telling, in that Hollywood has bogged themselves down in the idea that the rest of the world despises America, so much so that they would never want to see a movie that openly glorifies this country.  This is the thinking that got us a neutered, U.N.-friendly G.I. Joe movie, as opposed the real American heroes guys my age grew up with.  Thankfully, the film that Johnston made depicts a Cap that we can all get behind: a man with a strong moral compass, dedicated to taking down evil as it preys on the weak, but never lets his considerable power go to his head.  One can wring their hands about American history, however Captain America represents the American ideal here, and that’s all it needs to be.  Chris Evans, an actor whose star shines brighter with each film he does, dons the shield with pride.  Captain America: The First Avenger joins Richard Donner’s Superman and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films as prime examples of comic book adaptations that combine their source material with classic American iconography in an artful manner.

This week Cap throws his mighty shield on Blu-ray and DVD, and of course, there’s that 3D version stinking up the shelves as well.  Complaining about 3D is old hat at this point, but I saw Captain America in 2D in the theater, and of course, nothing was missing from the experience.  Seeing Cap’s shield pop out at me is an experience I can happily live without, the plain ol’ 2D Blu-ray is good enough for me.

Available on 3D Blu-ray, Blu-Ray, and DVD

An older version of this Captain America piece appeared over at my blog

Other Noteworthy Releases

Attack the Block: This here is one of my favorite films of the year so far in terms of all-out fun to be had watching a movie. Big Hollywood’s Christian Toto just covered this release, so go check out what he has to say if you haven’t already.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Jurassic Park Ultimate Trilogy: All three Jurassic Park flicks are coming to Blu-ray packaged together in a slick little set.  Having an intense love for dinosaurs as a child made the first one a seminal film for me growing up.  The Lost World gets a lot of flak for having an annoying gymnast sidekick following Jeff Goldblum around, but it had its moments, many of which were provided by Pete Postlethwaite’s fun performance as a big-game dino-hunting badass.   Jurassic Park III was just forgettable altogether.

Available on Blu-ray, DVD or a special edition gift set

Winnie the Pooh: Disney’s revival of these beloved characters using traditional animation didn’t burn up the box office the way they would’ve liked, but it will surely find its young audience on home video.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Island of Lost Souls: This 1932 adaptation of The Island of Dr. Moreau comes to Criterion.  A genre treasure of pre-code Hollywood, it features some crazy performances from Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi.  Available from Criterion.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

Dazed and Confused: Good things come to those who wait.  This film got a bare-bones studio release on Blu-ray earlier this year, but Criterion took the time to transfer their superior release of this Texas coming-of-age classic to Blu-ray.  If you’re a fan of this film, buy this release.  It’s a little more expensive, but Criterion gives you the bang for your buck you won’t get elsewhere.

Available on Blu-ray

Identification of a Woman: One of Michelangelo Antonioni’s later films comes to Criterion.

Available on Blu-ray and DVD

The People Vs. George Lucas: A documentary examining the hectic relationship between George Lucas and the Star Wars fan base.

Available on DVD

Destroy All Monsters: This Godzilla monster-mash isn’t the best of the original run of Toho’s Godzilla movies, but it has a fun rumble at the end that includes Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, and King Ghidorah, among others.

Available on Blu-ray

Rare Exports – A Christmas Tale: Don’t let the title fool you, this Finnish Christmas film is actually a quirky horror flick involving Santa being dug up in a archeological dig.

Available on Blu-ray/DVD combo and DVD

Shaolin: A semi-remake of the 1982 Jet Li film Shaolin Temple starring Andy Lau and Jackie Chan.

Available on Blu-ray, Blu-ray/DVD combo, DVD

This post originally appeared over at Parcbench

The Oscar-winning auteur pulled off that impressive stunt in 2005 (‘Munich,’ ‘War of the Worlds’), 2002 (‘Minority Report,’ ‘Catch Me if You Can’) 1997 (‘The Lost World: Jurassic Park,’ ‘Amistad’) and 1993 (‘Schindler’s List,’ ‘Jurassic Park’).

For 2011, Spielberg has ‘The Adventures of Tintin,’ based on the popular Belgian comic books by Georges Remi, waiting in the wings. But Oscar prognosticators have their eyes on ‘War Horse,’ Spielberg’s tale of a bond between a horse named Joey and its owner (Jeremy Irvine) through the darkest days of the first World War. The animated ‘Tintin’ seems more like standard kiddie fare gussied up by Spielberg’s fondness for the genre. The real excitement belongs to ‘Horse,’ a film that feels epic in all the right ways based solely on the trailer.

Let’s hope ‘War Horse’ makes us forget about “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.’

The other hot new trailer is ‘My Week with Marilyn,’ a peek at the ‘Some Like it Hot’ star’s first foray across the pond. Michelle Williams draws the unenviable task of bringing Marilyn Monroe back to life, but if the trailer is any indication she pulls the feat off with alacrity. Add Judi Dench, a veritable Oscar buzz magnet, and you’ve got the best reason yet to recall the beauty and pain behind the country’s most iconic bombshell.

–SEASON FOUR OF ‘BREAKING BAD’ FINALLY PREMIERES

Unfortunately, I don’t have AMC and refuse to pay another $30 just to get it along with 50 lame-ass channels I’ll never watch, so I’ll have to wait for DVD. But wait for DVD I will and with the idea in mind of voraciously eating up each and every episode in a weekend binge.

From the performances to the directing to the writing, the story of a mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher who goes into the meth business with fairly good intentions, is some of the best television I’ve seen since “The Sopranos” and “The Wire.”The arc of the characters, especially the main character, Walt (played brilliantly by Bryan Cranston), his wife, and his partner Jesse, is what keeps you glued year after year. Even as they surprise you, the show is so well written and layered that in the end whatever they do makes perfect sense.  

Essentially, “Breaking Bad” is a study of evil; an examination of how there are no half-measures when it comes to dealing with the devil. You can’t dip your toe in a dirty business and expect to hold on to your soul.

With no threat of being accused of hyperbole, I can assure you no dramatic film aimed at adults released in the last five years has been half as good as any episode of “Breaking Bad.” Television is where Hollywood shines right now.

–‘CAPTAIN AMERICA’ DIRECTOR TALKS ‘JURASSIC PARK 4′

Director Joe Johnston via Screen Rant:

“Why would anybody go back to that island? It was hard enough to figure out the second and third reason for them to go, but it would take it off in a whole other trilogy basically, but when it gets to that level it’s sort of about studios and Steven’s thing and who knows.”

The reviews might have been mixed, but I’m a big fan of “Jurassic Park 3.” Obviously it lacks the wonderment of the first. By this time, your mind was no longer blown by the sight of realistic looking dinosaurs. And I’ll admit that my eyes rolled when kid arrived on screen like something out of “Lord of the Flies,” but if you look at “3″ as B-film, it really works and when our intrepid crew finds themselves in the pterodactyl cage, that’s one effective reveal.

Nothing makes part three sing more, though, than its blissful runtime of 92-minutes.

Let’s just hope that if Johnston directs again he doesn’t kill our buzz by promising audiences that a movie about dinosaurs won’t be “about dinosaurs.” He’s funny that way.

–BEST MOVIE TITLE IN YEARS. CAN’T WAIT TO SEE IT. PLEASE, NO SHAKY-CAM.

Cowboys, aliens, Daniel Craig and maybe, just maybe, Harrison Ford acting like Harrison Ford again?

Where do I get line.

Furthermore, “Iron Man” director Jon Favreau is directing and what a breath of fresh air’s he’s been, especially in the arena of action. He allows you to see what’s going on. There’s a geography to his action scenes that makes sense and that you can follow. It’s too bad that lousy, lazy, shaky-cam addicted filmmakers like Paul Greengrass have set the bar so low that that actually being able to enjoy an action scene is now a draw, but it is.

“Cowboys and Aliens” hits theatres July 29th.

–MEDIA SITES CROW OVER DON RICKLES ‘INSULTING’ BRISTOL PALIN

Dear MSM: To paraphrase Dean Wermer — desperate, pathetic and stupid is no way to go through life.

Here’s the actual clip. That’s an insult? Furthermore, anyone who knows anything about Don Rickles also knows that any attention the iconic comedian gives you is considered — wait for it, wait for it — a compliment.

How are we supposed to not hate these people?

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QUICK HITS

–IN SO MANY WORDS, QVC SAYS JANE FONDA IS LYING

–STEVEN CROWDER’S NEWEST VIDEO IS UP WITH A COUPLE OF SURPRISE CAMEOS

**SPOILER ALERT** — DESCRIPTION OF “CAPTAIN AMERICA” POST-CREDIT SEQUENCE

–HARRY POTTER BREAKS EVERY RECORD THAT NEEDED BREAKING … WOW.

–DESPITE GOOD REVIEWS, ‘POOH’ FLOPS

–NICE: ‘MRS. C.” IS 82 AND GOING STRONG

–TEASER TRAILER FOR SEASON 2 OF “THE WALKING DEAD”

TRYING TO CARE. FAILING.

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CLASSIC PICK FOR TUESDAY JULY 19TH, 2011

Fox Movie Channel:

Midnight: PANIC IN NEEDLE PARK (1971) — Love story involving a pair of junkies (Pacino and Winn) struggling to survive on the harsh streets of New York City. Cast: Al Pacino, Raul Julia, Kitty Winn, Alan Vint, Richard Bright. Director: Jerry Schatzberg

When Al Pacino could still act and New York City was at its most interesting — at least when it came to cinematography.

Depressing and disturbing to be sure, but still powerful. 

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Please send tips/suggestions/requests to jnolte@breitbart.com

After the misfire of “Always” and the colossal misfire of “Hook,” he returned to the director’s chair for “Jurassic Park” and “Schindler’s List,” two vastly different movies that demonstrate the different ways that a movie can inspire awe.

Even aside from Spielberg’s contributions, 1993 was a pretty solid year.

The Nominees:

“The Fugitive” – Easily the benchmark for big-screen adaptations of TV shows, featuring an Oscar winning supporting turn from Tommy Lee Jones.

“Schindler’s List” – This was not the sure-fire home-run it seems to be in retrospect. Spielberg turns artsy, but wisely remains high concept in doing so.

“The Piano” – As contrived a movie as you’re ever likely to see. Feel free to tell me where I’m wrong. I can’t be swayed.

“Remains of the Day” – Anthony Hopkins. A shotgun. Awesomeness ensues. Not really, but don’t tell me you wouldn’t go see that movie. Merchant-Ivory. Like Simpson-Bruckheimer. Only…boring.

“In the Name of the Father” – I feel like I should remember this movie more than I do. It’s about…jail, or something. Right?

What should have been nominated:

“Schindler’s List” – I’ll never forget the sheer silence of the packed theatre when I saw this movie…

“Jurassic Park” – …just as I’ll never forget the kids in the theatre going “aaaaah!” when the dinosaurs make their first appearance in this movie.

“Groundhog Day” – Make this same movie about a butler, with none of the laughs, set it in Victorian England…Oscar gold!

“True Romance” – You two sorta roommates? Exactly roommates.

“Dazed and Confused” – One of my favorite opening shots ever. And the movie only got better from there.

What shoulda won:

“Dazed and Confused” – I wonder if this movie would be as good and as enduring, if it had actually been a hit. I personally never wanted to see the movie but my girlfriend and I had gone from Athens to Atlanta for the day and had some time to kill, and we had seen everything else showing at the theatre. So we saw “Dazed and Confused,” and couldn’t wait to tell our friends about it.

While it was never a hit, it gained cult status pretty quickly. I remember it playing over and over again at The Georgia Theatre when there were no bands playing. Essentially a 1970s version of “American Graffiti,” with wall to wall music, fast cars, and teenagers killing time, Richard Linklater’s masterpiece is the quintessential sleeper. Part of the joy of the movie is discovering it.

Me and my friends saw it so many times that one buddy noticed Ben Affleck stumbling in one scene when he’s way off in the background.

The characters that drive the movie are timeless. We all knew bullies like Clint and O’Bannion, fun-loving jocks like Benny, mean chicks like Darla, anointed cool kids like Mitch, introspective jocks like Pink, and we all knew a Wooderson.

Matthew McConaughey was obviously a star in the making. He’s been good in movies since, but he has never been this good. His performance is emblematic of the movie itself. We loved it because we discovered it. Now, we feel like McConaughey is over-exposed, jammed down our throats. But when we were allowed to find him, it was special.

“Steven Spielberg’s sixteen year-old dinosaurs are light years ahead of “Avatar” in the reality department.”

Cameron might have used more terabytes, megabytes, spiderbytes, or whateverbytes to create the Na’vi and the paradise planet of Pandora than Steven Spielberg ever dreamed possible in 1993, but in the convincing me this is real department — in the convincing me this is not computer generated department — “Jurassic Park” blows “Avatar” away. Peter Jackson’s Kong and Gollum are also light years ahead of “Avatar.”

The Na’vi look animated. They absolutely look computer generated, and so does their planet. You might think the difference is that Spielberg and Jackson mixed their digital creatures into the real organic world, but so did Cameron in a number of scenes and still … never for a single moment did “Avatar” convince me it was anything more than a garishly colored, computer-animated creation.

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What is the enduring fascination with a 55-year old flick that stars a fake Japanese reptile stomping Toyko into matchsticks?  The first thing is that Godzilla is a truly entertaining movie.  Actually, it’s two movies.  The version most Americans have seen on TV is the 1956 re-cut version of the 98-minute original Japanese movie, Gojira.  Some American producers decided it could make them a bundle, but it needed a bit of familiarization before the American audience would accept it.  They hired a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr to film some awkward footage as American reporter “Steve Martin,” cut out a lot of draggy filler, and shipped the slimmed down 80-minute final product to drive-ins all over the fruited plain.

Gojira is pretty cool on its own and is available in an awesome DVD collector’s edition (which also includes Godzilla, King of the Monsters).  Gojira is very dark, both literally and figuratively.  Black and white is really the only way to see Godzilla in action, and most of the monster attacks conveniently take place at night.  In the shadows and the flickering flames of the shattered city, you almost forget that it’s a dude in a dinosaur suit.

Under the capable, steady direction of Ishirô Honda, Gojira forgoes subtlety and is a pretty straightforward nuclear weapons allegory.  Godzilla represents the Japanese perception of what they saw as an uncaring, unstoppable and undeserved alien force of remorseless destruction wreaking havoc on their homeland, sort of like the rain of fire that descended upon Japan from American B-29s less than a decade before.

Accordingly, the central visual theme of the film is flame.  It surrounds Godzilla as he smashes through the city, it frames him on the horizon and it literally comes from within him, evoking both the pika don of the A-bomb detonations but also the even more destructive night fire bombing campaign of General Curtis LeMay.  There’s more going on here than just a monster movie – and post-WW2 Americans could not have cared less.

Of course, you don’t need to let this self-pitying revisionism get in the way of your enjoyment of the film.  I had two grandfathers bobbing out in the Pacific waiting to go in with the invasion the A-bombs ensured never happened.  I also served for nearly two decades in the 40^th Infantry Division, which was scheduled to be the first to hit the beaches and probably would have been wiped out on the sand.  Accordingly, my sympathy for the just consequences the Japanese suffered as a result of treacherously starting their brutal, savage war of conquest is distinctly limited.

But the film does provide an interesting insight into the attitude of willful indifference to the facts regarding the war that persists in Japan to this day.  For example, visiting the A-bomb museum in Nagasaki, one must search through the myriad, elaborate displays of destruction and suffering to find the most important thing any such museum might provide to its visitors – context.

Literally squirreled away near the back of the museum, I stumbled upon a small display of pictures.  They were not clearly labeled but it seemed that some were of Japanese-occupied China and one was particularly recognizable to an American – the burning hulk of the USS Arizona.  That was 2002; perhaps things have changed.  But walking out of that museum – or out of Gojira – one might be forgiven for thinking that the Japanese were just sitting around, minding their own business, enjoying some teriyaki and bottles of Asahi Super Dry, when all of a sudden these terrible things happened to them for no conceivable reason.

Sorry, Ishirô – you can try peddling that to somebody else cuz I’m not buying.

And the American producers were wise to cut that silliness out and American-ize Godzilla into something an audience that consisted of many people who had literally been shot at by the Japanese just a few years prior might want to watch.  They removed most of the allegory and, as the trailer shows, they gave Godzilla the full P.T. Barnum treatment, promising – and delivering – “dynamic violence” and “savage action.”

But they left the essential story elements in – Raymond Burr’s crudely inserted scenes simply frame the action and clarify the story so the movie can get right to the landscape-wrecking fun.  The movie starts off with some mysterious events going on out in the Pacific.  You don’t see the big guy at first – you just see shadows, bubbles, flashes, and huge footprints and you hear his legendary roar.  When Godzilla finally shows up in all his glory – the special effects here really are terrific – it’s just awesome.

There are still no laughs – well, no intentional ones – in Godzilla.  The people of Tokyo look and act terrified, and the movie plays the threat of the creature straight.  You see the injured and the dying – it’s not graphic, but the movie does show the figurative fallout of the monster’s rampage.  In the end, one character makes a noble sacrifice that will put a lump in your throat.  And, as with all the best monsters, you sympathize with Godzilla as he meets his fate.  It’s actually quite moving.

Sadly, after Gojira, the Godzilla series followed a regrettable pattern common to great genre flicks.  The first movie is a serious, uncompromising film made by serious people for serious people (but sometimes, as with Godzilla, fully appropriate for and beloved by kids too).  Then the series starts heading south.  Pretty soon your terrifying, mysterious, darkness-swathed wraith becomes a fat guy in a lizard suit wrestling King Kong for laughs in broad daylight.

It happens all the time.  The 1931 classic Frankenstein was a disturbing meditation on man and the limits of science.  By 1948, Dr. Frankenstein’s monster was chasing Abbott & Costello around while Dracula and the Wolf Man looked on.  The original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is a very tough, very creepy little horror flick.  I think Freddy Krueger fights Jason in the last sequel.  Or maybe Chucky.  Or Optimus Primus the Transformerzoid.  Who knows?  Who cares?

I haven’t seen any other Godzilla films in years, and it appears I have not missed much.  The movies reached their nadir after 1969’s Godzilla’s Revenge, where the big guy stopped stomping cities and started helping out lonely latch-key children.  Yawn.  From its very loud, very explodey trailer, 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars looks more like Godzilla v. The Matrix.

And don’t even mention the awful 1998 re-boot.  The new Godzilla featured a redesigned, doofy-looking monster plus some transplanted pseudo-raptors ripped-off from Jurassic Park chasing Matthew Broderick all over Manhattan.  This only reinforced one of the five key principles that guide my life – never see a movie starring Matthew Broderick that does not also feature Ben Stein.  Well, to be fair, Glory is pretty badass too – and itself no doubt a future “Movie We Like.”

Now, that is not to say that the later Godzilla films do not provide their guilty pleasures.  Godzilla v. The Thing (1964) is a lot of fun.  For some reason, a few years ago they insisted on re-titling it Godzilla v. Mothra, but to those of us who, in the 70’s, waited up late for Creature Features to see it, it will always be known by its original TV moniker.  And, as a bonus, it features the miniature Mothra twins’ ear-melting Mothra song.  And some of Godzilla’s later antics have a kind of goofy charm:

Another delightful Godzilla-related musical interlude is provided by the mind-boggling tune Save the Earth from 1971’s terrible, terrible Godzilla v. The Smog Monster. This is the one where Godzilla battles what appears to be a sentient, flying cow pie.  The song is the true lowlight.  It’s this combination of over-earnest 70’s enviro-nonsense and 60’s Japanopop that is mistranslated into English and served up for your listening pleasure.  You can almost see Al Gore sitting alone in his mansion, nodding his head, grinning, and snapping his fingers to its big beat as he gazes upon his Oscar and Nobel Prize.

Forget the rest of the series.  Stick with the original – okay, the second original.  Godzilla, King of the Monsters is a terrific 80-minute thrill ride mercifully free of the kind of clichéd movie industry nonsense that ruins so many movies today.  There’s no nauseating shaky-cam, the shots last longer than 0.35 seconds, and the whole thing is just plain cool.  The kids dug it big time.  Plus there’s a guy in a rubber dinosaur costume smashing up Tokyo who represents the awesome, righteous wrath of the American people – what’s not to like?

If you’re a writer struggling to put together a screenplay, but it’s a big mess and you don’t know where to begin, this is the post for you. I’m going to explain the easiest way I know how to bring structure to your screenplay and solve the problems you’re having.

In my last post, I suggested that “doing the right thing is worth the struggle” is a common inspirational message found in many of the most stirring Hollywood movies. However, each individual film has it’s own particular moral theme that it wants to get across to the audience. And it’s this moral theme that will be your guide to figuring out how to solve the problems in your screenplay.

A moral theme is a unifying, ethical idea that both shapes and brings meaning to the story. For the Wizard of Oz the moral theme is: happiness can be found in your own backyard. For Spider-Man the moral theme is: with great power comes great responsibility. For Plan 9 From Outer Space the moral theme is: how many times can I run fake footage of Béla Lugosi and still claim it’s a Béla Lugosi movie?

Now, talk of ethics and morality may have you feeling a bit jittery. Most screenwriters are cautioned early on to avoid grand themes of “good versus evil” in their work because it smacks of pretentiousness. And in a postmodern age where all forms of art seem to favor ironic detachment and ethical ambivalence, nobody wants to be accused of old-school, sentimental moralizing. If nothing else, morals and ethics sound like worthless, airy theorizing and of no practical use in getting words on paper.

But the vast majority of Hollywood movies use characters to tell a story. And these stories exist as a way to answer the question What should I do? for the audience. And storytelling that attempts to answer the question What should I do? will necessarily have to deal with ethics or morality.

The fact is, if you’re writing a Hollywood movie, you’re moralizing. Your only choice is to be a clueless, haphazard moralizer or a purposeful, successful one.

And let me emphasize that word “successful.” The “moral of the story” is not a theoretical afterthought of your screenplay; it’s the most important and practical tool I can think of to get ideas out of your head and onto paper.

And it doesn’t matter what the subject matter of your story is. The subject matter can be just about anything, but it’s the force of the moral theme that will give structure to the story. And if you’re a screenwriter struggling to find a hook for all the characters and scenes you want to write, structure is what you’re looking for.

My dictionary defines structure as the way in which parts are arranged or put together to form a whole and the interrelation or arrangement of parts in a complex entity.

Selecting a moral theme for your movie will suggest how to go about arranging the elements of drama – the conflict, emotion, action and dialogue of your characters – to form the “complex entity” of the story. That’s why selecting a moral theme points the way towards solving many problems for you. It suggests what kind of characters you need, the situations to put them in, how they should act, the progression of their character, their conflict with other characters, the decisions they’ll make, the things that they’ll say and so on. It’s the most helpful way I know to order your thoughts and bring order to the work itself.

Let me give you an example of how a moral theme can structure the story by analyzing Jurassic Park, a film that I don’t really like (except for the T. Rex sequence), but which has a strong moral theme suitable for study.

When author Michael Crichton dreamt up Jurassic Park he imagined scenes of terror and jaw-dropping spectacle as monsters like T. Rex stomped and chomped their way through everyone in their path.

Scenes like the photo above – full of high emotion and stunning, dreamlike imagery – are what movies do best. So the subject matter for Jurassic Park was “rampaging dinosaurs.” That was the central idea that made everyone eager to read the book and see the movie. This is what drew Spielberg and his producers to the material – the thrill of bringing realistic “rampaging dinosaurs’ to life on the screen.

And yet, the book was not simply 300 pages of dinosaurs on a rampage. Likewise, the movie was not a 90-minute special effects sequence of a T. Rex attacking and killing people.

That’s because, although the “rampaging dinosaurs’ are important and will bring the first wave of people to the theater, when people read a book or see a movie, they are looking for something more…they’re looking for a story. And if the story doesn’t engage them, all the stunts and explosions and CGI won’t matter a bit.

So, what exactly is a story? Well, my dictionary defines story as the plot of a narrative or dramatic work.

OK…so what’s a plot? My dictionary defines plot as the main story of a narrative or dramatic work.

Hmmm…I can see we’re not going to make much headway by relying on the dictionary.

Let me instead use the definition of plot developed by the novelist Ayn Rand. She writes that a plot is “a purposeful progression of events…. Such events must be logically connected, each being the outgrowth of the preceding and all leading up to a final climax.”

This is why watching a dinosaur chow down on people for 90 minutes is not a story. There is no “purposeful progression of events” that leads to a climax.

Apparently, Crichton had a number of false starts on the work, and the movie is significantly different from the book. In this analysis, I’ll stick to the Hollywood movie version.

Once Crichton knew that the subject was going to be “rampaging dinosaurs” he was faced with the task of constructing a story out of the subject. Somehow he would have to create a “purposeful progression of events” that lead to a climax.

Where do you begin such a task? What is there that the writer can grab onto that will help him construct the storyline?

As a solid craftsman, Crichton knew that whatever story he constructed, the force that structured the story would be a moral one.

So Crichton began the task of constructing a storyline by thinking about a possible ethical theme of the book, that is, a moral idea he wanted to express; something that he thought people should – or should not – do…all connected, somehow, to rampaging dinosaurs.

As it happened, Crichton didn’t have to think too hard about what that moral idea would be that would shape his story. He fell back on a moral idea that had already been at the root of several of his previous novels and motion pictures. It’s an idea as old as Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein…

Man is too ignorant and too immoral to control the destructive forces that high-tech science unleashes on the world when he tampers with nature. Therefore, man should refrain from using high-tech science to tamper with nature.

This is a theme that Crichton has returned to over and over again.

In his later years, Crichton was a welcome voice in the growing skepticism of man-made global warming. But in his early years, his stock-in-trade was cautionary tales of science spinning wildly out of control and killing people.

For example, in Crichton’s novel The Andromeda Strain, the subject was biological warfare. In his book Prey, the subject was nanotechnology. And in The Terminal Man the subject was cybernetics.

Each of these books had a different high-tech science subject but a similar moral theme and storyline – characters working with high technology made ignorant or immoral choices that lead to their work running amok like Frankenstein’s monster, threatening the lives of the scientific creators and innocent bystanders alike.

Could this favorite Crichton theme be applied to ‘rampaging dinosaurs?’ Well, it just so happened that “high-tech science’ is the very thing that got Crichton thinking about dinosaurs in the first place.

Crichton heard about the possibility of finding dinosaur DNA inside the bodies of blood-sucking insects trapped in amber. Scientists speculated that someday it might be possible through genetic engineering of the DNA to bring the dinosaurs back to life.

Bingo! The marriage of “genetic engineering” (high-tech science tampering with nature) and rampaging dinosaurs (destructive forces) was ready made for him.

This is the kind of Eureka! moment that every writer is on the lookout for – suddenly you know that you’ve got a story you can work on. That’s the shaping power that a good theme can bring to a dramatic work – it crystallizes a vague notion into a cast of characters and a solid chain of events.

So, the story of Jurassic Park would be characters making ignorant and immoral choices in genetic engineering, which unleashed destructive forces – i.e., the dinosaurs running amok – and leading to the conclusion that man shouldn’t used high-tech to tamper with nature.

That’s why, although the subject of the movie was about rampaging dinosaurs, the story was about the men who, in Crichton’s view, made the moral mistake of tampering with nature to bring the beasts back to life, creating dangerous monsters.

Now that the shaping theme of the story was set, Crichton had the task of creating characters with the required moral values to take the story where he wanted to go – in other words, to actually show the actions of ignorant and immoral men using technology and letting loose disaster.

Recall that in Rand’s definition of plot, she makes the point that the events in the story are purposeful, logically connected and leading to a climax.

The very nature of a plot imposes a certain structure on your story. This is partly because events in our own lives are purposeful (our actions are goal-oriented), logically connected (“cause and effect” exits in reality) and climactic (our actions either achieve our goals or they don’t). We make sense of our own lives and the lives of others in the same way we that we make sense about the rest of the world – we look for the logic and purpose behind human events. You can play around and have fun with these notions, like Memento does, but by and large Hollywood movies stick to this classic plot structure.

So plots have purpose and logic because they attempt to re-create the reality of human life. But in addition, plots follow purpose and logic because the writer is, in a way, attempting to prove his moral theme by making an argument in favor of it. And good arguments are, by their nature, purposeful and logical.

Screenwriters use the conflicts, emotions, actions and dialogue of their characters – the “elements of drama” – to make their moral arguments. And each of these elements spring from the values and moral code assigned to each character.

That’s why when an author creates his characters, he gives them a value and a moral code that fits the demands of his story/argument. In this sense, his characters are the argument.

Let me put it this way: if Crichton is going to prove that mankind is too ignorant and immoral to tamper with nature, he’s got to create characters who are ignorant and immoral and tampering with nature.

You can’t expect a character whose moral values are shaped by the Sierra Club or Earth First! to act the way Crichton needs. Their code of ethics would forbid them tampering with nature. So you’ve got to come up with characters whose moral values allow them to pursue genetic research.

What kind of men does Crichton need? In the first draft of his work, he used a graduate student. In later drafts, this was changed to business men…men in the business of tampering with nature using genetic research. So it’s not surprising that Crichton creates a Big Business genetics company for his plot to supply people with the moral values he needs to prove his theme.

Part of his theme is that men are too immoral to be allowed to tamper with nature. The “immoral” part of the argument is represented by the character DENNIS NEDRY, who works for In-Gen, the huge corporation that runs the genetics lab and is building Jurassic Park. Conspiring with Nedry is LEWIS DODGSON who works for a genetics company competing with In-Gen. Dodgson pays Nedry to steal dino embryos from the In-Gen lab. Their immoral behavior, born of greed, is a large reason why the beasts escape and start terrorizing the Park.

A lot of writers would be satisfied with what these characters represent – that men are too immoral to be trusted with the responsibilities of genetic research. But Crichton has bigger fish to fry. His moral argument is that man’s basic ignorance also disqualifies him from doing genetic research. So he needs to come up with a character whose ignorance leads to disaster.

That’s why Crichton created the character of JOHN HAMMOND, the wealthy naturalist/showman who is the head of In-Gen, overseeing the entire dino project.

Hammond is portrayed quite sympathetically in the movie. Hammond is written as bright, enthusiastic, generous, creative, and really in love with his dinosaurs. He is dedicated to their welfare. He’s even taken precautions to make sure that they don’t start breeding without him – all the dinos are female.

Add “motherly” to the list of positive qualities the Crichton
uses in his portrayal of Hammond. There’s no doubt about it –
the filmmakers want us to like this guy!

Crichton goes out of his way to make Hammond a sympathetic fellow because he wants to show that even very good people are ignorant of the disasters that await them when they start tampering with nature. So even though Hammond is a good man and has taken precautions, disaster strikes.

The moral argument of the story begins with the actions of Hammond, Nedry and Dodgson. Their values and codes of ethics – the things that guide their actions – made it possible for the dinos to be created and let loose.

And just to make doubly sure that the audience understands that man’s basic ignorance is dangerous, Crichton created the Jeff Goldblum character of IAN MALCOLM.

Malcolm spends a lot of time talking about “chaos theory’ in the movie. My dictionary defines “Chaos theory” as:

“a theory that complex natural systems obey certain rules but are so sensitive that small initial changes can cause unexpected final effects, thus giving an impression of randomness.”

In other words, it is not possible for man to comprehend all the initial conditions of complex natural systems, and that leads to unexpected consequences when tampering with nature – like rampaging dinosaurs!

Crichton decided that this idea needed to be stated explicitly in the film in order to get the theme element of ignorance across. That’s why Malcolm is given lines like:

                                                            MALCOLM
John, the kind of control you’re attempting is not possible. If there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new territories. It crashes through barriers. Painfully, maybe even.. dangerously, but and…well, there it is.

He speaks these lines directly to Hammond because Crichton wants to emphasize the clash of values between the two characters.

With lines like these, there’s no mistaking Malcolm’s values; when man thinks he’s smart enough to tamper with nature, monsters start “crashing through barriers. Painfully, maybe even…dangerously.” And, indeed they do, because Crichton wants them to, to make his argument.

The last part of Crichton’s argument is that because of the probability of disaster, “man should refrain from using high-tech science to tamper with nature.”

This is the “moral of the story” that Crichton wants the audience to take home with them. After witnessing several scenes of rampaging dinosaurs, it’s not surprising if the audience is persuaded to see things Crichton’s way. But to really drive home the point, Crichton does something more – he has his character Hammond see the errors of his ways.

During the course of the story, Hammond witnesses the disastrous consequences of his actions and the actions of Nedry and Dodgson, and decides that he needs to re-think his values.

When the movie begins, Hammond is gung-ho for the Park and what it represents. By the end of the movie, however, opening the Park is no longer a value to him.

                                                         GRANT
Mr. Hammond, I’ve decided not to endorse your Park.

                                                        HAMMOND
After careful consideration, Dr. Grant – - so have I.

These are the last spoken words in the screenplay, which is meant to emphasize their importance.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the ways that the author of a drama says to his audience “This is what you should do” or “This is what you should not do” is showing the consequences of the moral decisions of the characters. One of the strongest arguments against acting immorally is that, ultimately, your bad behavior hurts you. Most often, this is true in real life: if you are habitually dishonest, no one will trust you; if you are habitually lazy, no one will hire you.

And one of the strongest arguments for acting morally is that, ultimately, your moral behavior is beneficial to you. Most often, this is true in real life: if you are honest, people will trust you; if you are hard-working, people will hire you.

A rough definition of justice is “getting what you deserve.” By and large, in screenplays the main  characters get what they deserve – for good or ill – because this idea reflects the moral ideal of justice that we strive for. In free societies, it’s generally true that people get what they deserve. It’s up to each one of us whether that’s a blessing or a curse.

In drama, authors often use the death of a character as a consequence of immoral choices. The argument is, “Act immorally in this way and you suffer the ultimate penalty.” In short, they “got what they deserved.”

So who lives and who dies in Jurassic Park? For the most part, it is the people who acted immorally that meet a bad end. In fact, Crichton condemns them to the worst ending I can think of – being eaten alive!

Of the four characters I’ve mentioned, here’s who dies in the film:

And here’s who lives.

Other characters live and die in the film, but let’s just focus on these four.

It’s clear why Crichton chose to kill off Nedry and Dodgson – their immoral deeds sealed their fate. And it’s clear why Malcolm lives – his values and ethical code is rewarded by having him escape death.

But why did Crichton keep Hammond alive until the end of the film? Why wasn’t he killed like the others for his immoral behavior?

There are several reasons. One might be that Hammond’s inability to realize the danger of his ignorance is not quite so bad as the willful malevolence of Nedry and Dodgson. But perhaps the principal reason Crichton kept Hammond alive is because he wanted him to say his final line.

The audience is supposed to think, “Hmmm…if this bright, sympathetic and well-meaning scientist thinks that he was wrong about genetic engineering, then that’s good enough for me!”

And here’s another fact about Hammond that drives home this point. In the book, Hammond is written as a cynical and greedy person. As a result, in the book, he too gets eaten alive by the dinosaurs. But the filmmakers realized it would be better to keep him alive, which meant they had to re-think his character. Changing him to a sympathetic figure was necessary to fit the moral argument they were making and making sure he “gets what he deserves” when he escapes death.

By doing this, Crichton has made his argument much stronger in the mind of his audience by showing a character that the audience likes and respects as changing his mind and admitting he was wrong. It also sends a signal to the audience that they, too, can change their mind about genetic engineering and be saved. So write your Congressman and ban genetically engineered food from the stores! You never know what kind of Frankenstein monster our ignorance is creating!

As you can see, choosing the values and moral code of your characters is critical to the story. It helps define the structure and strongly shapes your characters, dictating their actions, dialogue, emotions and conflicts – the elements of drama you use to make your argument.

John Hammond’s change of values at the end of the movie would make it impossible for him set in motion the same storyline. You need no further proof of this than looking at the storyline of the movie’s sequel: Jurassic Park II: The Lost World.

The sequel begins with Hammond begging his board of directors to shut down the Park and let the dinosaurs be. He’s learned Crichton’s lesson, that man shouldn’t tamper with nature:

                                                     HAMMOND
The hurricane seemed like a disaster at the time, but now I think it was a blessing, nature’s way of freeing those animals from their human confines. Of giving them another chance to survive, but this time as they were meant to, without man’s interference.

But since the storyline for Jurassic Park II isn’t going to go anywhere with that kind of value, Crichton creates the character of Hammond’s nephew, PETER LUDLOW.

Ludlow begins the film by kicking Hammond off the board and taking control of In-Gen. And in case the audience has any doubts about Ludlow’s values, he states them explicitly in the first few pages of the script:

                                                                LUDLOW
This corporation has been bleeding from the throat for four years. You, our board of directors, have sat patiently and listened to ecology lectures while Mr. Hammond signed your checks and spent your money. You have watched your stock drop from seventy-eight and a quarter to nineteen flat with no good end in sight. And all along, we have held a significant product asset that we could have safely harvested and displayed for profit. Enormous profit.

Yep. To get the plot of the second movie going, Crichton once again needs a character who is ignorant and/or immoral and tampering with nature. If he can’t uses Hammond anymore, then he’ll create someone new – and for the liberal sensitivities of Hollywood, what could be more immoral than a man driven by the profit motive?

And if you guess that Ludlow gets eaten for his immorality, you’d be right!

And so it goes. Your choice of characters, their actions and their fates are dictated by the moral argument you’re making. They need to have values that permit them to act in such a way as to prove your argument.

Quite possibly, all this talk about “ethics,” “morality,” “values,” and “argument” may make it seem like every movie should be made into a preachy, moralistic, too-earnest bore. Or it may scare you off and think that you need a degree in moral philosophy before you can begin to write a movie.

But you’ll find that even the most light-hearted of comedies has a moral theme that shapes the story, and you don’t need a doctorate degree to understand it or create your own moral themes. So don’t let all this talk of morality scare you. Not only are you are perfectly capable of handling moral themes in your work, it is essential to creating a successful movie.

Like The Godfather, Jurassic Park is a classic example of a cautionary tale that tells the audience “This is what you should not do.” As a result, there is no clear heroic figure in the movie. Heroes are for stories that say “This is what you should do.” I’ll talk about those stories, next.

Two Lovers is a splendid exception, both evoking a mood and telling a story. Not a complicated story, not a Jurassic Park story, and not even a Moody Family Drama story, but a story of familiar feelings in what for most us will be an unfamiliar setting populated by unfamiliar people. Two Lovers is mood-heavy account of a young man’s simultaneous romances with two women. Instead of ending up in bathos–the usual destination–the filmmakers show this young man carrying around his past while he tries to find a happy future. This conflict directs the nature and depth of the romances. In the end we see how happy endings are sometimes the saddest of all.

Joaquin Phoenix plays this fellow, and the character seems entirely likely thanks to two things. The smart script from Ric Menello and James Gray (who also directed) does just what a script is supposed to do: use moments of activity to show–not tell–how this young man feels about himself and life. The introverted delivery boy turns out to be an occasionally smooth ladies’ man, a dancer, a joker, a conversationalist. We wouldn’t have suspected that until we see him become these things, and the discovery is an engaging surprise that also contributes to mood. Dissonance is key: like a real person, this character contains contradiction, and it makes us want to know him.

The other thing that makes the character likely is the “acting skill” (whatever that is—I have never been able to quantify it) of Joaquin Phoenix, who makes us believe we’re seeing someone experience happiness and sadness and frustration—especially frustration—in the appropriate measure at the appropriate time. I don’t know how he does that, and I’ve long believed that success at doing that is more a matter of matching an actor to a role than any particular ability an actor has—but no matter. I noticed his stinginess with smiles, his sudden openness with his feelings, and displays of (to me) real passion, and maybe that’s part of how Phoenix succeeds in making us care. He gives us a young man walled off from some of the life every young man deserves, living with mental illness, recovering from heartbreak, looking for a future and trying hard to find how much he can temper his restlessness and still be satisfied with reality.

Of course, it is that personal connection that always reaches deepest. For those of us past a certain age, to see him work through this matter of settling down is to remember going through it ourselves. If you’re too young to have had to make certain choices (and are the sort to read this kind of review this far), Two Lovers will likely be troubling by its familiarity with your life and the decisions you sense are coming. It’s that good, and there aren’t many pictures as evocative and engaging as this one.