Pop Culture Happy Hour, Small Batch Ed. — Terminator: Genisys (sic)

Arnold Schwarzenegger as a long-serving T-800. (Paramount/Skydance)

 Skyped in from the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in beautiful New London, CT to dissect Terminator: Genisys (sic) — the underwhelming reboot of/fourth sequel to one of my favorite movies — with Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon. While I was taking in this movie in the “Luxury Seating” equipped Waterford 9 Cinemas, several of my fellow Critic Fellows, all ladies, were next door enjoying Magic Mike XXL. My proposal for a double feature was summarily rejected.

The Future Is Not Set: A Terminator Dossier

A T-800 goes shopping for clothes at the Griffith Park Observatory, May 12, 1984.

I haven't seen the by-all-accounts underwhelming Terminator: Genisys yet, because I've been busy being a "Critic Fellow" at the one-of-a-kind Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in the wilds of Connecticut. But I did indulge in some quippy dramaturgy on the wandering-ronin Terminator franchise, for NPR.

Audrey and Bill, reviewed for Washington Post Book World

Audrey Hepburn & William Holden in a promotional image for Billy Wilder's Sabrina, 1954.

I reviewed Audrey and Bill: A Romantic Biography of Audrey Hepburn and William Holden, a crummy book about the two stars' affair during the making of Sabrina in the early 50s, for The Washington Post. If decades-old Hollywood gossip is your bag, I recommend Karina Longworth's podcast You Must Remember This. The author of Audrey and Bill, Edward Z. Epstein, is a former publicist; Longworth is film critic and historian. It's a crucial difference. 

UPDATE: Whoops, You Must Remember This already covered Hepburn and Sabrina. I should've checked that. Also, I stumbled upon this 10-year-old Slate piece about Arnold Schwarzenegger's incredibly luxe deal for Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, by one Edward Jay Epstein. It's richly reported and has a strong point of view, two qualities Audrey and Bill lacks, in my opinion. Having written for Slate myself, I know that their editors encourage this sharper, more argumentative tone, but even allowing for that, this Schwarzenegger piece and Audrey and Bill still don't read like the work of the same author. Probably because they're not: Edward Jay's site is here; Edward Z.'s is here. But that's still a pretty big coincidence.

Two-and-a-Half Stars: 7 Minutes, reviewed.

Luke Mitchell has a mask and a gun but not much of a plan.

I like Michael Mann and I love Heat in particular, and I love Wes Anderson. But 7 Minutes, a nicely-shot hybrid of Heat and Bottle Rocket, Anderson's debut, is less than the sum of its influences. I reviewed it for The Dissolve.

The Bitch Is, Regrettably, Back: Jurassic World, reviewed.

Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt star in a surpisingly retrograde blockbuster. (Universal)

Stuff I Ran Out of Space to Say in My Just-Posted NPR Review of Jurassic World:

1) Yeah, the sense of wonder that still comes through in Steven Spielberg's 1993 original comes back, fleetingly, a little, just in the opening act. I think that's mostly down to Michael Giacchino's score, which interpolates John Williams' stately, noble Jurassic Park theme the way John Ottman's music for Superman Returns interpolated Williams' march from Superman. 

1a)  I haven't been able to stop humming Williams' "Theme from Jurassic Park" in the two days since I saw the new one. Giacchino is the busiest and probably best composer in the blockbuster game these days, as ubiquitous as Williams was 30 or 25 years ago. But I can't recall any of his original Jurassic World music.

2) This movie, while enjoyable, is even better if you imagine there are subtitles under all the shots of dinosaurs' faces, like when dog and bear confer in Anchorman.

3) The great Judy Greer was at least allowed to pick her butt and groom herself in last year's terrific Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. (She played an ape, okay? Calm down.) In Jurassic World, pretty much all she gets to do is cry into her iPhone, though I do like the part where she tells her two boys, whom she's packing off to visit their aunt at Jurassic World, "If something chases you, run."

4) The only Jurassic Park sequel set on Isla Nublar, the fictional island off of Costa Rica where the original movie took place, Jurassic World tells us several times that 20,000 people are onsite, most of them admission-paying visitors to the park. That's an interesting new wrinkle — remember the subplot in Jaws about how the mayor didn't want to close the beach on Amityville because its merchants need the tourist income from Independence Day weekend to survive? But save for its one The Birds-homage aerial assault, Jurassic World sort of remembers these many hot, thirsty, bored, hungry, eventually terrified masses and forgets them again at its convenience. In a real crisis situation requiring these people to sit still and do as they're told, they would likely pose as much a threat as those hungry, hungry dinosaurs.

5) Jurassic World was written by Rise and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, though they were subsequently rewritten by director Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly, who wrote Trevorrow's one prior feature, Safety Not Guaranteed. All of the films I've named in this paragraph are better than Jurassic World.

Again, my review, absent these items, is here.

Waves of Regret: Dawn Patrol, reviewed.

I reviewed a movie called Dawn Patrol for The Dissolve. Not the Howard Hawks one from 1930. Or its Errol Flynn-Basil Rathbone-David Niven-starring remake from 1938 (pictured). This one is a grimy little indie revenge drama that was shot two years ago in Ventura and Oxnard, Calif., the beautiful seaside region where I lived for four-and-a-half years in the very early aughts. It was directed by the writer of Beverly Hills Cop and stars Clint Eastwoodson, better known to the world as Scott Eastwood. Here's the review.

The Fault Not in Our Stars: San Andreas, reviewed.

The Rock and Carla Gugino do a decent job of reacting to things that aren't there. (Warner Bros. Pictures)

I went with my friend and colleague Heather to see San Andreas, and we felt saw the Earth move. That the film really seems not to notice that its fireman chopper-pilot hero is a deserter and a thief is part of the fun. My NPR review, which opens with a discussion of the 1974 Universal Pictures release Earthquake — written by Mario Puzo the same year as The Godfather, Part II! — is here.

Richard Roundtree played a "daredevil motorcyclist."

For The Village Voice, L.A. Weekly, and affiliates, Ten Summer Movies I Hope Don't Suck

Pixar's Inside Out gives physical form to one girl's Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith). The first trailer was sexist and lame, but trailers ain't movies.

It's Memorial Day weekend, which a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away used to signal the start of the summer movie season. Sometime around the turn of the century, the summer movies began arriving the first weekend in May. In recent years the first weekend in April has become a perennial launchpad for Marvel movies and Fast & Furious flicks. 

But I'm the sentimental type, so I (and The Village Voice and L.A. Weekly) waited until this week to post my look at ten releases coming up in roughly the next 10 weeks for which I've got grand or at least moderate hopes. Plus Magic Mike XXL, which I was asked to add so the list wouldn't be "too straight." I am aware that Channing Tatum is what the former John "Cougar" Mellencamp would call "a real good dancer," but Steven Soderbergh is not un-retiring from theatrical filmmaking to direct this sequel, so I'd probably rather see Jurassic World or Ant-Man, neither of which made the cut.

Have a great summer, movie lovers.