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.

A-choo: The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, reviewed.

Paul Morella, Lise Bruneau, Susan Rome, and Barbara Rappaport (Theater J).

My review of Theater J's updated production of drag-playwright Charles Busch's 2000 mainstream breakthrough The Tale of the Allergist's Wife is in today's Washington City Paper. God bless you.

In the Flesh: Zombie: The American and NSFW, reviewed.

Sean Meehan, James Seol, and Tim Getman in Zombie: The American (Stan Barouh).

Two satires, each alike in indignation. My reviews of Robert O'Hara's world premiere Zombie: The American at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Lucy Kirkwood's 2012 NSFW at Round House Theatre are in today's Washington City Paper, available wherever finer alt-weeklies are given away gratis.

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.

The Play's the Thing, the Thing, and the Other Thing: The Blood Quilt, Jumpers for Goalposts, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, reviewed.

Adam Wesley Brown, Ian Merrill Peakes, and Romell Witherspoon in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. (Teresa Wood)

Liam Forde, Kimberly Gilbert, Zdenko Martin, and Michael Glenn in Jumpers for Goalposts. (Igor Dmitry)

Meeya Davis, Nikiya Mathis, Caroline Clay, Afi Bijou. and Tonye Patano in The Blood Quilt. (C. Stanley Photography)

My reviews of — in alphabetical order — the new play The Blood Quilt, the debuting-in-the-U.S. play Jumpers for Goalposts, and the postmodern chestnut Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, are all in this week's Washington City Paper. Except for the latter two of the three, which are online-only. Find them via the links above.

Pop Culture Happy Hour, Small-Batch Edition: Mad Max: Fury Road

Hugh Keays-Byrne (chalk white, center) as Immortan Joe in Fury Road (Jasin Bolland).

I was under the mojo-sapping influence of a stomach bug when I joined Pal-for-Life Glen Weldon in the studio for a Small Batch dissection of Mad Max: Fury Road, a film I love.

Readers of my Twitter feed know that matters of hydration are foremost in my mind during DC's April-to-November summers, what with 2015 being my 24th consecutive year as a runner and all. So while I accepted most of Fury Road's fantastical elements without question, the matter of how everyone in the movie didn't pass out from heat exhaustion after 30 seconds of combat was one I would be disposed to fixate upon even if I hadn't spent the night prior to the taping on my couch, curled up in the fetal position around a bottle of Gatorade.

And yet it never comes up in our discussion.

How? Professionalism.

I hope I did an okay job of explaining that while Fury Road is essentially one long chase involving dozens of what look to be astonishingly gas-guzzling (but also astonishing, full-stop) vehicles, the film is a marvel of narrative efficiency.

Hear us prattle on here.