The Lost World: Jurassic Park

The original Jurassic Park took in more money than many countries make in their yearly GNP. This blunt fact is the main plot focus behind the sequel. Of course, director Steven Spielberg already has more money than most nations, so why he needs the extra loot is any one's guess.

If this review sounds as if it belongs in The Wall Street Journal, then it has accurately summed up the basic impact of the movie. The Lost World: Jurassic Park has its fair share of thrills and chills. It also has its stumbles. But mostly, the film has no particular reason for existing. The original Jurassic Park had at least some childlike awe and wonder to offer along with the merchandising. The Lost World primarily suggests that Spielberg simply felt the need to increase his already ample bank account. At least this theory would explain why the movie is singularly lacking in spirit and fun.

Dino action is the only thing that The Lost World has to offer. Fortunately, the sequel delivers more gut chomping moments than the original as a T-Rex family puts a Jurassic spin on the old nature-or-nurture debate. Lost World has more dinosaurs than were seen the first time, which also means that the sequel has a larger cast for the inevitable feast.

At the top of the dino menu is Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), the skirt-chasing mathematician who previously came close to being snack food. Malcolm is still upset about the mini-massacre that took place at the original Jurassic Park, but his efforts to go public about the incident resulted in getting him branded as a complete wacko. When Malcolm discovers that there is a second island that was used for breeding (and is still booming with the critters), he is torn between feelings of outrage and a need for redemption.

The realization that his current girlfriend, Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), is already on the island convinces Malcolm to again confront his primordial fears. Besides, this guy just seems to have a thing about cute paleontologists. Along for the ride is Malcolm's teenage daughter (Vanessa Lee Chester), whose only function is to get herself routinely in peril.

Malcolm and the other members of the team (Vince Vaughn and Richard Schiff) are sent to document how the dinosaurs have adapted to their environment. Apparently the earlier disaster has turned John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) into a Green Peace activist and he wants the surviving dinosaurs to romp in isolated splendor. But Hammond's company is now operated by Peter Ludlow (Arliss Howard), his greedy nephew who thinks that San Diego would be a swell spot for a new Jurassic Park. So while
Hammond's team is busy photographing raw nature, Ludlow's boys come swooping in to bag some specimens for display.

Oddly enough, neither team is particularly prepared to achieve their contrary objectives. Malcolm is ready to leave upon arrival while Sarah carelessly meanders among house-sized beasties. Meanwhile, Ludlow's hunters are led by a borderline psycho (Pete Postlethwaite) who is solely fixated on the idea of going one-on-one with a T-Rex. You can almost hear the dinner bell clanging away in the jungle.

The Lost World is packed with superb special effects and non-stop action. In fact, the movie suffers from too much action. Lost World never has time to adequately develop any sense of tension even while the entire cast is running for their lives. None of the characters are ever developed beyond the level of a few stock statements and the plot rarely evolves from A to B. Only the many dinosaurs hold any interest, and after awhile, their eating habits become more boorish than gruesome.

But the real surprise about The Lost World is Spielberg's willingness to create a second-rate copy of his own work. Jurassic Park was by no means a masterpiece (just a standard critter picture with a monster-size budget). Yet the original film did have moments of genuine feelings (e.g. the field of peacefully glazing brontosaurs) and nail-baiting suspense (e.g. the vibrating pools of water indicting the movements of the T-Rex). By comparison, the sequel is the kind of dim and diminished work that one might expect from a lessor filmmaker.

So what is Spielberg's problem? Does he really need the money or is he just spinning some artistic wheels while waiting for inspiration? The most likely answer is that he couldn't say no to a dumb, if oblivious, idea.

Which is a shame. If a lesser director had made Lost World, then we could spend our time dissing the guy for being no Spielberg. As it is, we have to remind ourselves that Spielberg is actually better than this film.

Schindler's List

When's clicking, director Steven Spielberg is capable of making great movies. But when he misses the mark, he's off — way off. At his best, Spielberg strikes emotional chords within movie-goers that other directors can only dream about. At his worst, he's extremely manipulative and intensely adolescent.

Not that he needs to worry about these fluctuations affecting his affecting his finances. Despite a recent track record of mammoth bombs (Empire of the Sun, Always and Hook), Spielberg has always been able to rebound with hits that routinely rewrite the list of all-time box office champs. After the completely preposterous success of Jurassic Park, he could make a musical based on the Yel­low Pages without fearing for the robust­ness of his bankroll.

But Spielberg's hungry for things that money can't buy: critical recognition and artistic respect. He wants a gold-plated Oscar and a scrapbook full of rave reviews. Most of all, he wants to be taken seriously.

With Schindler's List, Spielberg finally gets his wish. The guy who used to be called the "Cincinnati Kid" is now the spokesperson for mature, significant filmmaking. The wunderkind who built movies as if they were theme parks is now confronting the Holocaust. And it works — Schindler's List is one of Spiel­berg's greatest films.

It's also one of his most difficult films to watch. Spielberg promised a direct confrontation with the death camps, and he wasn't kidding. Schindler's List relent­lessly unspools a detailed presentation of enough Nazi atrocities to fill a war-crime tribunal.

The movie's based on a true story, that of Oskar Schindler, a German entrepreneur who saved the lives of hundreds of Polish Jews by buying their freedom from Nazi death camps and giving them jobs in his factory. The film's script is adapted from author Thomas Keneally's book by the same name.

Schindler (played by Irish actor Liam Neeson) starts out as a lik­able, but incompetent, businessman who's followed the German Army into Poland because he smells an opportunity to make easy money. The Nazis are busy taking over factories and they're looking for loyal Teutonic types to run them, which is where Schindler comes in. Schindler also realizes that an equally lucrative business is to be had in the form of entertaining the Wehrmacht's officers with wild "presentations" (read: parties). So he convinces a Jewish man (Ben Kingsley) to do the boring book work at his new factory, while he han­dles the "presentations."

The deal's simple — and raw. While Schindler does the networking, Kingsley runs the real business and recruits other Jews from the Krakow ghetto to work in Schindler's factory. Unfortunately, at this point in the story, Schindler is less concerned with helping his employees than with exploiting them. The workers' wages are used to bribe Nazi officials, and in return for their lost wages, the employees are given pots and pans to barter with on the black market.

And so it goes, until the S.S. kicks into gear, destroying the ghetto and shipping the survivors off to a forced labor camp.

Slowly, it dawns on Schindler that the Nazis don't intend for anyone to get out alive. Gradually, almost imperceptibly, he becomes morally revolted by the very process be helped initiate. He begins to free prisoners by creating a list of (fictitious) factory jobs, then he uses his good standing with the Nazis (plus good old-fashioned bribes) to convince them to release prisoners to fill the jobs.

The story's simple structure barely suggests the emotional force that Spiel­berg invested in Schindler's List. Nor does it prepare viewers for the fact that Spielberg - quite unexpectedly - reinvents the art house film genre with this film, as he beats a complete (and wise) retreat from his Disneyland approach to movie­making. For Schindler's List, he borrows from such wildly divergent forms as film noir, cinema verite, Italian Neo-Realism and French New Wave. The movie's a virtual textbook of the past 50 years of international film movements. Even the liberation scene near the end of Schindler's List is designed to invoke Russian films of the 1950s.

Spielberg's touch isn't limited to visu­als, however. Schindler's List needs to be seen in a theater with a good sound sys­tem, because its soundtrack is a brilliant piece of audio construction. At times, important parts of the film take place in the speakers, rather than on the screen. Schindler's List is big, and powerful, and important. But to my mind, one of its most indelible moments is also one of its quietest: a slow pan across the mountainous heaps of clothing, eleglasses, and shoes that belonged to the dead. With this one camera shot, Spielberg captures the overwhelming horror of genocide.