CRYPTOZOO

 

Publicity poster for Cryptozoo (© Dash Shaw/Fit Via Fi/Electro Chinoland/Washington Square Films/Low Spark Films/Cinereach/Magnolia Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial; Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

What if someone well-meaning but ultimately misguided decided to create a Jurassic Park-like establishment, yet populated it not with dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, but instead with mythical monsters and cryptozoological mystery beasts – on the idealistic yet somewhat ingenuous assumption that because they should at least in theory be safer behind bars, albeit ensconced within this veritable crypto-utopia, than risking capture or even worse out in their natural wild habitats, they would therefore actively prefer to be in captivity?

That is the basic premise of an extraordinary adult-oriented animated movie set in San Francisco's late 1960s hippy 'Flower Power' period that I watched on 7 August 2024 – just a day after watching Mad God (click here to read my review of it) and two days after watching The Primevals (click here to read my review of it), thereby concluding my long-planned viewing of these three wholly independent but equally exceptional yet by no means widely-known animated or semi-animated movies. Directed and written by Dash Shaw, and released in 2021 by Magnolia Pictures, this now duly-watched third movie is entitled – what else in light of its premise but? – Cryptozoo.

Unfortunately, however, the US military see these entities (which are all termed cryptids in this film, irrespective of each example's respective scientifically undiscovered vs wholly mythological status) as being potential bio-weapons. Think what could be achieved with a platoon of petrifying gorgons, or a phalanx of flying horses, a herd of harpoon-horned unicorns, or, above all else, a small yet potentially invaluable dream-devouring baku that could be trained to consume anyone's dreams that were anti-governmental?

Sure enough, the military duly hire a talented but merciless cryptid hunter named Nicholas (voiced by Thomas Jay Ryan) who utilises a traitorous faun, Gustav (Peter Stormare), to track down and capture the baku. Opposing their plans, however, are the staff of the Cryptozoo, especially its elderly owner Joan (Grace Zabriskie) and her principal assistant Lauren Grey (Lake Bell), a veterinarian cryptozoologist, plus a friendly gorgon named Phoebe (Angeliki Papoulia). But when meddling trespasser Amber (Louisa Krause) releases all of the zoo's cryptids, total havoc swiftly ensues.

How will all this chaos resolve itself, will the baku evade capture, and in the final analysis could it be that the zoo's staff need the cryptids more than they need them?

Winning the Innovative Award at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival that aptly hosted its global premiere on 29 January (aptly because that was the birthday of my late mother, Mary Shuker, who had always supported and shared my lifelong cryptozoological interests), Cryptozoo took four years to animate, from 2016 to 2020. And whereas the traditional hand-drawn mode utilised has yielded a relatively simplistic style (especially with regard to how the human characters are depicted), it is exceedingly colourful, exhibiting a very distinctive beauty and imagery wholly unlike the full-length CGI-laden animated movies more frequently released nowadays. Indeed, both in visual terms and in its philosophical approach, Cryptozoo is certainly influenced by the 'peace and love' ethos of the specific time and place in which it is set.

Its cryptids are portrayed very effectively, in particular the flying horse, camoodi, griffin, and tengu (no Mongolian death worm as far as I could see, sadly). Having said that, they were given far less screen time than I'd have liked or expected for a cryptozoology-themed film, especially as there are several slow-paced conversation-heavy sequences that warranted editing in favour of more cryptid content, I felt, when watching this movie.

Speaking of conversations, however, I should mention that quite apart from those already named above, Cryptozoo's impressive vocal performers also include the likes of Michael Cera and Zoe Kazan.

Needless to say, cryptozoologists and zoomythologists are likely to love this film, as will animation traditionalists, but I'm sure that its appeal will extend beyond those specific categories of movie viewer if given a chance.

So why not do that? For Cryptozoo can currently be watched in its 95-minute entirety free of charge here, on DailyMotion. Or if you'd prefer to view a couple of trailers for it first, please click here (for a general one) and here (for a baku-themed one) to do so on YouTube.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

And just in case you were wondering what it looks like, here is the baku as it appears in Cryptozoo (© Dash Shaw/Fit Via Fi/Electro Chinoland/Washington Square Films/Low Spark Films/Cinereach/Magnolia Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial; Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

MAD GOD

 

Publicity poster for Mad God (© Phil Tippett/Tippett Studio/Shudder – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 5 August 2024, I watched a stop-motion animation-featuring movie that had taken a staggering 56 years to complete – The Primevals, finally released in 2023, and reviewed by me here. A day later, on 6 August 2024, I watched an almost exclusively stop-motion animation movie with another seriously long production period, over 30 years this time. The creation of modern-day stop-motion movie maestro Phil Tippett, but very much an adult horror movie in nature, as opposed to the family-friendly stop-motion animation-featuring fantasy films of Ray Harryhausen, it is entitled Mad God (aka Phil Tippett's Mad God in some sources), with imho the emphasis very much on mad.

Not only directed but also produced and written by Phil Tippett, who also contributed to the cinematography, and released in 2021 by Shudder, Mad God is as much a series of loosely-connected sequential vignettes as a single cohesive, coherent story. As for its content and tone, the prologue is more than sufficiently daunting to inform you in no uncertain manner of what to expect from the movie itself. Here is that prologue, which consists of a quote from the biblical book of Leviticus:

If you disobey Me and remain hostile to Me, I will act against you in wrathful hostility. I, for My part, will discipline you sevenfold for your sins. You shall eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your cult places and cut down your incense stands, and I will heap your carcasses upon your lifeless idols. I will spurn you. I will lay your cities in ruin and make your sanctuaries desolate and I will not savor your pleasing odors. I will make the land desolate so that your enemies who settle it shall be appalled by it. And you I will scatter among the nations and I will unsheath the sword against you. Your land shall become a desolation and your cities a ruin.

The principal character in Mad God is an enigmatic anonymous humanoid figure clad in iron, wearing a face-obscuring gas-mask, armed with a tattered map, and carrying a suitcase, who is named in the credits merely as the Assassin. He(?) descends inside a diving bell into a ruined, infernal, post-apocalyptic city populated by indescribably hideous monsters and monstrosities, the stronger ones taking savage, sadistic delight in mutilating and slaughtering the weaker ones with unnervingly, unnaturally casual indifference. Even the Assassin himself does not shrink from nonchalantly trampling underfoot a squabbling group of tiny gnome-like entities.

But perhaps the most stark scenes of wanton cruelty are those featuring what appear to be identical (cloned?) humanoid but faceless drones or slave workers carrying out the Mad God's will with regard to extensive construction work, overseen mercilessly by flogging foremen. Moreover, health & safety guidelines are conspicuous only by their absence here, as the drones are regularly maimed, decapitated, or worse by flying sections of machinery, metal shards, etc. And when they have served their purpose, these poor helpless, hapless souls meekly line up to throw themselves down into a deep fiery pit where they are instantaneously incinerated. If ever a work force was in dire need of a representing trade union!

As for the titular mad god itself, this is seen only as a pair of eyes and a huge mouth with hideous teeth and black-scorched flesh surrounding it that appears on screens attached to a lofty tower, and utters all of its vile dictates in an unintelligible, incongruous babble of baby talk.

Meanwhile, avoiding being attacked himself, the Assassin uses his map to find and fend his way through this perilous city's grim and grimy subterranean bowels, brimming on every side with violence, horror, blood, black bile, gore, and more – a veritable vista of Hell itself, surely – until he finally reaches his destination, a location inside the base of the Mad God's tower containing an enormous pile of suitcases identical to his own.

The Assassin opens his case, takes out a bomb, and sets its clock ticking, but never discovers that the clock isn't functioning properly, because a rapacious monster, having crept up behind him unseen, now seizes him in and drags him off onto the darkness.

We next see The Assassin strapped to an operating table, fully awake, where a human surgeon crudely slices open his abdomen, and then inexplicably hauls out great quantities of jewels and books from inside it, plus copious amounts of blood and black innards, before finally pulling forth a bawling larva-like infant that a nurse hurriedly takes away.

She hands it to a huge, fantastically-designed entity resembling a Venetian plague doctor but wholly composed of a floating mass of black ribbons, who in turn takes it to a dwarfish alchemist who calmly grinds up the screaming infant into a fluid that he transmutes into powdered gold. This is then thrown up into space and creates a whole new cosmos

And that is by no means all that happens in this macabre yet mesmerising 82-minute movie, which includes hardly any audible dialogue, functioning almost wholly on a visual level – with regard to which I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it before, nor do I particularly wish to see anything like it again. Or to put it another way, every time you think that the next scene cannot possibly be more horrific than the previous ones, you are invariably proved wrong!

One professional movie reviewer described Mad God as "a cacophony of savagery and cruelty – [offering] no hope, no respite from the awe-inspiring terror", and I know exactly what they mean!

Equally, however, I freely confess that technically and visually this is a truly astonishing spectacle. For apart from a couple of brief scenes featuring humans, Mad God is composed entirely of stop-motion animation, and is therefore a definite triumph of sorts within that specific cinematic genre. Consequently, this unique, experimental horror movie makes undeniably fascinating (albeit highly disturbing) viewing. So much so that although I may well never watch it again, as someone with a sizeable collection of animated films on DVD and video I readily recognize that any such collection demands that Mad God be included in it. And not merely because there is absolutely nothing else like it in this particular genre, but also, as noted earlier, because of its unquestionable technical brilliance. So I do plan to purchase its DVD in due course.

I simply wish that all of the highly-skilled, immensely creative, and seemingly tireless workmanship that went into producing Mad God could have instead been directed toward preparing something as beautiful as this is nightmarish. Judging from one albeit brief segment in Mad God that presents the creation of a brand-new universe, the production team could most certainly have prepared such an alternative, visually gorgeous movie, because that particular segment is indescribably exquisite and inspirational.

As mentioned at the beginning of this review, Mad God took over 30 years from its beginning to its release. Tippett began filming it in his spare time during the late 1980s, after working on RoboCop 2. A few years later, however, now working on Jurassic Park and seeing at first-hand the truly spectacular nature of its CGI dinosaurs (his involvement in their creation earning him an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects), he shelved his own project as he feared that with the advent of CGI, stop-motion animation was now obsolete.

And there Mad God remained, in creative limbo for the next 20-odd years, until encouragement and assistance from volunteer animators and other film crew plus donations via Kickstarter combined forces in 2009 to reignite Tippett's interest in it and relaunch work upon it, which continued in stages until the film was completed in 2920, and was then officially released in 2021, premiering at the 74^th Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland. Another mammoth movie-making undertaking was finished at last, and its success has confirmed, as did that of The Primevals two years later, that the days of stop-motion animation are still far from over. Fittingly, in the Ray Harryhausen Awards for 2022, Tippett was elected to the Harryhausen Hall of Fame.

In summary: albeit an indisputably astounding feat of stop-motion animation, Mad God is not for the faint-hearted, but for those of you made of stronger stuff you can currently watch it in its entirety free of charge on DailyMotion by clicking here. Or if you prefer a more guarded approach to its bloodcurdling contents, click here to watch an official Mad God trailer on YouTube.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

THE PRIMEVALS

 

A publicity poster for The Primevals, highlighting the yeti (© David Allen/Castel Film Romania/Full Moon Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

The stop-motion monster/sci fi movie that I watched on 5 August 2024 was a staggering 55 years in the making from original concept to eventual release last year. Thankfully, however, it took me less than a day from discovering it online on 4 August to watching it on 5 August, and what an incredible treat it was!

Directed and co-written by the veteran stop-motion film and TV animator David Allen (who had also created in 1968 the short presentation film Raiders of the Stone Ring from which this feature-length movie ultimately evolved), and released in 2023 by Full Moon Entertainment, The Primevals opens with the killing in Nepal of a huge and highly aggressive yeti by a group of sherpas, assisted by a timely avalanche. But after its enormous carcase is successfully smuggled into the United States, and as a spectacular mounted specimen is publicly displayed to great acclaim, a scientific expedition led by anthropological expert Prof. Claire Collier (played by Juliet Mills) is swiftly assembled.

Its team includes one of her ex-postgraduate students, Matt Connor (Richard Joseph Paul), whose controversial PhD thesis had lately been rejected because it had dared to propose that the yeti was a real, undiscovered species (as this new discovery has now sensationally confirmed), not a myth (as mainstream zoologists had always traditionally deemed it to be). And when the exotically-named Rondo Montana (Leon Russom), a both burly and brainy Indiana Jonesian ex-big-game hunter, is hired as their guide, tracker, and bodyguard, the team duly treks through the Nepalese Himalayas in the hope of observing and possibly even capturing a living yeti.

They also wish to discover an answer to the riddle of why their preserved yeti's brain contains a deep, mysterious lesion, as if something – or someone – had cut through it but without killing the creature.

What they do discover, however, is beyond their wildest dreams – and nightmares. Namely, a hidden prehistoric realm populated not only by yetis as well as by primitive hairy pithecanthropine hominids but also by a race of reptilian aliens whose spacecraft had crash-landed here 100,000 years ago, when they were much more advanced in form and benevolent in behaviour than they are now. For due to their subsequent experiments here on Earth with gene splicing in a bid to improve their form in order to survive more effectively in this chilly montane climate, they inadvertently transformed themselves into the cruel, savage, retrogressive reptiles that they are today.

So much so, in fact, that they capture yetis, subject their brains to laser-like rays that turn them hyper-belligerent, and then stage horrific gladiatorial bouts in a specially-constructed arena for their own sadistic entertainment, in which a brain-frazzled yeti is pitted against captured pithecanthropines – the poor doomed proto-humans only lasting as long as it takes the yeti to smash them into pulp with one fist, i.e. not very long at all.

But what happens to the scientific team when they too are captured by these loathsome lizard-men and released into the arena as a maddened yeti's latest opponents? I'll say no more, so that you can enjoy finding out for yourself when you watch – as watch you must! – this marvelous movie.

 

A second publicity poster for The Primevals, highlighting the reptilian aliens (© David Allen/Castel Film Romania/Full Moon Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Its plot is certainly fantastical, but equally it provides plenty of adventure and escapist fun. Also, it is one of the very few sci fi movies that I can recall in which extraterrestrial aliens and cryptozoological creatures both appear, making it doubly interesting to connoisseurs of the controversial. Happily, therefore, the stop-motion reptilian aliens and yetis (supplemented by some animatronics and puppetry in certain scenes) are absolutely superb throughout – Ray Harryhausen would have definitely approved. Indeed, the entire movie is redolent of his own much-loved First Men In The Moon and The Valley of Gwangi stop-motion film classics.

Tragically, however, David Allen, who had originally conceived this movie back in the late 1960s, and had tenaciously weathered as its director its seemingly unending gestation period throughout the remainder of his life, never lived to enjoy his cinematic labour of love finally being officially released in Canada during 2023, and a year later in the United States. Instead, he had died from cancer in 1999, aged just 54, but he had completed filming the live-action scenes in Romania and most of the stop-motion ones in 1994, so he'd at least been able to see the movie in virtually finished form.

What caused such a huge delay to the movie's progression after Allen's death were finance problems and seeking a company sufficiently interested in it to provide the extensive backing and publicity that such an ambitious, enterprising project required, resulting in it being shelved, beginning a production-hell hiatus that winded up lasting roughly 20 years. But after fellow producer/director Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment stepped into the breach (Band was a longstanding friend and admirer of Allen's work, and in the 1990s had agreed to become this movie's producer), these issues were ultimately resolved, with the final stop-motion scenes being filmed in 2022 following a successful online fundraising campaign launched by Band in 2018 raising US $40,000 to finance their production – overseen by this movie's original special-effects expert, Chris Endicott.

Worth noting, incidentally, is that in addition to the standard version of this movie, a special extended director's cut, 'The David Allen Version', containing an extra seven minutes of footage, has also been produced. Of particular interest is that various additional prehistoric animals that were storyboarded but did not finally appear in the standard version are animated into this extended one, which includes, fot example, a scene featuring the team fleeing from a dinosaur-like monster.

The Primevals has only just been officially released on DVD and Blu-Ray, but for those wishing to view this movie immediately there are actually two separate full uploads of it presently on DailyMotion that you can watch and download free and legally for personal viewing if you use DM's own downloader. Click here, therefore, to access one of these uploads, the one that I watched and thoroughly enjoyed. Or, for a tantalizing taster, click here to watch on YouTube an official trailer for The Primevals.

Certainly, if you adore as I do the superb stop-motion monsters from the golden Harryhausen-led era of cryptozoology-/mythology-themed creature features, you will definitely not want to miss watching this glorious homage to those timeless, iconic movies, that's for sure!

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

A third publicity poster for The Primevals, featuring both the yeti and the reptilian aliens (© David Allen/Castel Film Romania/Full Moon Entertainment – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

LA PASSIONE

My official UK sell-thru VHS video of La Passione (© John B. Hobbs/Chris Rea/Warner Vision – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

If ever I was despairing of ever tracking down some item that I'd long sought but always unsuccessfully, Mom would smile and say: "Everything comes to he who waits". And so true did her words prove again on 20 September 2024. Back in 1996, British rock musician Chris Rea conceived, and penned all the music for, a semi-autobiographical movie entitled La Passione (Italian for 'the passion'), which is all about a young boy growing up in northeastern England during the early 1960s but of Italian immigrant descent, and whose family has imbued him with an interest – indeed, a passion – for motor-racing, but most especially for the Ferrari team and their signature blood red racing cars. The movie charts his development from child to adult with his Ferrari infatuation undimmed, and also features several Rea-penned songs, including two wonderful ones sung divinely by Dame Shirley Bassey. In fact, it was originally hearing those songs long ago that incited an interest, a passion, all of my own – to track down the movie in which they appeared and watch it.

But as La Passione has never been released on either DVD or Blu-Ray, is not present on YouTube or other legal online movie sites that I've scoured, does not appear to have ever been screened on British TV, and with the now-rare official UK sell-thru VHS video release of it listed on auction sites for extraordinary amounts – the cheapest example currently on ebay is priced at £49.99 – finding it seemed a remote hope. Until 20 September, that is, when I walked into a local charity shop, and there, among a pile of other second-hand UK sell-thru VHS videos, all priced at just 50p, was a mint example of La Passione, which I instantly purchased. So now I was finally able to view this elusive movie, and acknowlege, as I have done so many times previously, the wisdom of my late mother's words. Six days later, on 26 September 2024, I sat down and duly watched La Passione, plus the 30-minute 'making of the movie' interview with Chris Rea that followed it, so here now is my take on this film:

Directed by John B. Hobbs, but written by Chris Rea who also composed all of its music, including all songs, and released in 1996 by Warner Vision, La Passione is an unusual movie inasmuch as it incorporates several very different film genres, and is therefore best described perhaps as a semi-autobiographical motor-racing fantasy musical, though in reality – a humdrum concept that rarely intrudes upon its story, thankfully – it is more than any of these individual or collective components.

La Passione tells the story of a young boy, Jo Maldini (played by Thomas Orange), growing up in the industrial North-East of England during the early 1960s, whose family's male members, i.e. his father (Paul Shane) and uncles, of Italian descent, are all enthusiastic motor-racing fans, following with great fervour and passion (la passione) Italy's iconic Ferrari Formula One team.

When Jo watches a F1 race for the very first time (the 1961 Monaco Grand Prix), on their humble little b/w TV, he asks his father what colour the Ferrari cars are, which at that time were the famous Ferrari 156 'sharknose' racers, and his father replies: "Blood red!". From that moment on, Jo is totally besotted with Ferrari, their cars, and especially with their world-famous real-life driver, a very charismatic German count named Wolfgang von Trips (1928-1961), who was born in Cologne, and is played in this movie by Benedick Blythe.

Indeed, to the consternation of his family, Jo becomes so infatuated with the German driver – someone whom he has never even met and who is wholly oblivious to Jo's very existence – that he lives vicariously through the life that with the typical romantic innocence of a young child he imagines such an aristocratic, super-stylish, universally-popular figure as von Trips must surely be living in his grand castle and racing in and around Europe, adored by everyone. Consequently, when a horrific crash during the Italian F1 Grand Prix race at Monza in 1961 claims the life of his hero, Jo is totally distraught.

Years later, and now a young man (played by Sean Gallagher), Jo still grieves for von Trips, but his passion for Ferrari and their blood red sharknose racers remains undiminished, even though his own life is as dull as ever. For he is consigned now to a dead-end, joyless job working in his father's ice-cream parlour, which is barely keeping afloat financially, and spending three hours every day cleaning out the ice-cream machine, which is a hard, dirty, thankless but necessary task.

One day, however, Jo hits upon a possible money-making scheme. No matter how much he washes, bathes, and showers after cleaning the ice-cream machine, he is never able to wash off his skin the strong vanilla smell of the ice cream, but to his great surprise he discovers that young women find it irresistible! As the specific vanilla formula that his father uses for his ice cream is one devised by his forefathers, handed down their family from one generation of ice-cream makers to the next, and thence to him, Jo proposes to his father that they use it as the basis for a completely new product – aftershave. However, his very traditionally-minded father is horrified by such a radical suggestion, and denounces it, and Jo, in no uncertain terms!

Totally despondent and disillusioned, Jo steals a sample of the vanilla, leaves for London, and after incorporating it into a range of products including perfume as well as aftershave under his own trade-name, La Passione, he becomes an immensely rich, mega-successful tycoon – so much so that he is at last able to turn his lifelong obsession into a tangible reality, buying every Ferrari car that he could ever want, and also spending time following the trail across Europe that his hero von Trips had once blazed.

He is even visited sometimes by the German racer's ghost, most dramatically at Monza, still driving his Ferrari sharknose, but von Trips's advice to him, combined with his own experiences, propels an increasingly jaded Jo to the stark realisation that it is the joy of a passion that counts, not all the material aspects of it, which tend only to drag it down from its elevated heights to the grim mundanity of reality, which in Jo's case includes the physical duties and responsibilities that owning and maintaining a fleet of Ferraris inevitably entails.

Consequently, Jo sells his La Passione empire to another businessman, and albeit still driving a Ferrari, though no longer a blood red one, returns to his father, who greets him warmly. His son, his prodigal son, is back, and together they will now enjoy together, to quote another Italian phrase, la dolce vita, the sweet life.

 

The real Wolfgang von Trips (centre, in red shirt), at the 1957 Argentine Grand Prix (public domain)

La Passione is a movie with a distinctly episodic structure, each episode progressing the plot yet also largely self-contained, and featuring either a segment of lush orchestral instrumental music, or a song. As noted earlier, my favourite songs are the two performed on-screen by Dame Shirley Bassey, making her on-screen movie debut here. (Moreover, it is the last movie of legendary actress Carmen Silvera, who plays Jo's stern but doting Italian grandmother.)

The first of these songs, 'Shirley Do You Own A Ferrari?', which also features Rea singing the role of Jo, is a very heartfelt and melodic but also somewhat wistful, wish-fulfilment number. It appears in a fantasy scene where the adult Jo, still working for his father at the ice cream parlour, meets Dame Shirley outside in the snow one winter morning, and he asks her in song that pertinent question after his father had mentioned how magnificent she had been on TV the previous evening. The remainder of the song is Dame Shirley's reply. Needless to say, the colour of her spectacular gown is blood red (click here to watch this lavish musical scene on YouTube).

The second is this movie's title song, 'La Passione', sung by Dame Shirley as we watch how Jo becomes a tycoon via the realisation, followed by the immense success, of his La Passione perfume and aftershave brand, and the luxurious jet-set life that he now leads, including purchasing every blood red Ferrari that catches his eye (click here to watch this heady, hedonistic musical scene on YouTube). There are also some solo Rea-sung numbers, none of which I'd heard before, but which again I enjoyed, especially 'Girl in a Sports Car' (click here to watch on YouTube this musical fantasy scene that Jo is daydreaming while alone in the ice-cream parlour) and 'When The Grey Skies Turn To Blue' (click here to watch on YouTube this very moving musical scene, the final scene in the entire movie, featuring redemption and reconciliation for both son and father), plus the devotional 'Dov'è Il Signore?' ('Where is the Lord?') sung by chorister Toby Draper (click here to listen to it on YouTube). Indeed, the soundtrack to this movie, written entirely by Rea, proved sufficiently popular when released to reach #43 in the UK album charts. And an up-tempo version of the title song, still featuring Dame Shirley but retitled ''Disco' La Passione', entered the UK singles chart, reaching #41, but placed higher in the Belgian and Dutch singles charts, and proved very popular throughout Europe.

As noted above, La Passione contains a number of fantasy scenes, supplemented by songs and even a couple of brief dance routines, which in my view makes it a musical, but then again it also features some fascinating stock footage of Formula One races from the early 1960s and in particular some rare, scarcely-seen clips of von Trips both on the racing circuit and relaxing with friends and family. In a 30-minute official 'making of the movie' interview that follows the movie itself on my video, Rea reveals that these clips were kindly loaned to him for use in the film by a tiny museum in Cologne dedicated to von Trips. In return, Rea generously made available to the museum on permanent loan, the exact replica used in La Passione of the Ferrari 156 sharknose that von Trips had raced prior to his untimely death in 1961, aged only 33. No original sharknoses still existed by the time that Rea came to make his movie (Ferrari factory policy during the early 1960s meant that they had all been scrapped), but a Lotus engineer friend offered to build a working replica for him, which he did, and this is what duly appeared in the movie and was subsequently loaned to the museum. Another replica was built by a motor-racing enthusiast, and a third one is exhibited at the Museo (formerly Galleria) Ferrari, based in Ferrari's home town of Maranello, near Moderna, Italy.

I've read quite a few professional reviews of La Passione, and have been dismayed by the negative tones and comments in some of them, which largely dismiss it as a bland, superficial vanity project. True, Rea is indeed of Italian descent and grew up in the North East of England, his father was indeed an ice cream seller, and Rea has indeed always been passionate about Ferraris, meaning that this movie was very much a personal labour of love project for him, but what is wrong with that? Such projects often provide a refreshing change from the all-too-often formulaic, repetitive nature of Hollywood studios' big-budget output, and this movie certainly does, so I totally disagree with their less than glowing assessments of it.

Anyone who harbours a heart and not a swinging block of concrete inside their chest cannot be other than moved emotionally by the young Jo's poignant desire to live the glittering life of his hero even though his own modest surroundings and background ostensibly indicate to the viewers that this ain't gonna happen any time soon, only for them to be proved wrong of course when it does – via the magic of a movie like this one! But above all, what Rea has captured so effectively on film is the movie's own title – passion, and plenty of it. And not just passion either – the power of dreams too, and above all else, the limitless, immeasurably potent potential of the imagination.

I had a friend once who stunned me into abject, open-mouthed silence when, while chatting one evening about movies that we had seen, she stated uncompromisingly that she couldn't watch anything that wasn't real. What?? Everyone is born with an imagination, but not everyone chooses to utilize it. Some, like my erstwhile friend, apparently prefer to lock it up and then throw away the key, whereas, in stark contrast, I have always obtained great delight in harnessing my own imagination in order to discover where it will take me and what it will show me. In this respect, I am reminded of another, even earlier friend, who told me that he only ever watched fantasy films, as there was already more than enough dull, unmagical reality in ordinary, everyday life without spending time watching even more of it on screen. This is my view too, though in less extreme form than his, as I do enjoy watching some non-fantasy movies in addition to fantasy ones.

The reason I bring all of this up here is because it seems to me that the film critics who denigrated La Passione and the passion, dreams, and imagination that it conveys and celebrates may themselves be somewhat lacking in those qualities, rather like my first—mentioned friend appeared to be, and may therefore be unsuitable for, possibly even incapable of, offering an unbiased, objective, and informed opinion regarding this movie.

As I am sure that you can tell, I absolutely loved La Passione, and am now even happier than before that I have finally tracked down and watched it. Consequently, if somehow you too ever locate this movie, I definitely recommend that you watch it, and also the interview with Rea afterwards. You do not need to be a motor-racing fan to enjoy it (though I'm sure that this would enhance your pleasure of it even more) – all that you need to have is an imagination, an understanding of what true passion is, and an appreciation of Chris Rea's stirring, emotive music contained in it – a love of the vocal tour de force that is the sensational and most definitely magnificent Dame Shirley Bassey wouldn't go amiss either!

I haven't been able to source an official trailer for La Passione anywhere online, but if you'd like to view for free on YouTube the entire 30-minute post-movie interview with Chris Rea concerning La Passione, which is extremely interesting and informative, please click here.

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

A 1961 Ferrari 156 sharknose racer (© Calreyn88/Wikipedia – CC BY 4.0 licence)

 

The back cover of my official UK sell-thu VHS video of La Passione (© John B. Hobbs/Chris Rea/Warner Vision – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM

 

Publicity poster for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the second movie in the Jurassic World film trilogy (© J.A. Bayona/Steven Spielberg/Amblin  Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Perfect World Pictures/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

I launched this present blog of mine, Shuker In MovieLand, on 27 July 2020, but for quite some time prior to then I'd been posting on my Facebook home page various accounts that I'd written about movies watched by me lately. Some of these accounts were only very short, little more than micro-reviews, but certain others were longer and more detailed. I was reading through all of these recently, and it occurred to me that although I'd written them some years ago, before my blog existed, there was no reason why I couldn't, or shouldn't, post them here now, with the longer accounts reworked into full reviews, and selections of the shorter ones presented together as single multi-movie posts. So here is one of the longer ones, presenting in expanded form my original take on what subsequently proved to be the second installment from the second film trilogy within the blockbuster Jurassic Park/World movie franchise.

On 7 June 2018, I went to what was then my local cinema (now closed) and watched Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the second movie in the Jurassic World film trilogy – the latter cinematic trio serving as a sequel to the original Jurassic Park film trilogy inspired by American sci fi author Michael Crichton's eponymous 1990 novel. I'd been waiting with great anticipation for ages for this movie to be released, so that I coul finally watch it, and I certainly wasn't disappointed.

Directed by J.A. Bayona, with Steven Spielberg as its executive producer, co-written by Colin Trevorrow (who directed the other two movies in the Jurassic World trilogy), and released in 2018 by Universal Pictures, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom sees the return of Chris Pratt as velociraptor handler/whisperer Owen Grady, and Bryce Dallas Howard as Claire Dearing, formerly the operations manager of the dinosaur theme park Jurassic World before the mayhem of its genetically-engineered living dinosaurs and pterosaurs loose and on the rampage, as dramatically portrayed in the previous movie, Jurassic World (2015), had forced its permanent closure. The abandoned theme park, or what is now left of it, is situated on the isolated Central American island of Isla Nublar, uninhabited by humans since the park's closure, and where the escapee dinosaurs and other resurrected Mesozoic monsters are able to roam free, undisturbed, unthreatened – but not for much longer.

The island's volcano is threatening to erupt, and with devastating force, enough to make the Krakatoa eruption look like a hiccup, and which will definitely destroy all life on the island (and quite probably the island itself), including, therefore, the dinosaurs. Moreover, as they exist nowhere else on Earth (yes. I'm excluding birds from all such considerations!), this will result in a second dinosaur mass extinction, on a far smaller scale but just as comprehensive as the one that wiped them out the first time, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, roughly 65 million years ago.

 

Chris Pratt as Owen Grady, Blue the velociraptor, and my official Jurassic World franchise 2017 Mattel 12-inch-tall Owen Grady action figure (© J.A. Bayona/ Colin Trevorrow/Steven Spielberg/Amblin  Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Universal Pictures / © Mattel – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

To make matters even worse for the imperilled dinos, a United States Senate committee votes against US Government involvement in any plan to rescue them from their doomed island homeland before the volcano erupts. However, a ray of hope appears upon the horizon when Jurassic Park founder Dr John Hammond's now immensely rich former partner Sir Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) invites Claire to his vast mansion where he and his assistant Eli Mills (Rafe Spall) discuss with her their bold plan to rescue a representative selection of the dinosaurs and relocate them to a new island sanctuary.

Inspired by this exciting news, Claire agrees to help them, by making available her knowledge of the park's systems as well as of the dinosaurs themselves. She also recruits Owen to come on board, particularly with regard to capturing Blue, the last surviving velociraptor, whom he had reared and trained, and who therefore trusts him.

However, there is treachery afoot, as they subsequently realise when they reach Isla Nublar and discover that the dinosaurs being trapped there are destined to be transported not to any island sanctuary but instead to the Lockwood mansion, where Lockwood's young orphaned granddaughter Maisie (Isabella Sermon) overhears a mysterious auctioneer named Eversoll (Toby Jones) secretly discussing plans to sell the dinosaurs to the highest bidders in a private auction to be held there. But what if any of the winning bidders choose to use their purchased dinosaurs as bio-weapons – and who at the Lockwood mansion is behind all of this skullduggery anyway? Furthermore, it turns out that the dinosaurs are not the only genetically-engineered entities in the mansion – isn't that right, Maisie?? Deep waters indeed!

The CGI dinosaurs are even more spectacular than in previous movies within this franchise, and I certainly will not be losing any sleep over their absence of feathers or any other palaeontological inconsistencies. If I can suspend disbelief to watch middle-aged men performing incredible stunts that defy physical reality and gravity in equal measure (yes, Tom Cruise, I'm thinking of the Mission: Impossible films as I write this), I can certainly do the same regarding any dinosaurian discrepancies and deviations from current mainstream opinion within the palaeo-community.

 

Publicity poster for Jurassic World, the first movie in the Jurassic World film trilogy (© Colin Trevorrow/Steven Spielberg/Amblin  Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

My Jurassic Park trilogy and Jurassic World  trilogy  complete DVD collection plus my Jurassic Park trilogy steelbook edition (© Steven Spielberg/Joe Johnston/Colin Trevorrow/J.A. Bayone/Amblin  Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Perfect World Pictures/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

And speaking of the dinosaurs in this movie: whereas in previous Jurassic Park/World films the dinosaurs were breathtaking and dramatic, in this much darker, horror-driven entry, however, the carnivorous dinos in particular are little short of demonic at times, fully justifying this film's 12A certificate in the UK. Small children may indeed have nightmares from watching it, especially in relation to one particular scene, featuring Maisie cowering in her locked bedroom as a genetically-engineered wholly novel dino-horror called the Indoraptor that is positively fiendish in both form and behaviour seeks – and ultimately achieves – entry into her room. I'll say no more, but it's decidedly creepy, even Gothic in places.

In summary: the plot of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is nothing if not eventful, providing a toxic combination of megalomania and financial greed, plus a natural catastrophe thrown in for good measure, yielding a deadly game in which the dinos are unwitting pawns.

As for its ending: back when I first watched this movie in 2018, it seemed not so much an ending as a launch-pad for what could well be an unlimited number of sequels. Indeed, there is a brief but memorable post-credits scene that provides a very clear indication of the directions that such sequels might pursue.

With the subsequent completion of this trilogy by the release in 2022 of a third, concluding movie, Jurassic World Dominion, however, this might no longer be the case. Having said that, film franchises that have been as financially successful as this one (its six movies have collectively grossed approximately 6 billion US dollars at the box office alone!) have a tendency not to lay down and die all that easily, so who knows? It may yet be that the dinosaurs are not the only ones to be resurrected!

 

My three official Jurassic World franchise Mattel pehistoric animal action figures: my 42-inch-long Blue the velociraptor, my 30-inch-long giant mosasaur sea-lizard (the mosasaur escapes from its pool into the ocean at the beginning of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), and my 32-inch-long Brachiosaurus (the Brachiosaurus meets a tragic end in this movie) (© J.A. Bayona/ Colin Trevorrow/Steven Spielberg/Amblin  Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Perfect World Pictures/Universal Pictures / © Mattel – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

 

 

My Uni-Amblin official  Jurassic World and The Lost World: Jurassic Park metal pencil cases (© Colin Trevorrow/Steven Spielberg/Amblin  Entertainment/Legendary Pictures/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Perfect World Pictures/Universal Pictures / © Uni & Amblin – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)

Incidentally, I should warn you that certain trailers for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom that have been highly visible online ever since its release actually offer a very slanted (even imho a quite deceptive) idea of what happens in the main part of the film. So if you still haven’t watched this movie yet but plan to do so, don't be misled by any such trailers into thinking that you already know what will be happening.

What does happen is a dynamic tour de force of escapist action, adventure, and suspense, supplemented by the stirring music of John Williams, and populated by a host of awesome CGI dinos (and also some animatronic model ones for certain close-up scenes), all of which I enjoyed immensely, juat like I did when last year I watched the above-mentioned third movie in this trilogy, Jurassic World Dominion (2022). And yes indeed, courtesy of this latter film a feathered non-avian dinosaur finally appears in the Jurassic Park/World franchise! Was it worth the wait? Be sure to watch Jurassic World Dominion and judge for yourselves!

Meanwhile, please click here to watch on YouTube an official Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom trailer (one, moreover, that is suitably dramatic but thankfully does not contain any of the ambiguous excerpts alluded to by me earlier here).

Finally: to view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Publicity poster for Jurassic World Dominion, the third movie in the Jurassic World film trilogy (© Colin Trevorrow/Steven Spielberg/Amblin  Entertainment/The Kennedy-Marshall Company/Perfect World Pictures/Universal Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis  for educational/review purposes only)