There’s no shortage of new releases with it being summer, but this week’s movies offer two very different silver screen experiences for two unique audiences, one for the kids and one for the older viewer…
First this week is something for the younger members of the family. British film The Dinosaur Project, directed by Sid Bennett, presents ‘found footage’ of a colony of secret dinosaurs in the Congo, uncovered by an arrogant British scientist, Jonathan Marchant (Richard Dillane) and his team which includes his reckless son Luke (Matt Kane). Dinosaurs have been crowdpleasers on the big screen for decades and Bennett gives us a fun, entertaining romp with the usual mix of battered egoes, wrong turns and betrayals. The CGI is decently done even though its doubtful even the youngest of viewers will be fooled into believing that any of this is real. But it doesn’t outstay its welcome and the acting is decent enough. If you’re looking for something that will keep the family occupied for 80 minutes, then you could do worse than pick The Dinosaur Project.
Next up is Fernando Meirelles’s drama 360. Meirelles was of course the director of the brilliant City of God, set in Rio de Janeiro, and here he turns his hand to an international cast and story. It’s a drama in a similar vein to something like Babel: we see a number of stories and protagonists in cities around the world (Vienna, London, Bratislava, Paris, Rio and Denver) and, as the film progresses, we see the connections made between the seemingly-disconnected cast of characters. Screenwriter Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/ Nixon) has also admitted that it owes something to Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde. 360 does have a lot of central characters (from English businessman played by Jude Law to prostitute Mirkha (Lucia Siposova), Anthony Hopkins as the man searching for his lost daughter and Valentina (Dinara Drukarova), the wife of Russian thug Sergei) but this film is finely balanced so Meireilles and the excellent ensemble cast have the opportunity to give 360’s creations enough life so that the viewer can get caught up in their world. Even Jude Law isn’t half-bad here. Even though the story does feel a little too conveniently wrapped up, 360 is a solid thriller with a very likeable cast…
