Jurassic Park 3; South West 9

Jurassic Park 3

It’s nice to see the return of Sam Neil and Laura Dern along with that iconic score, but William H Macy and Tea Leoni also fare well as slightly caricatured exes, searching for their lost son on one of the endless string of islands that John Hammond seems to have seeded with dino-clones. Alessandro Nivola is also good as the younger, hungrier version of Neil’s archaeologist showing off some 3D printing at the start which becomes a key plot point, but what’s happened to him? Seemed to have such potential…

Action stations kicks off after about 20 minutes of set-up and barely lets up as the cast are chased around the island by reptilian predators. Good to see continued mix of CGI and animatronics making the dinosaurs seem more realistic - the Spinosaur isn’t too cheesy as the inevitable step-up from the threat of the T-Rex (though some scenes attempting to ape the tension of the original’s stand-out encounter inevitably fail), Raptors have a nice update with feathers and vocal communication even if this is at odds with those in the first film, and the Pteradons are very creepy in their fog-filled aviary, a tingling sense of the alien with their huge heads, beaks and beady eyes.

I had memories of really enjoying this at the cinema when it was released in July 2001, and it’s good to see that it hasn’t aged in the last 12 years, particularly if you see it as the schlocky B picture it is.

South West 9

A time capsule piece that seems to occupy a strange middle ground, too big to be a TV special but too small to be a proper movie. Somehow doesn’t feel very cinematic despite some high speed/ slo-mo, cross-fade and other trickery, but does feature some clips of archival protest footage which cement the characters, culture and time.

Director Richard Parry was clearly fond and knowledgeable of the counter-culture scene of London from the late Nineties to the turn of the Millennium with all the crusties, raves and pill-popping that entails, but it does sometimes feel a bit fabley or adult fairy-tale, at odds with the gritty realism of the war-torn news footage he shot from the mid-nineties, included on the DVD as an extra.

I get the impression that the original intentions may have been a little loftier than the eventual result - it’s got drugs, sex and a gun so it was probably easier to fund in the aftermath of the UK gangster geezer explosion that spewed out after ‘Lock, Stock’ became a hit.

Unfortunately the only equivalents I have that spring to mind when thinking of ensemble pieces looking at underground culture are the likes of Soderbergh’s Traffic, an unenviable rival however different in tone (the voice-over threading the flash-back & forward narrative points toward a serious intent, however gaudy some of the visuals, action and characters).

A scrappy love letter to a snapshot in London’s life, South West 9 is good in parts but is scuppered by its own aim of identifying so closely with its subject - it becomes something of a museum piece rather than a film that continues to live.