Now that’s a classy title screen.

Oh really?

That’s more like it!

Oh yeah, this is the Elm Street movie that really establishes the “mythos” — the first movie was just a smart movie about nightmares and stuff, and the second movie was… nothing… but then this movie takes a hard look at the first movie and creates this whole… thing… using that as a basis.

If I remember correctly.

Hey! She’s back!

It’s Cowboy Curtis!

It’s really 80s — I like that.

IT”S GOOGEL

This movie, like, distills what made the first movie work: If you fall asleep, you’re in a really scary world where you’re powerless, and that really resonates.

But then this movie is about banding together and vanquishing the evil, which is a really smart move, too — for a final movie in a series, but then again, this isn’t.

Is that the talk show guy…? I guess not.

The scares are pretty inventive. They don’t really seem like actual nightmares, though.

Oh yeah, in this movie Krueger is the result of a gruesome rape. I think they backed off from that in later movies? It’s perhaps not the best origin story for a gruesome villain?

It’s not very scary, but it’s kinda inventive? And while there are large portions of this movie that drag, there’s some parts that are pretty entertaining.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Chuck Russell. 1987. ⚃

Hey! Laura Dern is back!

But what are they gonna do in this movie? Send some people to an island with dinosaurs, and then they’re gonna run around a lot until they get off the island again?

Even in the second movie, the premise seemed really… tenuous.

They’ve invented the 3D printer!

This is directed by a Spielberg-adjacent director (I think?). He’d done Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Jumanji, so this seems like a natural movie for him to do — it’s very 80s.

It’s just hard to get excited about this, and you feel like the people involved think the same thing.

This looks kinda cheap… what was the budget on this thing?

Oh, OK, it was a pretty expensive movie — this scene just looks oddly cheap:
They shake the cam around a lot to avoid showing the dinosaur in focus.

It made money, but less than the previous films. So I guess they decided to pause the franchise for a while after this: The next movie didn’t appear until 14 years later.

OK, we get to see the dinosaurs a lot more as the movie goes along. And they look pretty good, although a bit stiff.

OK, that’s a reasonable plot — these rich people brought the rest of the people to the island because they wanted to find their son.

But… it’s also not a very interesting plot? That is, why should we care?

Right:

Johnston thought about quitting the project on a few occasions because of uncertainty about how the film would turn out, considering that it did not have a finished script.

It does feel like a sketch towards a movie in many ways… it’s got a lot of elements, but it doesn’t really cohere?

The dinosaurs look pretty good? I guess it’s a mix of CGI and rubber? They look pretty stiff, but pretty good…

This is the nerdiest quibble ever — but I’ve always felt that these scenes are just kinda stupid, even if they look great? I mean, all these animals are plant eaters — but there’s basically nothing on these fields to eat? The grass looks like a lawn, and there are no juicy trees or bushes to nibble — so why are they all standing around here anyway? These animals need to eat! A lot! Get noshin’!

Now this is just stupid.

It’s a pretty bad movie. I mean, there’s some fun scenes, but it’s incredibly hard to care about what happens — there are no stakes beyond “oh no, they’re trapped (?) on an island with some dinosaurs” yet again.

Jurassic Park III. Joe Johnston. 2001. ⚁

Well, this is very odd — I was expecting a costume drama, but instead it’s… more abstract? And somebody’s spent a lot of money on MDF and paint?

Did this originate as a stage play? Both the sets and the acting are super stylised.

Oh! Gallois means “welshman” — I assumed it meant like er gaul. But I guess it’s Asterix the Gaul, not the Gallois…

Oh, is this based on a fairy tale?

Oh:

based on the 12th-century Arthurian romance Perceval, the Story of the Grail by Chrétien de Troyes

It’s based on the real thing. I mean, as these things go…

This is so weird — the Perceval character is a total moron, and apparently a total psycho, too?

It’s so close to being, well, Pythonesque… but instead it’s serious? Or is it? I’m not quite sure whether Rohmer is poking fun at the Arthur thing or taking it super-hyper seriously?

OK, he’s making fun of it.

Having a Greek chorus is very handy when doing plot recaps.

I like they way the switch between delivering their lines and reciting stage instructions.

This movie is something else, even on an Oddball Movie scale. But is it good? I’m not fascinated exactly, and I’m not laughing either… but I’m not bored. It’s très amusant, as kids say these day.

Rohmer asks the same question.

Wow, that’s cool…

Uhm uhm I zoned out there for a minute, and now we’re somehow doing the crucifixion of the Christ? How did that happen?!

Rohmer was famously very Catholic, but again — this seems to be making more fun of the proceedings than anything else…

What with the choir in a corner singing along to the nails being pounded in.

It’s just such an odd movie.

I did enjoy this puzzling movie, but I’m not sure it was worth spending this much time on it. It’s almost two and a half hours, and while the final half hour did eventually make sense in context (plot threads were tied), it’s… just a lot?

So while there were parts I loved, I’m gonna lowball it:

Perceval. Éric Rohmer. 1978. ⚃