Inside Out

It's a great time to go to the movies! This is yet another film I've had my eye on for a while (as evidenced by its inclusion on my list of most anticipated films of the year), but like Tomorrowland it had a great deal of secrecy about it. Not much was known about Inside Out except the fact that it was exploring the mind of a little girl. It sounded kind of like Pixar taking on Inception, which I was definitely intrigued by. Then as the trailers came out, I started to see where they were going with the story, and it was clear to me then that this was going to be a return to form for Pixar in a way we haven't seen since 2009's Up. Or at least, that's what I was hoping for going into the theater. Perhaps I had too high of expectations, but given its brilliant premise, I felt fairly confident that Inside Out was going to deliver.

Jurassic World

Wow! What a surprise this movie was! Even after seeing all of the Jurassic Park series for my FlashBack Friday reviews, I couldn't be more excited for a return to Isla Nublar. There's a reason this was so high on my list of most anticipated films for 2015. It's been a long time since Jurassic Park III was in theaters; so long that I'm now twice the age I was at the time of its release back in 2001. Coming off of two sub-par sequels, this franchise was primed for a nostalgia-heavy reboot with updated visual effects. While that sounds like an adequate placeholder in order to cash-in on the popularity of the property, I am so grateful that Jurassic World offers so much more to an audience hungry for another thrilling adventure like the first film gave us over twenty years ago. 

Jurassic Park III

Welcome back to FlashBack Friday as I continue my review series of the Jurassic Park films! After an extremely disappointing entry last week, I was not entirely hopeful for this third entry in the saga. Spielberg had left the project, and the general consensus regarding Jurassic Park III was not a positive one. Having been 4 years since the previous film in the series was released in theaters, I couldn't have been more ready to go back to the island of dinosaurs in 2001, and remember being extremely excited about seeing not only Sam Neill as Dr. Grant again, but finally seeing the Pteranodon depicted as a major foe for the first time in the series. Even at the time, however, I knew that there was something a little off about this movie in comparison to its Spielberg-directed counterparts. Still, this is probably the Jurassic Park movie I watched the most as a teenager, and I went into this review really hoping for it to surpass my middling memory of its quality. As always with my FlashBack Friday reviews, beware of SPOILERS from this point on!