Jurassic Park (1993) - 5/5

What is there to say about Jurassic Park? It’s a timeless classic. Almost all of the special effects are practical and flawless, and the few CGI shots hold up surprisingly well. The tone impeccably rides the line between pop horror and family adventure with aplomb. The plot, dialog, delivery, and cinematography are each so masterfully crafted that almost every scene is culturally iconic.

Closest comparison: It’s like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory by way of The Lost World (1960).

Setting: Exploration
Plot: Horror
Tone: Adventure

Isle of Dogs (2018) - 4/5

This movie is predictably funny, sweet, quirky, and occasionally a bit harsh in the signature style of Wes Anderson. It’s an evolution of The Fantastic Mr. Fox visually, but the story is more classic rescue adventure fodder with some fantasy and sci-fi elements thrown in. Its quirkiness will impact audiences differently, but where Darjeeling Limited and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou had the quirkiness on full display Isle of Dogs relegates it more to the deeper levels of story and narrative structure.

Closest comparison: It’s like The Fantastic Mr. Fox with a more grounded story.

Setting: Near Future Sci-Fi
Plot: Adventure
Tone: Quirky

Thor: Ragnarok - 3/5

Mileage may vary. The action is awesome, but only some of the humor worked for me. The visuals are stunning, but much of the plot only pays off mildly well. It's not a bad film by any means, but it's only 'fine' when it could have been 'great'. It's candy, not meat and potatoes. It's fun, flashy and fleeting.

 Honestly the fact that the trailers ruined so much of the movie was very disappointing to me. There's like 20 minutes of build-up to "who is Thor going to fight?", but that was in the first 20 seconds of the trailer. And for as amazing as many of the costumes were, Valkyrie's costume was one of the worst I've seen in any super hero movie. Who thought "You know what's a badass color? Taupe."