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Apparently, despite going extinct some sixty-five million years ago on this planet, dinosaurs have staying power in the movie theaters. Thanks to what the late novelist Michael Crichton had first wrought in book form in 1990, and then legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg in cinematic form in 1993, what we know as the JURASSIC PARK/JURASSIC WORLD franchise has proven to be a box office bonanza of staggering proportions, with a cumulative total of $8 billion being made. One would have thought there would have been nothing more that could be done with genetically-modified dinosaurs after the 2022 entry JURASSIC WORLD: DOMINION; but such wasn't quite the case, as JURASSIC WORDL: REBIRTH has shown us.

With JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, the original cast pairings have been replaced by a whole new set of characters, and a plot devised by Koepp, who was responsible for the first two films in the franchise. Here, Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali are the ones leading an expedition to a truly remote island near the equator to extract DNA from three different species of dinosaurs that have been left in splendid isolation for the purpose of treating heart disease. To get this DNA, however, they need to shoot darts at the dinosaurs at very close range (ten meters, to be precise), thus exposing themselves to the utmost danger imaginable. The three species in question are Mosasaurrus (which lives underwater); Titanosaurus (a very large terrestrial creature); and Quetzalcoatlus, an avian species. And before they are even able to reach the island, though after they have extracted the Mosasaurus DNA, they are forced to do the selfless thing by rescuing a father (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his two daughters (Luna Blaise; Audra Miranda), and a boyfriend (David Iacono) whose boat was destroyed by the Mosasaurus. Three members of Johansson's team (Rupert Friend; Ed Skrein; Philippine Velge) are killed by the dinosaurs as the rest of the party seek to extract themselves in some of the most frightening sequences yet seen in the Jurassic World franchise

Although it can be accurately be categorized (and, unsurprisingly, criticized as well) as a typical summer blockbuster, the fact that Spielberg still keeps his name attached to JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH in the role of executive producer, along with Koepp's intrinsic knowledge of both Spielberg's and Crichton's original vision shows it not to be as merely another summer blockbuster. Stepping into the director's chair is Edwards, a British-born filmmaker with a track record for having directed two huge blockbuster films, 2014's GODZILLA, and 2016's ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY. Inevitably, this means that the emphasis in JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH is the enormous mayhem that our principal characters must endure, not to mention tons of tyrannosaur terror as well. The wrinkle that is added in is the notion that dinosaur DNA, especially of three particular types, getting extracted for the purposes of finding treatments to diseases. It is, to say the least, a highly intriguing wrinkle, even if it is a highly speculative one as well. And while it can be argued that its inclusion is also something of a convenient plot device (a "McGuffin", to use a classic Alfred Hitchcock term) to put the characters in prehistoric harm's way, it does work as precisely that, and arguably even more, thanks to Koepp's careful explanatory plot structure.

As anyone who remembers the original 1993 Spielberg classic knows, even the best dinosaur effects and the filmmaking really wouldn't matter a whole lot without at least a couple of the main characters being sympathetic, heroic, and smart enough to know how much trouble they are in and have to get out off. In this, both Edwards and Koepp have found their characters in Johansson (whose credits include 2006's THE BLACK DAHLIA, 2012's THE AVENGERS, and 2017's GHOST IN THE SHELL), and Ali (who won two Best Supporting Actor Oscars, in 2019 for THE GREEN BOOK, and in 2016 for MOONLIGHT). While not the most subtle film of its kind by any means, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH, with all these things in it, plus a solid score by Alexandre Desplait that revisits some of John Williams' own JURASSIC PARK themes, still delivers what it promises in terms of excitement, suspense, terror, and good science fiction speculation. Not many Hollywood blockbusters can boast that anymore nowadays.

I will be giving this REBIRTH an '8' rating.

Television is often thought of as an instant medium, especially when it comes to reporting on world events, be it the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, the Apollo 11 moon landing, or, in more recent decades, 9/11. But even the most experienced people can get caught up short in a news event that they're not necessarily fully qualified to report on but find themselves in the middle of. This is what happened on September 5, 1972, when ABC Sports' coverage of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, West Germany went suddenly into hard news mode at the moment gunfire was heard in the Olympic Village early that morning. Before long, ABC Sports president Roone Arledge and his broadcast team, including the legendary Jim McKay, found themselves broadcasting live for the first time ever an actual terrorist attack, namely the ultra-violent Black September terrorist splinter group of the Palestinian Liberation Organization holding eleven Israeli athletes hostage. The film SEPTEMBER 5 is a vivid dramatization, though done in a quasi-documentary style, or how ABC's coverage of this horror unfolded.

Peter Sarsgard portrays Arledge, who finds himself in the unenviable position of broadcasting the world's most important sporting event, the Games of the 20th Olympiad, and then being forced to improvise, along with his entire broadcast crew, in covering a story where two Israeli athletes have already been killed, nine other Israeli lives are being threatened, and nothing can be nailed down definitively. And they also must walk a fine line as they cover it, being careful to get the story out while at the same time not looking like they are giving the Black September militants too much of an opportunity to show off. Fighting off the limitations of the kind of satellite coverage available in the early 1970's. John Magaro and Ben Chaplin are, respectively, Arledge's two top assistants Geoffrey Mason and Marvin Bader; and with the help of a good German female translator (Leonie Benesch), they are able to interpret what the German officials are doing about a situation that, because of laws written into the German constitution following the Nazis' defeat in World War II, they are not exactly qualified to handle. Sarsgard and his staff, however, realize the bind they themselves are in when it is learned that every athletes' room in the Olympic Village has a television, and that the terrorists are watching everything going on just mere yards from the Israelis' apartment. There's a whole air of tragic inevitability to the story, given how it turned out; but as with so many great films based on true stories, it's the depiction and the process of events and characters that keeps the viewer glued.

Aspects of the Munich tragedy have been filmed before: the 1976 made-for-TV film 21 HOURS AT MUNICH; the highly acclaimed 1999 documentary film ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER; and the masterful 2005 Steven Spielberg film MUNICH (which told of how an elite Israeli hit squad sought out those who planned the Munich horror). SEPTEMBER 5 joins that distinguished trio of films, thanks in no small part to the cast assembled by director Tim Fehlbaum, whose previous credits included 2011's HELL and 2021's THE COLONY. The control room that was recreated for the film based on what existed in televised sports and news coverage is exceptionally realistic, and shows the audience what it meant to be dealing with what by 21st century standards is considered antique technology. That a lot of the footage used comes from the actual ABC News coverage of the event is not terribly surprising, but not only do the seams not show, it only adds to the chilling realism being displayed.

Fehlbaum and his cast and crew knew better than to turn SEPTEMBER 5 into am early 1970's version of a high-tech, virtual reality video game; and by shooting it in a documentary fashion, they give it a realism that only exists in the best Hollywood dramatizations of historical events of our time. The dialogue in the control room comes in hot and heavy, which is right for the story itself; and the cast more than ably delivers the emotional tenor required without lapsing into overt melodrama. The whole Munich saga itself had the world in its grip for twenty-one straight hours, with as many as nine hundred million people tuned into the horror that had exploded in a place of peaceful competition. SEPTEMBER 5 is a testament to the professionalism of the ABC crew, and a fitting tribute to the athletes whose horrific demise they had to cover; and it is one of the best movies released in 2024.

I'm giving SEPTEMBER 5 a '10' rating.

Created by veteran television writers Richard Levinson and William Link, and spawned off by two TV pilot films made in 1968 and 1971, "Columbo" was part of NBC's "Mystery Movie" TV cycle during the glory years of television in the 1970's. In it, Peter Falk portrayed the frequently rumpled title role, a lieutenant in the L. A. P. D. out to solve murders, and not let the perpetrators know that he in fact is onto them...until the end, of course. The series ran for six glorious seasons, from 1971 to 1977; and even to this day, it remains one of the highpoints of television.

The first episode of "Columbo" that aired (on September 15, 1971), though it was actually the third one to actually be filmed, "Murder By The Book" involves a jealous but supremely under-talented writer, portrayed with sinister relish by Jack Cassidy, who murders his writing partner (Martin Milner), the more talented one, and tries to make it look like the whole thing happened in Milner's 8th floor office on Sunset Boulevard, except that the murder takes place in a cabin in isolated mountain lakeside town in San Diego County. It all seems quite devious and unsolvable. But then, of course, Lieutenant Columbo shows up.

Apart from Cassidy's seedy performance, done with a touch of oily smugness, and of course Falk with his famous "There's one more thing" line, the film also features a good turn from Rosemary Forsyth as Milner's wife, who hears her husband on the phone at the moment of his getting bumped off. So much of this can sometimes seem like an imitation of Hitchcock classics like DIAL M FOR MURDER done for the small screen-not to mention kind of formulaic to boot. But evidently nobody had counted on the young kid known derisively on the Universal lot as (Sid) Sheinberg's Folly, a then 24 year-old named Steven Spielberg, being given this plum assignment of directing the whole thing; and neither did they count on this episode being written by a not-much-older Steven Bochco, who would later go on to create landmark TV series like "L. A. Law", "Hill Street Blues", and "N. Y. P. D. Blue", in a way that involves a certain amount of craft and craftiness, the kind of which was perhaps more plentiful in the 1970's than it is these days.

Although Spielberg had already gotten episodes of "The Psychiatrist", "Owen Marshall", and "The Name Of The Game" (the famous sci-fi themed episode "L. A. 2017", plus his involvement with "Night Gallery", and although all of those showed he was already a director to be reckoned with, he still didn't exactly have a lavish budget to work with ($100,000) or a long-enough schedule (no more than a week). And he was still working with crew people who were a hell of a lot older than he was, notably the crusty veteran cinematographer Russell Metty, who had won an Oscar in 1960 for SPARTACUS. But even so, he put those limitations to good use, making the most of a very fine Bochco script without allowing either Falk and Cassidy to ham it up too much. And there is also the matter of the ingenious underscoring by Billy Goldenberg, including synathesized typewriter sounds, sitars, and flowing orchestrations.

All of this adds up to one of the all-time great examples of episodic TV from am era that had so many, thanks to a pair of young guys who would thoroughly turn the way movies and television were done on their collective heads.

"Murder By The Book" gets a definite rating of "10"...by the book.