Jurassic Attack

When their mission to capture a renegade general and a kidnapped scientist goes awry, a team of soldiers learn they've stumbled onto an ancient valley filled with live dinosaurs and must try to get away before they all fall victim to the creatures.

This turned out to be quite an enjoyable effort that could be fun once it overlooked the cheesiness. There's a huge amount of that spread throughout here, once again featured from the absolutely atrocious and ridiculous CGI used for the dinosaurs that don't have any sort of consistent movement beyond three general attack behaviors throughout as well as the constant size discrepancies in the scenes and totally ridiculous-looking animation effects for the attacks. While these look really bad, and there's a couple problematic story lines in play that don't make any sort of sense at all, there's some fun here with a lot more action than expected, including a rather fun takeover of the rebel hideout in the jungle which devolves into a series of fun firefights that are pretty enjoyable. As well, with the creatures continuously on the group that leaves for plenty of high-quality confrontations and kill scenes to make up for it's shortcomings. Overall, this one wasn't too bad even with a few flaws.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Language.

I think my review title sums it up. It's very watchable, this story of soldiers against dangerous Jurassic beasts.

But it's very stupid. The dialog is corny and it's quite contrived.

The worst and stupidest part of the stupidity is the characters. The "bad guy doing good things" is a cliche that you don't want to try to believe in real life. A human monster doesn't do "nice". The motivations here are even more unbelievable than the rest of it, which says a lot.

The only characters with any possible believable motivation are the minor characters who get scratched out of existence. That's another Hollywood cliche, the sermon about "hey, we'll kill anyone you can relate to, just to keep you depressed, nyah, nyah".

However, it is watchable in a sort of "so bad it's good sort of way".

A special ops squad led by Captain Steakley (Gary Stretch) executes a mission in the South American jungle to rescue a hostage scientist (Natascha Berg), but also take captive an anti-capitalist Latino (Israel Sáez de Miguel). As they escape, their copter crash lands in a 60-mile forested crater that contains a prehistoric world cut off from the rest of the earth. Michael Worth plays the madcap professor who's been living alone in the lost world for years.

Originally titled "Jurassic Attack," "Rise of the Dinosaurs" (2013) is comparable to mockbuster flicks by The Asylum, like "Isle of the Dead" (2016), "King of the Lost World" (2005) and "The Land that Time Forgot" (2009). The worst thing about it is the CGI: While the dinosaurs look good enough for a low budget movie, the lighting and motion don't always mesh with what's on the rest of the screen. And the blood dripping from the t-rex's mouth is hopeless. But with a cheap knock-off like this, did you expect any better?

The movie works as survival situation with a fairly interesting group of protagonists and one antagonist. On the female front, Natascha is jaw-dropping from beginning to end in modest short shorts while Alicia Ziegler is decent, not to mention kick-axx. Michael Worth's professor comes across as a hippie-ish academic who has found his paradise. Even though Israel Sáez de Miguel overdoes the Che-like militarist, the script surprisingly gives him a good scene where he supports his communistic principles and mocks capitalism.

The film runs 1 hour and 23 minutes and was shot in Belize.

GRADE: C+

Rise of the Dinosaurs (2013)

1/2 (out of 4)

A special units squad is sent into a jungle to rescue a female hostage but on their way back the helicopter they're riding in crashes. Soon the group realize that their in a mysterious land where dinosaurs still rule and like the taste of human flesh. Originally titled JURASSIC ATTACK, it's clear that this film was simply made so it could cash in on the re-release of Steven Spielberg's JURASSIC PARK but there's no question which is the better picture. Sadly this here is so bad that even a company like The Asylum would be embarrassed by it. There's really nothing here that would make the viewer think that anyone involved with the picture had any intention of making it good. The CGI effects are beyond horrible but I'm sure most are expecting this. It's strange that no matter what type of dinosaur we're looking at they're always pretty much the same size. Just take a look at one awful scene where a dinosaur eats a man and just wait till you see how much blood comes pouring out of its mouth. If the CGI dinosaur looks back what's even worse is the horrid blood coming from its mouth. There's really no drama, no adventure, no laughs, no shocks or anything else that you might expect in a film like this. It's clearly just a rip-off of THE LAND THAT TIME FORGET, which its author gets a mention here. There's even a joke aimed at the Spielberg movie but I'm going to guess that most would have hit the stop button by then. Usually these types of movies can reach a so bad it's good level but this here never comes close to that. The best advice is to just stay away or at least not watch it until dinosaurs are walking the Earth again.

Despite having a crazy guy whose trying way to hard, and goes by two different names, I can still choose my favorite part and it's the fool that brought a paintball gun to a "blank bullets" fight.