50 Movies to See Before you Die-Jurassic Park

In the next installment of our 50 Movies to See Before you Die series, we tackle one of the most groundbreaking and original films of all time, Jurassic Park. It seemed a fitting time to talk about JP as the film was just released again in 3D and Imax. I saw it thirteen times in theaters when it originally came out, and added one more to my list so I could see it in all its large, technical glory once again. The re-release of the film highlights one of its greatest achievements, that it still holds up 20 years later.

Lets start with a brief summary of the film in case you have been living under a rock for the last two decades. The film is about an amusement park magnate named John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) who employs scientists and billions of dollars to create the ultimate zoo, a zoo full of creatures long extinct. Before the park opens, he must get a paleontologist and paleobotanist (Sam Neill and Laura Dern respectively), and a mathematician (Jeff Goldblum) to sign off on the park so the lawyers and investors can fully understand what Hammond and his team have accomplished. However when a disgruntled employee sabotages the system to steal dinosaur embryos, the visitors and employees of the park must go from surveying to surviving as the dinosaurs run free.

While the main plot of the film is about survival and it becomes a effective and amazing horror film once the dinosaurs are let loose, the backbone of the film is the knowledge and dialogue backing up the visuals. While I am not saying the way they recreate the dinosaurs is 100% accurate (considering this is currently impossible), they do a convincing job of making you forget the implausible. In addition the conversations between the doctors and the creators and the scientists are fast, smart, and impeccably delivered by some great acting performances. In addition to the four actors already mentioned, you get great performances from Joe Mazzello and Ariana Richards as Hammond's grandchildren, Bob Peck as the big game hunter turned raptor enthusiast, and Samuel L. Jackson in one of his early roles as the park engineer.

While we are still early in the series, this is the second film by director Steven Spielberg to make the list, and it won't be the last. Spielberg had a banner year in 1995, winning Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for Schinder's List, and three more technical Oscars for Jurassic Park. Jurassic Park was a visual marvel for its time, one of the first films to use CGI, but Spielberg knows better than most when to use CGI and when classic puppetry and animatronics were necessary. JP is one of my favorite films, and is without a doubt the movie I have seen the most times, but it never gets old or stale, and if somehow you have not seen it up until this point, come over and we'll watch it together.

-Maximus