Title: Jurassic Park

Year Released/Rating: 1993 PG-13

Starring: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough

Directed By: Steven Spielberg

Written By: Michael Crichton and David Koepp

Star Rating:   4.5 /5 stars

Trivia: When the T-Rex comes through the glass roof of the Explorer in the first attack, the glass was not meant to break, producing the noticeably genuine screams from the children.

Extra Trivia: The full-sized animatron of the tyrannosaurus rex weighed about 13,000 to 15,000 pounds. During the shooting of the initial T-rex attack scene that took place in a downpour and was shot on a soundstage, the latex that covered the T-rex puppet absorbed great amounts of water, making it much heavier and harder to control. Technicians worked throughout the night with blow driers trying to dry the latex out. Eventually, they suspended a platform above the T-rex, out of camera range, to keep the water off it during filming.

I remember seeing this in the theater and being scared out of my mind.  I didn't even read the book until later.  And once I did read it, I realized that the book is even scarier.  It's still one of my favorite films from my preteen years.

The opening scene is just fantastic.  There's no explanation.  No exposition.  Just action.  We see an encounter with one of the dinos, we don't really know which one, and the tragic results.  Obviously if we pay attention later in the movie we know that the accident happened at the Raptor cage.  Just a great establishment of tone for the rest of the movie.  Once our scientists get to the island, everything seems nice and happy.  But we should all be remembering the opening scene.  It's just great.  And the score!  Oh the score!  It's just amazing.  My favorite scene has to be with the initial encounter with the T-rex.  The rain, the mud, the Jeeps, the kids.  All so very scary.  Overall, I love it!

Best Bits: Almost all of them come from Malcolm... no surprise here.

Dr. Alan Grant: Oh my God. Do you know what this is? This is a dinosaur egg. The dinosaurs are breeding.

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John Hammond: All major theme parks have had delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked!

Dr. Ian Malcolm: But, John. If the Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists.

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Dr. Ian Malcolm: Anybody hear that? It's a, um... It's an impact tremor, that's what it is... I'm fairly alarmed here.

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Dr. Ian Malcolm: Remind me to thank John for a lovely weekend.

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Dr. Ian Malcolm: God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs...

Dr. Ellie Sattler: Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth...

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Dr. Ian Malcolm: But again, how do you know they're all female? Does someone gone into the park and, uh... pull up the dinosaurs' skirts?

Henry Wu: No, we control their chromosomes. It's really not that difficult. All vertebrate embryoes are inherently female anyway. They just require an extra hormone given at the right developmental stage to make them male. We simply deny them that.

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Dr. Alan Grant: [ holding a newly-hatched Dinosaur in his hands] What species is this?

Henry Wu: It's uh, a velociraptor.

Dr. Alan Grant: [ in disbelief] You bred raptors?

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Tim: [ after the tour car falls upside down on them at the bottom of the tree] Well... we're back... in the car again.

Dr. Alan Grant: Well, at least you're out of the tree.

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Dr. Ian Malcolm: If there is one thing the history of evolution has taught us it's that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, ah, well, there it is.