Skip to main content
MY MOM JAYNE
Before Mariska Hargitay became one of television’s most respected, longest-working actresses as Law & Order: SVU’s Olivia Benson, she had to overcome not only whispers of nepo baby allegations as the daughter of Jayne Mansfield, but the grief of losing her mother as a child. Hargitay rarely talks about her mom, so the depth in which she discusses Mansfield in her documentary My Mom Jayne feels both necessary and extra revelatory. Hargitay not only righteously recontextualizes her mother’s legacy as being more than “the poor man’s Marilyn Monroe,” but she also reveals how she learned about her two fathers (Mickey Hargitay never doubted his paternity even on his deathbed, making it even easier for his daughter to connect with her own adopted children). Hargitay reminds viewers that Mansfield spoke several languages, played violin and piano proficiently, and held a genius-tier IQ score. Despite this, Mansfield struggled to overcome sexist perceptions—one archival video clip in which a talk show host dismisses her violin skills, saying, “Who cares? Kiss me!” is especially heartbreaking—and tabloids often tagged her as the “poor man’s Marilyn” despite her aspirations to become a serious actress before both stars’ tragic early deaths. Hargitay’s candid conversations with her brothers, Miklós Jr. and Zoltán Hargitay, about what they remember from Mansfield’s fatal car accident (recalled with shocking on-scene footage) demonstrate how deeply grief can be felt decades after a mother’s death. TV-MA. JAGGER BLAEC. Max.
JURASSIC WORLD REBIRTH
Dinosaurs never truly go extinct as summer blockbusters, but Scarlett Johansson, Jonathan Bailey and Mahershala Ali do much more than just line up for their turn at the dino money trough in Jurassic World Rebirth, which sees the return of screenwriter David Koepp to the islands. Koepp co-wrote the iconic screenplay of the original Jurassic Park with Michael Crichton and hasn’t run with T. rexes since The Lost World, but handing his story to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story director Gareth Edwards was as natural as pairing frogs with ancient amber. It would be hard for Rebirth to top Koepp’s first two scripts, yet it easily establishes itself as the apex sequel among its frankly inferior competition. Anyone turned off by the newest trilogy’s exhausting turn should feel renewed by this one. Covert ops expert Zora Bennett (Johansson) teams with paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Bailey) and her team lead, Duncan Kincaid (Ali), to extract live DNA samples from Jurassic Park’s most formidable island complex. The franchise’s legendary puppetry has only gotten better with time, enhanced by both an appreciation for luscious tropical flora and a return to the early films’ neglected horror roots. Edwards and Koepp overcome franchise fatigue to craft—yes, really—one of this year’s best adventures. PG-13. RUDY VALDEZ. Academy Theater, McMenamins St. Johns Theater & Pub, OMSI, St. Johns Twin Cinemas, Studio One Theaters, AMC, Cinemark and Regal locations.
M3GAN 2.0
It’s a mother-off as the dolls slay down the house, diva boots! M3GAN 2.0 ditches its predecessor’s horror tendencies for a straightforward sci-fi action flick with some shoot-’em-up espionage and tech intrigue. This sequel isn’t scary by any means, and ignores the terminally online virality that turned M3GAN into a sleeper hit. The first film explored humanity’s discomfort with artificial intelligence, while the second both accepts it and encourages education about what it is (and isn’t). Returning director Gerard Johnstone wastes no time establishing that the military secretly repurposed the A.I. program written by Gemma (Allison Williams) as the robot Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno). The government killbot goes rogue, murdering everyone involved in its (and therefore M3gan’s) creation. M3gan (Amie Donald/Jenna Davis) survived as a ghost in Gemma’s suspiciously affordable machine house, and since Amelia will target Gemma’s niece Cady (Violet McGraw) as M3gan’s original bonded user, the program passes both the Asimov and Bechdel tests to save the day. Though the action gets a bit repetitive by the end, M3GAN 2.0 is as entertaining as its inspiration, if unfortunately not as creative (unexpectedly reusing the first movie’s funniest gag being the exception). M3GAN 3 feels all but inevitable, and fortunately by its cast and crew’s merits. PG-13. ANDREW JANKOWSKI. Academy Theater, Studio One Theaters, AMC, Cinemark and Regal locations.
TRAINWRECK: POOP CRUISE
In the annals of great tragedies of the 2010s, perhaps the most “oh yeah, that happened” of them all was the ill-fated 2013 voyage of the Carnival cruise liner Triumph across the Gulf of Mexico, as it was known in those days. An engine fire turned this floating mall into a repulsive battleground for survival as perishable food spoiled, human waste freely overflowed, and American tourists rapidly developed a grubby “every man for himself” mentality. While this documentary crew pulled off some journalistically impressive feats like reuniting a bachelorette party from 12 years ago, Trainwreck: Poop Cruise doesn’t dive any further than ankle-deep toilet water to expose corruption or even inspire empathy for the likely most-sympathetic victims they could find: the aforementioned bachelorette party, a divorced dad-and-daughter pair, members of the ship’s crew, and a man vacationing with his fiancée’s father. Since it doesn’t meet the three-star bar, I’m forced to ask myself if rating a documentary called Trainwreck: Poop Cruise with a solid two stars is better or worse than a not-solid two. I should consider the victims in this question, and so too should have this Netflix doc, which introduces but doesn’t delve into narratives like the split-world reality of vacationers and the army of people literally living to serve them. Though it shined a light on how Carnival crafted its narrative and why and how CNN reported the story—and ultimately proves its purpose by reminding viewers that the Triumph now sails as the Sunrise after a $200 million restoration—it’s hard to take a movie called Trainwreck: Poop Cruise seriously. TV-MA. ANDREW JANKOWSKI. Netflix.
