Rocketman (And a List of the 50 Best Elton John Songs)

"I've always wanted to smash a guitar over someone's head. You just can't do that with a piano."
-Elton John

Rocketman, the biographical musical about Elton John from his childhood until the 1980s, is yet another rags-to-riches tale of a rock star who flew a little close to the sun. Fortunately, Rocketman, though not the best, is less dull than last year's similar film. It might be unfair to do so, but I do not know how to view this film and reflect on it without comparing it to Bohemian Rhapsody, the Oscar-winning biographical film on Queen singer Freddie Mercury. Both were directed by Dexter Fletcher (though he didn't receive credit for Bohemian Rhapsody because he replaced ousted Bryan Singer), both deal with real-life queer artists, and both, obviously, portray iconic British rock stars. But the similarities don't stop there. Both feature the manager John Reid, who is played here by Richard Madden. (Reid was portrayed, a bit more sympathetically, by Aiden Gillen in Bohemian Rhapsody.)

Rocketman is undeniably better than Bohemian Rhapsody. For one, it's far less stale (though inevitably at least a little too similar to all the other biographical films of famous musicians over the years). Bohemian Rhapsody was a realistic musical from the very beginnings of Queen until the famous Live Aid concert less than a decade before Mercury died. The songs you heard in that film largely showed the behind-the-scenes drama in making them. In Rocketman, the famous Elton John songs serve as impetuses for set pieces, often with energetic choreography to back them up. They are placed as if they would be in a Broadway musical, driving the narrative and that sort of thing. At the beginning of the film, for example, John shows up in one of his elaborate, camp show costumes to an addicts meeting. He's a smart aleck in his response to the leader's questions, shrugging them off with a joke that falls flat about how his dealer was out of town so the meeting seemed like the next best thing. But then he sees an image of his younger self (played by Matthew Illesley), and because one of his most famous songs contains the opening lyrics of "I was justified when I was five, raisin' Cain, I spit in your eye," the opening number is "The Bitch Is Back," one of his most beloved.

A better example of this is its use of "Crocodile Rock", which we see him play during his U.S. debut at the Troubadour in 1970. (Fact check: Elton John didn't play "Crocodile Rock" at the Troubadour in 1970 because the song wasn't released until 1972.) In a fantastical style, Fletcher and his crew channel the famous photo of John hovering in air to temporarily turn the film into a fantasy, before bringing it back down to earth for the fun we expect. Outside of the musical numbers, though, the fun lacks, perhaps justifiably. There's a serious amount of attention to the depiction of Elton John's parents (Bryce Dallas Howard as his mother and Steve Mackintosh as his father) as being unsupportive to one degree or another. And a biographical film about a famous musician (particularly a rock and roller) is not complete without a rock-bottom fall induced by drugs. The film more or less accurately depicts John swallowing a bunch of pills and nearly drowning in his pool a few days before playing to an enormous crowd at Dodger Stadium in LA.

But probably the most emotionally moving aspect of this film is the relationship between John and his long-time lyricist, Bernie Taupin, played here by Jamie Bell. John has claimed in interviews that the two of them have never argued about music, and in fact have likely never argued about anything. There is an argument depicted here in the film, though. Elton is dressed in another splendidly outrageous costume before heading out on stage, and Bernie questions why is behaving so. Elton blows up at him and marches past, but just before appearing in front of the adoring fans, he slightly turns back, places his hand on Bernie's arm, and quickly apologizes. Much attention has been given to the sex scene in Rocketman (not between John and Taupin), but the most moving love is the platonic relationship of these two musical geniuses.

Before concluding, it must be said that Taron Egerton is incredible as Elton John. That is all of him singing, and it's a performance in which an actor commits as much as is possible. To say he is impressive and among the best performers of the year is a severely gross understatement.

The Best Elton John Songs

Honorable Mentions: Holiday Inn, Tonight, Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word, Bite Your Lip (Get Up and Dance!), Mellow, Passengers, Believe, El Dorado

50. Ballad of a Well-Known Gun
49. The Greatest Discovery
48. The King Must Die
47. Razor Face
46. Grey Seal
45. Bad Side of the Moon
44. Ballad of Danny Bailey (1903-34)
43. The Nasties
42. Can I Put You On?
41. Lady Samantha
40. Carla/Etude
39. Teacher, I Need You
38. Sixty Years On
37. Electricity
36. I Guess That's Why They Call Them the Blues
35. Sweet Painted Lady
34. Country Comfort
33. Don't Go Breaking My Heart
32. Elderberry Wine
31. The Cage
30. Rock and Roll Madonna
29. Border Song
28. Take Me to the Pilot
27. Your Sister Can't Twist (But She Can Rock and Roll)
26. Step Into Christmas
25. Can You Feel the Love Tonight?
24. I Just Can't Wait to Be King
23. Mona Lisa and Mad Hatters
22. Empty Gardens (Hey Hey Johnny)
21. Funeral For a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding
20. I'm Still Standing
19. Are You Ready for Love?
18. The Circle of Life
17. Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me
16. Your Song
15. Daniel
14. Benny and the Jets
13. Levon
12. The Bitch Is Back
11. Someone Saved My Life Tonight
10. Curtains
9. Better Off Dead
8. Philadelphia Freedom
7. Crocodile Rock
6. Honky Cat
5. Tiny Dancer
4. Candle in the Wind
3. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
2. Rocket Man
1. Saturday Night's Alright (For Fighting)

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Jurassic World

"I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power you're using here: it didn't require any discipline to maintain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had, you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it...your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should!"
-Jeff Goldblum as Ian Malcolm, "Jurassic Park"


I can still remember the day I saw "Jurassic Park" somewhat vividly. It was a hot summer day in 1993, and as I jumped out of our family's car, my mother explained to me that I might find the film to be scary because in the movie "some of the dinosaurs eat other dinosaurs." From the opening moments, I was completely mesmerized, and I probably had no idea that movies were capable of presenting such images. I loved it from start to finish. We left the theater, had lunch, then came back to watch "Free Willy." It remains one of the greatest days of my life. I can't imagine that twenty years from now I will remember watching "Jurassic World," the fourth installment in this franchise, the one where the movie's makers stood on the shoulders of geniuses and were so proud of their ability to make what is now the world's fifth-highest-grossing movie of all time (with $1.4 billion in just one month) and bring back the franchise from the dead. The trouble is that they never stopped to think if they should.

Should they have? I say no, and loudly so. The 1993 film at the time seemed to have ushered in a new age of cinematic wonder, but instead in retrospect closed an era of better movie magic. If you don't believe me, just consider some of the visual effects before 1993 (like "2001: A Space Odyssey" and the original "Star Wars" trilogy) and then consider some of the modern-day ones (like "The Avengers" and the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy). True, there are some directors, like Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky, who seem to take the time to really give their audiences impressive visuals, but Colin Trevorrow is not one of them. Trevorrow directed the mediocre independent film "Safety Not Guaranteed" three years ago, and he does deserve some credit for his work here. He and his cinematographer, John Schwartzman, use a camera that's fairly active, and their decision to use film stock instead of digital cameras was the right one because it creates a better visual link to the previous installments. But unlike Steven Spielberg, the director of the first two "Jurassic" films and the executive producer of the two most recent, Trevorrow is one of the many newer directors working with visual effects who seem to have no restraint. David Christopher Bell's article for "Cracked" explains this in more detail in a brilliant article in which he calls the visual effects of "Jurassic World" and other recent films "photorealistic carnage." He makes a further very important point: except for four minutes of computer-generated imagery of only fourteen minutes of actual dinosaur screen time in "Jurassic Park," every special effect utilized was an animatronic (or puppet or other practical effect) created by Stan Winston. In other words, CGI, itself groundbreaking in 1993, was a last resort and was used to better the visual experience on a case-by-case basis. In "Jurassic World," there was only one scene that I thought was using an animatronic. The scene features two protagonists who discover a butchered dinosaur and feel sorry for it. The audience seemed to share these characters' sympathy, conveniently not carrying that practically a dozen characters were eaten moments earlier.

Part of this wreck is not Trevorrow's fault. There was a profound sense of awe with that first movie, but then with each and every subsequent installment in the franchise, there was less and less. But had Trevorrow and his visual effects team used the same restraint and lack of color grading that was used in 1993, I think "Jurassic World" would have been much better. Its story and actors try to fill the gap. The world of "Jurassic World" is one in which the idea of living, breathing dinosaurs is no longer a novelty but a bore. Jurassic World is an amusement park much like Sea World, featuring roughly 20,000 visitors a day. Irrfan Khan plays the new owner, a billionaire so irresponsible he not only demands his scientists make bigger and meaner dinosaurs but also personally takes a helicopter out to do battle with the dinosaurs wrecking his park. The park's operations director is played by Bryce Dallas Howard, and she, too, is not very responsible, sharing the concerns that closing the park would be the end of the company. Finally, there's Vincent D'Onofrio, who's just as good a villain here as he is on Netflix's "Daredevil." D'Onofrio plays the hawkish security chief who believes that InGen, the corporation featured in most of the films, could use these animals for war purposes.

None of them seem to heed any of the advice of Owen Grady (Chris Pratt), an animal trainer for the park who seems to be one of the few adults in the room. Pratt has continued to show that he can carry a film as an action lead and do so with humor as well. At one point, Grady gets into an argument with Howard's character, Claire Dearing, who needs Grady's help finding her nephews after a dinosaur breaks out. She insists that he track the boys' footprints or scent. "I was with the navy," he barks, "not the Navajo!" But while I could appreciate the humor of Pratt, I found his character's situations so unfathomably stupid. Grady works for the park training the Velociraptors and actually leads them into battle against the Indominus, a genetically-mutated dinosaur that is terrorizing the island (and looks unbelievably stupid). At one point, Grady and Dearing take a moment to break from shooting at the Pterodactyls flying around chewing on their fellow human beings so that they can smooch. I think if the talking raptor from "Jurassic Park III" had made an appearance, it would have been more believable than any of this junk.  

There are still other fine performances here. Omar Sy appears here as a fellow trainer of Grady's; you may have seen Sy in the international French hit, "The Intouchables." It's also interesting to see Wong return, and his role this time is much more interesting that his small appearance in "Jurassic Park." And really, at the heart of this movie are the two boys who are sent to visit their aunt Claire, who is too busy to spend time with them and sends them to explore the park with her assistant. They are played by Ty Simpkins (whom you might recognize from the "Insidious" movies) and Nick Robinson as the older brother, more interested in girls than dinosaurs, and who is particularly annoyed by babysitting his brother. Simpkins in particular is very good here. The two boys become aware that their parents are getting a divorce, and this understandably troubles the younger one. It made me think that Spielberg, whose films often feature a child's relationship to his father, insisted that the moment be included here. But that's another flaw of "Jurassic World": there are some real moments that work well with the human characters, but there are zero interesting moments featuring dinosaurs.

I think back again to that day as a six-year-old in 1993. Children are arguably the best audience members; they possess no prejudice towards movies. It doesn't matter if it's a black-and-white film, or whether or not it's in sound, or whether or not the language is a language they understand and use. To most children, particularly younger ones, "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" can be just as exciting and thrilling as "The Lost World," the 1925 silent adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work. Certainly the young boy two rows behind me who wouldn't shut up the entire time found "Jurassic World" to be quite good fun. But it's the parents of these children who have a duty to find their young ones better movies to watch. My advice: if you have children, show them "Jurassic Park," and then lie to them and say that there were no sequels.

Dedicated to Carrie and Eileen.

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