Jurassic Park

The effects… remain movie magic, and as a cautionary tale disguised as an amusement park thrill ride, its intensity is undeniable. Though I’m more drawn to the parallels between Hammond and Spielberg as obsessed visionaries bent on creative control.

When the prehistoric creatures command the screen in this remarkable new picture, they represent one of the movies' few most striking achievements of their potential as the next best thing to dreaming.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, Aliens, Jaws and Total Recall were all great. But they were just a warm-up act for Jurassic Park, which takes your brain on a roller-coaster ride along the tracks of your nerves to the pit of your stomach.

On a "people" level, "Park" isn't Jaws, but on a jolt level -- oh, yes, it is.

A stiff, preachy fright-fest with no story and no room for ours, no characters worthy of our affection or hatred, and almost no fantasy life.

Jurassic Park is the Tyrannosaurus rex of summer movies, a huge Hollywood whopper that not only has legs, but teeth.

Consider it the moon landing of dinosaur movies, the magical and terrifying miracle that actually gets done what moviemakers have wanted to do since the first film cameras were cranked. It is everything you might have hoped it would be -- and more.

Jurassic Park is a dead-center bull's-eye, a film destined to be one of the all-time blockbusters -- and one that actually deserves the accolades.

You get the sense that a whole new cinematic art form has been created here, that the fundamentals of movie-making have suddenly and miraculously changed.

Stupendously bad in that it is both stupendous and bad. It is also further confirmation that Spielberg, so inspired and brilliant in his early films, has become little more than a high-tech hack in his later career.