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Jurassic Park

An adventure 65 million years in the making. 

Year: 1993 
Running Time:
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 (XWide) 
Certificate: BBFC PG Cert – Parental guidance 
Subtitles: This film is not expected to be subtitled, though this cannot be guaranteed. 
Directed by Steven Spielberg 
Starring: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Wayne Knight  
An image from Jurassic Park
Review:

Many of us will have been too young to remember the first release of the now legendary Jurassic Park, perhaps Steven Spielberg’s greatest film to date. The film hardly needs an introduction; nor does it need to provide a reason for seeing it, for the film is pure entertainment - two hours of pure heart-pounding, dinosaur-chasing, wise-cracking fun. Along with Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Jurassic Park heralded believable and fully-realised computer-generated imagery in the early nineties, setting the precedent for the rest of the decade that has lasted into the twenty-first century. Some would even argue that the overall effect of the film has never been surpassed, due to the guiding hand of the most commercially successful director of all time.

It’s hard to have grown up in the past twenty years and to not have watched this film. Everyone seems to remember a particularly defining moment, whether it be the initial attack of the poor helpless Mexican theme park worker, the primary rain-soaked encounter with the T-Rex, big Dennis (Knight) being devoured by that freaky ink-pitting creature, or the Velociraptor siege in the kitchen. Who could forget the douche-bag lawyer ‘escaping’ to the toilet? Old memories will be refreshed for the returning viewer, and new ones will be created for new audience members. Perhaps the greatest reason for the film’s abiding memory in the mind of the nineties child is the idea that children themselves were not free from danger. Spielberg employed the innocent device so well with Drew Barrymore and Henry Thomas in E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, but subverts it here by placing Joseph Mazzello and Ariana Richards into inescapable terror. This is a terrifyingly good blockbuster film experience.

Jack Porter

The performance on Wednesday 28th September 2022 is from an original 35mm print kindly loaned from the BFI National Archive, presented with its original Oscar-winning theatrical 35mm DTS soundtrack.

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Screenings of this film:

1993/1994 Spring Term (35mm)
1993/1994 Spring Term (35mm)
1993/1994 Spring Term (35mm)
1993/1994 Spring Term (35mm)
1994/1995 Autumn Term (35mm)
1995/1996 Autumn Term (35mm)
1995/1996 Autumn Term (35mm)
2010/2011 Autumn Term (35mm)
2010/2011 Autumn Term (35mm)
2015/2016 Autumn Term (35mm)
2022/2023 Autumn Term (35mm)