Jurassic Johansson sequel is dino-mite

DIRECTOR Gareth Edwards’s standalone prequel to the Star Wars series, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, was a huge hit and now he has turned his hand to create a new angle on another monster franchise.

More than 30 years after Jurassic Park, the seventh feature-length film, Jurassic World: Rebirth (12A), takes place five years after the events of Jurassic World Dominion.

While dinosaurs have again roamed the earth, their numbers are now in decline, with the exception of a few isolated islands with ideal microclimates.

Some of the gigantic creatures dwelling in and around Ile St-Hubert, in the Caribbean, are suspected by scientists to hold the key to developing a superdrug which could help create lifesaving medical treatments.

Covert operations expert Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) and her team, including Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) and paleontologist Dr Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), travel into the heart of darkness to try and extract DNA samples from three of the most colossal specimens across land, sea and air.

Meanwhile, a family on a nearby boating expedition have been capsized and are stranded, but that is just the start of their worries…

Written by David Koepp based on characters created by Michael Crichton, with Stephen Spielberg as an executive producer, the film has a running time of two hours and 14 minutes and is out now at the Regal Picturehouse in Henley.

Based on Deborah Levy’s novel, in Hot Milk (15), out today, Rebecca Lenkiewicz directs Fiona Shaw as Rose, an Irish mother in a wheelchair, who goes on a trip to southern Spain with her daughter, Sofia (Emma Mackey). Sofia meets Ingrid (Vicky Krieps) and their holiday romance uncovers deeper traumas.

There are also one-off screenings of Wuthering Heights (2011) (15) and Singin’ in the Rain (U).