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You’d think a movie in which Adam Driver fights a bunch of dinosaurs couldn’t possibly be boring, but that’s exactly what “65” is.

This is a movie that would have benefitted from being a whole lot stupider. The big-budget sci-fi flick—which reportedly cost $91 million to make and was featured in a Super Bowl ad—should have embraced its inherent B-movie roots. Instead, it tries to juggle a wild survival story with a poignant family drama, but both elements feel so rushed and underdeveloped that neither ends up registering. There’s nothing to these characters, and the action sequences quickly grow repetitive and wearisome. There’s a jump scare, insistent notes from an overbearing score, some running and screaming, the gnashing of teeth, and maybe an injury before a narrow escape. Over and over and over again.

But the film from the writing-directing team of Scott Beck and Bryan Woods , whose credits include co-writing “ A Quiet Place ” with John Krasinski , offers an intriguingly contradictory premise. It takes place 65 million years ago, but suggests that futuristic civilizations existed back then on planets throughout the universe. On one of them, Driver stars as a space pilot named Mills. He’s about to embark on a two-year exploratory mission in order to afford medical treatment for his ailing daughter ( Chloe Coleman from “ My Spy ,” who’s featured in the film’s prelude and sporadic video snippets).

On the way to his destination, the ship Mills is flying enters an unexpected asteroid field, gets torn to shreds, and crashes. All of the passengers in cryogenic sleep are killed—except one, who just happens to be a girl around the same age as his daughter. Her name is Koa, and she’s played by Ariana Greenblatt . And the planet, which has swampy terrain reminiscent of Dagobah, just happens to be—wait for it—Earth.

“65” requires Mills and Koa to schlep from the wreckage to a mountaintop so they can commandeer the escape pod that’s perched there and fly out before dinosaurs can stomp and chomp on them. The creatures can be startling at times, but at other times they look so cheesy and fake, they’re like the animatronics you’d see at a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. And yet! It almost would have been better—or at least more entertaining—if “65” had leaned harder into that silliness if it had played with the basic ridiculousness of mixing complex technology with the Cretaceous period. They rarely use Mills’ advanced gadgets in any inspired ways within this prehistoric setting. The few attempts at humor fall flat—they mainly consist of Koa making fun of Mills for being uptight—and moments of peril wrap up too tidily for us to luxuriate in their anxiety.

Worst of all, Driver doesn’t get to ham it up nearly enough here. He’s an actor of great intensity, which can be both thrilling and amusing if he’s amping it up in a knowing way. Imagine him screaming “More!!!” as he’s blasting Luke Skywalker in “ Star Wars: The Last Jedi ,” or punching a wall during an argument in “ Marriage Story .” But the man he plays in “65” is blandly heroic and just seems generally annoyed. Greenblatt, meanwhile, does the best she can with a character we know absolutely nothing about. Koa speaks a language that’s not English, so most of her exchanges with Mills consist of mimicking the basic words he says to her, including “family.” There’s no real bond between them, but neither is there any sort of prickly tension since they’re stuck with each other. “The Last of Us,” this is not.

Beck and Woods offer some clever camerawork here and there, but also some erratic editing choices. And they borrow quite a bit from the “ Jurassic Park ” franchise: a giant footprint in the mud or a dinosaur’s yellow eye leering menacingly through a window. But maybe that’s inevitable at this point. Their film only gets truly enjoyably nutty toward the end, with its climactic combination of a sneaky quicksand patch, a ravenous Tyrannosaurus rex, a well-timed geyser eruption, and a catastrophic asteroid shower. But by then, it’s too late for us—and the planet.

Now in theaters.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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Rated PG-13 for intense sci-fi action and peril, and brief bloody images.

Adam Driver as Mills

Ariana Greenblatt as Koa

Chloe Coleman as Nevine

Nika King as Alya

Bryan Woods

Cinematographer

Salvatore Totino
Chris Bacon

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‘65’ Review: What on Earth?

Millions of years ago, a guy from another planet landed on this one. Like most survivors, he had a moody little girl with him.

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In a film scene, a man and a young girl stand in a dense forest, looking worried.

By A.O. Scott

To paraphrase an old Monty Python sketch , nobody suspects the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinction.

Certainly the poor dinosaurs didn’t, though for their more obsessive present-day human fans the fact that this movie is called “65” — as in million years ago — might count as a spoiler. When Mills the space pilot crash-lands on a muddy, reptile-infested Earth after his vessel is hit by an asteroid, you might have an inkling of the larger disaster in store.

I don’t mean the movie; that would be unkind. “65,” directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (two writers of the first “Quiet Place” film), is not interesting enough to be truly terrible or terrible enough to be halfway interesting. As Mills, Adam Driver does a lot of breathing and grunting as he runs a gantlet of familiar dangers. In addition to the T. rexes and other saurian menaces, he faces quicksand, large bugs, falling rocks, malfunctioning equipment and the withering judgment of a 9-year-old girl.

But let’s back up a second. Who are these people, and how did they get to our planet before (if I may quote the opening titles) “the advent of mankind”? The answer is that they belonged to an ancient extraterrestrial civilization, one sufficiently advanced to have invented not only space travel, but the usual array of futuristic sci-fi technology.

Their health care system was pretty bad, though. Mills’s adolescent daughter, Nevine (Chloe Coleman), suffers from a persistent, apparently life-threatening cough, and the only way he can afford her treatment is by taking on a high-paying “long-range exploratory mission.” He’s already grief-stricken when the asteroid hits, cleaving his spaceship in two and killing all of his cryogenically frozen passengers except one, a girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt).

The folks on their home planet, realistically enough, speak more than one language, so Koa and Mills — whose native idiom is English — can’t communicate very well. Also, he’s a grumpy, unhappy man and she’s a moody girl, so we’re on familiar survival-story terrain. “65” is a little like “ The Last of Us ,” but with dinosaurs instead of mushrooms and no obvious sociological theme that would sustain a think piece.

Which would be to its credit, if it managed to be a simple, effective action movie. Or science-fiction movie. Or scary movie. Or something. Like Mills’s emotional back story, the special effects seem to have been pulled out of a box of secondhand ideas. Nor is the execution all that impressive. There’s little in the way of awe, suspense or surprise. Just a quickly hatched plan to get off this God-forsaken planet and leave it to its fate.

65 Rated PG-13. Dinosaur blood and prehistoric curses. Running time: 1 hour 33 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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65 review – Adam Driver v dinosaurs in almost fun enough thriller

A scrappy adventure, shot two years ago and getting unceremoniously dumped, isn’t as bad as its backstory would suggest but it’s missing something

I t’s almost impossible sitting down to watch the loopy sci-fi thriller 65 without being niggled by a familiar sinking feeling, like you’re about to eat a meal that you know won’t agree with your system. Despite the intriguing presence of Adam Driver , whose post-Star Wars roles have typically prioritised art over commerce, and a magnetically gonzo premise that sees a pilot crash-land on prehistoric Earth, it’s arriving weighed down by baggage heavy enough to flatten any hopes the thrillingly nutty trailer might have inspired.

Not only has the film, shot two years ago, already missed five prior release dates but it’s landing last minute without much of a visible campaign (it was only officially scheduled last month) and almost entirely without screenings for critics (I attended the only one in New York, taking place just hours before release). Inevitably, this then lowers even the most optimistic of optimist’s expectations to beneath ground level, a cursed backstory for something seemingly so awful that studio Sony would rather bury it than have anyone actually watch it. But as is often the case with such a lead-in, it’s more ho-hum than horrible, a mess but not a hugely embarrassing one.

Perhaps if it had been truly tell-everyone-on-Twitter terrible, then maybe it would at least be remembered by the time it swiftly lands on plane movie rotation but 65 veers between fine and slightly less than, never quite bringing the fun we were expecting,

Unusually, for an elevator pitch genre film such as this, it starts off in far shakier territory than where it ends up. Driver’s pilot, Mills, is saying goodbye to his wife and sick daughter (cue performed light cough) before he goes on a two-year mission. Shot during early Covid, we rush through the scene-setting to avoid anything that might prove logistically difficult for what’s essentially a two-hander, an understandable sacrifice given the time, but the frantic pace continues once he crash-lands on a mysterious planet, clumsily sprinting us through what should have been a more delicately effective buildup. The first act has the feeling of something that caused sleepless nights in the edit suite, jankily jumbled together, short and choppy scenes ending before they should, giving it a distractingly arrhythmic quality (criminally, the discovery that the planet contains dinosaurs (!) is truly fumbled). Once Mills finds a fellow survivor (an excellent, understated Ariana Greenblatt), the pair must make their way across dangerous terrain to an escape pod.

It’s a pretty unremarkable survival movie from then on, but efficiently so in the shortest of bursts, thanks to a physically committed Driver taking it all rather seriously and some moments of decent enough jeopardy. We’re teased something gnarlier, something that might have distanced it even further from the family-friendly Jurassic Park franchise other than quality and budget, but it’s all a little too restrained to be the extreme and extremely silly B-movie it could and should have been. One tellingly funny scene has Greenblatt’s cute kid rescue a friendly dinosaur before it gets promptly ripped apart by others but that’s as knowingly nasty as it gets – we’re otherwise stuck with a makeshift family melodrama squeezed in between some mostly unscary scare sequences. Rather than build up genuine suspense, as writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods did in their breakout script for A Quiet Place, as writer-directors here they rely on an annoying overdose of jump scares, most of which cause yawns rather than jolts. In the slightly more involving final act, Beck and Woods lean further into the goofiness of their premise, as danger starts quite literally falling out of the sky, but it’s a case of too little, too late.

It’s not quite the toxic disaster it’s being treated as but 65 is nowhere near the giddy lark it should have been, crash-landing somewhere in the middle instead.

65 is out in UK and US cinemas on 10 March

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‘65’ Review: Adam Driver Battles Dinosaurs and Other Stone-Age Story Ideas in Derivative Thriller

'A Quiet Place' writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods direct a prehistoric adventure that feels like it's 65 million movies in the making.

By Todd Gilchrist

Todd Gilchrist

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Identifying the distant remains of the rest of their ship using a handful of relics from his technologically advanced culture, Mills and Koa make a difficult trek across terrain filled with quicksand, steam-filled geysers, life-threatening flora and a variety of dinosaur species. But even as they overcome each new hazard, a much bigger one appears: the asteroid that felled their ship is on a collision course with Earth. They soon find themselves in a race against the clock to get to the ship’s escape pod before either dying in a planet-leveling fireball or being eaten by a carnivorous reptile.

But those quiet moments also give the audience to wonder: so a humanlike species from another planet, armed with the technology for interstellar travel (not to mention laser guns and 3D GPS) came to Earth 65 million years ago, long before humankind existed — and the point is “just” that they’re trying to get back home? Seems like a long way to travel to go nowhere particularly meaningful.

That said, Beck and Woods make dinosaurs frightening for the first time in decades, thanks to some classic misdirection and staging that involves a lot of shadows to make the audience say “nope” when the characters decide to plumb further into them. If their filmmaking isn’t particularly inventive, the duo approach it with the same kind of sturdy proficiency they use when borrowing scenes or genre boilerplate to tell their stories. “A Quiet Place” worked because it gently tweaked a lot of familiar formulas and then director John Krasinski executed the whole thing with a workmanlike attention to detail; “65” doesn’t have the same core emotionality holding it together (this family is fractured, not fighting to stay together), but behind the cameras Beck and Woods merely service their ideas rather than strengthening them from the page.

At just 93 minutes, ”65” feels pleasantly diverting in competition with a glut of sequels that include “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “Creed III,” “Scream VI” and “John Wick Chapter 4” — not that anything in it is all that original. Then again, perhaps the reason it still falls short is because the idea of a standalone story seems too good to be true in an era of cinematic universes, especially given the fact that buried in its premise, before the title card even, is the idea there’s more than just our own to explore.

In which case, the best thing for “65” would be that no more installments follow, but if it proves a hit, audiences couldn’t possibly be that lucky. Who were Mills’ other passengers? Why was he transporting them? In what way do his “people” relate, genetically, or otherwise, to ordinary humans? These are all questions that you can see Sony salivating at the prospect of answering in a sequel or spinoff, but they all feel more intriguing without some sort of canonical answer. In which case, “65” is a film whose past feels like it was 65 million movies in the making, and its future depends on a several hundred millions in box office revenue. They best way to enjoy it is to let go of all that and be present.

Reviewed at Thalberg Screening Room, Los Angeles, March 9, 2023. MPA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 93 MIN.

Production: A Sony release of Columbia Pictures presentation of a Bron Creative, Raimi Prods., Beck Woods production. Producers: Sam Raimi, Deborah Liebling, Zainab Azizi, Scott Beck, Bryan Woods. Executive producers: Maryann Brandon, Doug Merrifield, Jason Cloth, Aaron L. Gilbert.
Crew: Directors, writers: Scott Beck & Bryan Woods. Camera: Salvatore Totino. Editors: Josh Schaeffer, Jane Tones. Music: Chris Bacon
With: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman.

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10 Mar 2023

Given they are the subject of the one-time biggest box-office hit in history ( Jurassic Park , naturally), it’s a wonder that Hollywood hasn’t embraced dinosaurs more. Bringing the wildest dreams of small children to life seems like an obvious win for blockbuster filmmakers looking for some paleontological pleasures at the picturehouse; special effects wizards like Ray Harryhausen and Phil Tippett once kept them alive in the cinematic imagination but these days, outside of the ongoing Jurassic series, big-screen dinosaurs are a rare beast.

Now, finally, comes this dino-disaster-movie from Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, who have — as with their script for A Quiet Place — sketched another simple but effective sci-fi premise: what if a spaceman from another world crash-landed on our planet, 65 million years ago, at the tail end of the Cretaceous Period? It’s a basic idea which reframes dinosaurs not as the terrible lizards of wonder that captivated young minds in science classes, but deadly, terrifyingly unknown aliens.

This is a very straightforward, efficient kind of blockbuster. Following some rather gloopy exposition back on his home planet which establishes him as a stock-in-trade Sad Dad, Adam Driver ’s Mills crash lands on Earth within ten minutes. There is so little flab here, it is almost skeletal: not counting the prehistoric beasties, there are only four speaking roles, and one of them doesn’t even speak English. That would be Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), Mills’ fellow survivor, quickly taking the role of surrogate daughter for his real one, who is suffering from an unspecified illness (we’ll call it ‘Character Motivation Syndrome’).

65 breaks no new ground. But it is a short, sharp, largely original studio movie.

In the spaceman-falling-to-a-planet-that-turns-out-to-be-ours setup, there are faint echoes of Planet Of The Apes , but Beck and Woods aren’t especially interested in making any kind of satirical commentary on our world, past or present. Instead the film lurches into a lean genre exercise, a survivalist thriller that occasionally draws from the filmmakers’ horror background. The sheer hostility of prehistoric nature means peril is always lurking, the experience always at some degree of stress.

It plays more or less as you might expect: there are problems that require solving; there is a journey requiring the characters to get from A to B; there is, unhelpfully, the odd Tyrannosaurus rex in between those two points. The dinosaurs are fun and frightening (even if — sorry, paleontologists! — none of them have feathers here), and while plot holes loom like falling asteroids, it is at the very least handsomely presented, blending epic landscape cinematography — including lush location shooting in Louisiana's Kisatchie National Forest — with solid, subtle CGI.

It’s also bound together by a typically compelling Adam Driver performance. As he did in three Star Wars films , Driver brings a thoughtfulness to his genre character even when the screenplay doesn’t, a humanistic approach that grounds the bombastic silliness around him. He shares an easy warmth with Greenblatt, too, despite their characters speaking different languages, her character having hailed from the "upper territories" of their home planet. They commit, admirably, to the project at hand.

65 breaks no new cinematic ground, upends no rules, challenges no clichés. But it is a short, sharp, largely original major studio movie, unbound to any franchise or intellectual property — at a time when such a concept is being threatened with extinction. Also, it has a T-Rex in it. Sometimes, that’s enough.

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’65’ review: adam driver fights dinosaurs in an underwhelming sci-fi actioner.

An astronaut from another planet and a little girl find themselves battling dinos on Earth 65 million years ago in this film from the writers of 'A Quiet Place.'

By Frank Scheck

Frank Scheck

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65 review: a simple, bare-bones sci-fi thriller

Adam Driver wears a futuristic spacesuit in 65.

“65 is a simple but effective sci-fi thriller that, thankfully, doesn't overstay its welcome.”

Adam Driver's committed lead performance
A lean 93-minute runtime
Several intense, clever action sequences
A messy, unpolished visual style
An overly familiar story

The new movie 65 is a refreshingly unambitious sci-fi blockbuster.

Written and directed by A Quiet Place writers Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the film is a straightforward, tight thriller that’s interested in little more than forcing its star, Adam Driver, to repeatedly fight a bunch of dinosaurs and other dangerous prehistoric creatures. The film employs no more visual effects than it absolutely needs, and it consistently makes strong use of its real-life environments and locations — most of which prove to be far more dangerous than they initially seem. In case its tight 93-minute runtime didn’t already make this clear: 65 doesn’t have any franchise aspirations, either.

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The film’s world-building is concise and efficiently delivered, and Beck and Woods’ screenplay doesn’t ever seem in danger of becoming obsessed with the kind of fictional minutiae or sci-fi gobbledygook that drag down so many other modern blockbusters. Its safeness and limited scope undoubtedly prevent 65 from rising to any truly great heights. However, there’s also something thrilling about the way 65 calls back to the days in which Hollywood’s sci-fi blockbusters could still be self-contained adventures that ask no more of their viewers than 90 minutes of their undivided attention.

As is alluded to by its title, 65 takes place around 65 million years ago and centers on Mills (Driver), a work-for-hire space pilot from a distant, technologically advanced planet. The film’s simple opening scene establishes Mills’ decision to take on a two-year transport mission in order to pay for the expensive medical treatments needed by his sick daughter, Nevine (Chloe Coleman). In its next scene, 65 catches up with Mills’ fateful mission as it’s upended by an asteroid field that damages Mills’ ship and sends him and his passengers crashing onto a nearby, uncharted terrestrial planet.

In the wake of the crash, Mills discovers that all but one of his cryogenically asleep passengers were killed by the destruction of his ship. Mills finds and wakes up the crash’s only other survivor, a young foreign girl named Koa (Ariana Greenblatt), who unfortunately doesn’t speak the same language as Driver’s skilled pilot. Determined to make sure that Koa gets back home safely, Mills takes her on a multiday journey to his ship’s escape vessel, which landed over a dozen kilometers away from where he and Koa ended up.

Along the way, Beck and Woods reveal that Mills hasn’t crash-landed on just any terrestrial planet, but Earth itself. Mills is, therefore, forced throughout his and Koa’s journey to use his scientifically advanced weaponry to fight off a wide range of deadly prehistoric creatures. In what likely won’t come as much of a surprise to anyone who has seen anything even remotely similar to 65 , Mills and Koa’s journey also results in the two characters gradually forming an intensely trusting, if unconventional, bond.

Despite what its dramatic opening title reveal would like you to believe, 65 is nowhere near as original as it thinks. Driver’s casting as Mills makes the film’s twist on a typical uncharted planet premise easy to accept, and 65 doesn’t have any more truly subversive tricks hidden up its sleeves. The film spends the bulk of its runtime following Mills and Koa as they encounter a series of dangerous creatures and obstacles over the course of their journey together. The film’s straightforward, obstacle-driven structure results in it feeling a bit repetitive in its second and third acts, which only makes the thinness of 65 ’s story feel that much more apparent at times.

There is, however, something uncomplicatedly thrilling about watching 65 ’s heroes come face-to-face with increasingly difficult challenges and still overcome them with their own brute force and intellect. There are moments throughout 65 in which Beck and Woods demonstrate the same knack for action storytelling that they did in A Quiet Place . That’s particularly true of one sequence in which Driver’s Mills is forced to fix his dislocated shoulder before a pack of dangerous, raptor-like dinosaurs get the chance to rip him and Koa apart.

Woods and Beck’s economical approach to 65 ’s story also allows the pair to make the most out of Mills’ various futuristic weapons. The duo often avoids relying on exposition by simply letting viewers watch Mills put his gadgets to use, as he does during one sequence in which he places a series of glowing markers around his and Koa’s camping spot. The character’s decision to place the markers where he does makes their purpose clear long before their yellow, pulsing lights turn red and Mills begins looking around in fear for any approaching creatures.

Beck and Woods’ visual style isn’t nearly as refined as their storytelling. There are numerous moments throughout 65 when the duo’s uneven mix of general coverage shots and dim lighting makes it difficult to maintain a clear sense of the film’s physical spaces. One underground showdown between Mills and an unidentified dinosaur is particularly confusing to watch due to both the overwhelming darkness throughout it and its lack of establishing wide shots. Beck and Woods bring much more control to some of 65 ’s other action sequences, but the duo’s visual style nonetheless comes across as disappointingly rough and messy during certain sections of the film.

Fortunately for it, 65 is luckier than most other Hollywood blockbusters because it’s led by Driver, a performer who is willing to bring the same level of commitment to films like 65 as he does to the more grounded dramas he typically stars in. Driver’s performance as Mills is so unsentimental and to the point that it ensures that the character’s rare moments of emotional vulnerability land with real force. In a way, the cut-and-dry nature of Driver’s performance is ultimately a reflection of 65 itself, a film that understands how even the most pared-down version of a story can still be compelling and entertaining if told with enough passion and focus.

65 is now playing in theaters.

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Violent, by-the-numbers sci-fi/dinosaur movie has gory bits.

65 Movie Poster: Adam Driver holds a weapon and looks alarm as a dinosaur lurks behind him

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Encourages selflessness: One character considers g

Both characters are strong and resourceful; they t

Four characters: Mills (Adam Driver), a White man,

Many are said to have died in cryosleep during cra

A few uses of "s--t." One use of "damn." A use of

Positive Messages

Encourages selflessness: One character considers giving up until he discovers that there's another person to think about.

Positive Role Models

Both characters are strong and resourceful; they take turns helping each other out of scrapes, working to overcome difficult odds.

Diverse Representations

Four characters: Mills (Adam Driver), a White man, is the central character. Young Koa is played by Ariana Greenblatt, who is of Puerto Rican heritage. Mills' wife (seen in prologue), played by Nika King, is Black. Their mixed-race daughter, Nevine, is played by Chloe Coleman, who is of African, Eastern European, and English descent. Mills' insistence on Koa learning English -- rather than trying to understand her language -- supports dominant power structures.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Violence & Scariness

Many are said to have died in cryosleep during crash-landing. Dead bodies lie in a swamp. Girl in peril. Main character shoots laser-like space gun. Splattering dinosaur blood. Explosions. Main character pulls metal shard out of bloody wound. Character attacked by small dinosaur; he bashes it to death with gun butt. Main character falls out of tree; painfully snapping dislocated shoulder back into place. Dinosaur stabbed with pointed tusk. Quicksand. Dinosaur corpse covered in blood and maggots. Burned, gory dinosaur corpse. Red-tinted water sloshing on ship. Fiery crash-landing. Dinosaurs attack and eat one another. Asteroids colliding with ship. Main character briefly considers death by suicide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

A few uses of "s--t." One use of "damn." A use of "oh God" while in pain.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that 65 is a sci-fi/dinosaur movie about a space traveler named Mills ( Adam Driver ) who crash-lands on primitive Earth and must battle dinosaurs to save his one surviving passenger, Koa ( Ariana Greenblatt ). Expect intense violence: Characters die (their bodies are shown), there's splattering dinosaur blood/gore, and Mills pulls a shard of metal out of his own bloody wound. Mills also shoots a space-laser gun at dinosaurs and bashes a small dinosaur to death with the butt of his gun. There are also explosions and falls from high places, and a character briefly considers death by suicide. A girl is sometimes in peril. Language includes a few uses of "s--t," plus "damn" and "oh God." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (6)
Kids say (10)

Based on 6 parent reviews

Dinosaurs look awesome

Decent popcorn flick but huge missed opportunity, what's the story.

In 65, astronaut Mills ( Adam Driver ), from the planet Somaris, agrees to a two-year trip through space, since the increased pay will help cover his daughter's medical expenses. Unfortunately, while he's in cryosleep, the ship is pelted with asteroids and forced to make a crash landing. Only Mills and young Koa ( Ariana Greenblatt ) survive. But somehow, they've ended up on Earth, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs roamed. Now they must hike 15 kilometers across a deadly landscape to find the only remaining escape pod. And there's another problem: The asteroid that hit their ship was only a small one.

Is It Any Good?

While this sci-fi/dinosaur movie is competently made, it really only has one good idea, and it doesn't do much with it. The rest is generic and familiar and fails to generate much suspense or emotion. The first thing viewers must accept in 65 is that there's another planet that has inhabitants who speak English and act just like Earth humans. After the crash, we get all the usual CGI dinosaur attacks and jump scares -- all very similar to what we've seen before in the many Jurassic Park / World movies. The screenplay -- following a beat-by-beat, three-act formula -- sets up all the elements it's going to use during the final payoff, and it's all noticeable because there's not much else to think about. But perhaps the oddest touch in this movie is the decision to have Koa speak a different language (she's from a different "district" than Mills). This leads to many scenes of Mills trying to force Koa to learn English words -- which she gamely does -- rather than him trying to understand what she's saying. It's all a bit of a drag, like Land of the Lost with the fun taken out. Ultimately, 65 leaves us feeling dino-sore.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about 65 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

How does the movie handle the difference in the languages that the characters speak? How does the language barrier affect the story?

How does the movie deal with grief?

Movie Details

In theaters : March 10, 2023
On DVD or streaming : May 2, 2023
Cast : Adam Driver , Ariana Greenblatt , Chloe Coleman
Directors : Scott Beck , Bryan Woods
Inclusion Information : Female actors
Studios : Sony Pictures , Columbia Pictures
Genre : Action/Adventure
Topics : Dinosaurs
Run time : 93 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : intense sci-fi action and peril, and brief bloody images
Last updated : July 29, 2023

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Review: There are ‘65’ million reasons to avoid the new Adam Driver dinosaur space flick

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If you asked the AI program ChatGPT to write a dinosaur/space movie as if Steven Spielberg and James Cameron were trying to make fun of each other, you’d probably still get something more entertaining than the thudding hack job “65,” a movie about as thrilling as watching footage of someone — in this case, Adam Driver and his young co-star, Ariana Greenblatt — on the “Jurassic Park” ride at Universal Studios .

The writers of “A Quiet Place” — Scott Beck and Bryan Woods — are clearly not done with monsters and family and the apocalypse. But this time, as directors too, they’ve decided to take us not forward but back, to when a routine trip went disastrously wrong. Think “Gilligan’s Island.” Not because it’s like “65.” Just because it’s more entertaining than “65.”

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The Times is committed to reviewing theatrical film releases during the COVID-19 pandemic . Because moviegoing carries risks during this time, we remind readers to follow health and safety guidelines as outlined by the CDC and local health officials .

Do you like introductory text that removes that nagging worry that you won’t be expositionally satisfied? Because “65” has that. “BEFORE THE ADVENT OF MANKIND” reads the first. “IN THE INFINITY OF SPACE” reads the next, which is, by the way, set against the backdrop of … space. Just so everything’s clear! And later, after a sentient audience will have guessed from the huge dinosaur footprint that exploratory mission pilot Mills (Driver) has been stranded on a particular planet at a very particular time, here come the words: “A VISITOR CRASH LANDED ON EARTH.” Yes, that “65” refers to the number of millions of years ago. Not, as one might hope, the number of minutes in the film.

Do you like stories about absent dads? Based on the movies, they seem to be an emotional connection between humanity’s meager time on Earth and social systems in long-ago galaxies. (“ChatGPT, add George Lucas in the mix.”) By taking one more gig, Driver’s character not only leaves behind an adoring wife but, more urgently, an adoring and ailing daughter (Chloe Coleman), whose hologram messages of love, longing and increasing sickness are like stabs to his heart as he’s trying to avoid dinosaur teeth stabbing everywhere else on his body. So, if you wanted to give him only one human companion to heighten that guilty-father feeling, out of all the possible cryogenically frozen passengers to survive an inconvenient ship crash, who would you pick? A grandmother? Wrong! “ChatGPT, are you familiar with ‘The Last of Us ’?”

A man carrying a weapon walks into a cave alongside a young woman

Do you like made-up tongues not translated because it’s cuter when an othered figure learns English? Maybe Beck and Woods just didn’t feel like writing dialogue for the girl, Koa (Greenblatt), that would help establish this child as a person beyond at first seeming like a feral creature and then a surrogate daughter. Dialogue is hard! So instead this poor character gets an untranslated language until she can trigger “aww’s” by learning the words “home” and “family” and, with stick figures, inventing cave art.

Do you think Adam Driver can do anything? He might have thought that too, when signing on for this.

Do you believe that dinosaurs have long since outlived their CGI-rendered ability to instill awe and terror? Because the filmmakers seem pretty convinced 172 “Jurassic Park” movies haven’t already been made. Sometimes that kind of innocence inspires reinvention. Sometimes it just means that once majestic, still mysterious and endlessly fascinating creatures begin to feel like faceless goons in a video game.

Do you occasionally wish that studios would run dank-looking movies that seem stripped of color through a Snapchat-like filter that would add bright, rainbow-hued tails, faces, starbursts, pizzazz-y augmentations and the like? I’m not saying there are quickie backlot black-and-white adventure movies from 90 years ago with more visual breadth, color range and compositional tension than “65,” but, OK, well, yes, I am saying that.

Is “65” a hall-of-fame bad movie? No, and that may be its problem. It’s just pedestrian dumb and dull. It drops humans from eons away and ago into an extinction-level event, and instead of being full-on weird and wondrous about it, prefers to be utterly imitative and complacent. Way to extinguish yourself.

'65'

Rated: PG-13, for intense sci-fi action and peril, and brief bloody images Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes Playing: In general release

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<i>65 </i>trailer: Adam Driver shoots a dinosaur with a space gun

65 trailer: Adam Driver shoots a dinosaur with a space gun

Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, and some dinos star in the new film from Sam Raimi and the writers of A Quiet Place

Adam Driver is <i>65</i>, or at least starring in a sci-fi movie called <i>65 </i>from the <i>Quiet Place </i>writers

Adam Driver is 65 , or at least starring in a sci-fi movie called 65 from the Quiet Place writers

According to Deadline , Adam Driver has lined up his next project—or at least his next project after several other …

65 (United States, 2023)

If all you’re looking for out of a movie is Adam Driver running around in a jungle shooting dinosaurs while protecting a young girl, 65 delivers in spades. If you’re hoping for something more complex, either in terms of character development, background narrative, or world-building, the movie has neither the time nor the patience to accommodate. The dino special effects are adequate for the job (better than in 1993’s Jurassic Park but inferior to those in the third installment of the Jurassic World series ) and Driver appears committed to the work. The running length is a svelte 93 minutes, meaning that 65 isn’t around long enough to wear out its welcome. By keeping its goals limited, it’s able to deliver what it promises, and that stands for something. I’ll admit I was more entertained by this high-concept sci-fi adventure than half the films I have seen thus far in 2023.

In their directorial debut, Scott Beck & Bryan Woods (the writers of A Quiet Place ) keep it simple. The plot could be the template for a video game: get the hero from Point A to Point B without dying. Along the way, there are various impediments that have to be overcome: rockslides, steam geysers, quicksand, and (of) course dinosaurs. 65 mixes in an Aliens - inspired subplot about a lone, grieving adult “adopting” and orphaned young girl. At no point, however, does Adam Driver say to any of the dinosaurs, “Get away from her, you bitch !”

One could argue that 65 is real throw-back – all the way back to the 1920s and 1930s, when monster movies could enthrall and amaze. The first two-thirds of King Kong , after all, focused on explorers wandering around a prehistoric jungle and encountering dinosaurs. 65 has all the advantages of modern technology but it’s not significantly more sophisticated than the movies of Willis O’Brien. This is the kind of production that provides a couple of memorable moments (the T-Rex “reveal,” which is spoiled by the trailers, being the most notable) but somehow seems smaller than it should. Maybe that’s because we have been trained to expect that a menagerie like this is appropriate only for epics while the most lofty goal 65 can claim is being a slickly-made B movie.

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‘65’ Is ‘The Last of Us’ With Adam Driver, Dinosaurs, and Zero Thrills

By David Fear

Attention, anyone who’s ever said they’d gladly watch Adam Driver in anything: You’re about to have that statement put to the test.

The “twist” is, Mills has actually landed on Earth during the Cretaceous Period, and those monsters are dinosaurs . The title refers to how many million years ago Mills landed on our big blue marble. It also happens to be a larger number than the amount of minutes it takes for you to completely lose your patience with this mess. Can’t that ominous comet they keep cutting to in the sky — you know the one — come any sooner?

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And even if 65 didn’t have the misfortune of coming on the heels of The Last of Us ’ first season, the idea of this father figure leading a surrogate daughter to safety doesn’t have quite the emotional drive here that it needs to either rocket past plot holes or the nagging sense of overfamiliarity. As for the Chariots of the Gods notion of “alien” visitors landing on our prehistoric shores with futuristic technology, any potential for exploiting that age-old myth in the name of B-movie thrills goes the way of the ammonites. It’s not schlocky enough to be so-bad-it’s-good and nowhere near good enough to be taken even a tiny bit seriously.

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'65' Review: Adam Driver Can Save You From Dinosaurs, But Not This Disaster of a Movie

Adam Driver fighting dinosaurs should be a winning action romp, but this lackluster film is destined to go extinct from your memory.

There is something remarkable about how completely 65 wastes all it had going for it. Taking Adam Driver , one of the best actors working today, and throwing him onto a prehistoric Earth where he has to fight dinosaurs seems like it could be a solid little action flick. Whoever it was that edited the film’s trailer together should be given a raise, as it made it seem like the final product might actually be a thrilling science fiction ride that could possibly even bring some notes of horror. Instead, what we got is a poorly constructed work doomed by its derivative and dull narrative core.

Though it is aggressively simple, 65 manages to become as lost as its characters as they wander through fields, woods, and caves without any momentum behind them. There are occasional glimpses of the fun that could have been had and Driver is never phoning it in, even as he has basically nothing to work with. The trouble is that it can’t overcome what proves to be an unimaginative experience that is further hampered by poor direction, writing, effects, and everything a film needs to hold together.

This all begins with on-screen text informing us of the necessary information to understand that our humanoid protagonist Mills (Driver) is actually part of an entirely different species than our own. Living on a planet that is far from Earth, he is about to take on a job that will whisk him away from his family for two years. As he prepares to say goodbye to his wife and daughter, who is in poor health of some kind, we learn he is doing this so that they can afford proper treatment. The fact that this species with the capacity to travel through space is still one where healthcare is not accessible to all is a grim prospect, but there is no interest in exploring this as it is all about getting the story in motion. Even then, it feels like it is stalling.

RELATED: The 10 Best Adam Driver Performances, Ranked

While 65 was never going to be a particularly heady work of science fiction, both the narrative underpinnings and their execution are so empty that everything increasingly rings hollow even as it incessantly hammers home the same superficial elements. The inciting incident is that the ship that Mills is piloting flies straight into an asteroid field. This happens while he is asleep, and they subsequently crash down to Earth, their ship breaking into two parts. The only other surviving passenger of the many in cryosleep is the young Koa ( Ariana Greenblatt ), who Mills must then protect as they travel to the other part of the ship they hope to use to escape.

A narrative built around traveling from point A to point B could work to keep the emphasis on the action. After all, the selling point of the experience is getting to see Driver take on various dinos. Much like the recent Jurassic World sequel, that is not something that 65 sufficiently capitalizes on. Further, the déjà vu that is felt when it too becomes oddly fixated on bugs does it absolutely no favors. What should have been a stripped-down story is made into an overwrought and ambling film where the staging of the action ensures that it only rarely carries any actual weight.

From the first moment Mills encounters one of his few dinosaur foes as he goes out to get his bearings, the effects are painfully unconvincing no matter how much Driver dutifully rolls around. This becomes a persistent problem that the film will occasionally get around by using darkness as a cover, but that can only go so far. They are often bigger than the dinosaurs in something like Jurassic Park , but the way it integrates them into the story just falls flat. Those effects have aged better because they aren’t just built around throwing a lot at the screen, but about being more precise in how they are used. The longer that 65 drags on, the more it reveals it lacks anything approaching a creative vision.

Take when Mills and Koa are attacked under a tree, the first truly dangerous encounter the two have. Rather than feel tense, they just seem disconnected from the supposedly approaching creatures. We know from the cutting back and forth that they are getting closer, though we are never given a shot to establish the distance that is being closed. It leans on the committed performance of Driver to convey the character’s panic, but we never feel it in the way the scene is constructed. Not once do you ever think that either of them are in any real danger, no matter how much the film tries to insist that they are. Whenever they are just on the verge of being in actual trouble, they get saved at the last possible second. It robs the film of any sense of stakes, making it hard to actually care about any of the subsequent escalations it throws out. Making matters worse is that the back-and-forth the characters have is all painfully one-note. Much of this stems from how Koa speaks a language that Mills does not understand, essentially reducing her to being a surrogate daughter with no depth that she gets on her own. Greenblatt gives it her all, but she is fighting an uphill battle from start to finish.

All of this could be forgiven if the film were actually fun in how it played around with its premise. It was never going to be a masterpiece by any means, but it is bizarre just how boring it all feels. The main event of it all, Driver fighting a T-rex, is something the film teases for all its worth before it unfolds in the conclusion. This proves to be disappointing as, after all this wait, the sequence just doesn’t feel worth it and passes rather quickly. Once more, the persistent problem is how disconnected the two adversaries are and how poorly staged the entire thing remains. When you then look back on the entire experience, it is fascinating how fleeting it is and how little of an impact it all leaves. Though there are movies that are worse than 65 , it is part of a select few that manage to utterly and completely squander their own potential.

65 is in theaters now.

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DVD & Streaming
Action/Adventure , Drama , Sci-Fi/Fantasy , Thriller

Content Caution

In Theaters

March 10, 2023
Adam Driver as Mills; Ariana Greenblatt as Koa; Chloe Coleman as Nevine; Nika King as Alya

Home Release Date

April 7, 2023
Scott Beck; Bryan Woods

Distributor

Sony Pictures Releasing

Movie Review

Business trips are just the worst. Just ask Mills.

The originally scheduled trip was bad enough: a two-year interplanetary journey, shuttling a bunch of cryogenically suspended passengers on an “exploratory mission.” Two years is a long time to be away, especially when you have a critically ill daughter back home. But how else is Mills going to afford his daughter’s treatment? Health care is apparently not any cheaper on Mills’ home planet of Somaris than it is here.

Yes, if everything went as planned, the job would’ve still been lacking. But you know how trips are: weather delays, unscheduled maintenance, your occasional killer asteroid storm. Mills’ ship was hit by the latter, sending it careening off course and crash-landing on some strange, green and insanely deadly world.

Half of the ship—the part that Mills is attached to—landed in a fetid swamp. The rest—including the ship’s only still-working escape pods—now sits on a big ol’ mountain, a good 10 miles away. And while 10 miles might not sound like a long way, it is when the crash pretty much sounded the dinner gong for the surrounding fauna.

Oh, and when you’re babysitting a 9-year-old girl.

That girl would be Koa, the only other survivor. And just to add to the degree of difficulty, she doesn’t speak English. (Though one wonders why Mills, coming from the planet Somaris and all, is so fluent in it.) Her parents are dead, though she doesn’t know it just yet. The planet seems to want her dead, too—which is soon made very clear.

Mills and Koa will have to cross jungles and rivers, avoid poisonous berries and insidious parasites, fight small dinosaurs, big dinosaurs and positively gargantuan dinosaurs.

And that asteroid shower? It’s heading their way, too. Y’know, just to make things interesting.

But at least Mills didn’t fly coach.

Positive Elements

When Mills realizes the predicament that he’s in, he’s ready to just give up. But when Mills learns that someone else has survived the crash, too, he does his very best to get he and the girl back home. He’s not always the most touchy-feely of protectors, but he is a ferocious one. Slowly, he begins to treat Koa a little like his own surrogate daughter.

Koa, meanwhile, proves to be perhaps even more brave than her brave protector. Understandably, she’s a little unnerved when she saves a dino cub from a perilous tar pit, only to see it devoured by predators a mere 90 seconds later. But once she understands that pretty much everything on the planet would like to eat her, Koa becomes surprisingly resourceful. She also rescues Mills a time or two—and given that she’s 9 years old, that’s pretty impressive. When my kids were 9, they didn’t even save me ice cream.

Spiritual Elements

Twenty minutes or so in, we learn that Mills and Koa have crash-landed on prehistoric Earth: The movie’s title, 65 , comes from the fact that this is Earth from 65 million years ago, and obviously evolution is implied.

Sexual Content

Violent content.

Herbivores are about as common as accredited universities in this prehistoric world of 65 , and the bevy of meat-hungry dinosaurs must’ve been thrilled at the prospect of eating something besides each other.

They do eat each other, by the way: Raptor-like dinos swarm over a sweet-but-limping bit of immature prey (though, given the teeth on the thing, that dino likely would’ve grown up on a nice diet of meat, too, so perhaps it was a preemptive strike). Lizard-like beasts catch and kill pterodactyl-like beasts.

And all have their big, beady eyes focused on Mills and Koa—attacking them at every opportunity. One of the most disturbing critters to attack actually does its work from the inside . (We see the thing when the victim’s mouth is opened. If it was sentient, it surely would be cackling with malicious glee.)

Mills responds to most of these threats with a nifty energy blaster, which gorily blows apart the smaller dinosaurs and perforates the bigger ones. He and Koa also use tiny marble-like explosive devices to dispatch a few monsters. Koa poisons a massive fang (or horn) she finds and stabs a Tyrannosaurus-like dinosaur right in the eye socket. (It’s pretty impressive, really, that she can even lift the thing.) Mills smashes a much smaller dino repeatedly with his weapon.

But those aren’t the only dangers to beset the pair or their would-be predators. Geysers prove to be dangerous (and telltale dinosaur bones beside one indicates that they’re sometimes lethal). Tar pits can mire the unsuspecting in its gooey folds. Quicksand—a peril that I’ve not seen on screen since Gilligan’s Island —nearly kills one of our human heroes.

And, of course, one must not forget the asteroid shower, which includes a huge one that pretty much (according to many scientists) ended the age of the dinosaurs forever. Add the dino fatality count after that big event, and we’re looking at a pretty huge number.

As mentioned, Mills’ ship crashes, which claimed the lives of 30-some passengers. While they hope they were sleeping when they slipped the surly bonds of earth, we do see their dead bodies lying about in a swamp. Mills is injured in the crash, too; he yanks a piece of metal from his midsection and painfully sprays it with a coolant. (It continues to cause him periodic discomfort throughout.) He also dislocates a shoulder, and sprains an ankle, and falls from a big tree, and is bitten by a very nasty dino and nearly perishes in a crumbling cave (as does Koa). It’s surprising he wasn’t beset by killer bees (though he does gorily crush a huge insect or two).

Koa, meanwhile, was burned in the crash (an injury that Mills treats), and she’s yanked around by a dinosaur by the hair, which can’t be fun. We also hear that someone has died (back on Somaris, Mills’ home planet).

Crude or Profane Language

Mills swears on occasion: three s-words and one use of the word “d–n.” Koa is blissfully unaware of these linguistic missteps, though we English/Somarian speakers in the audience are not.

Drug and Alcohol Content

None. Not surprising, given the lack of taverns in the region.

Other Negative Elements

Despite the language barrier between Mills and Koa, Mills still manages to lie to Koa—communicating to her that her parents are alive and well with the other half of the ship. Even at 9, you’d think Koa would be a little suspicious, given the state of the other half of the ship and, y’know, the dead bodies there and stuff. But perhaps children are more trusting on Somaris.

The critter that sneaks inside someone’s body causes that person to kinda vomit/froth at the mouth.

The movie 65 is not destined to go down as an all-time sci-fi classic. Despite the always-interesting presence of Adam Driver in, um, the driver’s seat, this turn-back-the-clock thriller ultimately boasts more plot holes than asteroid craters, and that’s saying something.

But while 65 has problems, it doesn’t lack heart. This quasi father-daughter story is sweet in its own way. And except for a rather surprising amount of dino-blood and guts, 65 plays it surprisingly clean.

Adam Driver’s latest sci-fi thriller is a B movie, plain and simple. But 65 does tell us that the love of a father and daughter—even if they’re not actually related—can defeat dinosaurs, asteroids and everything in between.

And that message is T-rex-eriffic.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Review: 65 could have been a cheeky sci-fi dinosaur film, instead it's a meteoric flop

A potentially great popcorn flick ends up being an overproduced and derivative 90 minutes, with a cast too stellar for their own good.

Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt star in 65. All photos: Sony Pictures

Right from the outset, the premise to 65 seems so outrageous that it might actually be good. After all, who doesn’t want to watch Adam Driver dash across a prehistoric Earth blasting dinosaurs with a sonic rifle?

Unfortunately, the film quickly flatlines due to its grave tone, heavy-handed delivery of worn science-fiction tropes and inability to lean into its preposterous plot. What could have been a great popcorn flick ends up being an overproduced and derivative 90 minutes, with a cast too stellar for the film’s own good.

Warning: the rest of the article contains spoilers.

Released in UAE cinemas on Thursday, 65 tells the story of Mills (Driver), an astronaut from an advanced alien civilisation who crash lands on Earth about 65 million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the planet.

Directors: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods

Stars: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman

Rating: 2/5

Don’t worry, this isn’t a Planet of the Apes- type twist and we haven’t given anything away. The film makes clear from the beginning that the strange and unchartered planet that Mills’s ship crashes to is Earth. While it’s probably a good thing that 65 didn’t keep its location a secret for long, the fact that it’s revealed in a text at the start of the film is a bit callow. But that’s fine. We’re not here for a masterclass in scriptwriting, right? Bring on Driver and the dinosaurs.

But first, we have to toil through 10 minutes of arduous exposition.

Mills is on a beach on his home planet with his wife, Alya (Nika King) and daughter Nevine (Chloe Coleman). We learn that the astronaut is taking up a two-year expeditionary mission with the aim of paying for a treatment that could save his daughter's life. Further details of her sickness aren't disclosed, but that doesn't take away from the plot.

The film feels as if the cameras began rolling while a first draft of the script had barely been completed. Photo: Sony Pictures

This fact could easily have been revealed later in the film, through one of many scenes where Mills is watching old messages from his family on mobile holographic technology. A more exciting beginning, and one that would have added a much-needed layer of mystery, would have been to simply start off where he wakes up as his ship is on the verge of being bombarded by a cluster of unmapped asteroids that send him off course and on to Earth.

The impact kills almost all the ship’s passengers, save for a young girl, Koa. Portrayed by Ariana Greenblatt, Koa is every bit the archetypal doe-eyed, silent companion with which sci-fi is replete. She speaks a language that Mills doesn’t understand and ends up only parroting a few words here and there. Really, she seems to exist only as a foil to Driver’s character, giving him a reason to find an escape shuttle that went astray as his ship plummeted towards Earth, and helping him come to terms with the loss of his daughter.

Koa, played by Ariana Greenblatt, is every bit the archetypal doe-eyed, silent companion commonly found in sci-fi. Photo: Sony Pictures

While you can’t really torch a sci-fi film with dinosaurs for lacking emotional and scriptwriting depth, it really does feel like the cameras began rolling while a first draft was barely penned. But who cares, as long as the dinosaurs and the action scenes are on point, right?

Ah, the dinosaurs. Well, this is no Jurassic Park. There is no Spielberg sense of awe or terror when we first come across the monumental creatures. The special effects are nothing to write home about either.

Some of the dinosaur encounters are fun, but every cliff-hanger ends up almost immediately being a stairstep. Again, another few drafts of the script would possibly have salvaged the film, along with a more imaginative ending, but by the time Mills and Koa manage to shuttle off the planet, minutes before the asteroid comes down to wipe out the dinosaurs with surprising, lacklustre glory, you may have long jetted out of the cinema yourself.

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Movie Review: The colossal melancholy of Ceylan’s ‘About Dry Grasses’

This image released by Janus and Sideshow Films shows a scene from “About Dry Grasses.” (Sideshow and Janus Films via AP)

This image released by Janus and Sideshow Films shows, from left, Merve Dizdarin, Deniz Celiloğlu and Musab Ekici in a scene from “About Dry Grasses.” (Sideshow and Janus Films via AP)

This image released by Janus and Sideshow Films shows Deniz Celiloğlu, left, and Musab Ekici in a scene from “About Dry Grasses.” (Sideshow and Janus Films via AP)

This image released by Janus and Sideshow Films shows Merve Dizdarin, left, and Deniz Celiloğlu, left, and Musab Ekici in a scene from “About Dry Grasses.” (Sideshow and Janus Films via AP)

This image released by Janus and Sideshow Films shows Merve Dizdarin a scene from “About Dry Grasses.” (Sideshow and Janus Films via AP)

This image released by Janus and Sideshow Films shows, from left, Deniz Celiloğlu, Musab Ekici and Merve Dizdar in a scene from “About Dry Grasses.” (Sideshow and Janus Films via AP)

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Nuri Bilge Ceylan makes long films , by movie standards, but short ones by Russian literature standards.

There may be no filmmaker more consciously working in a novelistic tradition. The Turkish director counts reading “Crime and Punishment” as a formative experience. His Palme d’Or-winning 2014 film “Winter Sleep” adapted a pair of Chekhov short stories. But regardless of any direct correlations, Ceylan’s films — colossal, existential, talky — reach for (and often attain) an enveloping vastness that recalls those big 19th century books. He sets thorny stories peppered with prickly philosophical questions against expansive landscapes. His films don’t burrow into you, you burrow into them.

Ceylan’s latest, “About Dry Grasses,” bears a name that — like his “The Wild Pear Tree” or “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” — would do well as a parody arthouse title. The opening — in which a dark figure, seen from afar, steps off a bus onto a snow-blanketed plain on the Eastern Anatolian steppes — is likewise not hiding its tone of solemnity.

Our solitary man is Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu), who, like Paul Giamatti’s protagonist in “The Holdovers,” is a snobbish, misanthropic educator in a malcontented winter. Countless movies like “The Holdovers” have conditioned us to feel an automatic sympathy for such teacher characters, but doubts steadily accrue about Samet.

FILE - American director Francis Ford Coppola, center, carries his daughter Sofia, 8, through the crowd after the formal presentation of the U.S. film "Apolalypse Now", at the Cannes International Film Festival in France on May 19, 1979. His son Gian Carlo, 15, and his wife Ellie are left. Coppola is back at Cannes with his latest film "Megalopolis." (AP Photo/Jean-Jacques Levy, File)

He’s not especially friendly with his colleague and roommate Kenan (Musab Eki̇ci̇). When he’s reluctantly set up for tea with a fellow teacher, Nuray (an exceptional Merve Dizdar, winner of best actress at Cannes ), from a nearby village, he mostly moans about the backwardness of their rural region. His four-year term is nearly up, and he says he’s bound for Istanbul. At school, Samet styles himself as a less rule-bound teacher, looking down on some of his colleagues. But he’s no inspiring leader to his young students, either. “None of you will become artists,” he says in one rant.

Later, Samet will ask: “Does everyone have to be a hero?” He, certainly, is more of the anti-hero variety, but he’s also one of the most complicated main characters I’ve seen in years. He’s quite bitter, particularly after the student he has the warmest relationship with — Sevim (Ece Bağci) — accuses him of inappropriate behavior. She does it as a way to get back at him for concealing a love letter she wrote that was confiscated. He appears to be innocent, but there’s also something unmistakably intimate about their interactions. He gives her discrete gifts and and purposefully leaves the door open when she visits his office.

Samet is investigated for not “respecting distance” with Sevin and her classmates, a somewhat ironic charge given that Samet, a sour pessimist, seems to be keeping himself at a distance to most everything. “About Dry Grasses” tracks the investigation of Samet, yet it hinges more on his relationship with Nuray.

She bears a limp, a result of a suicide bombing during a protest in Ankara. In the film’s centerpiece scene, they spar over dinner in an extended dialogue about politics. She has fight and spirit still in her, and believes in the benefits of community. Samet is more hopeless and jaded, a quality that attracts Nuray, almost against her wishes. Not because she agrees with Samet but because she fears, maybe, that he’s right.

Ceylan has a knack for prolonging such debates in his films past their natural end point, turning the exchanges into something that can feel too dryly essayist. But it also may be his nature to bring a film to the very brink of philosophical quandary. In “About Dry Grasses,” he goes a step further with a fourth-wall flourish at the height of Samet and Nuray’s conversation. Why, at this point, does Ceylan insert a stark reminder that this is a movie? Is it his own Samet-like withdraw or a sudden flash of candid revelation?

Either way, it goes to the heart of Ceylan as a filmmaker. Far from just a bookish movie director, he has adopted many of cinematic modes of his heroes, Tarkovsky and Bergman, and translated them into his own unique and still evolving vernacular. As much as Russian literature may be a foundation for him, his movies are richly of Turkey. There are aspects of “About Dry Grasses” — the ID-checking police, the sexist bureaucrats in the school system — that place the Samet-Nuray dichotomy in a social context that has surely shaped them.

There’s a profound, unresolvable melancholy to “About Dry Grasses” that’s hard to shake. It’s not just that Nuray is better than Samet — though she certainly is. It’s the sad tragic quality to Samet. He takes photographic portraits that appear at moments in the film. Ceylan, too, was a still photographer. It’s hard to wonder — especially in thinking about that metafiction moment — how much he identifies with Sevim. But I wouldn’t trust any one reading of “About Dry Grasses,” even my own. It contains too many multitudes for that.

“About Dry Grasses,” a Janus Films release, is not rated PG by the Motion Picture Association. In Turkish with English subtitles. Running time: 197 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

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COMMENTS

65 movie review & film summary (2023)
You'd think a movie in which Adam Driver fights a bunch of dinosaurs couldn't possibly be boring, but that's exactly what "65" is.. This is a movie that would have benefitted from being a whole lot stupider. The big-budget sci-fi flick—which reportedly cost $91 million to make and was featured in a Super Bowl ad—should have embraced its inherent B-movie roots.
65
36% Tomatometer 128 Reviews 65% Audience Score 1,000+ Verified Ratings After a catastrophic crash on an unknown planet, pilot Mills (Adam Driver) quickly discovers he's actually stranded on ...
'65' Review: What on Earth?
Watch on. I don't mean the movie; that would be unkind. "65," directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods (two writers of the first "Quiet Place" film), is not interesting enough to be truly ...
65
Full Review | Original Score: C | Aug 9, 2023. Manuel São Bento InSession Film. 65 is as unimaginative and predictable as anticipated, only even less entertaining and far more bland. Adam Driver ...
65 (2023)
65: Directed by Scott Beck, Bryan Woods. With Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Nika King. An astronaut crash lands on a mysterious planet only to discover he's not alone.
65 review
65 review - Adam Driver v dinosaurs in almost fun enough thriller. A scrappy adventure, shot two years ago and getting unceremoniously dumped, isn't as bad as its backstory would suggest but ...
65 (2023)
65 (2023) is a movie that my wife and I saw in theaters this evening. The storyline follows a pilot on a research voyage whose ship runs into an unforeseen asteroid belt and crashes on Earth 65 million years ago. Most of the crew doesn't survive the crash except one little girl who doesn't speak English.
65 Review
65 Review Adam Driver shoots a bunch of dinosaurs like any good father would. ... 65 Movie Photos. 8 Images. Verdict. 65 is a capable action-thriller with a softer side when it comes to its family ...
'65' Review: Adam Driver Battles Dinosaurs in Derivative Thriller
Crew: Directors, writers: Scott Beck & Bryan Woods. Camera: Salvatore Totino. Editors: Josh Schaeffer, Jane Tones. Music: Chris Bacon. With: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman. In '65 ...
65
Mixed or Average Based on 27 Critic Reviews. 40. 11% Positive 3 Reviews. 59% Mixed 16 Reviews. 30% Negative 8 Reviews. All Reviews ... for sure, but some terrific GGI monsters, swampy scares and Driver's committed performance make 65 a snap-toothed popcorn multiplex movie which, at 93 minutes, is sprightly in comparison with its lumbering ...
65 Review
65 Review. After an asteroid collision, astronaut Mills (Adam Driver) crash lands on Earth — 65 million years ago. Together with the only other survivor, a young girl named Koa (Greenblatt ...
'65' Review: Adam Driver vs. Dinosaurs in Underwhelming Sci-Fi
65. The Bottom Line A middling throwback creature feature. Release date: Friday, March 10. Cast: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman, Nika King. Directors-screenwriters: Scott Beck ...
65 review: a simple, bare-bones sci-fi thriller
A lean 93-minute runtime. Several intense, clever action sequences. Cons. A messy, unpolished visual style. An overly familiar story. The new movie 65 is a refreshingly unambitious sci-fi ...
65 Movie Review
Parents need to know that 65 is a sci-fi/dinosaur movie about a space traveler named Mills (Adam Driver) who crash-lands on primitive Earth and must battle dinosaurs to save his one surviving passenger, Koa (Ariana Greenblatt).Expect intense violence: Characters die (their bodies are shown), there's splattering dinosaur blood/gore, and Mills pulls a shard of metal out of his own bloody wound.
'65' review: Not hall-of-fame bad, just dumb and dull
Review: There are '65' million reasons to avoid the new Adam Driver dinosaur space flick. Adam Driver in the movie "65.". If you asked the AI program ChatGPT to write a dinosaur/space ...
65
65 Review. Mar 10, 2023 - Adam Driver ... Mar 9, 2023 - Beck & Woods explain how movie magic transported Adam Driver back to the time of dinosaurs. 65. 21. 0:30. Feb 10, 2023.
65 (film)
65 is a 2023 American science fiction film written and directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, ... It grossed $60 million worldwide on a budget of $45-$57 million, and received mixed reviews from critics. Plot. Sixty-five million years ago, on the planet Somaris, pilot Mills is convinced by his wife that he should take on a two-year space ...
65 (2023) (C)
65 trailer: Adam Driver shoots a dinosaur with a space gun Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, and some dinos star in the new film from Sam Raimi and the writers of A Quiet Place By
65
65 's perspective is interesting as it presents a visitation by human aliens to the last hours of the Cretaceous Period. One of the film's small pleasures is the way it presents a porthole into the world of the dinosaurs on the final day of their existence. The movie ends with The Big One colliding with the planet but we're given plenty ...
'65' Is 'The Last of Us' With Adam Driver, Dinosaurs, and Zero Thrills
movie review '65' Is 'The Last of Us' With Adam Driver, Dinosaurs, and Zero Thrills Not even this movie star's broad shoulders can carry this curiously inept excuse for a high-concept ...
'65' Review: Adam Driver Can't Save You From This Disaster
Read our review of '65,' a science fiction action movie where Adam Driver fight dinosaurs on prehistoric Earth.
65
The movie 65 is not destined to go down as an all-time sci-fi classic. Despite the always-interesting presence of Adam Driver in, um, the driver's seat, this turn-back-the-clock thriller ultimately boasts more plot holes than asteroid craters, and that's saying something. But while 65 has problems, it doesn't lack heart. This quasi father ...
Review: 65 could have been a cheeky sci-fi dinosaur film, instead it's
65. Directors: Scott Beck, Bryan Woods. Stars: Adam Driver, Ariana Greenblatt, Chloe Coleman. Rating: 2/5. Don't worry, this isn't a Planet of the Apes- type twist and we haven't given anything away. The film makes clear from the beginning that the strange and unchartered planet that Mills's ship crashes to is Earth.
65 Trailer #1 (2023)
Check out the official trailer for 65 starring Adam Driver & Ariana Greenblatt! Buy Tickets on Fandango: https://www.fandango.com/65-2023-230571/movie-over...
Movie Review: The colossal melancholy of Ceylan's 'About Dry Grasses'
Movie Review: The colossal melancholy of Ceylan's 'About Dry Grasses'. Nuri Bilge Ceylan makes long films, by movie standards, but short ones by Russian literature standards. There may be no filmmaker more consciously working in a novelistic tradition. The Turkish director counts reading "Crime and Punishment" as a formative experience.

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Review: There are ‘65’ million reasons to avoid the new Adam Driver dinosaur space flick