Three new movies this week each feature a badass female protagonist going up against vicious, amoral enemies: dinosaurs, cannibals, and, worst of all, corrupt health care companies. One probably rings a bell, since it’s the seventh (!) entry in a nearly thirty-year-old franchise and features one of Hollywood’s biggest stars in the lead. The other two center on women who are rawer and more ragged, desperate beyond measure to protect their families from the depredations of a violent and uncaring world, and are scrappy, rough-edged genre films. Guess which ones are more interesting?

Technically, I suppose, Jurassic World: Rebirth is a genre film, too, but only in the way that an increasing share of studio films in the post-Jaws era qualify nominally as genre films. But it’s really a product, an attempt by a major corporation to cater to the perceived tastes of a wide spectrum of American moviegoers. Realizing that the dinomania invigorated by Steven Spielberg back in 1996 with the original Jurassic Park has waned, screenwriter David Koepp (who adapted Michael Crichton’s novel for Spielberg) and director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) have crafted a stand-alone entry. This follows the recent, generally unsatisfying trend of “from the world of” franchise entries, movies like the recent Ballerina that try to balance the familiarity of a cinematic universe (in that case, the John Wick one) with viewers’ increasing fatigue at having to track all the developments in previous chapters to fully enjoy the latest. (Call this Marvelitis.)

So, instead of Laura Dern and Sam Neill, or Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, we have Scarlett Johansson as Zora Bennett, a hyper-skilled mercenary who’s hired by an evil capitalist (Rupert Friend) to retrieve blood from three different dinosaurs in order to concoct a potentially miraculous cure for heart disease. (Sorry, backstory: having escaped their park confines, the de-extincted lizards have lived among humanity for years, gradually pushed by environment and conflict to a narrow, Mesozoic-friendly band of latitude that’s been declared off-limits to Homo sapiens.) Johannson puts together a team, as one does, that includes a dorkily handsome paleontologist (Jonathan Bailey of Bridgerton), a skilled boat captain (Mahershala Ali), and assorted redshirts.

On their way to the island of Saint-Hubert, they encounter a family whose transatlantic sailing expedition has been rudely interrupted by a pod of Mosasaurs. Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), his two daughters (Luna Blaise and Audrina Miranda), and the older girl’s boyfriend (David Iacono) join the party, but are soon separated from the pros after being shipwrecked on this Island of Misfit Sauropods. From there, the narrative takes two tracks: Zora’s amorality starts to erode as she witnesses Big Pharma’s ruthlessness in pursuit of this trillion-dollar drug, while the Delgados wander the jungle, bumping into various menaces and thrilling to sights accompanied by an almost wan version of John Williams’ iconic score. While members of the expedition can and do get chomped on, the civilians are encumbered by suspense-deadening plot armor: there’s no way any of them, even the lackadaisical boyfriend, aren’t going to make it out of this alive.

Because tyrannosaurs, brontosaurs, and velociraptors are passe these days, the back of the dinosaur field guide gets cracked open, and I’ll leave it to the science nerds to gauge the accuracy of the depictions of Titanosaurus, Quetzalcoatlus, and the adorable baby Aquilops. (One of the movie’s few good jokes is its vision of a world where dinosaurs walk the earth but nobody really cares anymore, encapsulated in a scene where a huge, plodding plant-eater has collapsed in the middle of a city, but to most folks it’s just a traffic annoyance.) Most outrageously, the Big Bad is a “D. Rex” that, as we see in an opening flashback, escaped from a lab on Saint-Hubert five years earlier. The D stands for Distortus, and the creature is a six-limbed, hypercephalic monstrosity resulting from genetic experimentation, prompting the same mixture of disgust and sympathy as the Rancor in The Return of the Jedi.

Jurassic World: Rebirth would have been far more entertaining if it was a worse movie. Skimming along on bare competence, it plucks familiar notes (and not just Williams’) as it half-heartedly tries to rekindle the sense of awe that Spielberg conjured and that the series has been chasing ever since. The whole thing feels decidedly unnecessary, like one of those films that gets made just so a studio doesn’t lose the rights to the underlying IP. The most dispiriting part is Johansson’s presence. She’d been managing, up until a few years ago, to balance her high-profile work as Black Widow in the Avengers films with challenging independent roles in films such as Under the Skin and Marriage Story. Now, it seems like all she does is ensemble work for Wes Anderson and mediocre multiplex fare like this film. Perhaps some of that energy has gone into her directorial debut, Eleanor the Great, which premiered to mixed reviews at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. If so, maybe we’ll see Johansson stretch the acting muscles that we know she has again in the future. She’s better than this. (Wide release)

40 Acres: Hailey Freeman, the ferocious matriarch played by Danielle Deadwyler in 40 Acres, is also dealing with a world transformed by science. In her case, global warming has led to series of crises culminating in a global famine, making, as the opening scrawl relates, “farmland the most valuable resource on Earth.” Hailey and the rest of the Freeman clan (the surname is no coincidence) are descended from escaped American slaves who fled to Canada in the 19th century. Now, she, her husband (Michael Greyeyes), and their kids live in an isolated farmhouse-cum-fortress, where they practice the deadly skills needed to repel the near-constant stream of interlopers looking to conquer their cornfields. An early sequence showcases just how brutal they’ve become, the youngest children no exception. It’s a bleak world, and Hailey’s unrelenting isolationism is only tempered by the shortwave radio contact she has with other outposts in the area, allies to whom she refuses aid when they come under attack. Her oldest son, Emanuel (Kataem O’Connor), however, chafes at the notion that the outside world is unremittingly evil, especially after he sneaks away to a nearby swimming hole and spies an attractive young woman (Milcania Diaz-Rojas) who lives in a nearby outpost. That encounter upsets, for better or worse, the equilibrium that Hailey has obsessively preserved and leads to a final showdown with one of the bands of cannibals that rove the Canadian countryside.

Sponsor

This is director and co-writer R. T. Thorne’s first feature, and it’s better at world-building than storytelling. Deadwyler is excellent, transporting the stoic rage of her acclaimed turn in Till to an even more harrowing environment than the Jim Crow era. The title, of course, is a reference to the famous but reneged promise of land grants made to freed slaves by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1865, and Thorne makes a good “termite art” effort to smuggle racial and political themes into a bloody, post-apocalyptic thriller, but the execution is uneven. Not for nothing is the entire Freeman clan composed of people of color, while the zombie-like attackers are generally redneck-coded. The waves of violence eventually grow tiresome, although there is one great shootout set in a completely dark room illuminated only by muzzle flashes. As a metaphor for Black self-sufficiency vis-à-vis self-segregation, it makes its points early on, then lets the stabby-shooty stuff dominate down the stretch, including some unpleasantly masochistic moments. (Living Room Theaters, Regal Fox Tower)

The G: G is for Granny (Dale Dickey), the craggy-faced, 72-year-old victim of elder abuse in director Karl R. Hearne’s second feature, which he says in the film’s press notes is based on his own grandmother’s experiences. G is also for Guns, and Gore, and Getting Even. G (real name Ann Hunter) lives unhappily with her wheelchair-bound husband, drinking her way through retirement while caring for him. Her only friend, it seems, is her granddaughter Emma (Romane Denis), who attends knitting circles with her and admires her Grit and Gumption. Ann and her husband are targeted by a company that finds old, asset-rich people on the verge of incapacity and gets itself appointed their legal guardian. It then essentially kidnaps them and forces them to live in one of its care facilities, draining their bank accounts to pay for it.

When Emma discovers that The G has gone missing, she sets out to extricate her from this truly abhorrent predicament. Unknown to both Emma and the bad guys, however, The G has a few tricks up her sleeve, most of which derive from her criminal past and nefarious family connections. This is where the film shifts from a social-problem drama to a bloody revenge thriller that qualifies for the Charles Bronson seal of approval. That’s to say that the sudden, lethal violence doled out by the faceless goons of the corporation is eventually matched by The G and the backup she calls in from Texas. Do actual nursing home chains resort to burying elderly men alive or execution-style killings to hide their misdeeds? Maybe, maybe not, but you know that some of them would if they thought they could get away with it. In any case, employing exploitation-film tropes in the service of exposing capitalist sins is no vice, as Barry Goldwater never said. (Salem Cinema)

Also this week

The Israeli: This sneak preview of an upcoming documentary about Zionist-turned-Palestinian rights activist Miko Peled will include a showing of the short film The Orphan and a post-film Q&A and panel discussion featuring director Jordan Karr-Morse and local activists. (Clinton Street Theater, 7/7)

The Falling Sky: Documentary about indigenous peoples’ profound connection to nature and their struggle against deforestation. (Tomorrow Theater, 7/6)

Downwind: Award-winning feature documentary from Portland filmmakers Mark Shapiro and Douglas Brian Miller about the effect of Nevada nuclear tests in the 1950s and the communities downwind that were subjected to fallout. (Tomorrow Theater, 7/7)

Repertory

Friday 7/4

• Beyond the Black Rainbow [2011] (Cinema 21, also 7/5)
• Tombstone [1993] (Kiggins Theatre)
• Yankee Doodle Dandy [1939] (Salem Cinema)

Saturday 7/5

• 2001: A Space Odyssey [1968] (Hollywood Theatre, on 70mm, also 7/6)
• All the President’s Men [1976] (Salem Cinema, also 7/9)
• The American President [1995] (Salem Cinema, also 7/9)
• Big Trouble in Little China [1986] (Cinemagic, also 7/7 & 7/10)
• Bone Tomahawk [2015] (Cinemagic, also 7/8 & 7/9)
• Boogie Nights [1997] (Hollywood Theatre, also 7/7)
• Murder, My Sweet [1944] (Cinema 21)
• Raiders of the Lost Ark [1981] (Tomorrow Theater)
• The Sound of Music [1965] (Tomorrow Theater)
• This Is Spinal Tap [1984] (Salem Cinema, through 7/7)
• Tombstone [1993] (Cinemagic, also 7/6, 7/7, & 710)

Sunday 7/6

• Frida [2002] (Tomorrow Theater)
• Used Cars [1980] (Cinemagic, also 7/8 & 7/9)

Monday 7/7

• News From Home [1976] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Se7en [1995] (Salem Cinema)

Tuesday 7/8

• Splinter [2008] (Clinton Street Theater)

Wednesday 7/9

• Clifford [1994] (Hollywood Theatre)
• The Year 01 [1973] (Clinton Street Theater)

Thursday 7/10

• Coming to America [1988] (Hollywood Theatre)
• Edge of Tomorrow [2014] (Clinton Street Theater)
• Steel Magnolias [1989] (Living Room Theaters, through 7/13)