Jurassic Park III (2001)

The 3rd Jurassic Park film (after the 1997 sequel) has a slow first 10 minutes but then it gets to that island and everything after happens at a breakneck speed, hardly ever letting up. The plot returns the Sam Neill character, Alan Grant, to the forefront (he skipped the '97 film). He's approached by a (supposedly) wealthy couple (William Macy and Tea Leoni) who, like Hammond in the  first film, promise to fund his continuing research in return for an aerial tour of the island. Grant agrees but is adamant about staying off the island, seeing it as certain death, but that is just what happens; he has been tricked by the couple, who are actually a middle class divorced pair who have a missing son - he went missing near this island. Very quickly, things go from troubling to a lot worse, as their attempt to take off is impeded by one of the island's larger beasts.
The highlight of this latest Jurassic escapade is the intro of the Spinosaurus, which is like a huge crocodile on two legs; it proves to be the new champ on the block as far as dangerous dinosaurs, making short work of a T-Rex and signaling to the audience that this was the new king, the new terror. Its continuing pursuit of the small humans throughout the film is very intense. Also back are the tenacious raptors, but the story throws in a twist in that the raptors are looking for something this time, not just easy prey. Laura Dern reprises her role from the 1st film in a small role, not on the island, connecting to Grant by phone. This was in most ways a smaller, more compact film than the previous two films, with  a shorter running time. As such, though it made it into the Top 10 at the box office of the films in 2001, it had substantially less of a gross than the first two films. Maybe that's why there wasn't another sequel until Jurassic World in 2015. But, even with the somewhat silly plot twists and a baffling blase denouement, it's rarely boring.  BoG's Score: 7 out of 10