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Reviews
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Indy As He Should Never Be Seen
Indiana Jones is a character that is best left in the '80s, where he belongs. I knew going into this fourth installment of the franchise that disappointments would abound, but couldn't anticipate how many. About forty minutes into Crystal Skull, I became convinced that in future discussions about this character and his movies, I would tactfully act as though Spielberg and Lucas' creation was still a trilogy, and nothing more. That conviction still stands.
To get where I'm coming from, you have to - pardon the pun - do a little digging with me here. Let's take thirty seconds to remember what made the first three films so great. Raiders was both a fresh take on pulp-fiction adventure and an homage to actual adventure serials of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Temple was a slightly dogged sophomore effort that, despite some mood issues, solidified Jones as being a very dangerous yet likable character - no easy feat for a middle-aged man who supposedly teaches academic archeology in dark, stuffy universities. Crusade rounded out Indy's world by providing a delightful insight into his origins, "humanizing" him without sacrificing pacing and thrills. The unifying thread in all three of these original films is Jones' ability to take ostensibly dull archaeological pursuits (the Ark of the Covenant, the mystical stones, and the Holy Grail) and turn them into romping adventures that manage to suspend just enough disbelief to make them suspenseful and fun.
Crystal Skull departs from this formula almost immediately. After an eyeroll-inducing fade-in with the trademark Paramount logo turning into a computer-generated molehill (really?) we get into something that feels more like a James Bond intro - Cate Blanchett backed by a bunch of no-names with a big Russian spy thing going on, Jones their captive, and lots of guns. What ensues is mostly primer for what we can assume will be a fairly enjoyable film. Instead we get a not so plausible premise - Crystal Skulls as archaeological boons - and boring banter between Shia Labeouf and Ford. We're thrust into South America, where Marion Ravenwood of Raiders fame, now much older and anything but sexy, is foisted on us for no particular reason. She's no longer Indiana's goddamn partner, that's for sure. Just as Aston Martins are often retired from and then re-introduced into Bond movies to whet hardcore fans' appetites, the writers of Crystal seem to treat Karen Allen as nothing more than Indy fan catnip.
A string of poorly-executed CGI-embellished scenes lead us, eventually, to a conclusion so contrived a third-grader could have written it. The ending strips away the human side of archeology and just leaves you watching something that is not only visually unbelievable, but intellectually dishonest as well - two crimes the original series never committed, despite plenty of opportunities to do so. Any connection to actual archeology or human history is forfeited in this film, and the audience is simply expected to embrace the unlikely because it has been packaged as an Indiana Jones vehicle.
This fourth Indy flick is not entirely bad - the Yale scenes are enjoyable, and overall the movie does feel very 1950s. Ford manages to pull off his part despite his age, which is laudable. And there are elements of the archeology that sync with reality. Unfortunately everything is tied together in a sloppy, made-for-money manner that pales in the faces of the films that came before it. Sometimes Hollywood big shots should just live by the old credo - "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." This is a movie that, while a big box office success, should have stayed buried to never see the light of day.
What Doesn't Kill You (2008)
I've Seen This 200 Times Already
This movie was your typical connect-the-dots street crime drama. You have your cookie-cutter bad-guys as good-guys setup, Ethan Hawke playing against type, the dumb mom with a heart of gold who can't resist her sadistic, flunky husband, etc., etc, etc. All of this would have been fine if not for three major problems: 1) the acting sucked. (2) the editing sucked. (3) The pacing was awful.
I'm not going to get too into the bad acting. Bad acting is bad acting. A bunch of guys shouting "hey, where you going?" to each other for the better part of 2 hours gets old fast, and requires little subtlety or range. I won't linger on the film's pacing, either. You can see for yourself that there are several slightly interesting street scenes among the main characters, and then these slow, tedious, pointless domestic scenes that try to illustrate just how low these low-lives really are.
The true sin this film commits is in its editing. First question - why is it ALWAYS winter? This entire film supposedly spans about 20 years. Yet every scene is set in gray, cold, bleak weather. Adding insult to injury is the director and editor's inability to be consistent about what kind of permanent winter they're trying to capture here. Repeatedly throughout the entire movie there are juxtapositions of scenes where one scenario plays out with six inches of fresh snow on the ground - then cuts away instantly to what logically plays out as something that is happening only a few hours or even just minutes later - with NO SNOW on the ground! This happens constantly, back and forth, back and forth, snow/no snow, snow/no snow. It's like, what the hell's the deal with this? Is it winter or not? Or is it late October? and how can it go from looking like the middle of January one minute, to the beginning of November the next, with reddish leaves on the trees and softer sunlight? Truly an editing disaster, and unless it was supposed to be symbolic of something, utterly pointless. As is most of this movie, aptly titled "What Doesn't Kill You." The rest of the phrase is, "Makes You Wish It Had." At least, that's the case here.