DISQUS

newcritics: Back to the Fifties: Curtains & Indiana Jones and that Crystal Skull

  • Claire Helene · 1 year ago
    I saw the new Indy yesterday, and I was pleased that I saw it in a venue where there was delicious beer and pizza available for me to partake in while I watched. The beer helped. I thought the movie was fairly lazy. It's nice they brought Marian back, but they didn't give her anything to do, and barely any lines. The whole thing felt like a retread of Indy knock-offs. And I hated what the crystal skull was, that seemed so very lazy to me. You can't come up with a better ancient thing? If I wanted X-Files, I'd have watched X-Files.

    I agree completely with the tiredness of Ford in the warehouse, and with your comment about the prairie dogs, we thought that too.
  • James S. · 1 year ago
    I thought they should have stuck with the Nazi villians.

    If they kept the timeline and South American location, they could have used Hitchcock's Notorious as a crib sheet and have a band of 50's Neo-Nazi die hards steal the ark back and try to use it to revive Der Furher. (The Boys From Brazil meet That Man From Rio).

    Kate B. could do an homage to Marlene Dietrich--I know she can do it, she has the cheekbones.

    Zowey! Let's greenlight it!
  • James S. · 1 year ago
    Oops! Kate is spelled Cate. My bad.
  • James S. · 1 year ago
    Duh. I misspelled villains. Sorry. Damn those phonics.
  • M.A. Peel · 1 year ago
    Claire, we can only HOPE the X-Files is going to be good. James, that's an interesting plot line. And they could have CGI'd a cameo by Olivier to add some class.
  • Tom Watson · 1 year ago
    My 10-year-old told me "I liked the prairie dogs, but they were just CGI."

    Audiences are overly sophisticated these days, I guess. I enjoyed the flick, and thought Ford really came on - but the whole thing died when they hit South America to me. Too much...well, just too damned much. Three waterfalls! Up till then it had a bit of that Back to the Future cultural stuff that I found amusing.
  • Claire Helene · 1 year ago
    But even the amusing parts were so derivative (ie: the Back to the Future bits you mentioned).

    MA: I hope the X-Files movie will be good, but I just don't know. It's been a long time since the show ended, and the new Indy is an example of how it's hard to recapture that essence or energy from the original. I remember seeing the first movie (and something about an army of bees?) but that's about it.