Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (guest review by William Andreassen)

Did you ever revisit your old elementary school, years after you last crossed its thresholds? Remember how small everything seemed? Of course, the dimensions of hallways and doors hadn't changed an inch, but you certainly had. Watching Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, director Steven Spielberg's follow-up to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which was released 19 years ago, I felt much the same.

Curiously, I ran across the first film, 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark on television last week. It, on the other hand, was just as thrilling as I remembered. The plot was filled with fascinating (if not entirely letter perfect accurate) archaeological lore, breathtaking action, and characters who were more than just caricatures.

So, what happened? Too much time passed? Perhaps. Tastes refine a bit? Definitely, but I will always, I suspect, have a place in my heart for these sorts of movies. Yes, the anticipation was white hot for Skull. Undeniably. But, as I've learned, such eagerness can lead to thundering disappointment. What could possibly live up to the expectations? Can you say Episode One? You get the idea. Right, George?

Harrison Ford returns as university professor/archaeologist/executor of impossible escapes Henry Indiana Jones. This time out, it is 1957. The world is a very different place since we last followed Indy's improbable exploits across foreign locales in the 1930s. So is Henry Jones. He's much older, beaten up a bit by the passage of time. "I'm at the point where life has stopping giving and is now taking away" he grouses after he is relieved of his duties at the University. As well, the FBI, CIA, and KGB are all interested in his next move. Gone are the hissable Nazis who lusted for gold and power. Oh, the motives of the villains are basically the same, but now they are Russians, led by Cate Blanchett (clearly enjoying herself) as Irina Spalko, a "scientist" interested in the paranormal, the mystical. She forces/utilizes Indy's knowledge of Mayan languages and history to lead her to the mysterious crystal skulll, and the "knowledge" that it brings. The role is a dream for any actress and her dialect coach. I found myself imitating her sharp brogue afterward. She looks more sadistic than she actually is, but this is essentially a family movie, so opportunities for the more provocative attributes of Irina are left to the imagination.

Some of Irina's cohorts, including a "triple agent", are more interested in the festoons of jewels which seem to adorn every South American cave they visit than the usual coveting of world domination. The other villains are mostly just garden variety minions who fire machine guns and die in creative ways.

But the less said about the plot, the better. As I watched it, I realized that it was paper thin, silly, and weak. It's hard to believe that it took so long to arrive at this script??!! Reportedly, Frank (The Shawshank Redemption) Darabont had knocked it out of the park with his take, but fellow scribe David (Jurassic Park) Koepp won out in the end. Speaking of the end, the finale of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is, well, quite visual. The choice to go with a more, um, sci-fi angle was allegedly masterminded by producer George Lucas. This is a shame, but not fatal. I won't reveal what I mean, exactly, but let's say that I was surprised there weren't more terrestrial ideas in the Spielberg/Lucas camp.

Also along is Shia LaBeouf as "Mutt", whose presence in the film thrusts Indy in the middle of this preposterous adventure. He's a James Dean wannabe greaser type, quick with his comb and switchblade, added to the proceedings to bring in the young audience who likely weren't born the first time Ford cracked his patented bullwhip. LaBeouf is very appealing, and this is a well timed follow-up to his success in last summer's Transformers (a surprisingly entertaining popcorn muncher in its own right). Karen Allen returns as Marion Ravenwood, easily the most interesting of the Indy women, though this time she is given very little to do. Mostly, she just looks stunned to actually be there. I was very happy to hear that Spielberg had given her the call, but the script really lets her down. We briefly see some of the spark that once ignited between her and Ford, but it's sadly short lived.

And what about Harrison Ford? Yes, he looks older, but that's integral to the story. One of the few successes of the script is the detailing of how Indy still manages to emerge unscathed from every scrape. Physically, that is. His psyche isn't so sturdy, and Ford plays it well. He's still got the goods. Rather than coasting, he actually puts some juice into it. And why not? After all, it was HIS idea to jumpstart this series after so long.

Several entertaining nods to the previous trilogy are to be found throughout, as well as an amusing line spoken by Ford which directly references that other famous character he played in another well known franchise by Lucas. The action set pieces are fantastic, and reason enough to see the film. One of them very cleverly uses a 50's malt shop as the stage. Another is a sure-to-induce nightmares-in-the-young 'uns scene involving large ants. Lots of them. I also enjoyed the nuclear blast refrigerator scene. Yes, you read that correctly. The chases, fights, and assorted spectacles are so exhilirating that it's easy to forget that Skull is ultimately no Raiders. But, what possibly could be?

-William Andreassen

Leatherheads

Occasional contributor William Andreassen checks in with some thoughts on George Clooney's Leadenheads...er, Leatherheads.

Put me in the "nay" camp for Leatherheads, a failed attempt at screwball farce. What I like to call the "comedy metronome" was way off in this one. Timing, so crucial to good comedy, was almost completely amiss from the opening scenes (when a confused cow is the most hilarious element in the film, you know you're in trouble). The rapid-fire exchanges were fewer than expected, and mild at that. No zip. Certainly not like any Preston Sturges I've ever seen. Clooney tries hard to evoke the spirit, but it comes off very heavy-handed. Much of the period flavor is there, but it mostly fizzles. And the editing was often amateurish. I was almost shouting at the screen, "Hey George, it would've been more effective to cut to..." Maybe I've seen too many movies. But then, so has Clooney. If he was trying for a Palm Beach Story sorta vibe..he needs to go back and absorb not just the structure of the film, but how kinetic the whole affair was. Again, timing. Maybe this sort of comedy genius is only relegated to certain artists?

The script, however, is what really does it in. The decision to take one of the subplots so seriously really derails any comedic rhythm the film could've had. It seems the writers wanted to make some STATEMENTS about integrity in sports (how timely), but this was the wrong vehicle in which to do it. Perhaps Ron Shelton should've tackled this project?

There are some good moments--a comical war flashback and a hotel lobby argument among the 3 principals had the sort of energy and sense of humor the remainder of the film lacked. The His Girl Friday-type homages with Zellweger worked far better in the Coens' Hudsucker Proxy, and Clooney himself nailed the old-time caraicatures infinitely better in O Brother, Where Art Thou. Krasinski was fine, but was only occasionally called upon to show his comedic talents. Mostly, he's just dour---a problem mainly with how his character was written.

So, no rec from me. Very disappointing.

Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?* (William Andreassen on Blade Runner)

Several years ago I joined the ranks of those obssessed with the movie Blade Runner. But my friend William Andreassen has been part of the club for going on 26 years! It's a club with a vast membership. How vast? Google "blade runner" and see how many fansites come up devoted to the characters, themes or just plain minutiae related to the film. Like other movies with a passionate following, Blade Runner ends with a riddle. Like Citizen Kane's "rosebud", the final lines of Blade Runner continue to inspire debate and speculation. Andreassen doesn't wade into those questions, but he's been watching the new 5-disc collector's package and offers this appreciation.

Why do I continue to be alarmingly obsessed with the 1982 seminal sci-fi classic Blade Runner? Nearly twenty-six years have passed since that wide-eyed, celluloid mad thirteen year-old sat in the dark with his father and experienced something positively otherworldly, something unlike any previous movie I’d ever seen (or since, honestly). Even at that still somewhat impressionable age, I believe that I was aware that I was witnessing something special, something to endure, something which would be relevant to future viewers. Any one element—the jaw-dropping production design, the thought-provoking screenplay, the evocative score by Vangelis-made it unique, but there was a cumulative effect working, an amalgamation of qualities that certified its place in a Class of One among science fiction. The only other sci-fi film I can recall which sets itself apart to the same degree would be Stanley Kubrick’s 2001.

Based on Philip K. Dick’s wonderfully titled “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, Blade Runner follows one Rick Deckard, a retired cop, or “blade runner” who in the bleak future of Los Angeles in 2019 is coerced into another, final mission: track down six renegade androids who have illegally escaped from another locale in the solar system, “an off-world colony,” where citizens have the “chance to begin again.” At the service of these citizens are the said androids, or REPLICANTS. These are no standard issue cyborgs; replicants have been intricately designed by the Tyrell Corporation, a megacorporation which produces slave labor which are more “more human than human.”

Hampton Fancher’s and David Webb People’s screenplay introduces us to these doomed replicants, these, dare I say it? Souls? Perhaps. Naturally, these are not men of flesh and blood, but rather microchips and miles of fiber optic nerves, coiled in a housing that indeed appears to be quite human. These androids reason, have perspectives, have memories. Droids aren’t supposed to think, right? That’s the user’s job. But the Tyrell Corporation designed a model that eclipses anything we’ve ever seen. But why? These machines are meant to be of service to the humans, to do their bidding. Users have more important things to do, like purchasing things. And moving to the off-world colonies for the promise of a better life. Who could blame them? The L.A. we see in director Ridley Scott’s (The Duellists, Legend) vision is a perpetual nighttime of rain and blurred neon. The sort of landscape Deckard inhabits with weary ease.

Scott, having already broken new ground with the horror sci-fi Alien in 1979, threw down the gauntlet yet again for what a science fiction film should look and sound like. As numerous sources attest, Scott’s unstinting perfectionism set an almost impossibly high bar, a measure against every f/x film thereafter would be measured. And with any trailblazer, scores of imitators will follow. And they did. Even other action-type films, end-of-world sagas, superhero adventures, they all bore the influence. But Blade Runner was also about the “how”, just how every great film absolutely is, in my opinion. Yes, Scott also set the standard for “how” a sci-fi film should be. How it lives and breathes. Multiple viewings reveal not just layers of the screenplay, an endlessly fascinating essay on who we think we really are, but also the embedded themes of imagery, things not easily put into words. It has been said that film is primarily a medium of emotion; Blade Runner is one to cite for the defense of that notion, in spades.

Even though I’m a pretty rabid film nut (as the author of this blog could attest), I rarely purchase DVDs. I love many, many movies, but there are relatively few I need to have at the ready to study, to revisit and enjoy at a moment’s notice. While I could easily add hundreds if I had the disposable income (and a lack of conscience as to far better use of the fundage), the ones I do own include bona-fide gems such as Being John Malkovich, Brazil, Dazed & Confused, and Fargo. Blade Runner is a very select specimen, a film that meets the aforementioned criteria and far more. The old no-frills Warner Brothers single disc of the Director’s Cut never made my collection, because I knew that a movie this special would someday get a royal treatment. And boy, did it!

To summarize: first you have the 2 disc set: it contains the recently minted “Final Cut” of the movie (with varying separate commentaries) and a superior 3 + hour documentary on the rather tumultuous production of the film. You could alternatively purchase the 4-disc set, which includes the above, plus the original 1982 theatrical version (with voiceover), a longer European version, the 1992 “Director’s Cut”, and the “Enhancement Archive,” which contains a litany of featurettes chronicling production, as well as interviews with the source material’s author. Also included is an elegant, heartfelt tribute to the film’s cinematographer, Jordan Cronenweth, who also lensed another favorite of mine, Stop Making Sense. His breathtaking, inventive work is largely responsible for why Blade Runner is so stunning.

I bought none of the above collections. Nope, I went for the ultimate fanatic’s package, The Five-Disc Limited Edition Gift Set which includes, of course, all of the above, PLUS, a workprint version of the film (which is assembled prior to complete color correction, f/x tweaks, voiceover and sound effects edits, and scoring cues) with commentary, and another featurette. A toy replica of Deckard’s spinner vehicle, an origami unicorn, an impressive art folio, and a lenticular (3-D hologram thingy) of a film clip accompanies the set, all contained in a spiffy plastic briefcase modeled after Deckard’s own. Yeah, I know, but this was a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. Now you get the notion that this film is important to me.

Like any seminal work I’ve encountered, Blade Runner has so infused itself into my cerebrum that I find myself recalling bits when Life seems to imitate Art. During Orientation Week as I was beginning doctoral studies in audiology some years ago, a Myers-Briggs personality test was administered. As I replied to the manipulative inquiries, I was reminded of the Voight-Kampf test, which viewers may recall is the oral questionnaire the blade runners use to determine if their subject is a replicant. As I creatively answered each question, it occurred to me- what sort of personality makes the best audiologist? Or is it the other way around? Do they want replicants? My mind reeled, and I was being ridiculous. My twenty classmates and I were later subjected to a lengthy explanation by one of the university’s psych profs, a session where the aggregate results were expounded upon at great length. He explained that we were Thinking Introverts, or so went that classification dichotomies, as they’re known. Ideal for audiologists! he cried. Hmmmm.

So, now it’s twenty-six years after Blade Runner was originally screened. We are now eleven years away from the year in which the film is set. It seemed so impossibly far away in ’82. Yes, such a future would be characterized by post-modern architecture and gravity-defying vehicles. A few years before I saw the film, I was on the monkey bars chatting with classmates as to what the future would be like. We imagined that even in the 1990s we’d be flying in souped up astro-vehicles over our former terrestrial thoroughfares and routinely traveling through outer space. But as the lyrics went in that They Might Be Giants song:

I’m trapped in a world before later on
Where’s my hovercraft?
Where’s my jet pack?
Where’s the font of acquired wisdom
That eludes me now?
Where’s all the complication
We won’t see around?

OK, so perhaps that’s not entirely accurate. But that is what is so disturbing. Blade Runner, so embodied by its observations about human nature, culture, technology, metaphysics, and emotion, is so very relevant now. I guess Dick called it, for every ten paces forged ahead with technology, we take several more into the dark abyss of regression, a very sad place, indeed. Author and compadre Christian film buff Jeffrey Overstreet lists Blade Runner as a film “For Ambitious Discussion Groups” in his excellent Through a Screen Darkly book. I would’ve loved to have had the opportunity to have chatted with Msr. Dick about the antidote to the darkness of which he wrote, the Great Hope mankind most certainly has.



*Title absconded from a Waitresses album, circa Blade Runner’s original release.

Ridley Scott and Philip K. Dick circa 1981

No Country for Old Men (guest review)

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

William Butler Yeats (Sailing to Byzantium)

My good friend and fellow film enthusiast William Andreassen reviews No Country for Old Men, the latest offering from master filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen. We saw it together Saturday, and he graciously agreed to write something for this blog. I heartily concur with his thoughts.

Can I begin by stating that this film, even after four days, continues to saturate my thoughts? Since I saw it last Saturday, I’ve done a great many things, both social and work-related. Yet, even in the depths of my often cerebrally taxing daily occupation, where distraction doesn’t always come easily, I have been frequently haunted by images, by lines of dialogue from this remarkable work of art by Joel and Ethan, the Bros. Coen.

How rare the film that gets under your skin, and stays there! Sometimes I see films that affect me quite negatively, and I somehow feel unclean, ashamed that I exposed myself to something so dark, so vile, so utterly bereft of merit. The Coens explore darkness as well as any American filmmakers, yet their journeys are always laced with a strong sense of morality.

Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones, in one of his finest portrayals) is an embodiment of such morality. Even after listening to his opening narration, and considering the film’s title, the viewer quickly realizes that Bell is the core of the story we are about to witness. After many wearying years of working his beat in a dusty west Texas hole, he has adopted an effortless bemusement. As he converses with his wide eyed deputy, we hear wise retorts that are evidence of cynicism that has resulted from much blood soaked experience. And now, there’s more to come. Oh, is there…..

The two lawmen discover several corpses in the desert, the aftermath of what appears to have been a Mexican standoff over a bedliner load of heroin. A local hunter named Lewellyn Moss (Josh Brolin) got there first, unfortunately, and rather calmly decided that he will disappear with a suitcase (containing a few million) he finds near the scene. There doesn’t appear to be any urgency in Moss’ fateful decision; he simply wants to provide for his wife (Kelley Macdonald). Of course, these plans are subject to a few snags.

Fate steps in. Or rather, a malevolent figure with the difficult name of Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a hatchet man brought in to retrieve the cash. Chigurh is a terrifying individual. Even his eyes are scary. But he’s not your typical psychopath; he plays mind games with nearly everyone who has the misfortune to cross his path. One uncomfortable scene involves a nervous gas station clerk who is forced to participate in the verbal equivalent of Chinese water torture. Chigurh is more complex than even that, however, or perhaps not. His actions seem to be dictated by pure probability. In deciding whether of not to off a potential victim, he flips a coin. For all of his studied evil, he seems to be at the mercy of chance.



I could write an entire essay on Anton. His character is one of the most unsettling I’ve encountered in some time. Having not read Cormac McCarthy’s celebrated novel upon which this film is based, I feel like I have an inkling of what makes the guy tick, but I look forward to learning more. How I was not familiar with this author’s work before now astounds me.

A lot happens in this typically serpentine Coen bros. tale, but I’m no spoiler. The film is patently unpredictable for a while, then it seems as if several chess pieces are strategically placed for an inevitable finale. Then the film takes a very sharp left turn for its last third, and let me say, it was pure poetry. I’ve read some blogs from other viewers who were baffled and frustrated by the concluding passages. Bell returns to the scene, and tries to assess the events which have transpired thus far. His place in the landscape becomes clearer, and the film continues to its quietly shattering conclusion. I won’t pretend to completely understand, but after much contemplation (and reading the dense monologues found in the later scenes), I feel I have deep appreciation for this sad world created by McCarthy, and brilliantly visualized by the directors. This is the best film I have seen in years.