Went and saw Indiana Jones & the KCS. I came out quite satisfied, though I still find Temple of Doom the most enjoyable of the series.
If you are one of those who think Last Crusade was excellent, you may as well ignore my opinion. Unlike that instalment, in which I found there were no thrills to be had and most jokes fell flat, this movie has genuinely exciting, protracted sequences, and a script that does provide some genuine humour. (The script is not perfect, though, and any flaws with the film really lie there, and not with the welcome re-invigorated action direction of Spielberg.)
One curious aspect of the film, though, was that the self referential bits gave me a feeling that it was like watching the last film in the career of an aging or ill director, who's doing a bit of a career summation. I assume that was not the intention.
You would, however, have to assume that the last scene was meant to telegraph that there would be one more Harrison Ford outing in the role before it is (possibly) handed over to Shia LaBeouf. I for one would welcome another outing with this cast.
An aside: They played the short for Baz Luhrmann's "Australia". It shows every sign of bearing as much resemblance to a realistic portrayal of this nation as "Moulin Rouge" did to 19th century Paris. It showed great promise as a great embarrassment, which I fully expect it to be, as I quite intensely dislike everything of Luhrmann's I have ever seen.
4 comments:
Oh, I agree. The atom-bomb sequence at the start was the best, though. I didn't mind the reference to previous Jones films at the beginning, though - I thought them bumping into the Ark was a nice joke. But I found the UFO scene at the end pretty silly. Sometimes it's nice to keep the fantasy and the SF separate. Though the whole plot did lead up to it, so it wasn't so bad.
Spielberg just keeps getting better as a director, I think. He's a brilliant storyteller, and it's a pity these skills aren't used so much in some of his films (Jurassic Park and War of the Worlds).
Glad to hear you liked it, Tim. My boy at the end said "that was really interesting", and this morning, once he understood that movies are on at the cinema for weeks at a time, was indicating he wanted to see it again. I actually wouldn't mind that too, particularly as I had some very irritating boys sitting behind me who really took 30 minutes to stop talking about every scene, and using their chip bags like a concertina.
(I can't for the life of me understand what some people do with crinkly bags in the cinema. If it was just the occasional 5 second burst of noise while they reach in and remove a chip, I can handle it. But some people seem to sit there crushing the packet for an entire 90 seconds, and that's when it bothers me.)
By the way, I was disappointed you didn't comment on my post about "The Great Fire". Did you think the passages I quoted were good or bad writing, or do you prefer to sit on the fence if you haven't read the book?
I kind of missed that one! Reading over it now, I'm not sure what to say, I haven't read enough of Hazzard to come to a fair assessment. The writing doesn't seem that bad; some of my favourite writers can be a little obscurantist or cryptic at times. (This includes science fiction writers like, say, Ballard, who tend to create a self-referential universe.) But, like I said, don't know enough to comment.
And here I thought you hung on my every word!
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