August Archaeology: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

With the 40th anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark this year, the release of the 4K box set (finally!), and the franchise’s omnipresence on Showtime the past few weeks, The Cinema King has come down with a bad case of Indy Fever. Having already reviewed the films some time ago, let’s try something a little different this month. In the tradition of the “Grand Marvel Rewatch,” let’s dig around the Indiana Jones franchise and see what comes up.

Finally, from 2008, it’s Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. After an unfortunate encounter with Communists at Area 51, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) meets up with Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), who asks for help following the mystery of a crystal skull in South America. An old mentor (John Hurt) and Mutt’s mother (spoilers!) have gone missing, and Indy’s Soviet foe Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) may be responsible. 

1. Color me interested. If you’ve had a conversation with me in the last few months, you’ve probably heard me say that the 4K transfer of Crystal Skull fixes the film’s color palette and in so doing remedies a lot of the problems with the theatrical release. In 2008, everything in the film had a green/yellow tint, which made all the digital effects look a bit fake. For a franchise founded on practical effects, that’s no good, so fortunately the 4K version color-corrects so that the film takes on a warmer, more natural visual tone. The digital effects aren’t as noticeable, and it finally looks like a proper Indiana Jones film, not a tint-rinsed nostalgia trip.
2. Nothing wrong with nostalgia. Steven Spielberg was born in 1946, and it’s pretty clear that he looks back on 1957 with fondness. The earlier films were all set before Spielberg was born, and so they inhabit a kind of timeless past without many particular historical markers. The first act of Crystal Skull, though, is all about the late 50s, with greasers battling straightedges while Bill Haley blares from a jukebox; meanwhile, Indy declares, “I like Ike” before implying he was present at the Roswell crash. Spielberg is closer to this material than he was to the preceding trilogy, and it shows; Crystal Skull is very much of its time.
3. Passing the torch. Flash back to 2008, and you’ll recall that there seemed to be an anxiety that Indiana Jones would retire and cede the franchise to Shia LaBeouf’s Mutt Williams, who (spoilers) everyone rightly predicted was actually Indy’s son. (Like his father, Mutt too named himself after the dog.) The film does seem to be walking away from the earlier ones, with allusions to the deaths of Marcus Brody and Henry Jones, Sr., in the interim, but all the same it keeps an eye on the past when it revisits Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), the only possible and eminently welcome choice for Mutt’s mother. The film’s closing gag, in which a gust of wind tempts Mutt with donning his father’s fedora, becomes a beautifully self-aware moment when Indy snatches the hat at the last possible second. We don’t want that, either.
4. Up in the sky! Fans are so torn on the extraterrestrial McGuffin, with many (rightly) pointing to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind as an influence. I’ve always liked the idea that Indy’s adventures are themed around the pulp stories of that day, and having him chase aliens during the sci-fi Fifties feels almost inevitable. An alien is a far cry from the deep and preexisting mythologies of the Ark and the Sankara Stones, but the fact that Indy never makes contact with the aliens (“interdimensional beings, in point of fact”) keeps the film from verging too far beyond the realm of the plausible. Put another way, if Indiana Jones never meets an alien, does it really exist?
5. Some Indy is better than no Indy (or: Toxic Fandom, I hate these guys). It’s not necessarily a new phenomenon – Star Wars had been through it a decade earlier (and a decade later) – but Crystal Skull was marked by scads of online discourse about how terrible this movie is, what a betrayal it was for the fans, and how “real” fans can’t love it. And while I don’t love Crystal Skull, I don’t think it’s as bad as people claim. It’s certainly not an appropriate reason to start gatekeeping fandom, either; it’s not Raiders, but so what? Few films are. This one is plenty fun, with enough exciting action to justify its own existence. It’s always amusing to see armchair critics insist they know Indiana Jones better than Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford.

Sound off in the comments, and tell me your favorite part of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. If there’s a moviegoer more excited for the fifth Indiana Jones film (set for July 2022), I’d like to meet that person. But I promise you won’t need to wait that long for the next review on this site. The Cinema King will return!

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

A staggering seventeen films into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, audiences are still prompted to ask, “Is this the best Marvel movie yet?” It’s a question that reminds me that I haven’t updated my Marvel ranking since doing a Top 10 since 2014, but it’s amazing that we’re still given occasion to ask that question, that we haven’t tired of the Marvel method just yet because the films keep finding new angles on these classic characters. Thor: Ragnarok continues the Marvel tradition of pushing its characters out of their comfort zones, both narratively and tonally, with a film that exudes so much style and fun without losing sight of emotional substance.

After recovering a dangerous artifact during his quest for the Infinity Stones, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) returns home to Asgard to find that his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) has been supplanted by Loki (Tom Hiddleston). In claiming the throne for himself, however, Loki has upset the delicate balance of the Nine Realms, exposing Asgard to threats like Hela, goddess of death (Cate Blanchett). Cleaning up his brother’s mistakes will take Thor to the gladiatorial arena of The Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum) in combat with an old friend, the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo).

I’m not going to make proclamations about whether or not this is the best Marvel movie or even whether it’s the best Thor movie (I’m still quite attached to the stodgy Shakespearian Thor from Kenneth Branagh), because the premise of the question overlooks the bounty of riches we have gotten from Marvel over the last decade. After all, I’m old enough to remember when a single Batman movie was a treat years in the making; in 2017 alone we’ve seen four Marvel movies, three DC movies, scads of animated direct-to-videos, and more superhero television than a human can watch. What I will say, however, is that Thor: Ragnarok is more crowd-pleasingly fun than I can recall having at a Thor movie, but strikingly it’s funny in a way that isn’t overpowering; unlike in Guardians, Vol. 2, where I felt worn down by the deflating humor, Ragnarok knows which moments to punctuate with a gag and which to let linger (a somber sequence on a cliffside, for one). It is the funniest of the Thor films, with Chris Hemsworth displaying a potent comedic sensibility; the film is virtually stolen by Goldblum’s hedonistic Grandmaster, all finger lilts and self-congratulation, though even Anthony Hopkins gets in a good laugh as Loki-Odin (his reaction to Thor’s arrival, subtle and perfect, might be a new favorite Odin moment).

While the Thor movies have always felt a little bit perfunctory, neither advancing the overarching narrative nor developing an arc for Thor beyond being an action hero, Thor: Ragnarok does attempt to tie the previous two films together into an impromptu arc for the god of thunder, collecting little bits from the previous Thor and Avengers films and uniting them into a story about warring brothers, imposing fathers, and those who cannot help but lead. It’s a real treat to hear composer Mark Mothersbaugh take the same approach to the film’s score, weaving in bits from Patrick Doyle and Brian Tyler before him (as well as a conspicuous harpsichord, to match a small cameo). Ragnarok does, then, finally tie Thor into the larger Marvel world and his own narrative arc, which both provides a satisfying rush to those of us who’ve been here from the beginning and lends a sense of cosmic importance to the film’s proceedings.

There’s much in Thor: Ragnarok I would have liked to see more, which is usually the mark of a good film, that it leaves you wanting more. Tessa Thompson’s Valkyrie, a kind of mirror-universe Lady Sif, is a fine answer to Thor, a hard-drinking survivalist who’d fit just as well on the deck of the Millennium Falcon. Hela and Skurge (Karl Urban) are compelling villains, particularly in light of Marvel’s notorious difficulty at crafting distinctive antagonists (though that does seem to be changing of late); the film does an astonishingly deft job at quickly characterizing them. I predict Korg (voiced by Taika Waititi) will become a Groot-level fan favorite, and the great thing about a shared universe like this is that we’ll surely see him crop up again soon. Then there’s the small cameos that could easily flesh out a film all their own, to say nothing of the surprising buddy chemistry between Thor and Hulk, which seems surprisingly obvious in hindsight; one wishes, though, that Bruce Banner had gotten as much screen time, because Ruffalo is really quite adept at Banner’s quick subvocal quips and perpetual disorientation.

Thor: Ragnarok might be the best Thor movie yet (and Waititi’s hints that he might be down for a Thor 4 are great news indeed), but its balance of bust-out humor and emotional weight stand as an example for Marvel going forward. Its score, too, distinctive in a way Marvel hasn’t approached since the “Awesome Mix” of Guardians of the Galaxy, reminds us how cinematically potent these adventures can be when they’re crafted carefully and thoughtfully. The film does a very good job breaking its characters down, taking them places they aren’t fully at home – Banner in space, Thor sans his hammer – to see what the characters really are. This one is worthy, and I’m quite excited to see it again.

Thor: Ragnarok is rated “PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and brief suggestive material.” Directed by Taika Waititi. Written by Eric Pearson, Craig Kyle, and Christopher L. Yost. Starring Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Tessa Thompson, Jeff Goldblum, Mark Ruffalo, and Anthony Hopkins.

Truth (2015)

True-story films about political journalism fall into two categories: insightful historical documents and shallow propaganda. On that continuum, then, Truth falls somewhere right of center – which it would detest to be labeled, I am sure – by falling closer to political agenda than historic insight.

Cate Blanchett stars as Mary Mapes, the 60 Minutes producer who oversaw the controversial story about George Bush’s alleged abandonment of duty during his 1970s stint with the National Guard. Robert Redford co-leads as Dan Rather, the doomed anchor whose commitment to the story (spoilers for real life?) ends up costing him his job. Truth covers the timeline from the story’s pitch in the summer of 2004 through Bush’s re-election in November.

The problems with the film are severalfold. First, to be pedantic, the title. Titles are important, as we know, and to label a story “Truth” is to take on an immense responsibility, a terrific burden. But in the promotional materials, Mapes herself describes the film as “my truth” – a critical difference from the truth, which the film purports to be. Worse, the film trades a great deal in equivocation and shouting down objections – a fine rhetorical strategy, I suppose, were it not for a monologue in which Blanchett decries that same technique.

A similarly false note is rung in that same monologue when Blanchett’s closing speech – which has all the self-congratulation of an Aaron Sorkin screenplay but less of the snappy prose – sneers at the allegations of conspiracy theorists and those who pander to them. Those of us in the audience ought to recognize what Truth does not – it’s speaking about itself in that moment, because it comes on the heels of a soliloquy by Topher Grace in which he alleges that his employer’s parent company Viacom is colluding against Congress with the Bush cabinet to protect its assets, while the film also spins a web of circumlocution around the origin of the documents in question.

Actually, the political stuff, which the filmmakers foreground, is for my money the least interesting material in Truth. I’d have much rather the film teased out more the way Mapes regards Rather as a kind of surrogate father (a Freudian slip near the film’s conclusion, mercifully, isn’t beaten to death), but the film leaves Mapes and Redford apart for a fair amount of their screen time. It’s likely the exigencies of real life at play, Rather having covered other newsworthy events like a hurricane at the time, but it’s evidence that there is more interesting material in the story than the film allows.

Rhetorically, then, Truth somewhat fails to live up to its own title. As a piece of film, though? It’s a little more successful aesthetically, though it’s far from perfect. It’s director James Vanderbilt’s debut, having cut his teeth on scripts for the Amazing Spider-Man reboots, Zodiac, and White House Down – a mixed bag if ever we saw one. Blanchett is, as ever, solid and enjoyable to watch, and the supporting cast (including Grace, Elisabeth Moss, and Dennis Quaid) does a fine job filling out the script. Disappointingly, Redford never quite convinces the audience that he’s Dan Rather; there are moments when he seems to have nailed Rather’s signature drawl, but otherwise it’s hard not to see Redford playing a version of himself – a complaint I didn’t have, incidentally, with Redford in last year’s much more delightful yet equally political Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

In short, I came away from Truth somewhat disappointed by its blatant political stance – a Fox News truck shows up with all the cinematic techniques you’d expect to see accompanying Jack the Ripper’s screen debut – and its attention to more aesthetic matters like its intriguing subplots. But rather than critique the film for what it wasn’t, what I would have preferred it to be, I’ll say that what we got wasn’t the award-season material its producers likely wanted.

Truth is rated R for “language and a brief nude photo.” There are about a dozen F-bombs in the film, as well as a pixelated image from Abu Ghraib.

Cinderella (2015)

With Maleficent (mercifully) behind us and a live-action Beauty and the Beast yet to come, we’re in the midst of a live-action reinvention over at the House of Mouse.  While I do have some reservation regarding the overall necessity of the move, I do think that Cinderella acquits itself better than Maleficent thanks to its narrative fidelity and its frankly stunning production value.

In what is essentially a remake of the 1950 animated Disney film, Lily James stars as Cinderella, left after her father’s passing in the care of her evil stepmother Lady Tremaine (Cate Blanchett).  After a chance encounter with her Prince Charming (Richard Madden), Cinderella makes every effort to go to the ball, with a little magical assist from her Fairy Godmother (Helena Bonham Carter).

The most striking thing about Cinderella is, surprisingly, the clothing.  I cannot recall ever being as impressed with costume design as I was with Sandy Powell’s work on this film.  (Fun fact:  she’s also the costume designer for my all-time favorite film, The Departed.)  Perhaps some credit is due to the cinematography, but the colors in the film really pop in a way that dominates my overall impression of the film – Cinderella looks spectacular.  The dresses of Lady Tremaine and her daughters very plainly communicate their interior ugliness, doing so with a flair that Powell has described as nineteenth century by way of the 1940s.  Cinderella’s dresses, too, are incredibly vibrant, matching well the Prince’s royal finery.

The film overall has a very polished look which I credit to the very pristine direction of Kenneth Branagh, who does fairy tales with the same elegance he brings to Shakespeare and superheroes.  There are a few nods to both – from Hamlet, both Derek Jacobi and fencing, and from Thor, Stellan Skarsgard – but more importantly, Branagh brings his trademark earnestness to Cinderella.  It’s honestly a little jarring to go from the delightfully revisionist Into the Woods, in which Cinderella’s indecisiveness clashed with Prince Charming’s insincerity, to a film which wholly believes in the happily-ever-after genre tropes.

Despite the well-crafted nature of the film and the strong performances all around, there is still the lingering question of whether there is a need for another treatment of Cinderella which doesn’t really distinguish itself too strongly from the versions that preceded it.  This is, of course, the question asked of every remake at one time or another, and my chief complaint about Maleficent was, you’ll recall, that its contributions to the revisionist project were so uneven that the best scene was the one that took the fewest liberties, so clearly there’s a threshold of acceptable innovation/transgression.  Cinderella succeeds, I think, on the grounds that it steers a very straight course through the familiar elements of the plot in an even and engaging way, but as content as I felt during the end credits there was still the sensation that I hadn’t actually seen anything new.

Now, to be fair, Cinderella goes 180-degrees from Into the Woods by making the Prince more, not less, compelling; where Sondheim’s Prince “was raised to be charming, not sincere,” Cinderella gives us a prince bristling at his royal obligations, more interested in marrying for love than for obligation (subtext that I don’t recall being quite so present in the animated film).  It also recognizes that Cate Blanchett is phenomenally gifted, so Lady Tremaine’s wickedness is played up as well as explored near the end of the film as she monologues about her motivations.

Ultimately, then, I’m in an unusual place with Cinderella.  The creative team responsible have created something that amounts to a very good cover band version of a classic with a few neat solos in the middle there, but there’s a curmudgeonly bit of me that wants to cling to the original because the new isn’t different enough.  Then again, I think of all the children in the theater with me that afternoon, and I realize that for them this film likely is the definitive Cinderella, and I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.  Maybe the better metaphor is that of translation, the act of going from one language (animation) to another (live-action), and it is on those grounds that Branagh’s Cinderella succeeds.

Cinderella is rated PG for “mild thematic elements.”  I suppose that’s due to the passing of Cinderella’s parents and the verbal abuse she endures at the hands of her wicked stepmother, but this is very nearly G-rated material.

Bonus review!  Cinderella is preceded by a seven-minute short, Frozen Fever – a sequel to (you guessed it), Disney’s wildly profitable Frozen from two Christmases ago.  The short finds Elsa (Idina Menzel) prepping the kingdom for the birthday of her sister Anna (Kristen Bell).  Only two things stand in the way – the snowman Olaf (Josh Gad) is trying to eat the cake, and Elsa has a head cold.  The cynic in me thinks that Frozen Fever is a long advertisement for plush toys of the snow-babies created whenever Elsa sneezes, but aren’t they cute?  By nature of being so short, Frozen Fever isn’t long on substance, but it does continue the film’s emphasis on the sisters’ relationship over a romantic one between Anna and Kristoff in a way that is more refreshing than treacle.  The main song “Making Today a Perfect Day” is about as catchy as “For the First Time in Forever” from the main film, though it won’t, I predict, have the staying power of “Let It Go” (either in eternity or in your head).  All told, I’m a bigger fan of Disney’s original shorts like Paperman and Feast, though Frozen Fever is as pleasant as the “Toy Story Toons” we’d been getting for a while there, a fun pit stop with some familiar faces.

Monday at the Movies - June 2, 2014

Welcome to another edition of “Monday at the Movies.” This week, two takes on Tennessee Williams!

Blue Jasmine (2013) – Woody Allen is nothing if not prolific, but the sheer volume of his work often means that every film can’t be a success.  Blue Jasmine – Allen’s post-recession take on A Streetcar Named Desire – is, however, a triumph; in fact, it’s probably his best in at least a decade.  In a powerhouse performance, Cate Blanchett stars as the eponymous Jasmine, at wit’s end after the imprisonment and death of her too-big-to-fail husband (Alec Baldwin).  To cope with her fall from grace, Jasmine lives part-time in a fantasy world while moving in with her sister Ginger (Sally Hawkins) and her boyfriend Chili (Bobby Cannavale).  As this iteration’s Blanche Dubois, Blanchett puts the “pathos” back into “pathetic” and more than earns her Oscar; her Jasmine is scattered and schizophrenic, slipping between realities while never failing to tell the audience which version of the world she’s actually experiencing – her own or the real one.  The supporting cast, too, is very potent in this one; Louis CK turns up for a bumbling note of levity, Baldwin as Jasmine’s husband is more important to the story than Blanche’s ever was, and the decision to split the Stanley figure in two – Cannavale’s Chili and Andrew Dice Clay’s Augie.  This gives us a fuller sense of Ginger, liberated from a reductionist “Stanley bad” approach that might be encouraged by Brando’s thuggish performance.  For those who think the filmmaker has lost his touch, this is a fine example of Allen’s late style, contemplative and sobered.

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) – Look, every now and again, I review a movie where all I can do is point to the decades of preexisting critical consensus and add little more to the discussion than to say, “Yeah, what they said.”  Case in point:  Elia Kazan’s adaptation of the Tennessee Williams play is nothing short of iconic.  While watching this tour de force rendition of the fall of Blanche Dubois (Vivien Leigh) in the home of her sister Stella (Kim Hunter) and Stella’s husband Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), one feels distinctly that one is in the presence of a greatness which more than lives up to its reputation.  Every note-perfect beat in the film strikes a resonant chord with the audience, be it Leigh’s fragile beauty or the frankly inspired decision to film in black-and-white.  And when it comes to Brando’s mumbling hulk Stanley, you’re talking nothing short of definitive; he performs as though Williams’s pen had literally given birth to Stanley, fully formed like Athena from the foamy scalp of Zeus.  Readers of the playscript will be forgiven for thinking this is anyone’s show but Stanley’s, for he is everything you could want from a Stanley.  Kazan’s direction cements the place of the film in cinema history; his directorial sensibility lends a tragic inevitability to the proceedings, such that Stanley’s line “We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning” becomes the distressing centerpiece to the play.  But the film, subject to the Hays Code, contains a slightly tweaked ending, a nuanced gesture toward a moral universe, which makes the film a distinctly unique experience when compared to the play.  It’s not Williams’s ending, that’s for sure – but it does make the film, in the final analysis, a masterpiece by Kazan.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week, but come back on Saturday for the Double-Oh-Seventh of the month!

Robin Hood (2010)

One can always count on Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe, and historical epics to combine for a reasonably solid summer blockbuster. And that's precisely what Robin Hood is: reasonably solid.

As a concept, the "truth behind the legend" genre is starting to limp on its last legs; King Arthur was a bit of a dud, and prequels in general are often a bad idea. But with Scott directing Crowe as the famous outlaw before he donned his famous hood and led a band of merry men in Sherwood Forest, something clicks. In this incarnation, Robin Longstride is an archer in the army of crusade-happy King Richard the Lionheart (Danny Huston). When things take a turn for the worse, Robin and his comrades return to England in time for Prince John's (Oscar Isaac) coronation as the new king. Posing as a knight, Robin meets Marion (Cate Blanchett) and her father-in-law Walter Loxley (Max von Sydow) before becoming embroiled in a French invasion scheme piloted by the nefarious Sir Godfrey (Mark Strong).

In a nutshell, Robin Hood can be boiled down to "Gladiator meets Braveheart." It's a facile comparison, and it's not particularly thorough, but you get the point. Robin Hood takes all the classic Ridley Scott themes and imagery - one man at the epicenter of national political crisis, with dazzling explosions and battles that encompass an entire populace - and throws in that Braveheart-esque battle cry of "FREEDOM!" There's nothing particularly surprising about the film - we know Marion and Robin will fall in love, even if they don't - but it's staged well, even if it doesn't play by the normal rules.

The film plays fast and loose with historical fact and with the legend itself, but it's all in good fun and none of it is too disconcerting. The Magna Carta plays a pivotal role as a kind of MacGuffin, though it gets a new backstory. There's a French invasion which doesn't quite jive with the history of Anglo-French conflict, but the only problematic creative liberty is Marion's presence on the battlefield during the climactic fight scene; it's in there to appease the PC crowd, to be sure, but it's distracting and feels incredibly forced. The film also casts Robin Hood as a kind of Jack Bauer figure - a perfect shot, always right, and distrusted by most authorities until he's proven to be always right. But for the most part the story is the one we know; Kevin Durand plays a streetwise Little John, and Mark Addy is perfectly and impeccably cast as Friar Tuck.

What's refreshing about Robin Hood is the presence of a new villain, Sir Godfrey. It's become almost a cliche to pit Robin Hood against the Sheriff of Nottingham, so it's a breath of fresh air when Matthew Macfadyen stumbles onto the screen as an inept Sheriff who is helpless in the face of farmers who won't pony up their (un)fair share of taxation. Enter Mark Strong, who's become awfully popular in the past few years - mostly as a villain, as in Kick-Ass, Sherlock Holmes, and RocknRolla, to name a few. His Sir Godfrey is menacing in the first degree, with a penchant for brutal sacking and a battle wound that gives him a perpetual sneer. As the climax hurtles toward us, it's impossible not to cheer for him to meet vicious vengeance.

There is a significant misstep, however, in the middle of the film. In true Ridley Scott style, the film opens and closes with knockout battle sequences, but the middle third of the film slows to what appears to be an actual halt in the narrative flow. As Robin is introduced to Nottingham, the film becomes an odd combination of Dark Ages domestic sitcom and bawdy soldiers-on-shore-leave humor, such that one almost expects Cyndi Lauper to come in on the soundtrack with "Archers Just Wanna Have Fun." All the while, the merriment is tempered by continued reminders that "The French are coming! The French are coming!" as personified by William Hurt's character William (easy name) Marshall, who seems to exist only to give an emotional tether for the audience to the political drama. But it doesn't quite work because we don't know who William is when we meet him, nor is his plotline particularly gripping. Of course, at this moment, Robin's plot isn't going anywhere at all, since he's nowhere near outlaw status in Nottingham just yet, and so the film falls into about a twenty-minute lull.

But the film rebounds nicely. Just as it opened with a bang, Robin Hood closes with an even bigger one. It won't be spoiling anything to say that the film closes with a (fairly obvious) nod toward a sequel, but the conclusion of the film wraps up all the major conflicts in an abundantly satisfying manner. Robin Hood is, I'm sure, the best new release out this weekend (really, competition from Letters to Juliet and Queen Latifah's Just Wright? Please.). A solid cast and crew turn out a solid production which might not be particularly memorable but at least is more than enjoyable.

At any rate, it's better than that 1991 Kevin Costner trainwreck Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, which could only boast the combined presence of Morgan Freeman and Alan Rickman.Robin Hood is, fortuitously for moviegoers with younger kinfolk, rated "PG-13 for violence including intense sequences of warfare, and some sexual content." The violence is standard stylized Ridley Scott fare, though most of it plays out bloodlessly and involves more clubbing than slicing; arrows fly quickly and almost never miss their fleshy targets. As for sexual content, bawdy dialogue (as is typical in most Middle Ages flicks) ensues but might fly over the heads of some young'uns.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

"All you need for a movie," Godard said, "is a girl and a gun." Yet the latest in this popular franchise, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, runs on two things: adrenaline and nostalgia.

For devotees of the franchise, it's been a dry spell marked only by Harrison Ford's retiring of the hat, coat, and whip - nineteen years since 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. So when Spielberg and Lucas announced the action hero's imminent return, skepticism was understandably high. Fortunately this movie delivers in a big way. Indiana Jones (Ford) finds himself at the epicenter of another global race to the MacGuffin - this time, it's a crystal skull from a long-dead (or is it?) culture. The Nazis have been replaced with 1957's top foes, the Communists and their paranormal expert Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett, who never slips out of her impeccable Ukranian accent). Indy gets by with a little help from his friends, though: young sidekick Mutt (a surprisingly talented Shia LaBeouf), old flame Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen back for more), and addled prof Harold Oxley (a surprisingly irreverent John Hurt).

Now that most everyone has seen this movie already, I feel fairly safe airing my grievances with the MacGuffin here. The crystal skull, legend has it, was constructed by extraterrestrial beings, though all skulls have so far been debunked as little more than clever human constructions. The movie doesn't take a hard line on the skulls until the very end of the film, relying instead on a slightly more archaeologically fascinating relic, the location of Akator (or El Dorado, the city of gold).

Yet there's still something a little off about the movie compared with the neoclassics Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. On a few levels there's something wrong with this movie. There's a plot twist somewhere about Mutt's parentage, but really - did anyone not see this coming? And the MacGuffin isn't as compelling; there's something about Judeo-Christian artifacts that I just find more compelling. And as nice of a change of pace as the Communists are - and as wonderfully wicked as Cate Blanchett makes herself - it's just not the same as having Indy fight Nazis, the token cinematic villain. Plus, we all miss Sean Connery.

But this movie isn't about making a great piece of celluloid. It's about making a fun thrill ride and revisiting an old favorite. Dr. Jones scores points on being just as entertaining as he was twenty-some years ago, with the adrenaline pumping in a nonstop race to the gilded finish line that puts one in mind of the similarly adventurous Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. There's something to be said for a movie that makes me gasp in terror when a protagonist as immortal as Indy teeters on the edge of a cliff during a supremely climactic car chase. Additionally, it's great to see that a character like Indy ages well - physically and cinematically. He's like an old friend: not quite the same since the last time you saw him, but that's to be expected. As long as you can kick back, dig into a bag of popcorn, and have a good time, there are worse ways to spend a few hours at the cinema.

I can think of a few better, but not many.