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Shyamalan’s latest: clumsy, gimmicky.

Maudlin, sluggish, bland, and undeniably sincere, M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening is a change of pace when set against the extravagant, hollow-brained mayhem of Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. But its inadequacy and clumsiness as a work of entertainment, much less a work of art, make it as forgettable and regrettable as every other summer blockbuster so far.

The Happening opens in “Central Park, New York City, 8:33 AM”: A Day Like Any Other has begun. However, once the wind in the trees picks up, mundane everyday existence is disrupted. People begin to freeze, repeat themselves, and walk backward. Then the really odd stuff occurs, as citizens stab themselves with hairpins, fling themselves from rooftops, and kill themselves without compunction or reason.

News of these strange goings-on in New York travel quickly to Philadelphia, where strident, mystical science teacher Elliot Moore (Mark Wahlberg) is one of the many teachers at his school told to cancel classes and leave town. As the mysterious “toxin” causing the deaths continues to envelop the Northeast, Moore takes his skittish wife Alma (Zooey Deschanel), his math-teacher friend Julian (John Leguizamo), and Julian’s daughter Jess (Ashlyn Sanchez) away from the big city and into the country. Once they’ve supposedly outrun the threat, they land in Filbert, Pennsylvania, where Moore says to Jess, “We’re in a small town. Nothing can happen to us here.” Needless to say, Elliot is soon proven wrong.

When evaluating a movie that relies so much on genre conventions for its emotional effects, a telling comparison with another artist can be useful. The Happening is a dreary, shuffling homunculus compared to Steven Spielberg’s brilliant 2005 retelling of War of the Worlds. Like The Happening, War of the Worlds raided the same cellar of apocalyptic sci-fi clichés (ominous yet perspicacious news bulletins, hillbilly survivalist weirdos, threatening open spaces) but achieved far more subtle and horrifying emotional effects. Ironically, in 1999, Newsweek declared Shyamalan “the New Spielberg” based on the success of Shyamalan’s film The Sixth Sense.

A decade later, Newsweek‘s proclamation looks ridiculous. Shyamalan’s work has gotten more uncertain, gimmicky, and tentative since then, while Spielberg has been on a magnificent creative roll since 2001’s AI: Artificial Intelligence. Even Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Spielberg’s worst movie of the decade, has moments of visual élan (the car reflected in the hubcap, Indy regarding a mushroom cloud) that Shyamalan has never approached.

The chief source of interest in this film comes from watching Shyamalan try to cast off his image as Mr. Twist Ending and become a more serious artist, whatever that means. This split is most evident in the contrasting ways the director handles large spectacles and more intimate moments. There’s a misguided classical feel to the violent set pieces. Shyamalan often uses out-of-focus background events and offscreen sound to suggest rather than show the horrible effects of the airborne menace. Yet he goes in the opposite direction when he’s directing actors, using scores of extreme close-ups that repeatedly and erroneously equate camera proximity with emotional intimacy. These are mistakes that the person he was supposed to replace in the film world has long since outgrown.

The Happening

Now playing

Multiple locations

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Dumbed Down Smart

Directed by Peter Segal, who helmed the more disastrous 2005 Longest Yard remake, Get Smart is a rather randomly timed big-screen adaptation of the popular ’60s TV series. The original Get Smart was essentially Spy vs. Spy as imagined by Mel Brooks — a slapstick comedy about a CIA-like secret government organization called CONTROL that spent its time combating the nefarious baddies from international troublemakers KAOS.

Set in the present, this modernization extends the series’ conceit into the post-Cold War era. CONTROL is now tracking loose nukes in the former Soviet Union.

As secret-agent man Maxwell Smart, Steve Carell makes for a more mild-mannered bumbler than the late Don Adams from the original series, but his square-john looks and knack for physical comedy make him an excellent choice for the role. (It seems established at this point that any scene that requires Carell to run is comedy gold.) And this good casting extends throughout the film.

Anne Hathaway seems too young for the role of love interest/work rival Agent 99, a fact the script explains away. In the film’s Alias-like secret-agent set piece, she hangs in there with Carell in a comic dance-off and is ace eye candy, all endless legs and décolletage. Her lingering girlishness works against Carell’s hangdog asexuality. An older, bolder choice (Angelina Jolie?) would devour Carell here.

Former pro wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson continues to hone his solid action-comedy chops, Hollywood vets Terence Stamp and Alan Arkin (excellent as “Chief,” who attacks a Dick Cheney stand-in during a Homeland Security meeting with the battle cry, “I’ve been waiting for this since Nixon!”) lend gravitas, and the secondary cast is peopled with several effective comic pairings.

Unfortunately, this cast doesn’t quite get the movie it deserves. The spy-flick plotting is overly familiar and nearly beside the point. There’s some inventive comic gadgetry — exploding dental floss, a Swiss Army Knife that includes a blowtorch and harpoon — but the laughs are so few that the script increasingly relies on out-of-character toilet humor (urine, feces, vomit, bare male ass) to provoke the audience.

In this context, the film’s feeble attempt at political commentary feels hypocritical. At this point, I’m on board for whatever invective you’d want to hurl at the Bush administration, but it feels cheap to mock the president for being a philistine and an oaf when you’re encouraging the same qualities in your own audience.

The television series Get Smart ended its run in 1970 and hasn’t been a regular syndication fixture in recent years, so I wonder how much of the potential audience here is actually going to pick up on nostalgic nods to the series the film contains — the shoe phone, the repetition of the catch phrase “Missed it by that much,” etc. The source material suggests an audience that came of age in the ’60s, but the coarseness and noisy action set pieces are geared toward teenagers, who buy movie tickets in greater numbers. It could be that Get Smart is a compromise that doesn’t fully please anyone.

Get Smart

Opening Friday, June 20th

Multiple locations

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Film Features Film/TV

Technique trumps truth in Abu Ghraib doc.

Errol Morris’ new documentary, Standard Operating Procedure, is an attempt to understand how the United States lost the global image war while fighting its war on terror. As part of his strategy to humanize the individuals who perpetrated the 2003 Abu Ghraib prison atrocities, Morris turns his Interrotron (a device he created for interviewing film subjects) on a dozen rank-and-file members of the U.S. military and asks them about their experiences in the notorious Iraqi detainment compound. But a sad thing happens once these folks start talking: Morris’ love of abstraction and form detracts from his subjects’ painful stories, eroding the filmmaker’s ability to record events and offer any larger statement.

Because of the brutal quality of some of the Abu Ghraib testimony, Standard Operating Procedure is repeatedly juiced by Morris’s once-radical propensity for inserting dreamlike, slow-motion re-creations of events. In films such as Morris’ 1988 true-crime investigation The Thin Blue Line and 1997’s mind-expanding Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, such imagistic fugues were new and exciting. Scattered throughout the films like clues and codes for entirely different movies, they functioned as stoned asides that often encouraged additional speculation about the mysterious role of objects and products in the universe. In those films, milkshakes, stock footage, and drive-in movie screens prove nearly as compelling as personal interviews.

Morris has been creating this visual music for two decades, so it’s no surprise that a few of Standard Operating Procedure‘s images are striking and tactile: water from a shower nozzle, a dog’s jaws snapping open and shut, an egg frying in a pan (seen, miraculously, from underneath the pan). However, they also needlessly abstract and aestheticize a series of human-rights violations that should be addressed clearly and directly.

Such ostentatious imagery offers little more than cheap sensationalism disguised as highbrow techno-philosophical inquiry. There’s nothing substantive in any of the director’s asides about the relative truth of photography that isn’t addressed more fully in a book like Susan Sontag’s On Photography, a classic movie like Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up, or a casual aside in any number of recent Jean-Luc Godard films. Why, then, is there so much effort devoted to re-creating these appalling images? The chief motive for these meticulously staged, carefully lit images and sequences of graphic and brutal maltreatment feels more commercial than moral or artistic.

Morris is famous for letting his interview subjects reveal themselves without any apparent off-camera questioning or prompting. Yet more than in any of his previous works, this testimony feels adrift from its context. The words and faces of soldiers such as Lynndie England, Jeremy Sivits, and Sabrina Harman all feel like additional motifs in a complex visual-musical strategy, and the collective testimony functions more like a series of rhythmic cues for Danny Elfman’s score than a collective portrait of people attempting a response to essential questions about responsibility, obedience, and culpability. Try as these individuals might, there’s a stubborn refusal to engage with the larger issues that belongs squarely on the shoulders of the filmmaker. Contrary to Keats, beauty is not always truth. There is more about this story that we need to know.

Standard Operating Procedure

Opening Friday, June 13th

Ridgeway Four

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Green Machine

They made a movie a few years ago that’ll serve just fine as a litmus test for how you’re going to feel about this summer’s next big release, The Incredible Hulk. The litmus film: 2003’s Hulk. A commercial and critical disappointment, Hulk ’03 has now been dealt the ultimate ignominy: It’s been rebooted. Hulk, meet Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and Batman Forever.

Hulk ’03 director Ang Lee and stars Eric Bana (Bruce Banner/Hulk), Jennifer Connelly (Betty Ross), and Sam Elliott (General Thunderbolt Ross) have been replaced in The Incredible Hulk with director Louis Leterrier and actors Edward Norton (Bruce), Liv Tyler (Betty), and William Hurt (Gen. Ross).

If you’re like most, you probably thought Hulk ’03 was too long, too slow, and too self-absorbed to kick much ass. If you’re in this camp, rejoice: Your Hulk movie has arrived. The Incredible Hulk gets it right. It’s a fistful of fun, with riveting action, thrills, scares, and laughs. It’s gleefully cognizant of its comic-book roots — with fanboy-centric moments in its references to the Hulk canon, Captain America, and other Marvel properties — but doesn’t get bogged down with slavish plot mechanics or origin-story minutiae.

But, if you’re like me and think Hulk ’03 already planted the flag, it almost doesn’t matter. Hulk ’03 is a moving meditation on anger, abuse, suppression, and emotional damage. It’s a comic-book movie with a heart of gold.

The Incredible Hulk is just a comic-book movie. Oh, Bruce Banner gets mad and roughs up some bad guys, usually with an armored vehicle as a club, so that’s a plus. But there’s no emotional underpinning to his rage. He just goes off, as inert as a bomb, pissed off at physical threats. What do you want me to say? The psychology of anger is much more interesting than its physical manifestations.

As The Incredible Hulk opens, Banner is living a solitary life in a Rio de Janeiro favela. He lives a meager life, but he’s got some big stuff going on: Banner is pursuing a cure to his “disease,” the uncontrollable thing raging inside him, his AIDS of anger. He’s also working on meditation techniques and jiu-jitsu methods to help him physically (pulse, breathing, diaphragm) control his temper.

Inevitably, General Ross discovers Banner’s whereabouts and sends a team of commandos, headed by Emil Blonsky (Tim Roth), to force him home. This doesn’t go according to plan, and defeated by the Hulked-out Banner, Blonsky begins a movie-long obsession with becoming a computer-generated behemoth, too. By the time it gets to its slugfest climax, with Hulk going toe-to-toe with Blonsky, The Incredible Hulk just feels like the newest animated movie from Marvel.

Litmus test: Who makes a better villain: a 15-foot, snarling, rampaging monster, or an abusive dad? Your answer will tell you if you should pay a visit to the multiplex or the video store.

The Incredible Hulk

Opening Friday, June 13th

Multiple locations

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Film Features Film/TV

Sex and the City

With a two-and-a-half-hour runtime to intimidate curiosity seekers, the eponymous big-screen follow-up to HBO’s popular series Sex and the City is strictly for the fans. Taking place over the course of a year, with star Sarah Jessica Parker’s will-they-or-won’t-they engagement to “Mr. Big” (Chris Noth) at the center and full story arcs from her three sidekicks swirling around, Sex and the City the movie feels like an entire television season crammed into one feature film, which would have been a better artistic choice — if probably less lucrative and surely less agreeable to the actresses involved.

An impressive opening-credit sequence ties the film to the series and gives fans an immediate charge of recognition and pleasure. The women are all back and in standard form: Groan-worthy essayist Carrie Bradshaw (Parker) and sex-crazed publicist Samantha (Kim Cattrall) are colorful, annoying, and unbelievable at the center, while salty attorney Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) and charming preppie Charlotte (Kristin Davis) are the likable, relatable wing-women who keep the enterprise from drifting away. (And, though Nixon and Cattrall are pretty game, a fleet of Malibu soft-porn extras have been shipped in to assure the “R” rating.)

The film seems to work pretty well on its own terms: I was more engaged than I anticipated, and the SATC fan in my life was reasonably satisfied. Indeed, the things that are most bothersome about the movie are the things that were most bothersome about the series: The crass materialism and the legion of minor contrivances and bad puns that dot the script.

The rampant, extravagant consumption (throwaway lines about $300 throw pillows and $525 Manolos, the insistence that young women flock to New York in pursuit of “labels”) and fiscal nonchalance (shrugging off complications involving Manhattan real-estate deals and high-end resort vacations) in particular make Sex and the City out of touch in the current economic climate.

A final note: Writer-director Michael Patrick King gets demerits for introducing, then failing to show proper appreciation for the great Judy Garland musical Meet Me in St. Louis, a work that mixes lightness and depth in a way that SATC — on small screen or big — can only dream about.

Now playing, multiple locations.

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In the Mood for Americana

The corner of South Main and G.E. Patterson has to be one of the most filmed locations in the country outside of New York and Los Angeles. For the past 20 years or so, many films have been shot in Memphis, and it seems like they all end up at this intersection, especially within the doors of the Arcade restaurant. From Elvis ghost stories in Mystery Train to a pre-tragedy family milkshake break in 21 Grams to a bizarrely boisterous celebration of its perfectly respectable chili in Elizabethtown, the Arcade has become a movie star.

It can seem a little silly sometimes that in a city full of promising locations, this one intersection is so ubiquitous. That the great Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai chose to set a third of his American debut, My Blueberry Nights, in Memphis with action taking place entirely in and around the Arcade and kitty-corner bar Earnestine & Hazel’s seems overly predictable.

Instead, My Blueberry Nights becomes something like the location’s apotheosis. The intersection is ready for its close-up, and Wong shoots it lovingly, from a fish-eye entrance by the Arcade facade to a moody shot of clouds reflected in the restaurant’s glass windows to the mysterious dark red glow inside Earnestine & Hazel’s to the wet grit of the street peeking over the bar’s neon sign.

My Blueberry Nights is the first American and English-language film from the adored cult filmmaker Wong, whose Hong Kong masterpieces such as Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, and In the Mood for Love are among the most celebrated international films of the past couple of decades.

The film — which opened the 2007 Cannes Film Festival to a very mixed reaction —  stars pop singer Norah Jones in her acting debut and takes place over the course of one year in three distinctly American locations: Manhattan, Memphis, and the casinos and deserts of Nevada.

At the opening, a young woman named Elizabeth (Jones) walks into a Manhattan diner frequented by her boyfriend, who she suspects is seeing another woman. A brief conversation with the proprietor, Jeremy (Jude Law), confirms her suspicion. She leaves the boyfriend’s apartment keys at the diner to be picked up and leaves.

But the lovelorn Elizabeth keeps coming back to check on the keys, sharing pastries and stories with the similarly heartbroken Jeremy. Just when the relationship with Jeremy starts to intensify, Elizabeth bails, hopping on a bus for destinations unknown.

She ends up in Memphis, waiting tables at the Arcade by day under the name Betty and tending bar at Earnestine & Hazel’s by night as Lizzie. The Memphis segment is the strongest of the film, as Betty/Lizzie becomes something of an observer to a Tennessee Williams scenario involving alcoholic cop Arnie (David Strathairn) and his blowsy estranged wife, Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz).

The third segment lands “Beth” in a backwater Nevada casino, where she befriends vivacious cardsharp Leslie (Natalie Portman) and gets involved in both a gambling scheme and Leslie’s family troubles.

Norah Jones as the heartbroken, pie-loving Elizabeth in My Blueberry Nights

This road-movie of sorts (written by Wong with American genre novelist Lawrence Block) is essentially an outsider’s vision of America as a neon-lit land of casinos, diners, and dive bars, where everyone drives a cool convertible and “Try a Little Tenderness” is always on the juke box. The boozy, tragic drama Elizabeth bears witness to in Memphis is as much a slice of Americana as the blueberry pie she ravages nightly in Manhattan. The film’s rapturous, unambiguous happy ending also feels like a cultural nod.

Unfortunately, the same rootless, wandering melancholy that’s so captivating in Wong’s Hong Kong films feels more contrived here, possibly because, to American audiences, the people and places are more familiar and the imagery less evocative. Where Wong finds mystery and romance in this classically American milieu, American audiences are more likely to find it in his Hong Kong settings.

Wong’s movies are much more about mood and image and moment than about story, and My Blueberry Nights is no different. Though the film has a conventional structure, the actual plotting is minimal. Wong is a repetitive, obsessive, fetishistic filmmaker. I don’t quite remember what his previous film, 2046, was about, but I’ll always remember Zhang Ziyi in that dress. Similarly, the memory of pop star Faye Wong surreptiously cleaning a crush’s apartment in Chungking Express with “California Dreamin'” blaring will forever be rattling around inside my head.

Wong is without his usual cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, but with Darius Khondji taking over, he still creates some imagery and moments that at least approach his best work. The film’s grainy texture is often lit with a red-orange glow characteristic of Chungking Express or Fallen Angels, though less extreme. And the opening-credit close-ups of vanilla ice cream melting and oozing through the seams of blueberry pie filling are an erotic bit of defamiliarizing.

My Blueberry Nights is, oddly, far more talky than Wong’s Hong Kong films, and as a result it suffers from erratic acting. Jones is an engaging and relatable presence but not really an actress — a fact made apparent when Weisz and then Portman enter and swallow the frame. Law tries too hard to ingratiate, his work exposed by the expert, laconic work of Strathairn, who gets, and nails, the film’s juiciest bit of dialogue, when he explains to bartender Lizzie the meaning of all the AA chips in his pockets — a handful of white ones symbolizing one day of sobriety and a lone purple chip recognizing 90 days clean. “I’m the king of the white chip,” he says, before ordering a whiskey to celebrate his “last day of drinking.”

What Jones lacks in chops she makes up for as an object of affection for Wong’s camera. But the cast here on the whole doesn’t provoke as much interest as Wong regulars such as Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung.

My Blueberry Nights is a trifle compared to something like In the Mood for Love, Wong’s 2000 masterwork, but it’s a lovely, romantic, visually stirring trifle. This minor-key mood piece may remind American filmgoers experiencing Wong for the first time of a sweeter version of Jim Jarmusch or a back-to-the-states sequel to Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, a film that borrowed much from Wong. If nothing else, it ends with a bang in the form of the best on-screen kiss since Rear Window.

My Blueberry Nights

Now playing

Studio on the Square

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Film Features Film/TV

Filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai’s Trip through Americana Imagery

The corner of South Main and G.E. Patterson has to be one of the most filmed locations in the country outside of New York and Los Angeles. For the past 20 years or so, many films have been shot in Memphis, and it seems like they all end up at this intersection, especially within the doors of the Arcade restaurant. From Elvis ghost stories in Mystery Train to a pre-tragedy family milkshake break in 21 Grams to a bizarrely boisterous celebration of its perfectly respectably chili in Elizabethtown, the Arcade has become a movie star.

It can seem a little silly sometimes that in a city full of promising locations, this one intersection is so ubiquitous. That the great Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai chose to set a third of his American debut, My Blueberry Nights, in Memphis and the action takes place entirely in and around the Arcade and kitty-corner bar Earnestine & Hazel’s seems overly predictable.

Instead, My Blueberry Nights becomes something like the location’s apotheosis. The intersection is ready for its close-up, and Wong shoots it lovingly, from a fish-eye entrance by the Arcade facade to a moody shot of clouds reflected in the restaurant’s glass windows to the mysterious dark red glow inside Earnestine & Hazel’s to the wet grit of the street peeking over the bar’s neon sign.

My Blueberry Nights is the first American and English-language film from the widely adored cult filmmaker Wong, whose Hong Kong masterpieces such as Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, Happy Together, and In the Mood for Love are among the most celebrated international films of the past couple of decades.

The film — which opened the 2007 Cannes Film Festival to a very mixed reaction — stars pop singer Norah Jones in her acting debut and takes place over the course of one year in three distinctly American locations: Manhattan, Memphis, and the casinos and deserts of Nevada.

At the opening, a young woman named Elizabeth (Jones) walks into a Manhattan diner frequented by her boyfriend, who she suspects is seeing another woman. A brief conversation with the proprietor, Jeremy (Jude Law), confirms her suspicion. She leaves the boyfriend’s apartment keys at the diner to be picked up and leaves.

But the lovelorn Elizabeth keeps coming back to check on the keys, sharing pastries and stories with the similarly heartbroken Jeremy. Just when the relationship with Jeremy starts to intensify, Elizabeth bails, hopping on a bus for destinations unknown.

She ends up in Memphis, waiting tables at the Arcade by day under the name Betty and tending bar at Earnestine & Hazel’s by night as Lizzie. The Memphis segment is the strongest of the film, as Betty/Lizzie becomes something of an observer to a Tennessee Williams scenario involving alcoholic cop Arnie (David Strathairn) and his blowsy estranged wife, Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz).

The third segment lands “Beth” in a backwater Nevada casino, where she befriends vivacious cardsharp Leslie (Natalie Portman) and gets involved in both a gambling scheme and Leslie’s family troubles.

This road-movie of sorts (written by Wong with American genre novelist Lawrence Block) is essentially an outsider’s vision of America as a neon-lit land of casinos, diners, and dive bars, where everyone drives a cool convertible and “Try a Little Tenderness” is always on the juke box. What the boozy, tragic drama Elizabeth bears witness to in Memphis is as much a slice of Americana as the blueberry pie she ravages nightly in Manhattan. The film’s rapturous, unambiguous happy ending also feels like a cultural nod.

Unfortunately, the same rootless, wandering melancholy that’s so captivating in Wong’s Hong Kong films feels more contrived here, possibly because, to American audiences, the people and places are more familiar and the imagery less evocative. Where Wong finds mystery and romance in this classically American milieu, American audiences are more likely to find it in his Hong Kong settings.

Wong’s movies are much more about mood and image and moment than about story, and My Blueberry Nights is no different. Though the film has a conventional structure, the actual plotting is minimal. Wong is a repetitive, obsessive, fetishistic filmmaker. I don’t quite remember what his previous film, 2046, was about, but I’ll always remember Zhang Ziyi in that dress. Similarly, the memory of pop star Faye Wong surreptiously cleaning a crush’s apartment in Chungking Express with “California Dreamin'” blaring will forever be rattling around inside my head.

Wong is without his usual cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, but with Darius Khondji taking over, he still creates some imagery and moments that at least approach his best work. The film’s grainy texture is often lit with a red-orange glow characteristic of Chungking Express or Fallen Angels, though less extreme. And the opening-credit close-ups of vanilla ice cream melting and oozing through the seams of blueberry pie filling is an erotic bit of defamiliarizing.

My Blueberry Nights is, oddly, far more talky than Wong’s Hong Kong films, and as a result it suffers from erratic acting. Jones is an engaging and relatable presence, but not really an actress — a fact made apparent when Weisz and then Portman enter and swallow the frame. Law tries too hard to ingratiate, his work exposed by the expert, laconic work of Strathairn, who gets, and nails, the film’s juiciest bit of dialogue, when he explains to bartender Lizzie the meaning of all the AA chips in his pockets — a handful of white ones symbolizing one day of sobriety and a lone purple chip recognizing 90 days clean. “I’m the king of the white chip,” he says, before ordering a whiskey to celebrate his “last day of drinking.”

What Jones lacks in chops she makes up for as an object of affection for Wong’s camera. But the cast here on the whole doesn’t provoke as much interest as Wong regulars such as Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung.

My Blueberry Nights is a trifle compared to something like In the Mood for Love, Wong’s 2000 romantic masterwork, but it’s a lovely, romantic, visually stirring trifle. This minor-key mood piece may remind American filmgoers experiencing Wong for the first time of a sweeter version of Jim Jarmusch or a back-to-the-States sequel to Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, a film that borrowed much from Wong. If nothing else, it ends with a bang in the form of the best on-screen kiss since Rear Window.

by Chris Herrington

My Blueberry Nights is now playing at Studio on the Square.

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Indiana Rides Again

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull starts perfectly. A group of teens are crowded in a jalopy tearing across the Nevada desert, Elvis’ “Hound Dog” blasting on their radio. The car veers onto a highway and starts teasing with a convoy of army vehicles. The sequence climaxes with a minor road race between the hot rod and the lead army car. Then the scene ends as the convoy turns off the road toward a military base. The kids are never seen again, and nothing plot-worthy comes of their appearance.

What a way to start a movie fraught with astronomic expectations, one released 19 years after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the hugely successful capper to what was, at the time, a trilogy. Long in development, with major plot points rumored and debated by legions of fans, Crystal Skull was a risky movie move. If it failed, it threatened to sully the reputation of the original trilogy, as the Star Wars prequels did to their cinematic siblings.

So the message sent by director Steven Spielberg in the opening: Sit back and relax. Have fun. Come along for the ride.

And that’s exactly what Crystal Skull is: a thrill ride. With the exception of Raiders of the Lost Ark, this latest Indiana Jones installment most successfully captures the spirit of matinee serials from the 1930s and ’40s, one of the primary cultural references of the films.

But the setting of Crystal Skull is 1957, and herein lies a major tonal shift from the previous Indiana Jones films. Crystal Skull reflects and is totally immersed in 1950s culture, just as the original trilogy was steeped in the ’30s and was grounded in the build-up to World War II.

Crystal Skull wades in the paranoia of the Cold War in the throes of the Red Scare, the science-fiction literature and films of the ’50s, and the teen spirit buoyant in the nascent rock-and-roll age. The Nazis of yesteryear are traded in for Soviet villains, with rapier-wielding Russian psionics warrior Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) as the chief baddie. Harrison Ford reprises his role as Indiana, but this time even the all-American hero can’t escape being an FBI “person of interest,” suspected of un-American activities.

The character Indiana is reintroduced in the middle of a bad jam. He and a fellow archaeologist/adventurer, George McHale (Ray Winstone), have been captured by Spalko and her Commie henchmen and ordered to help locate a mysterious artifact kept under lock and key in an Air Force warehouse.

Soon enough, though escaping from the Russkies, Indy has jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire: He stumbles unsuspectingly across the desert onto an atomic proving ground. The set piece — with Indy stuck in a mannequin town in the Nevada wastes as a nuclear bomb is detonated — is one of the best things in the whole damn movie series.

Shia LeBeouf, Harrison Ford, and Karen Allen

It’s great to see Ford again in the defining role of his career. Crystal Skull notably takes place a couple of decades after the setting of Last Crusade, so the character and actor have aged at the same speed. When Indiana says, “It’s not as easy as it used to be,” there’s no questioning the fact for the action actor. But Ford gamely does most of his own stunts, as usual, and if you see Indiana limping from time to time, well, it’s all the more poignant. And Ford’s acting, when Indiana reacts to seeing Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) for the first time in years, is absolutely priceless.

Blanchett works well for the most part as the villain. Though Spalko and Indiana don’t have much chemistry, she’s a formidable presence by herself. And listening to Blanchett’s accent as she curls über-Russian consonants is a thing of joy.

Shia LeBeouf co-stars in a part that could have wrecked the whole ship. He’s Mutt Williams, a Wild One wannabe who comes to Indy to enlist his help in tracking down Professor Oxley (John Hurt), his missing mentor and a former colleague of Jones’.

Though he’s often used for comic relief, LeBeouf is no weak link — he’s no Short Round (or Jar Jar Binks, for that matter). Though Mutt — who pulls out a comb to fix his hair when he’s not flashing a switchblade — could easily have fallen into parody, LeBeouf plays him straight. He doesn’t undermine the character for cheap laughs or force the anger brimming below the character’s surface. He’s a rebel with a cause.

The only real disappointing aspect of the film is that the archaeological hook isn’t very sharp. It could just be personal preference, but mysterious crystal skulls aren’t nearly as fascinating as the other artifacts sought after before.

Raiders and Last Crusade were especially great because the mysteries behind the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail were as interesting in and of themselves as they were effective in serving as MacGuffins. I’d put the crystal skulls neck and neck with the glowing rocks from Temple of Doom in terms of intrigue.

Overwhelming everything, though, is the entertainment value of the film. Spielberg turns the swashbuckle knob to 11, proving again why he’s one of the great directors of the age with boisterous, dynamic visuals. In fact, a film that could have been a throwaway or money grab, like Crystal Skull, may say a lot more about his skill as a director than more serious-minded efforts such as Saving Private Ryan, The Color Purple, or Munich.

Crystal Skull harkens back to an age when Foley artists got paid overtime to make sound effects and stuntmen got to risk their necks without a CGI net. I’ve hardly stopped thinking about it once in two days.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Now playing

Multiple locations

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Film Features Film/TV

Indiana Jones Rides Again

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull starts perfectly. A group of teens are crowded in a jalopy tearing across the Nevada desert, Elvis’ “Hound Dog” blasting on their radio. The car veers onto a highway and starts teasing with a convoy of army vehicles traveling there. The sequence climaxes with a minor battle of speed between the hot rod and the lead army car.

Then the scene just ends as the convoy turns off the road toward a military base. The kids are never seen again, and nothing plot-worthy ever comes of their appearance.

What a way to start a movie fraught with astronomic expectations — released 19 years after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the hugely successful capper to what was, at the time, a trilogy. Long in development, with major plot points rumored, debated, and over-thunked by legions of fans, Crystal Skull was a risky movie move. If it failed, it threatened to sully the reputation of the original trilogy, just like the Star Wars prequels to an extent did to their cinematic siblings.

So the message sent by director Steven Spielberg in the opening: Sit back and relax. Have fun. Come along for the ride.

And that’s exactly what Crystal Skull is: a thrill ride. With the exception of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the newest Indiana Jones most successfully captures the spirit of matinee serials from the 1930s and ’40s, one of the primary cultural references of the films.

But, the setting of Crystal Skull is 1957, and herein lays a major tonal shift from the previous Indiana Jones films. Crystal Skull reflects and is totally immersed in 1950s culture, just as the original trilogy was steeped in the 30s and was full of pre-World War II significance.

Crystal Skull wades in the paranoia of the Cold War in the throes of the Red Scare, the science-fiction literature and film of the ’50s, and the teen spirit buoyant in the nascent rock-and-roll age.

In Crystal Skull, the Nazis of yesteryear are traded in for Soviet villains, with rapier-wielding Russian psionics warrior Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) as the head baddy. Harrison Ford reprises as Indiana, but this time even the all-American hero can’t escape being an FBI “person of interest,” suspected of un-American activities.

The character Indiana is re-introduced in the middle of a bad jam. He and a fellow archaeologist/adventurer, George McHale (Ray Winstone), have been captured by Spalko and her Commie henchmen and ordered to help locate a mysterious artifact kept under lock and key in a warehouse at Area 51.

Soon enough, though escaping from the Russkies, Indy has jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire: He stumbles unsuspectingly across the desert onto an atomic proving ground. The set piece — with Indy stuck in a mannequin town in the Nevada wastes as a nuclear bomb is detonated — is one of the best things in the whole damn movie series.

It’s great to see Ford again in the defining role of his career. Crystal Skull notably takes place 19 years after the setting of Last Crusade, so the character and actor have aged at the same speed. When Indiana says, “It’s not as easy as it used to be,” there’s no questioning the fact for the action actor. But Ford gamely does most of his own stunts, as usual, and if you see Indiana limping from time to time, well, it’s all the more poignant. (And Ford’s acting, when Indiana reacts to seeing a major character from a past film for the first time in years, is absolutely priceless.)

Blanchett works pretty well for the most part as the villain. Though Spalko and Indiana don’t have much character chemistry, she’s a formidable presence by herself. And listening to Blanchett’s accent as she curls uber-Russian consonants is a thing of joy.

Shia LeBeouf co-stars in a part that could have wrecked the whole ship. He’s Mutt Williams, a Wild One wannabe who comes to Indy to enlist his help in tracking down Professor Oxley (John Hurt), his missing mentor and a former colleague of Jones’.

Though he’s often used for comic relief, LeBeouf is no weak link — he’s no Short Round (or Jar Jar Binks, for that matter). Though Mutt — who pulls out a comb to fix his hair when he’s not flashing a switchblade — could easily have fallen into parody, LeBeouf plays him straight. He doesn’t undermine the character for cheap laughs or force the anger brimming below the character’s surface. He’s a rebel with a cause.

The only real disappointing aspect of the film is that the archaeological hook isn’t very sharp. It could just be personal preference, but mysterious crystal skulls aren’t near as fascinating as the other artifacts we’ve seen sought after before.
Raiders and Last Crusade were especially great because the mysteries behind the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail, respectively, were as interesting in and of themselves as they were effective in serving as MacGuffins. I’d put the crystal skulls neck and neck with the glowing rocks from Temple of Doom in terms of intrigue.

Overwhelming everything, though, is the entertainment value of the film. Spielberg tightens the swash buckle to 11, proving again why he’s one of the great directors of the age with boisterous, dynamic visuals. In fact, a film that could have been a throwaway or money grab, like Crystal Skull, may say a lot more about his skill as a director than his much more serious-minded efforts such as Saving Private Ryan, The Color Purple, or Munich. (Schindler’s List is a directing masterpiece and an exception to my theory.)

Crystal Skull harkens back to an age when the Foley artists got paid overtime to make punching sounds, and the stuntmen got to risk their necks without a CGI net. I’ve hardly stopped thinking about it once in two days.

by Greg Akers

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Film Features Film/TV

“Prince Caspian”: A Return to Narnia

Much is always made about the religious themes at work in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series. The Sunday-school-simple Christian allegory and the familiarity of the plot made the 2005 film adaptation of his novel The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe feel a little rote. Being Shrek and Shrek 2 director Andrew Adamson’s first live-action feature, and coming so soon on the heels of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, made it suffer in comparison to that genre standard-bearer.

But Prince Caspian is another matter …

Read Greg Akers’ review of Prince Caspian.