The phrase "I don't know where to begin" has never been more appropriate than right now. As I described to my friends immediately following the movie, watching "Indy 4" felt like being repeatedly punched in the face; I couldn't feel a thing until it was all over, and then I had too many bruises to identify. Therefore, I'm only going to summarize some highlights of the highlights:
- Indy's days of doing cool stunts are basically gone. Shia's character swings through the jungle on vines and swordfights while standing between two speeding army jeeps. The iconic whip makes a less-than-cameo appearance.
- They get married!!!!
- Shia's character ends up being Indy's illegitimate child. Real original, George!
- There's gunpowder that flies through the air because of alien magnetism.
- Karen Allen can drive a jeep off a cliff knowing some unseen giant branch will gracefully catch and lower them into the river below.
- All you need to survive a nuclear blast is a refrigerator. You won't even be injured. And you'll get a free sponge bath from several men in suits immediately after. Expect a large order from North Korea any day now.
- When the FBI say they're going to watch you, they don't really mean it.
- My brother pointed this out to me: There are no traps! Seriously, think of one classic trap. All you get is native Aztecs jumping out of walls that they've seemingly lived behind for thousands of years.
I need to stop.
I looked up upcoming movies on Movies.com this morning, thinking it had to get better. It kind of does. Here's what we have to possibly or possibly not look forward to, with my impressions:
May 30 - "Stuck" -- I hadn't heard of this at all until just now. Apparently, well-to-do Mena Suvari drives drunk, hits a homeless man, and decides to carry him home on her windshield and wait until he dies in her garage and then dispose of the body. The movies.com description sums it up with: "So, [homeless guy] must gather up his strength to get out before he dies." Sounds exciting. I hope he at least poops in her recycling bin on his way out.
June 6 - "You Don't Mess With The Zohan" -- Adam Sandler delivers his best Adam Sandler impression... again.
June 13 - "The Incredible Hulk" -- Didn't I just see this 2 years ago? Not since "The Crow" has a remake come so quickly after the original. I've read somewhere that the script actually presents this as a sequel, while retroactively changing some things from the first movie to make it fit the new one. Whatever. Even though it's got our boy Ed Norton, the CGI is still center stage here, and the green guy still looks like a giant action figure.
June 20 - "Get Smart" -- Steve Carrell is probably the perfect person for this role, but other than that this movie is a total crapshoot. Having seen the old show a few times, I'm not sure how well they can adapt it to the modern silver screen.
June 20 - "The Love Guru" -- Mike Myers vehicle + Jessica Alba + Justin Timberlake = moving on...
June 27 - "Wall-E" -- I must admit, after watching an extended preview for this at "Indy", it actually looks kinda good. I've been known to really enjoy an animated kids movie from time to time (see The Incredibles). I doubt I'll actively seek this out, but if the situation presents itself I wouldn't mind seeing it.
June 27 - "Wanted" -- The first on this list that falls under genuine anticipation. This is clearly this summer's contender for the "Equilibrium" crown of most incredibly awful movie ever. The plot, while extremely terrible, is unfortunately nothing remarkable. But they can curve the trajectories of bullets by swinging and twisting their arms around during a shootout! Really! The other special effects seen in the previews look equally as ridiculous. It's only fitting that Angelina Jolie is involved in such a flaming pile. That's how you know it's a serious bid for the title.
July 2 - "Hancock" -- Will Smith delivers his best Will Smith impression... again.
July 11 - "Meet Dave" -- Eddie Murphy is an alien spaceship piloted by a crew of tiny aliens. They travel to Earth on some mission to save their home planet, but things go wrong when the "ship" takes on a mind of its own and begins romancing a "hot female", as movies.com so eloquently puts it.
July 18 - "The Dark Knight" -- If you haven't yet watched "Batman Begins", July 18 is your deadline. This movie is going to be HUGE. Not only is this Heath Ledger's final completed performance, but also judging from the previews it could very well be his best. His preparation for this role was remarkable (I'll get to this another time), and he will unquestionably steal the viewer's attention in every single scene in which he appears. Thankfully, it doesn't look like we'll be short on the Joker in this one; Batman/Bruce Wayne reportedly does not even appear for the first 6 minutes of the film. Aside from the Joker, we've still got the excellent Christian Bale as Batman, the excellent Gary Oldman as Officer Gordon, the excellent Michael Caine as Alfred, and the excellent Christopher Nolan directing. Cillian Murphy (also awesome) apparently reprises his role from the first film in a cameo, and even Katie Holmes gets upgraded into Maggie Gyllenhaal. Aaron Eckhart looks to play a capable pre-Two Face Harvey Dent, and Morgan Freeman will hopefully continue to be a benign garnish in what really isn't his show. It's going to be a long summer until July 18.
I'm going to stop here. For me, there's no reason to look further yet. Let me know what you're looking forward to.
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11 comments:
Jungly?? You are no longer allowed to give Joel a hard time about typos!
I caught that and corrected it. It says "jungle" now, but Lauren is correct; it said "jungly".
I'm not saying I didn't deserve it, but we don't try to pick on Joel for mere typos. It's things like typing "president" when he means "prescedent" or when he talks about someone laughing "historically" instead of "hysterically" that we enjoy so much.
By far the best part of Indiana Jones was standing around afterwards, mouths agape, saying "And what the hell was up with...???!"
Welcome to the page. Dark Knight was the highlight of the evening.
Next time you review a movie less than a week old, you may want to write SPOILER ALERT.
Just sayin' is all...
Brian - I'll add a spoiler alert. But really, what is there to spoil?
People clapped after the movie. WE didn't, but people did. Hell, some of them were probably thrilled with the wedding.
you have a brother?
i think i can guess why sex and the city was not on your list. i will be joining a group of friends to see it opening night.
How can you forget about the upcoming X Files release?
ahhh... I come back from my vacation to find that Mike has finally taken me up on my offer to write for FITS. Aside from that brief period in 2006 when I held a gun to Moe Greene's head and made him write a couple of rambling Film Vault Tuesday posts about his love of all things Michael Douglas, I've been doing this blog solo... now I've got someone else to lend a helping hand, and I didn't even have to use a gun this time!
as far as the post goes, yeah, Indy was a major disappointment... I spent most of the movie trying to sell myself on obvious cliche plot twists and painful special effects. My love of Indy is such that I was willing to lie to myself... "No, no, no, this is good... this is what I wanted... I'm glad Shia LeBouf is his son..."
But when it was all over and we were standing around in front of the theater talking, I couldn't lie to my friends... the movie sucked.
Lucas/Speilberg took something that was a special part of my childhood, and they defaced it as I was forced to watch... It was like seeing my first sweet and innocent elementary school crush all grown up and performing in a hard core pornographic movie... maybe it wasn't quite that traumatic... but it was still pretty bad.
I'm obviously looking forward to seeing Dark Knight as well.
And even though M. Night Shyamalan's movie all been progressively worse since "The Sixth Sense", I hold out hope that he may have something decent with "The Happening", but I doubt it.
There is also a feel good sports movie set to come out in August that has the potential to right the wrongs in the "Bad News Bears" remake, and give us that genuine good sports movie that we haven't seen since Friday Night Lights... It's called "The Perfect Game" and as with the M.Night movie, I'm cautiously hopeful.
chanclita- looks like Mike weeded out all the chick flicks in his look forward. I actually watched the first season of Sex in the City just for the Kim Cattrall factor, but you can only see her boobs so many times before even that gets old. I just didn't have enough estrogen to stick with it.
I'm glad to hear you're seeing it with friends and aren't forcing Mr. Chancla along for the ride. Let us know how it goes.
And no I don't have a brother. Mike does.
the refrigerator bit.bwahaha. so funny.
U forgot sex and the city. . hello! it comes out on my birthday! u must talk about it now!
LOL. haha.
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