Joey Magidson
Welcome back to my Home Movies! This week, we have Harrison Ford‘s final turn as our favorite archeologist in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Joining that film today are a pair of Criterion Collection releases, including Days of Heaven. Read on for more…
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
While this final adventure is hardly a patch on the original trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is still pretty fun. Plus, it sends Harrison Ford off on a better note as Indy than the last time around. So, that’s something, right? This here is some of what I said in my review back in the summer:
It’s kind of crazy that this movie even exists. Just think about it. Indiana Jones has been a big screen character for over 40 years now. Sure, Raiders of the Lost Ark got two good to very good sequels in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom as well as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but the long in development Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull underwhelmed, seemingly putting the franchise on ice. Now, Indy is back, not so much taking a victory lap as much as attempting to go out with more of a bang. The result is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which won’t make anyone forget about the first three, but is a welcome step up from the fourth one. Mostly, if you enjoy this character, there’s more fun to be had with him, before hanging up the fedora for good.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a farewell to an all-timer of a cinematic character. At the same time, it’s an adventure fit for our hero. Not all of it works, but in comparison to the wildly uneven nature of his prior outing, this is mostly satisfying. Would it perhaps have been better to just leave Indy be? Maybe, but after continuing on from a really strong trilogy, it made sense to try and course correct here. What we end up with is no modern classic, to be sure, but an entertaining adventure with an old friend.
Babylon 5: The Complete Series (TV)
The Color Purple (4K)
A Disturbance in the Force
The Kill Room
The Odd Couple: The Complete Series (TV)
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – Season 2 (TV)
Titanic (4K)
Blast of Silence
From The Criterion Collection: “Swift, brutal, and blackhearted, Allen Baron’s New York City noir Blast of Silence is a sensational surprise. This low-budget, carefully crafted portrait of a hit man on assignment in Manhattan during Christmastime follows its stripped-down narrative with mechanical precision, yet also with an eye and ear for the oddball details of urban living and the imposing beauty of the city. At once visually ragged and artfully composed, and featuring rough, poetic narration performed by Lionel Stander and written by Waldo Salt (both uncredited), Blast of Silence is a stylish triumph.”
–
Days of Heaven
From The Criterion Collection: “One-of-a-kind filmmaker-philosopher Terrence Malick has created some of the most visually arresting films of the last century, and his glorious period tragedy Days of Heaven, featuring Oscar-winning cinematography by Nestor Almendros, stands out among them. In the mid-1910s, a Chicago steelworker (Richard Gere) accidentally kills his supervisor, and flees with his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) and his little sister (Linda Manz) to the Texas panhandle, where they find work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer (Sam Shepard). A love triangle, a swarm of locusts, a hellish fire—Malick captures it all with dreamlike authenticity, creating a timeless American idyll that is also a gritty evocation of turn-of-the-century labor.”
Stay tuned for more next week…
Comments
Loading…