Showtimes for all movies in the area. Click here!

By Cole Smithey

‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’

Movie Trailer

From the “daan-dadaduun-tuun-duun” opening notes of its famous John Williams musical score, “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” announces itself as a matinee serial cliffhanger-inspired sequel that’s built like a brick smokehouse where audiences will be spoon-fed with infectious exuberance.

An amalgamation of nearly every successful adventure movie franchise, the movie is dotted with immediately recognizable nostalgic elements that play to the kid in everyone. Teens drag race their convertible roadster with U.S. Army personnel on a Nevada rural route, circa 1957, before we discover that the military officers and soldiers are actually a team of wily Cold War Russians taking Jones and his intermittently double-crossing sidekick Mac (Ray Winstone) to the government’s notoriously secret Hangar 51 to find the contents of a certain crate.

Cate Blanchett is a black-bob-haired Ukrainian commandant named Irina Spalko who chews her vowels like licorice-coated borscht. With a smirk and his whip, Jones turns the giant hangar into a carnival of set piece action before escaping the enclosure to its dubious outer limits.

Back in the relatively safe confines of the college he teaches, Jones is fired as a result of an FBI investigation into his loyalty to homeland America. It’s not just the Cold War that’s breathing down Jones’s neck, but McCarthyism to boot. A malt shop meeting with a “Wild One” era Brando-inspired motorcycle greaser named Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), convinces Jones that a trip to the jungles of Peru to look for an archeological object of desire, the Crystal Skull of Akator, is in order.

Once there, the newly-bonded duo of Jones and Mutt rescue one very insane Professor Oxley (John Hurt) and obtain the Crystal Skull, which resembles an elongated cranium of the creature from the “Alien” movies. Spalko and her troops catch scent of the skull that they too desire and offer hot pursuit that fuels a long-running series of eye-popping slapstick chase sequences involving giant ants, a hoard of monkeys and the dramatic use of one very long snake for rescuing a certain snake-hating hero.

With Oxley and the Crystal Skull in tow, our daring trio become four when Mutt’s mother, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen reprising her role from “Raiders of the Lost Ark”), is delivered into the story like a romantic reward for Jones, for whom it’s clear she is the only woman.

Any film school professor will tell you that the easiest way to entertain a film audience is to create a chase scene — they exist in one form or another in almost every movie, regardless of genre. Spielberg’s mastery of the chase form layers elements of small and grand scale spectacle in an orchestrated way so that every increase in speed and obstacle is matched with humor and foreshadowing of things to come.

The slaps and tickles arrive with undeniably entertaining sword fights and jumping or falling stunts that delight in a magical way that adventure cinema should. The filmmaking on display here is so far ahead of quest movies like “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” that it’s embarrassing to even mention them in the same breath. The Indiana Jones ensemble of actors, crew, special effects teams, designers and the rest, understand Spielberg’s way of reaching into iconic physical elements like a city of gold, or a series of gigantic waterfalls for example, to extract cinematic joy deeply rooted in childish dreams and fantasy.

David Koepp’s script may not be a perfect example of balanced exposition and dramaturgy, but it doesn’t matter because the message is clear. We love to be taken with our surrogate family of heroes on pretend adventures to unbelievably beautiful and dangerous places where anything is possible, and where the surprises are beyond our wildest imaginations. We always want to go back. This is a movie you will want to revisit again and again. CV

‘War, Inc.’

Movie Trailer

The would-be comic lampoonery, about a time when all wars are outsourced, mirrors the realities of America’s corporate-enabled occupation of Iraq. John Cusack plays Hauser, a disaffected hit man sent by a former U.S. Vice President-turned-corporate-shill (Dan Aykroyd) to the fictional country of Turaqistan to assassinate an oil magnate known as Omar Sharif. Hauser’s cover as the organizer of a U.S. trade show that features state-of-the-art prosthetics, is just enough of a distraction from his actual purpose to seduce a lefty journalist named Natalie Hegalhuzen (Marisa Tomei). Hilary Duff injects the movie with a spunky pitch as Middle East pop star Yonica Babyyeah, who develops a crush on Hauser in spite of her pending wedding to her bodyguard. There are some inspired touches of humor, as when Hauser knocks back shots of straight hot sauce before springing into action, or when he shoves a former boss into a garbage truck, but the comedy never gels.

A recent New York Times article revealed that without the continued support of Blackwater Worldwide, the discredited company responsible for providing trigger-happy security to American diplomats and convoys in Iraq, America’s occupation of the country could not continue. Unlike the Cold War era when Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964) foretold of global annihilation at the hands of phallic-obsessed politicians, “War, Inc.” comes during a clashing era of climate change and a trademarked war for raw corporate profits. Enabled by commercial entities ranging from surveillance-complicit phone companies to gouging oil alliances, Americans are increasingly treated like host bodies ready to be sucked dry.  

This isn’t to say that “War, Inc.” couldn’t have been a funnier movie, merely that the writers (Mark Leyner, Jeremy Pikser and Cusack) had a more complicated job cut out for them. Cusack’s Hauser is just as concerned with creature comforts as any SUV-driving suburban mom is. In one of the film’s most inspired moments, a super-caffeinated whoa-yelling soldier derails Hauser’s impending public hit on Sharif in order to give the assassin his newly cleaned laundry. Hauser is glad to get his clothes, and nonplussed about missing the opportunity to fulfill his assignment. The poor soldier is stuck in a permanent state of radically elevated excitement. He’s recognizable as a walking war causality unable to ever return to civilian life regardless of any political outcome. The scene is notable for the feeling of resentment it evokes for the audience at Hauser’s ineffectiveness as a hit man. We want to see Hauser kill Sharif, for no reason other than to see the murder happen.

But after relating to Hauser’s calm at getting his laundry delivered, our focus shifts to similar ideas of material comfort and we accept him for being easily sated like us. The problem with “War, Inc.” is that commerce, fear and military occupation, are already inextricably linked to the way Americans live their daily lives. There’s no longer a separation between the way American citizens are treated by cops and the way Iraqi civilians are treated by military police. No matter how dark your sense of humor, the Bush Administration’s joke has become a harsh reality. There’s no spark of humor when you’re staring into an abyss. CV

Comment on this story | Return to top