Cynical Cinema

When it comes to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you get what you expect. It isn’t Raiders of the Lost Ark, or even The Last Crusade, but it is still better than Temple of Doom. Harrison Ford, now 88 years old, returns in this latest installment from Lucasfilm and Steven Spielberg as the archaeologist professor turned spy, soldier and superhero. Joining him once again is Karen Allen, his main squeeze from Raiders who apparently was always “the one”. Also signing up is Shia LaBeouf, who plays Allen’s son, a tough-kid Marlon Brando wannabe in the 1950s. His presence is announced in a fairly cheesy and hilarious fashion when he shows up riding a motorcycle, dressed up as Brando in The Wild One. And frankly, his presence in the movie is largely pointless, despite the big revelation that everyone saw coming from the start.

Cate Blanchett, the sublime actress responsible for such brilliant performances as Bob Dylan in I’m Not There and Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator, is as good as expected as the evil woman searching for the titular Crystal Skull for the Russians. (It’s the 50s - the Cold War is still big news.) The standard Indy fare is here - the friends who betray him, the kid who’s along for the ride, the hot-and-cold romance with Karen Allen, the fear of snakes, the temples full of trap doors and levers and booby traps, and the ridiculous action escapes from danger. Harrison Ford is as good as ever as Indiana Jones, making light of his age at the very beginning - “this isn’t as easy as it used to be”. References to classic moments in the first three movies abound. “Looks like you brought a knife to a gunfight”. And the warehouse that houses the ark of the covenant appears again at the beginning. Is that the corner of the ark we see?

I heard people complaining a bit about the movie when it ended - “Come on, farfetched much?” But in point of fact, the whole series is magical and mystical and farfetched. This isn’t really less believable than the ark of the covenant, the holy grail, and a mystic temple where people pull your heart out of your chest. So come on people. Jump on board and enjoy the ride here. For me, the farfetched ending here just adds to the B-movie feel that has been the hallmark of the Indy series up until this point. Is there anything more B-movie than…the way this ends? I don’t think so. John Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Jim Broadbent round out a cast that appears to have been selected more for cachet than for anything else.

There are moments which are, even for the Indiana Jones series, a strain on credulity. Like the one where he escapes a nuclear bomb by hiding in a fridge, or the one where he makes an escape from a warehouse on some kind of super-high-speed rocket device. But all in all, the story moves along insanely quickly, as you would expect. The protagonists encounter several interesting ancient cultures, if only for two minutes at a time. The evil bad woman lives through the killer ants and the plunges off waterfalls to make an appearance at the very end. The duplicitous friend perishes when greed gets the best of him. And the demise of the evil woman is as Indiana Jones as it gets.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the poster child for “popcorn movie”, the definitive summer blockbuster, where you sit down for two hours of non-stop action, check your brain at the door, and allow a guy in a fedora carrying a bullwhip to assault your senses with one stunt after another. It’s a testament to the skill of Spielberg and Ford that they make it so easy to shut off your brain. An almost-worthy inclusion into the Indiana Jones Franchise, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is worth the price of a rental. And the price of a small popcorn. It comes out October 14th courtesy of Paramount Home Entertainment.

“Recount” is an HBO movie that premiered on May 25th on HBO in the states and The Movie Network here in Canada.  Originally, Sydney Pollack was slated to direct the film, but pulled out at the last moment due to an undisclosed illness, which of course was cancer, the same cancer that caught up to him yesterday.  A sad coincidence as this fantastic movie premieres.  This is one of those major TV drama events where a made-for-TV movie actually gets hype and buzz and deserves it.  Well worth checking out.

HBO has just put the movie on TV, a dramatized version of the real events that led up to George Bush being fictitiously elected over Al Gore in 2000.  I recently saw Antonin Scalia, one of the American Supreme Court justices directly responsible for the handing of the election to Bush, saying in an interview “it was eight years ago.  Get over it.”  But America can’t get over it.  They still have that falsely-elected president, who is still screwing things up on a daily basis.  And not in a fun, keystone-cops kind of way.  Screwing things up in a malicious, Mr. Burns sort of way.  Scalia, by the way, is also the Supreme Court justice who believes torture is not an act in violation of the Eighth Amendment, the one dealing with “cruel and unusual punishment”.  His reasoning - although torture, such as waterboarding, IS cruel and unusual, it does not qualify as “punishment”.  You see, people who get tortured are not being punished for anything, since they have not been convicted of anything.  They may well be innocent.  And if they are innocent, then they are not being punished.  A prince of a man, Mr. Scalia.  But I digress.

Anyway, although the politics and questionable behaviour of Antonin Scalia are something about which I could rant for aeons, the man does not figure prominently in Recount.  Rather, the movie is about several other people.  Ron Klain (Kevin Spacey), Al Gore’s fired-then-rehired campaign advisor.  Warren Christopher (John Hurt), the secretary of state under Bill Clinton, who was sent by Gore to supervise the recount.  (Sidebar - Christopher, so far, is the only person portrayed in this film that has objected to his protrayal.  He has not seen it, but he read the transcripts and felt they made him sound way too naive.)  Katherine Harris (Laura Dern), the Florida Republican Secretary of State who exhibited terribly partisan and unethical behaviour during the 2000 election, doing everything she could to hand victory to Bush.  And James Baker (Tom Wilkinson), the Secretary of State under George Bush Sr., who was the chief legal advisor to Bush Jr. in 2000.

Each of those actors gives an examplary performance, especially Spacey, as an idealist who will fight to the end, and Dern as a woman in way over her head with a self-esteem problem and a taste for the spotlight.  Also terrific are Dennis Leary as Michael Whouley, and Ed Begley Jr. as David Boies.  Although we already know the end result of this film, (and for many of us politically interested folk, the entire process), this film still plays like a thriller.  Each moment is more and more tense, as you really get a sense of the machinations behind the scenes.  You get righteously indignant at the Republican troublemakers who tried to delay the re-counting of the votes.  You get furious at the groups who intentionally excluded more than 20,000 voters, most of them African-American, under the false pretext that they had been convicted of a felony.  You pull for the supreme court to render the right decision, and you can get right into it when something goes the right way for a change.  Even though you know for a fact that at the end of the movie the bad guys win and we get eight years of Chaney and Rumsfeld and Rove and Rice and that president guy.

 The only really irritating thing about the movie is the appearance of Bush and Gore themselves.  The two of them appear courtesy of archival footage, which is fine, but then they are shown, always from behind, and played by some stand-in actor.  That gives Recount, if only for those few brief moments, the feel of one of those lame, cheap, re-enactment scenes from a When Animals Attack show, or Unsolved Mysteries.  Aside from that, however, Recount is incredibly brisk, moves along very quickly, and is an absolutely thrilling political true story.  Tour-de-force performances all the way through, and a script that I’m sure just wrote itself.  Catch this one while you can, playing on The Movie Network right now.