Lost alternate finale

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opening night review

I just got back from the theater and here are my intial thoughts:

I'm glad Indy's back, however I can't shake the doubt that is growing in my mind over this film.

At times it made "Live Free or Die Hard" look... realistic and believable. Other times it made the "National Treasure" films look straight forward. Indy has now become "superhuman" - falling to the "Jack Bauer syndrome" that now affects most major action stars: they're impervious to damage - and whatever pain may be inflicted on them is only minor and they're recover immediately. A piano could fall on Indy and he would be fine (I suspect this will be a major plot point if they do another sequel/prequel (pre-this film's time frame that is).

Some sequences looked like they were edited by a complete amateur. Three things that nearly ruined the film for me (extremely minor "spoilers"): CGI Prairie Dogs, Fridge, Tarzan, Ending. Other times it looks like they added some apparent dramatic tension even though everyone and their mother could figure out who/what happened or was going to happen.

At least now Temple of Doom isn't the worst in the series!

At the moment I'm giving it a ***/*****

This coming week:

Prince Caspian:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:

The Road Warrior

Continuing my massive upload of reviews (I've just been too busy with work and my personal life for this lately), I present The Road Warrior.

This film wasn't out to win Oscars. It is a wildly entertaining post-apocalyptic film. The film, which is actually titled "Mad Max 2" - few saw "Mad Max", so the title was renamed to "The Road Warrior" to avoid having to explain why Max was mad, and why no one knew about the first time he was angry. But I digress...

In all respects, it is a sequel to the first "Mad Max" film, but the basic premise seems to have changed. The world has been thrown into chaos, devastated by atomic war. Australia seems to have fared pretty well - and it's still a complete craphole.

Max started off as a kind of Dirty Harry of the post-apocalyptic future, a tough cop that works by his own, loose rules. This film picks up at a later point in time, where he apparently is no longer a cop, and seems to be a wandering lone Ranger. The film is in most respects a Western. A stranger who helps a community fight off a gang of bandits.

This group actually is hoarding the most valuable substance in the world - oil. The problem is they're unable to actually transport this anywhere - so they're stuck here, in the middle of nowhere to be hounded by ruthless gangs. The people of the refinery just want out - to move to Northern Australia - which they claim is fertile and wonderful, but I just can't help but think that they're being optimistic.

The film has fantastic action sequence - especially for a time that is devoid of all CGI effects that get thrown into film chases these days, mostly for a mediocre "wow" effect (Michael Bay anyone?). If anything the wait to see this chase is worth every second before it.

***1/2 out of *****

Lost Recap

For those who need to know what's going on for the last 3 seasons:

Nope, nothing will be spoiled by watching this, and you'll be thinking the same thing once it's over.

Killers from Space

Killers from Space is a depressingly bad 50s science fiction movie. Lets just say there's not a lot of story here - Peter Graves is a scientist who is monitoring atomic bomb tests out in the New Mexico desert.

Some aliens don't seem to realize that we can just all get along, and want to wipe out a few billion people to make way for their billions of people.

I'm really curious how Graves could have kept making films after something like this? Or was he lucky enough and no one stuck around for the second feature on this one? Perhaps he left the country for a few weeks to lay low.

Yes, that must be it.

* out of *****

IMDb's listing of Killers From Space

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay

Let me start off by saying that I was not extremely impressed by this film. Granted it was pretty funny, but it fell flat too many times for my taste.

Perhaps they waited too long to get this out the door, allowing far too much tweaking in all aspects of the film. I've seen worse comedy sequels (Men in Black II, anyone?), but I just don't know. Sometimes I suppose it's just fine to leave sleeping dogs lie.

The character of Ron Fox (played by the somehow popular Rob Corddry) is perhaps one of the worst movie characters in recent memory. In no way was his character funny and he completely took away from the other characters that at least had some talent in the film. There were a few instances that his character set up a good joke, but lets be honest - most of the jokes were continuations of ones that had already been done earlier in the movie.

The film picks up directly after the first one - but it somehow feels different. It's something I can't quite place on it, but just... something. NPH was probably the only really redeeming part of the film (stay after the credits people!).

I read elsewhere, and I'd like to echo their sentiments: The cult love Harold & Kumar found in the years since its initial release has gone directly to their heads and now they seem to live in this delusion that no effort is necessary and that they just have to show up to get the same results.

While I don't think it's that serious, I do find a lot of that to be true. I fear for any future Super Trooper's sequels to suffer the same basic fate as this.

Maybe comedies shouldn't have sequels?

*** out of *****

Iron Man

Wow... just wow.

Iron Man just had everything I've been looking for in a comic book action film for the past few years (Sin City and 300 excluded).

To be perfectly frank, I'm not that familiar with Iron Man or Tony Stark. I've only ever been a moderate comic book reader - and most of those were the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics back when the movies were popular. Outside of that I only really knew what I had seen on Saturday morning cartoons - which only consisted of X-Men, Spiderman (mid-90s version), and the Fantastic Four.

Robert Downey Jr. really sold it as Tony Stark. He's a wonderful actor, and really pulled every aspect of what I'd expect someone like him to be going through with flying colors. The rest of the cast looked like they were enjoying themselves and had a good time. I just remember reading articles that blasted the filmmakers for hiring this cast of "great" actors to do a role that was apparently "beneath" them. They were all wonderful and that really shown through on screen.

I think they only downside to the movie was it's story. I understood it was a "orgin" film, but to a small extent it didn't feel like there was much of a story. It set everything up just fine, so I suppose I'm glad they didn't screw it up with bad writing or over-the-top horrible dialogue like in the Spider-Man films.

The action was just fine. I hear a lot of people say "lack there of" when it comes to the amount of action, but come on. Have we become so inept at just watching a movie for the film itself and not for the explosions (I'm looking at you Michael Bay)? I mean, I read a fan review that complained that there were "hardly are more than 5 action sequences in the whole movie." So would the film have been worse if there were 4? How about 6? Does that make everything better?

This was one film that I was proud to say I went to see twice in the theaters. There have been so few films lately that I could really say that about.

I'm really looking forward to the sequel and spin-offs!

**** out of *****