Starman (1984)

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, Charles Martin Smith, Richard Jaeckel

Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure.

Did I Like It: First of all, I’m just going to say this part simply and quickly. Any movie where the antagonist has a complete change of heart and helps the heroes escape after getting a dressing down from his superiors for being “a GS-11.” I like that a lot. I had forgotten about it. Even if this hadn’t been one of Carpenter’s films, I would have on the whole liked it quite a bit.

That being said, it’s weird to see Carpenter—and he really didn’t try it again, until Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1992) maybe—make a film that doesn’t have a pitch black heart.

It’s even weirder that Carpenter made this film shortly after—Christine (1983) only remains in the gap—he made the bleakest tale of alien visitation, The Thing (1982).

But, at his best, that’s what John Carpenter does: surprise.

It surprises not only in Carpenter’s choice of genre—alien invasion as hybrid of mediation on grief, romantic comedy, and road picture—but also in terms of casting. Carpenter would have been forgiven for using the Robert De Niro to his Scorsese and putting Kurt Russell in the role of Starman. That would have been a mistake, though. Whether Carpenter had the presence of mind to go another way, or he had the idea thrust upon him by the studio, but there’s an inquisitive, guileless innocence to Bridges that Russell didn’t even have when he was outwitting Cesar Romero.

It almost, just almost, makes one want to ignore that Carpenter isn’t using Dean Cundey as cinematographer. It might be a bit too much to allow for Carpenter to not writing the score. Unless you’ve managed to get Ennio Morricone, there’s really no excuse for that kind of mis-fire.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen

Have I Seen It Before?: I was there on that delightful spring day in 2008, wearing a leather jacket and fedora. I’m not sure how I feel about that admission, but I am reasonably certain that it is my fondest wish that I never do anything like that ever again.

Did I like it?: It seems like a superfluous question, but let’s get into it, shall we?

As with any film George Lucas became involved with after Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), there is a profound antipathy that courses through the populace.

And yet, when it comes to this movie, I really want to like it. I do. I’m pretty sure I do. I’m not one of the people who were completely turned off by the notion of Dr. Jones (Ford) running from Soviets before running afoul of a flying saucer. I’m more certain than I have of anything else in the history of film that if the fourth film tried to bend over backwards to give us even more Nazis, then the complaints about this film would have been even more caustic. I do wish that Spielberg and company (well, let’s face it, mainly Lucas) had gone for broke and had that familiar fedora’d silhouette look out into space. If they truly wanted to take a deep dive into 50s Sci-Fi movies, there was plenty of territory left unexplored.

That all being said, the story is actually kind of engaging. The cat and mouse game between Indy and the communists is more than enough to keep things lively, and fans of the series should be mostly on board with the movie.

Then why doesn’t the movie work?

I think there is some mix of two motivations behind the film’s listless quality: boredom and spite.

Each of the essential triumvirate (Lucas, Spielberg, and Ford) of the Indiana Jones series must have endured endless questions over the preceding twenty years about when Indiana might go on the hunt again. I can imagine that the questions got irritating. This movie certainly stopped most of us from asking about a fifth film. If that was the goal, then mission accomplished.

Lucas has long since seemed bored with the idea of popular filmmaking by the time this film came out, and that apathy was confirmed when—at the earliest opportunity—he sold the entire shop at the first opportunity to allegedly make small experimental films he doesn’t plan on showing to anyone.

Ford engaged in acting by way of sleepwalking for every film after Air Force One (1997) and before Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015). Some might argue in good faith about that range, but few would argue that this fourth entry that previously so catered to ever strength he had as a movie star, is now the nadir of Ford wandering aimless in and out of various films.

Spielberg, too, seems as if he had expended any and all excitement for the big entertainments that made him his bones were exhausted by Jurassic Park (1993). To make an action movie now must feel like a chore on par with The Lost World: Jurassica Park (1997). There are plenty of more serious films that he seems far more interested in making.

And right there, while Lucas bears the brunt of the blame for the resulting movie, there really should be plenty of blame to spread around. Sure, the film has the anti-septic, CGI-heavy feeling of the Star Wars prequels, which feels even more off when Indiana Jones was always the far more analog cousin of that galaxy far, far away. But Spielberg and Ford could have still zeroed in on something special, if that was what interested them.

Maybe they still will.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, John Rhys-Davies

Have I Seen it Before: Come on…

Did I Like It: What’s not to love?

Is this the greatest action movie of all time? Probably. Now, inevitably when something is unassailably great, somebody somewhere will try to take a shot at it out of nowhere.

Cut to these early years of the twenty-first century, and every goon with a blog will want to inform you of the Blessed Good News about how Indiana Jones (Ford) has absolutely no impact on the plot of the film that made him famous.

They would say that regardless of Jones’ presence, the Nazis would have found the Ark and would have  

Except that they wouldn’t be right. Never mind that the criticism seems to stem from an episode of The Big Bang Theory. Ironic that negating one of the most proactive characters in cinematic history comes from a show stubbornly committed to keeping it’s casual sketches of characters in permanent stasis, but I digress.

I maintain that—as de Führer is an impatient man—the Nazi expedition at Tanis would have been scrapped after Belloq (Freeman) and company were puttering around with no results. Now, you might say that the Toht (Ronald Lacey) would have been able to recover the headpiece to the Staff of Ra from Marion (Allen) without burning his hand in the process, allowing the Nazis to correctly construct the staff and get the accurate location to the Well of Souls. But I tend to think that Marion wasn’t about to let the only item of value/connection to her dead father out of her hands, or to some damn dirty nazi, and the film supports that she had the wherewithal to resist effectively.

So, Indiana ensures that he delays the Nazis don’t find the Ark timely, and no one may have found it at all. Had the Ark not been found, Toht, Belloq, and Dietrich (Wolf Kahler) would have continued to be a scourge on the Earth. Indiana Jones ensured that the Ark is locked away in anonymity for all time, and ensured that the world had a few fewer Nazis in the process. Show some goddam respect.

I might take a deeper dive into the collective mentality that leads a society to shit all over the few great things in existence, but that would be giving more credit to the people who would pass being persnickety for criticism. They don’t need me validating them, apparently they need Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).