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

I purposefully lowered my expectations before going into this. I actually spent some time during the day mentally preparing for it to suck, like I tried to think of the ways they could screw it up: too much reliance on CGI, George Lucas being allowed to write dialogue, etc... So into the theater my Dad and I went, fingers crossed, me expecting the worst, and lo and behold, my plan worked. I think I saw a pretty terrible movie that was lifted up by the grading curve in my mind.

The Movie Blog has a thread on the review of this movie about 200 posts long, and I'd say 85% of them are rightfully critical. I read something on there that summed up this whole Indiana Jones thing, which was basically like, "Don't compare anything to Raiders, because there's nothing like it. Raiders was a freak of a movie." I can get with that.

So instead of writing paragraphs on the bad things about "Crystal Skull" (i.e. CGI monkeys, Karen Allen's apparent vicodin haze, the entire 2nd half...), here are the things I liked:

* The first 30 minutes. The opening credits. The magnetic box that's pulling all the metal in the room as they lift it up. I have to admit that had my heart going. The action sequence that followed was tight, choreographed perfectly, and if they had only taken out one shot of those stupid prairie dogs, would have held it's own against any of the other film's openings. Also the entire A-bomb test scene was brilliant, the way he realizes what he's stepped into.

* The motorcycle chase that follows the diner scene. It reminded me of the lighter, more playful chase scenes in Last Crusade. And the way they crash into the school library, and as they speed off, Jones yells out, "if you want to be an archeologist, get out of the library!" Spielberg was on point there.

* Shia LaBeaouf. Never saw him in anything else. Thought I would hate him simply because I thought they wanted another Short Round. Turned out he was really good in this. Some of the things that come out of his mouth are pretty dumb, but he elevates it with perfect smart-aleck greaser attitude.

* Harrison Ford. Again, some of the dialogue was off (Indiana seemed too snippy too often, "Oh Marion, you had to go and get yourself kidnapped") but he's still the man for the job. Great to see him running, climbing, doing his own stunt work at 65.

Unforgiven (1992)

This movie kind of blew me away. I had always seen the cover of this on those lists like the AFI's GREATEST MOVIES or TOP 20 OSCAR WINNERS and put it mentally in the same category as Driving Miss Daisy or Forrest Gump: big budget Hollywood oscar winners that were beloved in the early 90's, but then lost flavor over time. Now I personally like Driving Miss Daisy, but dadgummit if Unforgiven ain't miles above it in every aspect. I read a review somewhere that stated Unforgiven is "a funeral for the western." Indeed it is. I suppose Dead Man gave the genre some more esoteric, smaller-level subverting a few years later, but Unforgiven really focuses its intentions and gives the western a proper burial.

Eastwood plays Bill Munny, essentially a washed up version of The Man With No Name, from the "Dollars trilogy", except this character is mean, amoral, or at least was...he's given up "the drink on account of his wife" and become a pig farmer with his two young children, leaving his bankrobbing, murdering years behind him. He's talked into doing one more job, though, by a kid who wants more than anything to be like those romanticized caricatures of gunslingers that Eastwood has embodied in countless movies.

So the movie's plot follows thusly, and is really straightforward, but it's the dialogue and depth of the characters that makes it so compelling. Stereotypes are inverted, and morality gets pretty murky. The bad guy in Unforgiven would be the good guy in any typical western, and vice versa. Little Bill Daggett, played ruthlessly by Gene Hackman (two years before he played a very similar character in The Quick and The Dead, in some ways the antithesis of Unforgiven), represents the death of the old ways of the west, in which thieves and killers roamed free and pillaged towns as they pleased. He used to be one of these outlaws himself, but now, as the town sherriff, he's determined to keep his town free of crime, albeit through intimidation and fear. And Eastwood's Bill Munny is the dying spirit of those old ways, a man whose time has come and gone, but who has to gather that gunslinging, lawless spirit in the face of injustice. Morgan Freeman plays Ned, Munny's former partner-in-crime, and the two of them have amazing onscreen chemistry as they struggle to get back on the saddle (literally) for this last stand.

The film chugs along confidently, exploring and debunking the cliches that the old Hollywood westerns thrived on, and finally we arrive at the final shootout, which I had to watch twice because it was so awesome. Seriously, one of the most badass endings of all time. I had to show my girlfriend the clip on YouTube a couple hours later. The ending of this movie is right up there with the endings of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest or Rocky for me, in terms of pure emotional impact. It's the moment I was hoping throughout the movie. It's so simple and predictable, yet so effective. And the dialogue makes it clear that everything that's been said in a scene like this has been repeated so much it's lost meaning:

"I'll see you in hell, William Munny."
"Yeah."

Bill Munny has responded to that cliche so many times, he no longer has anything to say besides "yeah."

Black Sheep (2007)

My good friend Al recommended this knowing I was a big fan of splatter-era Peter Jackson, and it did not disappoint. In fact, it did more than live up to expectations. I was really struck by simply how good the movie LOOKED. It was shot on 35mmm, had some really great photography of the New Zealand coastline, farmlands, etc, and overall was really slick. The director, Jonathan King, apparently wrote the script for The Tattooist, which I'm interested in checking out, even though it doesn't look very fun like Black Sheep was.

But on top of all that stuff, it kicked ass. There was quite a bit of gore, though nothing compared to Jackson's early stuff, and most of the gruesome moments came from people mutating into giant sheep, one limb at a time. There was one moment however that made me wince hard, and that was the offal pit, filled with rotting pig guts, and of course into which the characters fall and have to wade through to get back to safety. That reminded me of the scene in Phenomena when Jennifer Connelly falls into the pool of corpses, and I shuddered big time during that.

There was such a playful tone in the "sheep attack" scenes, which were essentially close-ups of handpuppets (kind of like Lamb Chop's demented cousins or something) chomping away at someone screaming, and then cut to a wide shot of common sheep standing in a field, casually gnawing at fake human limbs, heads, etc...and nothing beats menacing violins screeching underneath a bunch of sheep heading over a hill in our direction. Also, besides "Get the flock outta here!", another tagline was "Get ready for the Violence of the Lambs."