The Flash (2023).
It was ok. Michael Keaton shines as always. Ezra Miller was hard to look past at times, due to real life events. Above all, ENOUGH with General Zod! If there is one thing good that this version of the DCEU is dead, it means no more Zod (hopefully) for a long time. It’s time for WB to move on from a lot of the current DC for the long run.
Seen a few films recently…
The Flash.
Surprised how good this was. Very strong fast half of the film, very entertaining. Second half lost focus a bit, turned into a green-screen mess a bit, though it was great to see Keaton’s Batman and Sasha Calle as Supergirl.
Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse
A work of art. Like a moving painting, this was BRILLIANT.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
An enjoyable romp. Phoebe Waller-Bridge carried the film really, though old Harrison gave it a good go, lots of emotional heft. I liked the final act in particular. Slots in at number 3 out of the 5 Indiana Jones films.
INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY
I have always enjoyed time travel stories–time loops especially intrigue me.
So when the last act of IJATDOD is reached, I was pleased that we were hurtled back not just to WWII, but all the way to the Siege of Syracuse. Even better, the characters are following a trail of breadcrumbs engineered by Archimedes. The control of their destiny is not what they thought.
Unfortunately, the journey to this neat moment is a slog–a frenetic, often incoherently edited slog, but still a slog. As I watched the film, I appreciated yet again Spielberg’s ability to edit with deftness, and maintain a sense of space and the movement within it. I always know where I am in a Spielberg movie. With Mangold, I am often unsure where I am, and sometimes, not engaged enough to care. Also missed was Spielberg’s ability to interweave action with human drama. Mangold alternates the two, and his scenes are mostly monovocal.
I did enjoy the brutality of the deaths in the film–for the first time there were real consequences to Indy’s adventuring. But Mangold added the harshness more as a flavoring than a re-thinking–he tried to eat his Indy cake and have it too (though how much re-thinking he or any director would ever be allowed to execute is probably de minimis. So the touches stand out, and end up being facile).
I did enjoy Helena knocking Indy out, and bringing him back to the his correct time–thus preventing a rather pat conclusion. It was the moment when the director’s sensibility and the template he had been given fused most productively. It felt true to both Indy and Mangold simultaneously.
Historical note: I attended the tickertape parade welcoming the Apollo XI astronauts to the Canyon of Heroes. In fact, I still have some of the tickertape. Unfortunately, the Canyon of Heroes is at the base of Manhattan, and Hunter College is at 68th Street and Lexington Avenue–a minor point, and negligible in an involving film, but another annoyance here.
WRITTEN ON THE WIND (1956)–Criterion Blu-ray
Having watched the Max documentary, ROCK HUDSON: ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWED (very good, if deeply indebted to Mark Rappaport’s ROCK HUDSON’S HOME MOVIES), I felt in need of an unadulterated shot of Hudson artistry, and there is nothing more bracing than Douglas Sirk’s WRITTEN ON THE WIND.
Growing up in suburban New Jersey, my mother bought frozen orange juice in concentrate–it was cheaper that fresh OJ, and we drank a lot of it. WRITTEN ON THE WIND reminded me of those cannisters in my parent’s freezer–dense, cold, and packed with flavor–only consumable after being mixed with water. In WOTW, however, Sirk skips the “mix-with-water” step, and gives us melodrama in its purest, most undiluted form.
Sirk called the film his “most gutty picture…a piece of social criticism, of the rich and spoiled, and of the American family.” And gutty it is: alcoholism; spousal abuse; impotence; infertility; sublimated homosexual desire; nymphomania; and class conflict all make appearances, and play their parts. As for being concentrated: did I mention that the movie is 99 minutes long?
As for the mise en scene, I will let Sirk speak for himself: “I am contriving to paint with a strange brush. I avoid what a painter might call secondary colors—pale or soft colors. Here, I paint in primary colors." Concentrated colors and lighting that often has no discernable source within the frame make for an image that is Technicolor on steroids–Sirk’s Baroque pinnacle.
As for the performances–Sirk told Robert Stack to play the torment and not the alcoholism of his character, and Dorothy Malone received a new lease on her career with her turn as the ultimate bad girl who dances her father’s death. The two leads–Hudson and Bacall–are cool in comparison (Sirk valued Bacall for the “ambiguity in her cold face”), and Hudson gives one of his best performances–or maybe it is more accurate to say that Sirk uses Hudson more effectively than had been done up to that time.
Hudson’s Mitch Wayne is closed down/shut off–there are passions there, but concealed. With a minimum of gesture and vocal inflection, Hudson paints a portrait of a man introduced into a world of wealth, who has survived as a cherished, if patronized, sidekick, but who desperately wants out, whether through Lauran Bacall or going to Iran. The final wordless, exchange of looks between Malone and Hudson in a courtroom finale to end all courtroom finales conveys more meaning than five pages of dialogue could ever achieve (sorry SAF). Not that the dialogue is not itself concentrated in the film. From an earlier scene:
Stack: “You’re a filthy liar.”
Malone: "I’m filthy, period.
So during this summer of film, if you find yourself in need of some bracing cinema to cool down from spectacle/set-piece/span-the-globe overload, slake your thirst with WRITTEN ON THE WIND (shot on Universal’s backlot). Dorothy Malone is waiting for you:
It’s just the trailer but probably gonna watch it when it comes just for this line by Pierce “the fifth” 
(I edited the clip to play on the right scene)
Mission Impossible (1996)
Rewatching the whole six in prep for seeing the 7th (if I can)
The first is better than I remember. Jon Voight is serviceable at best, the film isn’t really bothered with him anyway so it doesn’t matter. I’d be surprised if he spent more than 2 weeks on it given he is only at the start and end then even there doesn’t do much that wasn’t clearly on a set.
What an interesting lens to understand a film through. Thank you.
Onto Mi2.
“He’ll probably engage in some piece of acrobatic insanity”
23 years later…
I always loved the first, with DePalma doing his setpieces.
The second, I admit, I have only watched twice, since I never really got the appeal of John Woo. But it’s been at least 20 years since I last watched this, so your rewatch cycle should be exactly what I should do, too.
Always liked the 3rd, enjoyed the 4th and absolutely loved the 5th and the 6th.
Yes, exactly the same for me. I was never a huge fan of the first one as I felt it had some lazy plotting. The second one was a John Woo movie first, a Tom Cruise movie second, and a Mission Impossible movie third.
Smoking Causes Coughing.
Thought I’d take a break from the summer blockbusters. The trailers sold it as a bizarre French comedy about a tobacco themed, Power Rangers inspired superhero team on a team-building retreat. It is, but at the same time it doesn’t scratch the surface of the truly weird places this film goes.
I don’t know what sort wide release this is getting as I saw it as a special screening though my Ciniworld membership. I would recommend if you get the chance, I can’t guarantee you’ll like it as you have to be on the right wavelength for this kind of comedy, but it was a cinema experience unlike any other.
Mission Impossible 3
Id forgotten how quickly it powers through, quickly setting up the new status quo whilst dropping you in the deep end of films plot. It ends up being a slight sigh of relief when Luther turns up as a reminder of where Ethan was compared to where he is now before going back to the breakneck speed.
I know it’s now the cool thing to hate on JJ Abrams, but the direction and his script on this film are sublime.
Totally agree.
Abrams has been retcon-maligned by Star Wars-net-bullies because they couldn’t stand the fact that they had outgrown their memories.
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
It’s definitely more comfortable in its humour than its predecessors, but impressively never at the tensions expense. The ever escalating situation in Dubai is a particular standout. Also loving the step up in team dynamics that prior to this had mostly just been Ethan and Luther, the return of Simon Pegg’s Benji being an inspired decision.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
I finally made it to the cinema again, the first time since “Knives out” after which the pandemic started. I wanted it to a special film to bring me back, after all.
With “Raiders of the lost ark” being such a transformative movie experience for me during my teenage years, enjoying “Temple of Doom” as a roller coaster horror adventure and saying goodbye to my first two decades of life with “The Last Crusade”, weeks before I started to go to university, I had loved to reconnect with Dr. Jones in “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” and got my nostalgia fix despite being bored during too many sequences. After that I was ready to say: okay, that’s it for Indy, and I’m fine with it.
I never thought that this fifth film would happen, nor that it was necessary. Especially without Spielberg at the helm. And when the pandemic delayed filming I was secretly hoping the project would be shelved. I love Harrison Ford, and he’s only getting better with age, but it was rather obvious that in his late 70´s he would play Indy differently than in the previous films. The action would have to be less or given to other characters.
When this fifth film actually got made and finished, I was delighted nevertheless, hoping for the kind of “NTTD making SPECTRE a better film”-effect. I was disappointed that Spielberg would not finish the series, and a bit skeptical about James Mangold taking over. I love his COPLAND, but none of his other movies connected with me so far. I think he is a good director but rather thematically, not really visually.
I had the disadvantage of seeing DIAL OF DESTINY being relegated already to a smaller screen venue (with only three people in the audience, beside my lovely wife and me), but after having seen the film I don’t think that a bigger screen would have made the visual storytelling more impactful.
Because Mangold and an his cinematographer are absolutely not as elegant and playful as Spielberg. Sure, nobody really can be. But the whole time I never got the impression that the images wowed me, and therefore they did not transport me to all those locations. I looked at it and thought: this is efficient. But not graceful.
And that’s what most of the film felt like to me. Efficient. It does what it needs to. It is fine. It´s not annoying. It is a nice one. But it´s also a bit paint by numbers. Aside from the finale when it finally deals with a really interesting idea. Up to that moment it just lacks surprises, I’m sorry to say. And that’s what Spielberg, even in KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, always managed to inject.
Also, and that’s what I feared with Ford being at this age, the action feels pedestrian and routine. And so often the effects just aren’t good enough to distract from the stuntmen. A bit like AVATAK, in that regard.
And the CGI - I don’t know, guys. While I liked the idea of getting a former “previously unreleased” Indy sequence at the beginning, Ford’s de-aged face so often just was not that convincing. The technique, IMO, just is not there yet (which I basically am thankful for, regarding all the consequences of a perfection of this technique). Again, it was… fine enough, but at no point I thought: this is really the younger Harrison Ford.
But even apart from that distraction, the whole opening sequence is unnecessarily complicated. The McMuffin
could have been introduced immediately as the object of desire, with the fake spear taking too much screen time. It should have already started on the train, too, cutting more of unneccessary CGI and green screen work which, by the way, also too often looked not up to the standards of today.
Then the sequence with Indy in 1969 - I loved that introduction, the feeling of Indy not fitting in anymore. This is what Ford said, he wanted to achieve, and this is truly great and a worthy addition to the series.
After that the movie becomes a series of action sequences which, as I pointed out, all felt fine to me but too much routine. Been there, done that. And Spielberg, I’m sorry, did it so much better. With him, action was a ballet. With Mangold it´s mainly edited together for pace and impact, thereby losing spatial continuity.
Maybe this adds to my impression that all the action just kind of follows and follows and follows and blends everything together. Nothing really stands out. There is no feeling of exhilaration: “oh, no, they are doing that? Oh, man, this is getting better and better!” Instead I thought: “yeah, that will happen, and that, and of course they need to do that…”
So the movie feels extremely long instead of just being long. You could have easily edited two or three major sequences out, resulting in a faster, more focused film - and a tighter budget.
But I do admit that this might again be a case of expectations ruining my movie experience. Expectations, of course, set by the previous films. In a way, this last film is like one of the lesser Bond films. And yes, I do think AVTAK is a good example. I do enjoy it. But it´s not great, and it´s going through the motions.
However, and this I cannot stress enough, DIAL OF DESTINY, apart from its interesting finale, has two scenes which are just marvelous. Both have no action but are character moments.
The first one is with Indy and Helena on the boat, talking about his son´s death and how his marriage to Marion crumbled under that impact.
The second one is the last scene with Marion and Indy doing the “Where doesn’t it hurt?”-scene from “Raiders” in reversed roles.
Those alone save the movie for me. And that last scene, yes, made me fight back my tears. Because it not only reminded me of the passage of time between “Raiders” and now, but also about everything that happened in my life since then. And the realization that, well, you can´t go home again, while not new, hit hard. At least…
Indy could go home. I was so grateful of Helena saving him from dying in the Archimedes past. I just did not want to see another of my heroes choosing death again.
By the way, Phoebe Waller-Bridge is very good in this (although I think her comic style might be about to reach its saturation), and so is Mikkelsen. It is nice to see
John Rhys-Davies as Sallah again, too. And the kid is fine and not annoying (although I would have preferred to see the grown Ke Huy Quan as Short Round instead.)
Writing this while listening to John Williams´ score, I am discovering that the music is unfortunately too low in the film mix. The music is fantastic, once again, and it should be more dominant in the movie. Well, Spielberg would have put it front and center, I’m sure.
Maybe I have to see it again, maybe I will enjoy it much more knowing what it is and what it isn’t. But I don’t think I will like it more than CRYSTAL SKULL. It will remain a footnote to this series, with some interesting ideas and two wonderful scenes. A nice to have.
But this should be the end of this series. And due to the box office I don’t think we will see a Helena Shaw continuation. Although this film definitely sets her up for it, giving her action scenes which in previous films should have been done by Indy himself.
How would I rank this film within the series? Well, it´s easy. Since I rank every Indy film in the order of its release. The first one was the best.
This.
There’s a reason why I rarely write extensive movie reviews, no, actually, there’s two. One: I’m not very good at it. And the fact that English is not my native language is not very helpful on these boards, given that I suck at writing movie reviews in German, too.
Two: it doesn’t take long around here until someone (there are usual suspects) writes one to which I just have to reply “This.” (see above 
)
I had this feeling right after I saw it, but wasn’t sure about it and didn’t know where and how to pin and put it. You’re so damn right, what this movie lacks is: Spielberg.
There’s just one thing: I rank DoD above KoCS. 
It’s been a while since I got goosebumps from a movie scene, but that final scene was one such occasion. The original scene is one of my favourite Indy moments, and when I saw it coming in DoD, the nostalgic old git in me got the upper hand. I had exactly the same feelings.
Well, for me, it just hit right. I enjoyed it.
A few month’s back, I was headed out to the desert for an annual event. When I go, I always have one thing with me. I’ve had it for 41 years.
“It’s not the age…It’s the milage.”
Cheers Indy. 
Gala asked me if I’d be careful when I went.
My response: " Don’t worry…You know what a cautious fellow I am."
Watched the King’s Man - finally, and was struck again, at how underused Gemma Arterton frequently is. Lots of good ideas in the movie but never really went anywhere.
