When is Lion King IV coming out?

I am definitely one of those that really did not like the new Indy much. Was it believability? Well at some point that sort of stuff does come into play. I think a movie that is well written and that has interesting characters can get away with more than a movie with predictable, cheesy dialogue and bad cutout characters (I am looking at you Cate Blanchett). Admittedly its a fine line but I definitely felt this movie fell quite solidly on the wrong side of that line.

Every movie of this sort has some elements that don't really make any sense but at a certain point, when all you can see are the nonsensical details and pointlessly contrived action sequences, the movie has lost you. It definitely lost me probably at the ten minute mark.

Definitely a mixed bag. I found the movie entertaining, but the "Wow!" moments were too often offset by "Oh, please!" moments. I'm perfectly willing to suspend my disbelief, but just how high do I have to suspend it? That refrigerator wouldn't have disgorged a physically intact Dr. Jones after flying through the air like that. It would have been plastered inside with professor puree.

Well, at least they respected the old adventure movie tradition that bad guys with automatic weapons cannot hit good guys even at point blank range.

First I gotta tell Cheryl, that this former (and hopefully future) New Mexican is jealous of her. In order to remain employed I had to move away.

I have also been disconcerted sometimes by knowing too much geography. When you know that the scene depicted over the actors right shoulder, and that depicted over his left shoulder, are thousands of miles apart, it takes something away from the experience. Another is my dislike of things that promote "woo". You know, obviously false myths that distort public thinking. At least when I watched the first three Indy films, I knew nothing of the myths exploited for the plot, and could simply enjoy them as first class action adventure. Now, before the movie is out we've had a raft of promotional documentaries on Crystal Skulls. Seeing the Skulls, as the object of some sort of alien worship cult, I think will destroy my ability to suspend disbelief and simply enjoy the film..... I think I will wait until it shows up on TV.

It would have been plastered inside with professor puree.

See, this is what I can't figure out. Why is this unbelievable when all those bullets are okay?

This is a real question, btw, not just snark.

Listen, Cheryl Rofer, I don't know who the ho-hum you are, but this is a political sight, not Ebert and Roper. Indiana Jones is a garbage flick, full of caca and fecal things and total poopiness. The fighting was stinky and Spielberger and Lucasfilm Ltd are pee-pee-heads with urine fingers. And John Williams, the earwax composer with boogersnot eyeballs is a doofus face. Harrison Ford and Shya Laboof are turd smackers in fancy pants. They should all dunk themselves in toiletbowls and slurp up sewer dung.

simulacrum, not similacrum.

I enjoyed the movie. I wasn't even a teenager when Raiders of the Los Ark came out, so it's hard to compare my reaction to the first versus the last. It's hard to beat Nazis for villains - especially how the Cold War turned out - but the movie could have done a better job selling the national panic about the Russians (e.g. a short television/radio montage of McCarthy accusing people, duck and cover public service announcements, Soviet tanks rolling into some eastern European country, panic over Sputnik, etc.)

I have mixed feelings on the whole aliens thing. It fits well with the 1950s theme, makes archeology in the America's relevant to the Cold War (since there are no well known Mesoamerican analogues to the Arc of the Covenant), and is a way to connect the Nazca lines, space race and Roswell, etc.

But the basis for aliens in South America is at least premised in part on the racist view of Westerners that the native people of the America's couldn't have built the pyramids or Nazca lines without the help of aliens. People like Erich von D�niken (Chariots of the Gods) found it easier to believe that aliens built these things than the short brown people they found in the jungles.

Nor does the movie really explain the aliens that well (beyond them being archaeologists).

It was also disappointing that they didn't do more in location shots in central and south America - that was one of the things about Raiders that made it feel so epic - it really looked like they were running around in Egypt.

Notwithstanding all of these nitpicks, it was still an enjoyable movie.

PS is "similacrum" an alternative spelling of "simulacrum"? If not, what's the difference between the two?

Okay, I've corrected the spelling.

But all I'm seeing here is those continuing nitpicks.

It's an Indy flick. Doesn't top Raiders, but it fits. The atom bomb was mystifying, and easy topped the horror of anything that's appeared in any Indy film ever.

I don't know about the racist aspect, I haven't read "Chariots of the Gods?", but racism isn't necessarily implied by believing in wierd origins. Many people believe transistors and microchips come from roswell, but that doesn't mean they're racist against white people.

The story of "Raiders" doesn't mean Jews aren't smart enough to create a system of laws.

But all I'm seeing here is those continuing nitpicks.

Perhaps I should try and make myself clearer then. The problem with this sort of stuff is that there is a certain amount you will always be willing to forgive if other things like narrative, dialogue and characterization are on par. Don't want to give away spoilers but that Cate Blanchett character and her henchmen were incredibly bad. I actually laughed out loud at the caricature. Seriously she was like something out of an Ed Wood movie. The dialogue was badly expository and completely spiritless. The jokes were lame and incredibly predictable. Things would happen in sequence that made no kind of logical sense at all. Even the action was sadly derivative and uninventive. Obviously this is all just my opinion but I am a huge Indiana Jones fan and I really wanted to like it. So by the time of the refrigerator bit, I had pretty much lost all my patience with the movie and all I could see any more were all the things that didn't make sense even according to its own internal logic. I won't go into all of that here because whats the point? But to my mind there wasn't a single action sequence that even made sense in its own fantastic terms.

The nitpicking starts once you have realized the movie is bad, not the other way around.

Indy in a fridge is a little more believable than Indy jumping out of a plane in a raft in "Temple". And the CG in "Skull" was better than that very same raft scene. Of course nothing beats the face melting in "Raiders", but that was before the MPAA decided to water down movies in favor of revenue.

Since the prequel debacle (*shudder*), I have had to reappraise what I expect out of movies. All I look for now is fun, and on that level, Indy 4 delivered. If you expect "Raiders" again, you will be disappointed, because that was lightning in a bottle. I consider myself lucky to have been born in the silver age of cinema when Indy, Luke, Quint, Col. Kurtz, and a few others managed to redefine what movies could be.

Weird thing is, I am pretty sure that all of the great auteurs of the last generation of film all were in the same film class, along with Jim Morrison. Could be wrong, though.

Cheryl, click here for background on the man who served as the real-life model for the Indiana Jones character. Interestingly, he was gay!

PS is "similacrum" an alternative spelling of "simulacrum"? If not, what's the difference between the two?

simulacrum -- an unreal or vague semblance.

Similacrumâ„¢ -- cheap, off brand baby formula whose manufacturers are being sued for copyright infringement. And bad taste.

The same thing afflicted Indiana Jones that harmed Ironman: there wasn't 1 surprising moment in either film.

I was going to write an incisive comment reacting to this spirited defense of the new Indiana Jones movie (which I paid $8 to endure, proving once again that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are smarter than I am) but I decided to cut my toenails instead.

I was really disappointed -- and I had been looking forward to this film for a year.

1) The opening was a let down. Indiana Jones captured and put in a trunk? Definately not the heroic opening that we saw in Raiders.

2) The plot made no sense. Aliens? Really? C'mon.

3) Karen Allen looked like she wandered in from a Lifetime movie about a chubby soccer mom who loves "Out of Africa". Where was the old, resourceful, great Marion?? And the immediate reunion with Indy after all these years?

4) Surviving a nuclear blast? Give me a break.

Awful. Save your money and skip it.

>Indy in a fridge is a little more believable than Indy jumping out of a plane in a raft in "Temple".

Actually that one was tested by mythbusters, and they found it plausible. I've worked on projects with a lot of aerodynamic design, and I even find it plausible.

The fridge scene, they just way overdid. Why would a nuclear test place the fake town so close that it gets vaporized? Much more plausible to put it where 1/4 or 3/4 of the contents are knocked down. The house is stripped away, the fridge tumbles 50 feet, indy crawls out to wreckage and dolls that have one side crispy fried. Just as effective.

The whole thing was like that, it went too far into cartoon land at every step. You never worried. The main characters were made of rubber.

Anyone seeking absolute believability in a movie has not seen an action movie before. Nitpickers can find something wrong with any of them, including "Raiders", which was a great escapist adventure that was never meant to be taken seriously.

Basically, it's a movie. Some will like it. Some won't. It can not be as insipid and insulting to the intelligence as "Armageddon".

IT'S A MOVIE. There are other sites for reviews. Let's keep them there.

I thought the movie was ho-hum, not terrible, but Harrison Ford seemed awfully wooden. But, my biggest objection was not to the refrigerator, but the logic of a taxi cab driver dropping off Indy in that town. If it wasn't a real town, how would a cab driver get there?

The two great disconnects that bug me in movies are the sound of American birds in scenes supposedly occurring elsewhere, and the unbelievable inability of American actors even to replicate regional accents in their own country. "Diner" and "Tin Men" set in Baltimore with New Jersey accents. Horrible Southern accents in almost every film about the South. And on and on and on. Yes, movies are primarily visual, but for those of us whose primary sense is aural these failures are just as jarring as New Mexican mountains in a Middle Eastern scene, and they happen all the time.

Credibility?

Most 'Action Films' jumped the shark long ago and it only gets worse with each flogging of a worn-out forumula.

If release 1 had a jumping car stunt, version 2 needed a bus jump, version 3 gets a train jump, version 4 required two trains jumping at once over the empire state building while exploding... (etc)

Buford yawns.

It's not just the heroes who can't get hit by bullets. In "The Assassination of Jesse James" two gang members were firing away at one another from what must have been about 5 feet. How many bullets did it take for them to get hit?

It's a good thing for one of them that Robert Ford could hit what he was aiming at.

The movie was OK and watchable, but underwhelming and disappointing. It's no Raiders of the Lost Ark. (Caveat--I was no kid when I saw Raiders in a theater the night it was released, so I guess that qualifies me as a cranky old man.) The best parts were the injokes of an aging Indy, references to the earlier films (like the shot of the Ark of the Covenent) and the character moments between Indy and Marion (OK, I've loved Karen Allen since Animal House in 1978). Political correctness aside, I enjoyed the Commie villains, which were clearly sendups of 1950s conventions. The low points were most of the action sequences (mainly boring) and the overuse of charisma-free lump Shia LaBeouf coupled with the criminal underuse of great actors like Ray Winstone, Jim Broadbent, and John Hurt. I guess hiring actors like this is barely a blip in the budget of this kind of movie, but still it seems a cruel waste to hire them and give them minimal screen time and nothing to do that requires their talent. The basic plot is also a large negative for me. I think the idea of extra-terrestrials (or extra-dimensionals, or whatever) in an Indiana Jones movie is a bad one to start with. And the execution here is poor and confusing, leaving the plot (as least to me) less clear than that of The Big Sleep to a first time viewer.

Sounds like an episode of A-Team where millions of bullets fly but no one ever gets hit.

I blame Stephen J Cannell for this special effect travesty.

Anyway, Crystal Skull for Preznit!!

Easily the most retarded of the Indiana Jones movies, worse than Temple of Doom. I'm not an ageist but I thought both Harrison Ford and Karen Allen were way too old to be believable as they hacked their way through the jungle. Shia LaBoef is annoying, uncool and could not pull of the Marlon Brando/James Dean greaser character at all. The supporting characters were not developed or likeable. I can't even remember the MI5 agent's name.

Yet another example of moviemakers thinking they have to top previous movies with gobs and gobs of special effect, ludicrous setpieces and ridiculously heightened stakes. It doesn't have to be that way. All of the CGI effects in the world won't compensate for a crummy story.

I thought the alien plot was ridiculous. I blame Spielberg for that one. And the 1950s hotrod nostalgia was misplaced and did nothing. I blame George Lucas for that. Thanks to Stephen Spielberg and George Lucas for ruining yet another trilogy of adventure movies that should have been left alone.

I groaned at the opening Paramount mountain gag. A mountain out of a molehill. Ha! Ha! Ha! Too cute and self-referential by half.

Coming soon to Washington Monthly's "Political Animal" blog:

More off-topic reviews of more bad summer blockbuster movies, crossposted to "Ain't It Cool News."

Sigh....just as a factual point, it's very hard to shoot people, even from close range.

(I've actually been saving this my anti-gun arguments...people can't hit anything anyway...this goes for trained police also. It's damned hard to shoot people)

From a report on shooting close in:

http://www.virginiacops.org/Articles/Shooting/Combat.htm

The police officer's potential for hitting his adversary during armed
confrontation has increased over the years and stands at slightly over 25% of
the rounds fired. An assailant's skill was 11% in 1979.

In 1990 the overall police hit potential was 19%. Where distances could be
determined, the hit percentages at distances under 15 yards were:

Less than 3 yards ..... 38%
3 yards to 7 yards .. 11.5%
7 yards to 15 yards .. 9.4%

In 1992 the overall police hit potential was 17%. Where distances could be
determined, the hit percentages at distances under 15 yards were:

Less than 3 yards ..... 28%
3 yards to 7 yards .... 11%
7 yards to 15 yards . 4.2%

The Disconnect Between Range Marksmanship & Combat Hitsmanship

It has been assumed that if a man can hit a target at 50 yards he can
certainly do the same at three feet. That assumption is not borne out by the
reports.

I think some folks don't know how to relax and have fun. This is not war and peace, folks. That refridgerator bit, and the going over three falls bit were never meant to be taken seriously these are supposed to be unbelieveable, comic relief moments.

The reality of the Indy films is a playful one. If you try and take it too seriously, or read too much into it, all you'll end up doing is fail to enjoy the film for what it is.

There will be more than enough oscar-bait dramas and stripped down, realistically styled thrillers out there. This was intend to be a fun, two-fisted adventure film, like the kind they used to make during the eighties before the style went more PG-13, and the budgets led everybody to design and define the film within an inch of its life.

Folks: it's just a movie. It's pulp fiction. It's entertainment. And if necessary, it's a guilty pleasure. But don't go there expecting Munich, or Saving Private Ryan

OK, I'll join in on movie discussion on a poli blog.

Indy 4 isn't a stinker mainly because I paid to see two. In a universe that contains Temple of Doom, it's pretty hard to make a "bad" action film. This one wasn't that bad.

How come the nuke test was so close to the warehouse? Indy on the rocket sled wouldn't have gone more than a mile or so and was close enough to ground zero that the houses were completely destroyed. The military warehouse for everything of value ever discovered is that close to a major A-bomb test?

Simple continuity stuff ... Why does the gate guard at the beginning open the barrier when walking over to say "nobody's allowed in"? Then it's down when the camera looks over again. That kind of stuff is why professional directors are paid more than I am.

And the gophers were Pixar-style stuff. No problem in their own kind of movie, but didn't work in an Indy.

And the automatic weaponry work was just too lousy to avoid laughter.

I didn't have a problem with the ants rolling over the various victims, but they each take a mouthful of meat back to the nest. Shoving the entire body into the nest was stupid.

A "lead lined" fridge is not believable to me. When did anyone ever put a poisonous lining in refrigerators? And the whole magnetism schtick wasn't believable What's magnetic in gunpowder? And a magnet is an inverse square field. If it will suck a powder from 500 feet away, it will grab your belt buckle from 40 feet away. Coins won't meekly follow at the same speed you're carrying.

Folks: it's just a movie. It's pulp fiction. It's entertainment.

Ah, my least favorite argument of all time. It doesn't matter what kind of movie or what genre it is. It doesn't matter if it is meant to be serious or meant to be funny. It can be done well or it can be done poorly. In my opinion, this movie was done very poorly.

"I groaned at the opening Paramount mountain gag. A mountain out of a molehill. Ha! Ha! Ha! Too cute and self-referential by half."

Well, I sort of liked it since I saw it as a nod to the opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which simlarly dissolved from the Paramount logo to a real mountain.

Very poor stuff, granted, but aren't you all missing the subtext? It was interesting only as an obvious commercial for John McCain - the grumpy older man, the hero getting on a bit who can still show the younger folk who think they know it all a thing or two, confronted by castrating communist bitch Hilary. Obama is I suppose the La Beef boy, at the end trying to put on the hat but reminded that no, this is not your time, perhaps next election.

Trying to get into the spirit of it all I bought a a party supplies shop what I registered as an Indy hat;

only some while later did a more accurate perception kick in and I realised it was in fact a Freddy Krueger hat, a switch in semiotics across the entire width of the spectrum.

Folks: it's just a movie. It's pulp fiction. It's entertainment.

That's the whole point, this wasn't good pulp fiction.

http://jonesrock.ytmnd.com/

Traveller was good about how hard it is to hit a target....and there's another factor re:
"As we've become desensitized, we require thousands of rounds from automatic weapons for the same effect"...Kevin is saying this of movies, but it's also a reality on the battlefield.
IIRC, as the infantry soldier through history got more and more firepower, from the 1700s to today,
it takeh him more and more rounds fired for every kill or hit. I've had no luck researching this in Google, other IN WWII, "it usually took 25 000 shots to kill a soldier"

This review indicates that WWII was 16,000 rounds per kill. However, I think this estimate is high as is the one for Viet Nam at 50,000...but from personal experience, and I think that this is what is really going on with cops and criminals and soldiers...when someone is firing back...damn you're scared!!!!!

It's hard to hit anything. People think that it is otherwise, but unless you've been under actual live fire, it is almost impossible to gage how you will respond.

***************

Vietnam and a host of other dirty bush wars introduced the ambush concept of very high rates of fire, light ammunition and firepower.

Ammunition had to be light, weapons cheap and easy to fix, and general tactics dictated spraying thousands of rounds during short firefights. The number of rounds per kill tripled from WWII levels to a staggering 50,000 rounds for each kill. In Vietnam, the light and deadly M-16 became the overwhelming choice of ground troops.

***********

http://www.comebackalive.com/df/guns.htm

Best Wishes, Traveller

I'm a diehard Indiana Jones fan. I went to see "Last Crusade" every week when it came out in 1989. And "Crystal Skull" sucked bigtime.

Firstly, there was the plot. It simply made no sense! Even if you accept that aliens came to earth and taught the Mayans all this knowledge, the ending just made no sense whatsoever. They put the skull on the one alien skeleton that's missing a head, all the skeletons then turn into a living alien who immediately rides off in a flying saucer?! WTF?! Furthemore, the alien had the typical unimaginative, stupid appearance that Hollywood aliens usually do. Why would beings from another planet light years away, who would have evolved under conditions very different from life on Earth, look so much like humans?

And I don't agree with reviewers who have said that the plot of Crystal Skull is no more unrealistic than those of the other Indy movies. Although the previous three all feature supernaturalism, they do so in ways that make sense in the context of the story. A story can contain paranormal phenomenon and still not be stupid. And let's be honest here. The supernatural events which take place in Indiana Jones films are no more impossible than similar things which are part of the major world religions. No one who believes that the Red Sea parted, that Jesus rose from the dead, or that bread and wine can become the body and blood of Christ can argue that it would be impossible for the Ark, the Shankara Stones, or the Grail to have the magical powers they do in these movies.

Secondly, there was the stuntwork. For all the amazing things he does (and survives), Indy is still supposed to be a human being. He's not Spiderman or Superman. A number of the stunts in this film, however, go beyond being difficult or improbable to being simply impossible. And it's not even as if they're impossible, but the audience doesn't know this and can therefore accept them. Instead, it's clear they're impossible to anyone with any common sense. Besides the "lead fridge" there's the part where Mutt swings on vines like Tarzan and manages to catch up with vehicles moving at 50 mph. Yeah right! And while the raft scene in "Temple of Doom" is amazing, it's not the same as going over three raging waterfalls and surviving. Not only does nobody in the boat die, nobody even falls out! If Spielberg is going to ask the audience to buy something like this, he needs to make Indiana Jones into some kind of superman rather than the human being he has been throughout the series.

The final major problem was the music. Music plays a critical role in making each of the first three Indy movies great. It helps to establish the pacing, and all of the first three have multiple memorable themes. None of this is true for "Crystal Skull." It's like John Williams' heart wasn't in it. There are absolutely no memorable, original themes. They simply recycle old Indy music (and even this doesn't sound nearly as good as it does in the earlier films).

All in all, a terrible movie and an insult to the Indiana Jones legacy. I don't care how much money he makes off of this--Steven Spielberg should be ashamed of himself.

These are playful films, and when play around in storytelling, and come up with things like lightsabers, laser guns, warp speed, centuries old boobie traps that work fine, it helps to walk into the theatre with a more playful, less nitpicking attitude towards storytelling.

I do screenwriting and have made a few short films myself, so let me let you in on the real correspondence between reality and what you see: Not necessarily much, even with a convincing tale told. I took two or three hours of a sculpture being moved, and shrank that time down to a four minute video. I cut out parts. I manipulated the color and luminance levels on the video to balance out some exposure and white balance issues.

As a writer, I can tell you this: nobody is capable of total realism, nor is it always the point, or a good thing. Realism is a stylistic choice. Should we chunk Fellini's Satyricon into the dustbin because it doesn't unfold according to those stylistic principles?

Of course not, because filmmaking is not about reality, it's about communication! Granted, that communication does employ vivid images that we often can identify as real, or representative of something real, but the other, depending on their inclination is fully able to go from hard-edge realism in their style, to post-modern pastiche, to old fashion pulp storytelling, where complete realism wasn't even the point, but rather mass market escapism.

Which, by the way, there's nothing wrong with. Just as there's nothing wrong with doing popular dramatic movies like Spielberg's done, like Schindler's List or Saving Private Ryan.

Take a look at that last film. The style of each picture's action is vastly different In Indiana Jones, you get two fisted, choreographed mayhem, without the forensic levels of realism on the violence. In Saving Private Ryan, you get horrific levels of realism.

Does one invalidate the other? No, because in each case, the style serves to communicate different things. You don't want some poor soldier walking around with a bloody stump picking up their arm in an Indiana film, because it's essentially an action adventure movie for the younger set. And you don't want Captain Miller swinging around on a bullwhip, or engaged in elaborate chases between different vehicles, where occupants switch between them.

So relax folks. You can't will every movie to be the kind you like. Really, I take them as I go. My copy Of Saving Private Ryan Has the Indiana Jones movies on one side of it, and on the other, the Chronicles of Narnia. That's how I approach movies. Realism and departures from that realism in storytelling are just ways of sending different kinds of messages.

Ah, some of you object, how can we let them send those kinds of messages, they degrade the marketplace of ideas. Well, in my experience, the thing that most degrades the marketplace of ideas is what people don't say. I'd say, don't worry about it. There was pulp fiction in all times, cheap-seats storytelling in every era. Despite this calamity, we have a nice roll of canonical masterpieces, many of which, even could fairly be labelled pulp fiction themselves.

We have to learn to have a little fun with our storytelling, not freak out that people aren't automatically drawn to films that people claim are good for them. At the end of the day, if we take a model of communication, a true masterpiece reaches beyond such simplistic audience analysis.

We have to learn to have a little fun with our storytelling, not freak out that people aren't automatically drawn to films that people claim are good for them. At the end of the day, if we take a model of communication, a true masterpiece reaches beyond such simplistic audience analysis.

Well said! And it is by someone who actually knows something about movies, rather than all the InstaCritics.

I just saw it this afternoon and here is my two cents worth. I think you have to meet each movie half way. If you are unable to do this, save your money and stay home, it's just an adventure yarn.

Personally, I found the movie to be an adequate end to the Indie franchise. I don't have a problem with ET, or in this case IT as they were referenced as inter-dimensional.

Arthur C Clarke - 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'

Haven’t seen the movie, and probably won’t till it is out on Netflix. But I am reminded of the situation with StarWars. The first movie was magical. Yah, it was a futuristic spin on a classic fairy tale, but the characters, plot and special effects all worked. I walked out of the theater ready to enlist with the rebel alliance. After the movie Lucas admitted the special effects were very limited; only small numbers of space ships at a time and they couldn’t fly in front of planets. What can I say, I never noticed. Fast forward to SW III: they now had fleets of spacecraft flying in front of planets with impunity. And the net result? Not a fraction of the movie SWI was.

Cheryl, click here for background on the man who served as the real-life model for the Indiana Jones character. Interestingly, he was gay!
Wrong, and and a deceptive headline. The guys who served as the insperation for Indiana Jones were all fictional characters from old American adventure movies from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, particularly serials, which routinely had action scenes as over-the-top silly as the bad ones from the four Indy flicks.

The heroes in those old American flicks were based on many sources, but on German archeologists who worked for Hitler? Think about what you are saying there, for a minute, and have the sense to blush.

For the real sources for this kind of swashbuckling scientist hero, look up Roy Chapman Andrews (paleontologist, went to China and Mongolia while they were ruled by warlords), Edward Drinker Cope and O.C. Marsh (adventurous American paleontologists, fanatically competitive), Howard Carter (opener of King Tut's tomb, but British and boring), Frank Buck (famous American "bring 'em back alive" animal collector and documentarian), Merian Cooper (bravura nature documentaries and the original King Kong, model for the Karl Denham character), and a couple of dozen other real and fictional notorious archeologists, paleontologists, Great White Hunters, and other famous characters from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Fascinating stuff, and the costume and whip are supposedly from a character Charlton Heston played back around 1950.

moogoo: "this is a political sight..."

But it IS for sore eyes, apparently.

We have to learn to have a little fun with our storytelling, not freak out that people aren't automatically drawn to films that people claim are good for them. At the end of the day, if we take a model of communication, a true masterpiece reaches beyond such simplistic audience analysis.

The problem here, of course, is that many people who disliked this movie liked the previous ones, so they seem to be capable of enjoying the same kind of storytelling, when it's done well.

It's not that the people who didn't like Crystal Skull went in expecting a hyper-realist meditation on the nature of modern warfare. They went in expecting a fun popcorn flick, and it failed (to some) by those standards.

I liked the characters. I especially liked Karen Allen, a 50-something actress without botox or plastic surgery. Ford, of course, is great. But the plot was awful; tedious and ridiculous. And I love fantasy and adventure movies. This one just wasn't very good.

Did Andy Rooney write this?

Saw it yesterday. Didn't think it approached the quality of the first and third movies (second one sucked) and left the theater wondering why it was made at all. Oh, yeah. Money.

Indiana Jones, AKA Harrison Ford is now on Medicare. Retire the franchise. For God's sakes, don't try to keep it going with the young Brando poseur. Shia? What kind of name is that?

Movies like Indiana Jones, Spiderman, Batman, and Iron Man are dumbing down our culture to death. They lower our attention span down to nanoseconds and turn our brains into mush. We need more movies like Citizen Kane, All About Eve, The Grapes of Wrath, A Man for All Seasons, Gandhi, The English Patient, The Hours, The Godfather, In the Heat of the Night, Sophie's Choice, Amadeus, Midnight Cowboy, MASH, The Graduate, and All the President's Men.

I went to see Indiana Jones, and was utterly appalled at how bad it was. It was only slightly entertaining, and for the most part was so stupid and poorly done that I couldn't stop asking how Lucas and Spielberg lost whatever touch they once had. How could they have come up with this crap?

I'm fully aware that in a movie like this you have to suspend disbelief, but come on. The whole last 1/3 of the movie was excrement, from the moment Karen Allen drives off a cliff straight onto a tree that drops them gently onto the river (as if she knew where the tree was). Then they go down three Niagara-size waterfalls, and emerge unscathed (including a delusional old man). And then they go see the aliens, and watch a cosmic interdimensional warp-thingy with boulders flying around them, without getting a speck of dust in the eye.

After being so disappointed I decided I was going to get my money's worth, and so I sneaked into Iron Man. Wow! Double wow! Now that's a great movie! Anyone here who hasn't seen it, and is still recuperating from the crystal-shit skull, run to the nearest theatre. Iron Man is as perfect as a comic book movie can be. If there were any justice, Downey would be nominated for an Oscar.

Well, I thought the first third of IJ was good and fun, and then I just grew really weary of totally absurd chase scenes and catastrophes that seemed to go on forever and appeared to be written by a bunch of 6th grade boys. We just saw Iron Man, although I really didn't want to see it because it's just not my kind of movie. I figured I'd be bored stiff, but I was very pleasantly surprised-- it had what the latest Indiana Jones lacked. Like IJ you had to suspend disbelief, surely, but not to such ridiculous extremes, and the various action scenes never carried on for so long that you just got irritated (and bored) with it all. And it was fun to see Jeff Bridges, an actor I think doesn't get the recognition he deserves, playing a villain.

I kind of expected it to be kind of weak. It’s unfortunate that that seems to be the case. I would have liked a great addition to the Indy trilogy, but that is ok. My expectations arent very high for this film.

I also would just like to say that I wouldn’t call Iron Man a “homerun”…It was alright IMO. The suits looked great, and it had some pretty good CG, but overall it was just alright.. Ia Stil watching all Movies Here http://www.80millionmoviesfree.com

io non me la so lui la sa ticchio al collo degrado.