filmland / By Charlie Myers

Creaky Old Indy

The tuneful oldsters of ‘Young@Heart’ inspire; Harrison Ford only bores

(May 29, 2008) Previews

For those who didn’t get enough of Sex and the City from Candace Bushnell’s book of her collected newspaper columns about young, single, professional women in Manhattan, one of whom was the author herself, or from the six-season HBO series, May 30 brings fans the big screen version, and it remains to be seen if the film adds anything to the series or just rehashes the same old material. At any rate, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon and Chris Noth are all back as their respective series characters in what I guess can be labeled a romantic comedy, directed and written by Michael Patrick King, who also directed 10 episodes of the TV series. The film takes up four year after the series finale and, based on the trailers, involves Carrie’s possible wedding and Charlotte’s pregnancy. Despite my admiration for Parker, I could never get into the series; guess I can be accused of being just a guy. Nonetheless, I will, of course, approach the film with my usual lack of bias. Rated R for strong sexual content, graphic nudity and language. 148 m. At the Broadway, Fortuna, Mill Creek and Minor.

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For all those guys out there without girlfriends, also opening locally is the latest horror thriller The Strangers, which uses the device of a home invasion to ratchet up the tension. Using such tried and true genre devices as a flashback from a brief opening scene, an isolated house and an unhappy couple who are about to find out how good they actually had it. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman (xXx: State of the Union; the Underworld films) are Kristen McKay and James Hoyt, a couple who discover that getting married may never be an option if the man with a bag over his head has his way. As Kristen intones in the trailers, “Why are they doing this to us?” Not that I’m pre-judging. Rated R for violence/terror and language. 90 m. At the Broadway and Mill Creek.

Reviews

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL: I really wanted to like this film, having fond memories of 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. The first episode in this series captured a nice balance between adventure and humor while Harrison Ford, fresh from the first two Star Wars movies, seemed the perfect protagonist for the film, which was a lot of fun. The two sequels were decent but not standouts, although Sean Connery was a nice addition in Last Crusade.

Now some 19 years after the previous sequel, the indefatigable Harrison Ford returns as the professor/adventurer who, this time, tangles with Russian military members, the latest in the cardboard villains of this series, over some crystal skull artifacts that supposedly will give their possessors great power. Not that anyone will really care about the plot, which exists to provide the flimsy framework for a series of action scenes that virtually take over the film, leaving little time, the filmmakers hope, for any sort of reflection.

The film is set in 1957, a time period that explains using the Russians as the bad guys, although the more recent tension with Russia under Vladimir Putin certainly figures in this decision as well. The film does start with a nice sequence set at an American military base in a remote location in a desert in the Western U.S. In addition to referencing atomic bomb testing (Indy and the Soviets briefly end up in a fake town setup for a bomb test), the action sequence has much of the playfulness of past films in the series, including Indy being blown through the air inside a lead-lined refrigerator.

Plus, we are introduced to Cate Blanchett as Irina Spalko, head of the Soviet team, in full bad girl regalia that includes black gloves and boots along with a sword. If only the film had gone in that direction.

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