The Adventure Returns


Indiana Jones is back and it's worth going to the theater to see a movie. I always loved going to the movies when I was younger. Of course the only options we had available were to see the movie at the theater or wait several years for it to show up on TV. The options for collectors were limited (in the US at least) to 8mm or 16mm films. When home video was introduced the quality was iffy and prices were high. Video stores could charge, and get, $10 a pop.
As a kid fifty cents would bet me in the movie, a bag of popcorn, a coke and maybe a small box of candy. I still remember the sticker shock when tickets went up to a dollar. Even that was affordable enough to catch several movies in a week. For that matter, most movies didn't play over a week at any one theater unless it was a special like West Side Story for example.
Now, I still enjoy seeing movies on a large screen, but the multiplex screens aren't that big and ticket prices are disgraceful. I only go to bargain matinees for the most part and they aren't really any sort of bargain. In Nashville full ticket prices are around $9 each, and there isn't much I feel like paying that for. And I know larger markets such as New York are even higher.
So, it pretty much takes an event to get me back into a movie theater and the latest Indiana Jones movie certainly qualifies. While not quite as good as the first and third films it is miles ahead of Temple of Doom. Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones are older, but they have aged gracefully. Ford can still carry off the action scenes and has works well with his co-stars, especially Shia LeBeouf. Cate Blanchett is good as the Soviet pseudo-scientist looking for the perfect psychic weapon. And it is a pleasure seeing Karen Allen back as Marion Ravenwood.
Throughout the movie we find references to other films such as Star Wars and Howard Hawks' Land of the Pharaohs (my favorite really bad film about Egypt). I'm sure there are others scattered about which repeated viewings on DVD will help discover.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull delivers what it promises. It is an exciting, entertaining adventure film, the type we get all too rarely these days. It is worth seeing in a theater on a (somewhat) big screen. I would love to have seen it in 70mm.

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