Tag Archives: Harrison Ford

2023 Movies… Favorites and others

It was great to get back into theaters this year and see movies on the big screen!

I’ve put the movies I saw this year into three groups:

MOVIES I LIKED A LOT…

John Wick Chapter 4. Not just an orgy of violence, it is ballet. The cast, the stunts, the locations, the story… wow! Keanu Reeves and company deliver one of the best action movies I’ve ever seen.

The Holdovers. Clever story and script, strong performances, some good laughs and a big dose of humanity make this a perfect movie for grown-ups. Paul Giamatti is excellent as usual.

American Fiction. A comedy about white guilt and those people who exploit it—both black and white. It’s also a family story with Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross and Sterling K. Brown as siblings and Leslie Uggams as their mom. Opens in St. Louis in January.

Oppenheimer. Big movie. Loud. The physicist’s life is divided into two parts: pre-bomb and post-bomb. Director/writer Christopher Nolan crams a lot of narrative into three hours. Robert Downey Jr.’s explosive performance likely to be among this film’s award winners. Not only was this film a critical success, it did huge box office numbers too.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3. More fun with this odd cast of characters, each of whom is developed more fully here. Loved the art direction and the song choices. 

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. With references to previous Indy movies and lots of entertaining chase scenes. The use of time travel as a plot device is weak but the movie checks most of the boxes we’ve known and loved in the Indiana Jones series. Welcome back, Dr. Jones!

The Burial. Jamie Foxx is excellent as a personal injury lawyer who takes funeral home owner Tommy Lee Jones as a client. 

MOVIES I LIKED SOMEWHAT…

Dumb Money. Better job of telling its story than expected. Paul Dano is great, as usual. 

Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. Weird time of life for all kids, especially girls. Classic teen book finally gets the screen treatment it deserves.

Champions. Woody Harrelson in a movie with heart. He coaches a basketball team of developmentally challenged kids. 

Cocaine Bear. Silly, goofy, fun. And Ray Liotta!

The Last Voyage of the Demeter. A slow build horror film. Nicely executed.

Book Club: The Next Chapter. Basically a raunchier version of a Hallmark movie with bigger stars. Candace Bergen is the standout among the four senior actresses.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One. Effects and stunts triumph over story and characters. I was more impressed by the Rome chase than the dangling train bit.

Napoleon. Has its moments. Spectacular battle scenes. 

Priscilla. Her side of the story. The woman in the title role (Cailee Spaeny) did a nice job but that whole relationship was creepy. 

The Exorcist: Believer. Some good scary moments. And Ellyn Burstyn’s return.

No Hard Feelings. Jennifer Lawrence has charisma and range. Several good laughs.

The Flash. Highlight of the film is Michael Keaton’s return as Batman.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Chris Pine is good but what the heck is Hugh Grant doing in this movie?

MOVIES I DID NOT LIKE…

Asteroid City. Wes Anderson overload. Pointless.

Five Nights at Freddy’s. Not scary. Josh Hutcherson’s overacting gets tedious.

Strays. Cute idea, dumb execution.

The Boys in the Boat. Sports movie clichés aplenty. I was bored.

Renfield. Nic Cage is fun but this horror flick had little charm for me.

Can’t wait to see what 2024 has to offer!

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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Welcome back, Dr. Jones! 

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny checks all the boxes. Everything you want from an Indy adventure, you get. And more. Grab the jumbo size popcorn and settle in for two-and-a-half hours of thrills, chills and chuckles.

The film’s first twenty minutes set the tone with action that includes our hero about to be lynched by Nazis in Poland, then wriggling away when a bomb hits, stealing a vehicle, jumping onto a moving train and engaging in a face-off atop a fast moving train. Oh, and that segment wraps with Jones jumping off a high trestle as the train crashes. 

That opening segment is set at the end of WWII and features a de-aged version of Jones. Kinda like they did with some of the stars of The Irishman a few years ago.

Then, in 1969, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) jumps into a new adventure with Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), the daughter of archeologist Basil Shaw (Toby Jones). Her dad was obsessed with a strange dial, supposedly developed by Archimedes, that can supposedly control, among other things, time.

Jones has one half of the dial but where oh where is the other half that’ll make the magical thing work? Well, that’s what the story’s about.

Of the many chase scenes in IJATDOD, the best may be the one in Manhattan where Jones is pursued through a parade honoring the Apollo 11 astronauts. (By the way: Remember when Harrison Ford was chased through a parade in Chicago in The Fugitive?) The chase features Jones riding a horse in the NYC subway. Love it!

The bad guy in the movie is Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a former Nazi, who wants to employ the dial to go back to 1939 and reset history. He encounters Jones back in that opening segment. Then in 1969, he is aided by a gang of henchmen (and one henchwoman) who follow Helena and Jones on their travels from New York to Tangiers, Casablanca, Greece and Sicily. 

Voller’s character, who works for NASA and takes credit for the moon landing, brings to mind Wernher von Braun the real-life German who came to America to design and build rockets in Huntsville AL.

I’ve always considered time travel to be a storyteller’s crutch. But there are so many other fantastical things happening in this movie, why not go back a few centuries? However as Mr. Peabody and Sherman taught us, you have to be careful that you go back exactly where (when?) you want to be in the space/time continuum. 

Maybe the most fantastical thing about IJATDOD is that Helena, despite partaking of derring-do alongside Indy, always looks great. She is a pretty woman.

Also in the film is Antonio Banderas as a sponge diver who leads Indy and Helena into the deep and when they surface, guess who shows up? Voller and his crew.

This is a film to see on a big screen in a theater with big sound—the better to enjoy John Williams’ exciting soundtrack (which reprises the Indy theme throughout.)

Indiana Jone and the Dial of Destiny is directed by James Mangold. Rated PG-13.

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42

Like most recent crowd-pleasing biopics, 42 presents a series of opportunities, challenges and successes for its hero. As we saw in films about Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, and now here for Jackie Robinson, talent and determination win the day.

Jackie Robinson is played ably by Chadwick Boseman. The movie’s depiction of Robinson reveals few flaws, other than a temper. No addictions, no womanizing here. He has a wife, but few other characteristics that flesh him out as a real person, not just a ballplayer.

The story of Jackie Robinson is also the story of Branch Rickey, the white man credited with bringing Robinson to the bigs. Harrison Ford plays Rickey with restraint. Not many of those intense tirades we’ve seen in other Ford roles, but a couple of good speeches give Ford his moments to shine.

After Rickey determines that Robinson has the guts and the self-control to handle the abuse, Rickey deals with managers and players who aren’t happy that Robinson is part of their team.

Acceptance is slow in coming, but winning ballgames helps heal some of the hard feelings. Robinson leads the Dodgers to the 1947 pennant, is named Rookie of the Year and the audience leaves the theater with a warm, Hallmark Channel-like upbeat feeling.

Following Django Unchained, hearing the “n” word in a mass market film like 42 is not so shocking. I heard the word four times through the first half of the movie. But after Robinson joins the Dodgers, he hears the word many more times—mostly from Phillies manager Ben Chapman. Chapman is played by Alan Tudyk, who was Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball.

42 attempts to capture the feeling of 1946 and ’47. On some levels, that goal is achieved with the typical tools: cars, phones and costumes of the era. What the film fails to communicate is how big baseball was in those days, as compared to other amusements. The depictions of real ballparks of the era are partly successful. The film has a major anachronism with a shot of modern seating in a minor league ballpark.

42 is not a great movie, but tells its story in an entertaining enough way to click with many groups of moviegoers: men and women, white and black, baseball fans and non-fans. Like Ray and Walk the Line, 42 is destined to be a crowd-pleaser.

 

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