“Indiana Bones and the Search for What Went Wrong”

Every person must have moments with movies that clearly resonate throughout their lives. I was lucky to start early. I got to thinking of what my earliest memories of movies were the other day and came up with what I believe to be a solid top 5. My top 5 cinema memories from my childhood could be ranked as such: 

5. My dad making me watch Goodfellas and Casino at age 9.
4. My dad making me watch anything with John Wayne and also a movie called Real Genius(I cheated and made 2 here, but I watched them usually back to back).
3. My dad making me watch Back to the Future.
1. My dad making me watch Star Wars.

I owe a lot to my dad as far as my love of movies go, and for those of you keeping score, you’ll notice that I skipped #2. I did this because I’m writing a review of an Indiana Jones movie, and it really is my 2nd best memory from cinema childhood, but in order to keep up this chain of drama, I had to make special note of it. Watching Raiders with my dad is one of my favorite memories as a kid. I can’t remember a time I wasn’t more excited than possibly Star Wars. And for some reason, I had to call and apologize to my dad after seeing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and apologize. I apologized FOR George Lucas, who took a dump on our memory.

Ok after waxing nostalgic, here it is; this movie is not good. I’m sorry. I wish I could say it was great and transcendent and everything. I’ve thought very long and hard to make sure I’m not making this judgement because I’m a big Indy fan, and I think I’ve pushed myself into the realm of possibly doing that. That’s because it’s a bad movie to boot, and worst because the bar is set so high.

My thing is this: Lucas was aiming for 50′s B-Movie. That totally works as an aesthetic. However, with an A-list cast and one of the best directors ever, do we have to aim for overall quality as well? Harrison Ford didn’t feel to me like Indiana Jones anymore and it had nothing to do with his age. I get that characters change and yada yada…but I saw a shell of the man that was once Indy in this movie.

Nothing is at stake in this flick. There is no one to cheer for because I didn’t care about any of the characters (except for Indy and that was a stretch). Indy was always a maverick, cowboy, the very essence of a modern day American cowboy who did it all as he went and if he had help, cool but not necessary. In this flick, we follow a bumbling group of mannequins chase after an object that sparks no real peril. Crystal Skulls? Who cares! There is nothing at stake for Indiana and apparently his band of bumbling sidekicks.

Ok so some of the action was cool and there were some fun comedic and dramatic moments. I’ll give it that. For the movie fan in me, the movie was a drag. For the Indiana Jones fan in me, this movie was a heartbreak. Shia LeBouef is solid (again) but can’t really make me care too much. Needless to say, I did not like this movie. It was a pretty draggy action flick and a disgrace to the original Indiana Jones flicks. And I have to say that because it is an Indiana Jones movie. It can’t be spoken of in a breath without being compared. This movie gets a solid 4 out of 10, for being boring, soul less and ultimately a let down with a few redeeming moments of nostalgia, comedy and action. 

RATING:

“The way to do it right”

 What a way to start this summer’s (comic) movie extravaganza than with a blockbuster (comic) movie! Yes it’s true: Hollywood has become the land of Asian horror remakes, Off-kilter indie movies about family dysfunction and comic book blockbusters. And Iron Man is certainly the latter of those three, offering a grand spectacle of how good a comic book movie can be. Notice I said good not great.

I was having a discussion the other day of what the best comic book movie’s of this generation were in order. I came up with Spider-Man 2 then Batman Begins, and so on down the line, ranking Iron Man a solid #5 spot. What Iron Man does perhaps better than any of the 4 movies above it is preform. It’s cast is really superior to the movies ahead of it. Robert Downey Jr. is easily the #1 in the list of leading men (sorry Christian Bale).
 

Other than having the better cast, Iron Man does everything well, but no one thing great. It has good action, good story and good effects…but it feels like something I’ve seen bits and pieces of before. This isn’t a bad thing. Jon Favreau clearly learned the pitfalls of his predecessors and sought to build a faster, better experience and certainly succeeds. It’s definetely exciting and fun to watch and stand alone a solid action flick.

But in the realm of criticism that it has to fall in, it’s a good movie, not a great one. So while it brings nothing new to the table of super-hero movies or the genre, it excels at doing the high points of said genre well, which makes Iron Man a success and a good movie. This movie get’s a high 8 out of 10 Bones for being the type of comic book movie that should be made, with a little more upping of the ante required.

RATING:PLUS!

“Not up to par with the rest of the Apatow flicks, but solid”

I always wondered when Jason Siegel would get his shot and finally here it comes via Forgeting Sarah Marshall, a movie he not only stars in, but also wrote. It seems like he is the weaker link of the whole Apatow clan, but certainly seems to have a place, so why not give him a shot at leading man territory? While this movie doesn’t explode into the viewer, it certainly provides a few good laughs and a decent enough story, but really loses some steam in the last third of the movie.

I hate to be so critical of a movie that is a romantic comedy, but I blame this critique on the fact that Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin were so well done, that the bar has been set. This movie certainly follows in that pattern: toilet-esque humor mixed with themes of growing up and adult decisions. I get the pattern and for the time being it’s working in droves. But while the material here is relatable for anyone in a relationship, it suffers in delivering either a coherent message or a message about not having just one message.

Ultimately, being a dude, I was rooting for the guy who get’s dumped. But there are moments where you take pity on the chick. It’s a delicate flip flop that creates some clunky moments. I was struggling to find where the movie was aiming, and ended up settling on the concept that maybe what the movie was trying to show was that there is no right or wrong in this situation.
 

Segel plays a sad sap well enough and the revolving cast is good enough in their roles to make this a fun enough experience. It really pales in comparison to the other Apatow “classics”, but is worth it’s weight. The music in it is hillarious and Paul Rudd is a gem. Check this movie out if you really dug the other Apatow-esque flicks, and check it out if it’s light hearted fair you seek. Otherwise, don’t expect too much. I give this a 7 out of 10 Bones for being the Miller Lite to the otherwise Guinness of the “adult, sex rom-com’s”.

RATING:

You can’t really blame them for trying; with the ever present success of The Shield and a movie like L.A. Confindential, the whole “dirty cop do good” storyline was going to come full circle via el cinema. Street Kings is that flick that attempts to capture the drama and moral dilemnas of a show like The Shield in the 2hrs it remains on screen. While a film like L.A. Confindential or even Training Day certainly seem like templates for Street Kings, they represent lightning in a bottle, insofar that they are two of the best cop movies of the past twenty years. Street Kings is their junior and in general, a pretty mediocre flick.

Don’t get me wrong; I was loving the new Johnny Utah(a.k.a. Keanu Reeves as resident badass). He was a hurt machine; swearing and making racial slurs at every bad corner of the neighborhood and in general kicking some serious inner city ass. But what plays out well in a show like The Shield, is that every week you return to these characters and join them in their morally murky world. You take the good episodes with the bad, hoping that the end all story ends up being better. Street Kings attempts to execute on the same level, and does so to an extent, but ends up coming off as a bad episode of said show.

Reeves and various other preformances certainly made this better for me and the story itself isn’t bad. But the material seems so inferior to the talent preforming it, that they end up having to act like it’s Shakespeare, when it’s really just cop drama. It’s entertaining in the same realm as a Training Day, but certainly not as powerful. What should have been another intriguing and powerful foray into crime cinema ends up coming off as an extended finale of a TV show. Which isn’t to say it’s all that bad, just certainly doesn’t deliver. Wait for DVD kids, or just watch Training Day. I give this a 5 out of 10 Bones, for being watchable but forgettable.

RATING: