Reeling Backward: "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" (2008)

No, we're not reeling back very far this week. The fifth installment of the Indiana Jones chronicle was supposed to come out in 2020, but has been pushed back to the following year. That gives us a chance to look back on the mightily controversial previous one, 2008's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

It seems like it's been forever since that film, but if the schedule holds it will have only been 13 years since the last Indy movie, whereas it was 19 years between 1989's "The Last Crusade" and "Skull."

This seems like a good time to ruminate on the passage of time in film franchises and the aging process of actors.

There were a whole bunch of old jokes about the movie and in the movie, as star Harrison Ford was in his mid-60s when "Skull" was made. (The original trilogy roughly covered his 40s.) Pop culture was inundated with quips about him being the same age as Sean Connery was when he played Indiana Jones' doddering old dad in "Crusade."

In point of fact: Ford was several years older than Connery was, since in actuality the two actors are merely 12 years apart in age.

Ford will be 78 or 79 as they wrap up shooting of the sixth Indy movie, whose title is still a secret. Since all the movies have roughly tracked with the actor's actual age at the time they were made, it would seem the new one will be set in the 1970s.

Thanks to "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles," the underrated TV series that ran from 1989 to 1993 (plus a few made-for-TV movies that were later re-edited into more serial episodes), the character's birth year is firmly established as 1899. Easy for me to remember, as it's also my paternal grandfather's.

George Hall played "Old Indy," the contemporaneous "host" of the TV show, who then would have been in his 90s. Notably, by then Indy had lost his right eye and wore a patch beneath wire-rim glasses. I'll be interested to see if this injury is explained in the new movie, sort of the way Ford's real-life chin scar was added into "The Last Crusade."

Astounding fact: When he stars in the next movie Ford will be older than Hall was when he played Old Indy.

Seeing "Skull" for the first time in many years, I was struck how frail Ford already appears to be in the action scenes. He actually moves around pretty well, including some jumps and swings he apparently executed himself. He even wriggles feet-first through a small opening between the cargo area of a truck and its cabin, looking relatively spry.

No, it's the punches where this Indy pulls his.

Old-school stunts have been a calling card of the Indiana Jones series, including plenty of fistfights. Punches are always accompanied by a signature sound effect that sounds more like a whiplash than the collision of flesh and bone.

Here we get the same aural crack while Ford's punching arms appear to be moving in slow motion. Indy's enemies -- the Russians this time -- still fly around the screen like they've been struck by a charging bull. The result is the fight scenes seem comically fake.

In general Indy subcontracts most of the heavy fighting to the greaser teenage character, Mutt Williams, in what is seen as Shia LaBeouf's breakout into adult roles. Of course (half-hearted spoiler warning here), about halfway through the movie it's revealed that Mutt is the son of Indy and his long-lost (or mislaid) lady love, Marian Ravenwood (Karen Allen, eternally radiant).

It's Mutt who takes on Irina Spalko, the sword-carrying scientist/kook played by Cate Blanchett in a torrid Ukranian accent that's just begging for a "moose and squirrel" reference. They duel with blades while each standing in the back of vehicles speeding through the Amazonian jungle in one of the film's signature scenes.

Spalko and Indy never exchange more than a few harsh words. Oh, I think she slaps him once.

Mutt first appears wearing EXACTLY the same outfit Marlon Brando did in "The Wild One," right down to the motorcycle and skewed riding cap. Once he and Indy start talking and he references his mother, I think most people guessed at his progeny. When Marian turns up as his mom, the cat's out of the bag and we're just waiting for the reveal to arrive. Mutt and Indy look nothing alike though there is a resemblance to Marian.

From this point on the movie (intentionally) becomes a hammy family sitcom, as the three exchange quips -- "Honey," "Daddy-O," "Junior" -- while fighting the rooskies and, in Mutt's case, literally swinging with the monkeys.

Ford's Indy has definitely mellowed at this point. He's not as excitable or egotistic. I enjoyed the part where they get caught in quicksand and Indy begins patiently explaining the difference between quicksand and a dry sandpit, emphasizing the difference in viscosity.

He's more pedantic professor than grim grave-robber these days.

Perhaps my favorite moment in the film is soon after meeting Mutt, when Indy tosses a line about having known "a lot of Marys" in his lifetime, and the young man leaps from the table, ready to fight a perceived insult of his mother. The Indiana Jones from "Raiders" or "Temple of Doom" would've quickly taken up the challenge, warranted or no.

Instead, he holds his place, looking directly but softly into the younger man's eyes. "You don't have to get sore all the time to prove how tough you are. Sit down. Please, sit down."

Pat Roach, the hulking wrestler who was Indy's punch-pal in the first three movies, had died in 2004 so Igor Jijikine was recruited to play the muscleman antagonist in this movie. He and Indy actually exchange a few good hits before the Russian is eaten alive by giant Amazonian ants. The CGI in this scene was attacked as hoky, but I think it still looks pretty good and certainly was fine compared to contemporary films.

With regard to the two biggest knocks against KotCS:

Yes, the "nuke the fridge" bit is ridiculous. Even if the blast didn't kill him the impact from traveling a few miles like being shot from a cannon would've. But plausibility has not been a hallmark of Indiana Jones movies.

I mean, in "Temple of Doom" an evil shaman reached into a dude's chest and pulled his heart out. Or take the scene where they're flying along in a mine cart, jump across a huge chasm and land exactly on the skinny rail lines on the opposite side.

Gimme the algorithms on that actually happening, perfesser.

On the space aliens revelation, I'm actually 100% fine with that. The film is set in the late 1950s, and Steven Spielberg and George Lucas explicitly said at the outset they wanted to do a science fiction  Indiana Jones flick. I mean, we see the incredibly elongated skull about halfway through the movie -- did you think thiswas going to end anywhere other than (not so) little spacemen?

Again, the first movies involved 1) the Lost Ark of the Covenant, 2) Evil demon magic, and 3) the actual frickin' Holy Grail. To those who loudly pshawed at lead fridges and aliens, I pshaw right back.

I'm genuinely curious what the forthcoming -- and, I've got to think, last -- Indiana Jones movie will hold. I can't imagine they'll try to present Indy as still being capable of even the scaled-down feats of KotCS. We've already heard Mutt won't be back, so is Indy going to recruit another stand-in for the boldest stunts?

They're also not going to kill him off, not without upsetting the established canon that has Indy living until at least the 1990s. There was a lot of talk a few years back about rebooting the franchise with Chris Pratt or someone else starring. The reaction was overwhelmingly negative, and perhaps even provided the final push needed for a fifth one starring Ford to get made.

Ford has joked about wanting to kill off all of his iconic characters, and he finally succeeded with two of them, Han Solo and Rick Deckard, just within the past few years. Curiously, he has never expressed similar thoughts about Indiana Jones, and in fact has been quite vocal about wanting to bring him back.

Indy's already older than his dad, so to speak, and is even senior to the eldest version of the character ever depicted. Whither Dr. Jones? Only time can tell, and how much can truly be left?

Reeling Backward: "Cruising" (1980)

"Who's here? I'm here. You're here."

"Cruising" has the distinction of being the first mainstream movie to garner a major protest from the gay community.

Just a decade after Stonewall, the gay rights movement had gotten organized enough to stage street protests to try to disrupt the production in New York City. They blew whistles during the outdoor shots, forcing director William Friedkin to redub the  movie post-production, and even used reflectors from atop high rises to screw up their lighting.

It got more protests when it finally came out, though not enough -- or perhaps just the right amount -- to make it a moderate hit. Critics were fairly unimpressed, and today the film is pretty well forgotten except for the controversy.

Looking back with the perspective of 40 years, "Cruising" still isn't a very good movie but it's not a terrible one, either. Nor is it the lurid, gay-bashing piece of pulp it was labeled at the time.

Instead, it stands now as an observational piece that turns its eye on a particular place and time. In this case, it's the "leather" scene of the  1970s to early '80s typified by a fetish for leather jackets, pants, hats and other paraphernalia. Gay men would gather in  exclusionary bars to dance, flirt, have sex, do drugs, etc.

Gay hangouts had been underground for decades, and now they were becoming more public as the community founds its identity. It no doubt horrified "the straights," but that was an essential part of the movement up until fairly recently.

Interestingly,  the NYC gay club were largely operated by the Mafia, which is one reason they were relatively protected and allowed to thrive. Thanks, Guido!

Friedkin wanted Richard Gere for the lead because he had an androgynous prettiness to him, but settled for Al Pacino. There is obviously a lot of similarity to Pacino's breakout role in "Serpico," where he also played a cop going "deep undercover" into a world that was alien and frightening to him.

He plays Steve Burns, a street cop in his late 20s who is eager to get his "gold shield," aka make detective. (Pacino was actually 40.)

Captain Edelson (Paul Sorvino, made up to look haggard and prematurely old), who has been assigned to solve a string of gruesome murders of gay man, many of them discovered in dismembered pieces, taps Burns because he resembles the physical type favored by the killer: small stature, slim, dark hair and eyes. The idea is to use Burns as bait to draw the slasher out.

(Never commented upon is that the majority of men Burns encounters in the leather bars look just like him.)

Until now these killings have been swept under the rug, filed as CUPPI (Circumstances Undetermined Pending Police Investigation) with the body parts literally shoved in a coroner's drawer and forgotten. But they've started to get some press and gay activists, gifted with power for the first time, are pressuring city politicians for action.

So the movie gives a nod to the gay community that was trying to prevent it from being shot. The main criticism was the suggestion of an inherent connection between violence and homosexuality. Friedkin et all dismissed that, saying they were only telling a story about one small slice of gay men.

Later he came to acknowledge the film wasn't representative of a burgeoning movement.

The film follows Burns as he gradually immerses himself into the leather scene. "Cruising" was initially given an X rating by the MPAA rating because of the depiction of sex between men in the bars. (One wonders if identical scenes with heterogeneous couples would have been similarly labeled.) A bunch of the footage was cut out to make the grade.

Voyeurism is a key part of the aesthetic of the film, though it's fairly tame by today's standards. There are a bunch of asses but no dicks; we see plenty of men making out and groping each other, some simulated blowjobs and one fairly oblique depiction of fisting.

I wonder what the experience was like for contemporary audiences, which had just learned to accept pornographic films as part of the mainstream, and now were shown obvious, if not overt, gay sex.

The film doesn't just treat these men as objects, though. We meet Ted (Don Scardino), a struggling playwright living next door in the apartment Burns takes up as part of his cover. He's a spectacularly normal guy, worrying about money and his career, as well as conflicts with his roommate, a controlling dancer named Gregory (James Remar) we meet late in the movie.

We get introduced into this world, which like any other segment of human society has its own particular sets of rules and expectations. Burns notices men with colored bandannas hanging out of their pockets and asks a store vendor (Powers Booth) what they mean, learning they're signals for sex acts desired to be performed or received.

Later, when Burns wears one in a club and is approached, the other man becomes enraged when Burns says he only likes to watch. On another night he is gobsmacked when he returns to the same place and finds everyone is dressed as police officers, one of the regular "theme nights." He's asked to leave because, ironically, the one actual cop in the place isn't dressed as one.

A key failing in the story is how Burns is supposed to pass himself off as gay if he never engages in any sex acts with other man. It's like the classic trope among drug dealers suspicious of undercover LEOs, "Take a hit to prove you're not a cop."

I would think that he would quickly gain a reputation as a suspicious interloper, a curious dilettante or a cockteaser.

The movie was based on a 1970 novel by Gerald Walker, a New York Times crimes reporter who fashioned his story out of bits 'n' pieces of actual murders from his beat. My understanding is Friedkin, who also wrote the screenplay, inserted the leather scene  based on magazine articles and his own research, including frequenting some bars himself.

So it's very much a straight perspective exploring the gay scene like a zoological expedition, which no doubt played a part in resentment toward the movie. There was a budding gay cinema back then, including the films of Andy Warhol, though these didn't penetrate mainstream Hollywood.

Friedkin has said that he very much saw the project as another one of his gritty  investigative dramas, like "The French Connection," but set against a different backdrop. Indeed, once you take away the (lite) S&M and boys macking on each other, it's pretty much a straight police procedural.

The story occasionally returns to Burns' relationship with his girlfriend, played by Karen Allen, and how he grasps at her as a touchstone to his "normal," straight life that he yearns to return to. However, there is some suggestion that Burns is genuinely piqued by his exposure to homosexuality. He puts on eye makeup and pumps iron while staring in the mirror.

This would be a more interesting area to explore that the film dallies with and then drops.

The most compelling part about "Cruising" is the ambiguous way it treats its murderer. The story ends with the case officially solved, with a gay grad student (Richard Cox) who took a class from a professor who was killed charged as "the guy." However, Ted later turns up dead and the cops blame it on a lovers' quarrel so as not to spoil their case.

What's really interesting is that Friedkin uses three different actors who swap in and out playing the killer or the victims. He's seen as a tall guy in leather cap and sunglasses who likes to do a little playful singsong routine with his victims right before he stabs them with an outsized steak knife.

So the first man killed, a muscular young actor, later plays the killer himself. Cox plays the killer in another murder in Central Park, but appears to be innocent when Burns later lures him into the park and they try to stab each other.

At one point a waiter named Skip (Jay Avocone) is fingered because he works at a steakhouse that uses similar knives and because he has a reputation for liking the rough stuff. Burns initiates a tryst that cops burst in on, arresting them both.

During the interrogation Skip is beaten to a pulp by the police before being released on no evidence. Burns complains this isn't what he signed up for, and nearly quits.

He's also not happy about, for the purpose of continuing the ruse, getting smacked around himself by a huge black cop wearing only a hat and jock strap, in what is surely the film's most completely unhinged moment. This officer is never named and speaks no dialogue, and his outfit is never explained.

There's other portions that show some dirty cops harassing the cross-dressing hustlers, arresting them without cause and forcing them to perform sex acts on them. My guess is the interrogation room cop was trying to instill that same fear.

"Cruising" had its heart in the right place, despite accusations, but its head in the wrong one.

Review: "Year by the Sea"

"Year by the Sea" is one of those little movies about seemingly small things that has big import. It stars Karen Allen as a woman who has spent the last 30 years being a wife and mother, and decides it's time to try something else.

For her, this involves separating from her husband and living in a ramshackle cottage on the shores of Cape Cod. A writer struggling to find something to write about, she meanders about for a bit before making some new connections, while reassessing her marriage and deciding what kind of life she wants to have going forward.

We are lucky to be seeing more films starring older women feeling the second blush of romance, as in "Paris Can Wait" earlier this year with Diane Lane. But "Year" is not so much about romantic love as finding new things in life to love.

The film was a labor of love by producer Laura Goodenow, who lives in Indianapolis and turned from journalism to creative ventures. Based on the best-selling memoir by Joan Anderson, the project got its initial funding from a Kickstarter. It's a testament to the notion that you don't need major studio backing or a Hollywood address to make movies.

Allen is sensitive and empathetic as Joan, who's become a rather passive person. Her husband, Robin (Michael Cristofer), is a businessman consumed by anger and resentment. He's close to retirement age and finds he is being transferred from Nyack to Witchita.

After one son gets married and the other moves out, Joan decides seemingly spontaneously to not join Robin in Kansas, and instead rent a cottage in a small fishing town, Sealway. This widens the split with Robin, who feels everyone is looking to put him out to pasture.

I became silent, Joan narrates, and he became stony.

The cottage is very remote -- as in, it's only accessible by a ride on a dinghy across the bay. Joan settles in and starts to explore the town and its denizens. Her first encounter is with another Joan (Celia Imrie), a free spirit who's as grounded as our Joan is adrift. This Joan has the self-knowledge our Joan lacks. She's married to a famous psychiatrist who's convalescing in a nursing home, uncommunicative but still emotionally attached.

Joan's other lifeline is her book agent, Liz (S. Epatha Merkerson), who calls and drops in to ask about when the next work is coming. (It's not.) She also takes a job in the shop of a kindly local fisherman, Cahoon (Yannick Bisson). He's married to Judy (Jane Hajduk), the town scold.

There's also a friendly shopkeep at the local store/diner (Monique Gabriela Curnen), whose boyfriend is controlling and belligerent. Plus the usual array of background characters, such as the old coot who lives off the generosity of people like Cahoon, who gives him unsold bait for his stew.

Things go from there, without much of a narrative thread other than Joan's gradual progression into a distinct person who does and thinks for herself. Robin swings in for a Christmastime visit, but old troubles remain much as they were. There's a suggestion of a spring/autumn attraction with Cahoon -- but as I said, "Year by the Sea" is about the totality of a woman rather than just her amorous attributes.

The movie was adapted and directed by Alexander Janko, a rookie behind the camera whose background is on the musical end of film -- a transition you don't often see. (Never, in my own experience.) He shows a steady hand with controlling the mood and pace of the film, which is deliberately languid and contemplative.

The performances from the cast are uniformly wonderful, especially Allen. Her lovely, naturally weathered face is a mask of yearning and sadness, counterbalanced with burgeoning joy. There is an unavoidable touch of Hallmark Channel-type sentimentality in the proceedings, unhelped by Janko's own musical score of piano trills and strings.

The cinematography by Bryan Papierskiis terrific, using the washed-out colors and natural wonders of Cape Cod, including abundant seals and other creatures, to great effect. In many ways the backdrop resembles the inner turmoil of Joan, who's watched the tide go out on her own life and is waiting for something else to replace what was there.

"Year by the Sea" is a movie that thinks, not one where stuff happens just to fill the running time.

Reeling Backward: "King of the Hill" (1993)

"King of the Hill" is exactly the sort of picture a rising young filmmaker tackles for their third feature. In 1993 Steven Soderbergh had enjoyed his breakout with "Sex, Lies and Videotape," followed by the more esoteric "Kafka." For his third go-round, he went for a classic coming-of-age story about boy abandoned during the Great Depression.

These sorts of tales are so common they have gotten their own literary designation: "Bildungsroman," named for fairy tales in which a young person goes out into the world, encounters hardship and seeks to define themselves through their experiences. Though in young Aaron Kurlander's story, much of his journey occurs within the confines of the crumbling San Francisco hotel where he lives.

At first, it was the whole family crammed into that single room -- German immigrant father (Jeroen Krabbe), kind mother wracked by consumption (a luminescent Lisa Eichhorn) and scrappy, trouble-making younger brother Sullivan (Cameron Boyd). They were poor, along with everyone else in the Empire Hotel, where the mercenary bellboy Ben (Joe Chrest) acts as thuggish enforcer, locking people out of their rooms if they get too far behind on their bill.

But at least they were together. Father is fitfully employed as a salesman, but is a dreamer/schemer who always has a plan up his sleeve about finding a better gig. They decide to send Sullivan off to live with an  uncle to save a dollar a week in costs. Then mother's tuberculosis flairs up and she's packed off to the sanitarium.

Dad actually manages to land the job he boasted about selling watches for the Hamilton Watch Company, but it forces him to leave Aaron (who's about 12) alone for the summer in the apartment. He gives the hotel manager $17 (against a debt 10 times that) to hold him off, and arranges for one meal a day at a local diner. But Ben the bellboy has been tasked with strong-arming all the riff-raff out in favor of dance hall girls, and the diner worker was pulling a scam. So Aaron is left with an armful of dinner rolls and his instincts to make it through.

 Soderbergh's wonderful screenplay, which is based on a memoir by writer A.E. Hotchner, is filled with all sorts of authentic little details about life back in 1933. The people speak in the lingo of the times. Visually, the film is a sumptuous representation of the era, from the Model T Fords to the leather straps the children use to carry their books to school. Even the fat, corrupt policeman, who lives to pinch little kids' ears, wears a natty Clark Gable mustache.

Aaron is a bright boy, and even receives the top award at his school for the student who best represents the ideals of academia and good character. He has the former in spades, but has a penchant for lying. Asked to write an essay about his personal hero, he fabricates a tale of a personal friendship with aviator Charles Lindbergh. His supportive teacher (Karen Allen) sees it as fanciful initiative, but is more disturbed to learn Aaron has been lying about where he lives so he can attend the "rich kids" school district. She doesn't squeal on him, though.

Adrien Brody has a nice role as Lester, an older kid down the hall whom Aaron idolizes. His street smarts trump Aaron's book smarts, and he's constantly helping the kid out of scrapes or into ones -- like picking the lock on the hotel storeroom, where Ben has stashed all the belongings of former residents who got the boot. He eventually gets arrested for selling stolen hooch to the homeless people (they were called bums back then) living in the Hooverville catty-corner from the hotel.

One quiet, small moment with a lot of power is when Aaron barges into Lester's apartment looking for him. Lester never let anyone in, protesting that his sick mother needs her rest. Turns out Lester invented her, to conceal the sad, squalid little life he actually lived.

A young Katherine Heigl has a small role as a wealthy girl who spies Aaron stealing food off another kid's plate at school, and invites him to dinner with her family. Aaron is embarrassed when, at a big birthday party right before that dinner, his trail of lies catch up with him. He runs off, even leaving behind his school award medal, and holes up in his room, hiding from Ben and his box full of locks.

Interestingly, the film depicts most people in Aaron's community has being sympathetic and helpful. Even the hotel manager who wants to give him the boot does so at the behest of the bank that owns it. Ben and the abusive cop are the only true villainous figures in the movie. Instead, Aaron self-ostracizes himself through his shame at his lowly circumstances, and his many distortions of the truth.

I think the movie really shines in its portrayal of a tentative, furtive romance between Aaron and Ella, a slightly older girl who lives on the same floor, who never seems to leave their apartment. She's supposed to be unattractive and awkward, though in the finest cinematic tradition the girl (played by Amber Benson) is actually gloriously cute, simply hidden behind glasses and an unbecoming hairstyle.

Aaron is at first put off by Ella's attentions, stopping him in the  hallway to talk and inviting him over for a hot dog. He is at that age where boys begin to notice the female allure, but they're still held back by their little-kid notions of girls as The Enemy. He is horrified when she has an epileptic seizure while they're dancing, and beats a hasty retreat. But Aaron, to his credit, returns again to see her.

A few other elements don't quite get baked in to the pie. There's an on-again, off-again exchange with Mr. Mungo, the patrician gent who loves across the hallway. Played by writer Spalding Gray, Mungo is a formerly rich man brought low by the Crash, now content to eke out his last few dollars and his last few days as a wastrel prince lording it over the poor man's hostel. He dresses elegantly and keeps a prostitute (Elizabeth McGovern) around as a bored retainer -- her job, aside from some assumed sex we never see, is apparently to annoy and belittle him.

Ultimately, the physical journey in "King of the Hill" is rather small. Mr. Kurlander dreams of getting a better job so he can move his family out of the Empire Hotel and across the city to the Carlton Court Apartments, and in the end he does. It's a nice though hardly lavish abode in a better neighborhood. The Carlton is weightier in its significance than its trappings, though, as Aaron has grown and learned immeasurably in his time alone.

"King of the Hill," in tone and theme, reminds me very much of "Empire of the Sun," an  unheralded film from 1987 that remains my favorite directed by Steven Spielberg. The story is smaller in scope, as there is no world war in the backdrop, but the import approaches.

3.5 stars out of four