Word: skulled
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...conscientious member of the Cannes critics' corps will see five or six new films a day. We're meant to attend all 21 features in competition for the Palme d'Or, plus special screenings (like Sunday's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), and another 20 or so in the sidebar program called Un Certain Regard. But there are times when a Pied Piper stands outside our classroom, luring us to play hooky...
...Crystal Skull is intended, and works effectively, as instant nostalgia - a class reunion of the old gang who in the '80s reinvigorated the classic action film with such expertise and brio. So don't expect the freshness of the what-one-man-can-do plot in Iron Man, or the oneiric visuals of Speed Racer. Spielberg and Lucas, and screenwriters David Koepp and Jeff Nathanson, are looking not forward but back, to the first three films. They know that moviegoers would be disappointed not to see the talismans of Indys past reappear here. Shall we itemize...
...cool car chase. A lot of the elements in Crystal Skull may feel like mandatory reprises of the old tropes, but the high-speed two-vehicle fight between Indy's team and Irina's goons is up there with the Raiders jeep sequence, more complex and sophisticated in its engineering of physical action. (In the post-film press conference this afternoon, Spielberg said, "I believe in practical magic, not digital magic," and in "real stunts with real people.") If there's a scene that film students will be poring over, decades from now, this...
...that will cost hundreds of lives and add exactly nothing to the lore of civilization. (And, in three of the four movies, he comes home empty-handed.) But heck, it's an adventure movie; leave all ethnic scruples home. Scholars of antiquity will be pleased to know that Crystal Skull - with its runic inscriptions, vanished languages, hidden caves and dreadful secrets - is the archaeolog-iest Indy film yet. In fact, the movie is a little plot-heavy around the middle. It seems more determined to tell a complicated story than to use a story as the excuse for a convulsive...
...David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson cope with middle age in their X Files movie later this summer. They may suffer from the occasional creaking joints of Crystal Skull. (And, truth to tell, there was more applause here at the beginning of the screening than at the end.) But they'd be hard-pressed to inhabit the sleek, satisfying adventure that three septuagenarians and their pals dreamed up here. There's a moment in the film where Mutt sees Indy negotiate some really cool bit of action, and the kid can't help mouth a "Wow." That's the right response...