KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: Picnic at Hanging Rock

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy

Picnic at Hanging Rock 

I was aware of Peter Weir's phantasmagoric film back in 1975, but I never had a chance to see it in a theater. Over the years I certainly could have caught up with it on home video or on my satellite service, but again, I never did. This last weekend on "The Lambcast", we had a Roll Your Own show and my colleague David Brook was choosing Cinema New Wave Films from different parts of the world. Director Peter Weir was the essential film maker of that period. "Gallipoli" and "The Year of Living Dangerously" were the films that first brought him to my attention. His subsequent American films have been among the best of the last forty years.   Picnic at Hanging Rock was voted the best Australian film of all time by members of the Australian Film Institute, industry guilds and unions, film critics and reviewers, academics and media teachers, and Kookaburra Card members of the National Film and Sound Archive, in a 1996 poll.

The film is a languid mystery about the disappearance of school girls from a young woman's college while on an outing to nearby Hanging Rock, a geological formation that is quite unique. There is a soft horror story that goes along with the mystery because everybody at the school and surrounding community is effected negatively by the vanishing. Some of the consequences of the event are mild hysteria but other manifestations are more deeply complex, frightening and tragic. All of this takes place in a beautiful setting with historically elegant period design. The cinematography is gorgeous, which is of course strongly reflecting the surroundings. 

Early on you get a feel for Weir's hand in the film, when the principle young woman, Miranda, is shown in her room, reflected on a mirror that is reflected off of another surface. This is a movie that is composed so that the images will be memorable and attractive, even if the consequences are ambiguous and somewhat creepy. The feel of the movie is almost always like an episode of "The Twilight Zone", where we know what we are seeing is going to be changed by the events that occur, and a pall of sadness lingers even if the images are beautiful. 

In addition to the photography, the mood is heightened by the selections of classical music on the soundtrack and the frequent contributions of Greek pan-flautist Zamfir. 

I have to admit that my familiarity with his work consisted only of the infomercial sales pitches on saw on independent TV stations in the 1980s, an example of which you can see above. The cheesy ad may undermine your confidence in the quality of his product, but in the film it sets a very strong emotional tone. The flute compositions are haunting and beautiful, which fits perfectly with the movie and the way it has been shot.

The film plays out as a series of events which lead to surprising outcomes. A young Englishman, who lives with his Uncle and Aunt, is mesmerized by the young women when he sees them walking up the rock formation very briefly. Their vanishing cannot simply be ignored and he obsesses over the missing girls. One unfortunate girl, Sara, who has a deep connection with Miranda, also suffers in her absence and the school becomes something more oppressive to her as time passes. The headmistress Mrs. Appleyard sees her school being crushed by the events and she feels the moral crisis of having to deal with an unjust financial situation. The other teachers are flummoxed as to how to respond to developments, and the one girl who does return from being missing, sheds no light on the subject. 

All of this takes place in a world vaguely tinged by burgeoning sexuality. The girls are somewhat objectified as sexual beings by the two youths who observe them. Sara seems romantically drawn to Miranda, and one of the teachers seems to feel the influence of the young ladies who are coming into their womanhood. One of the maids at the school is having a sexual dalliance with one of the groundskeepers, and the police and local doctor seem to be particularly careful about the implication that the girls might have been sexually assaulted. Mrs. Appleyard seems to imply that some of the relationships between the guardians of the girls and their charges are suspiciously unclear. There is no actual sexual activity shown on screen but there is an undercurrent in some of the images. 

Those of you who are narrative lovers and want a complete story, may be frustrated by the fact that the movie ends ambiguously. We don't discover what happened to the girls, we only learn what happened to everyone else. The landscapes and costumes are attractive, and the movie plays slowly, but it is magnetic to look at and will probably get you thinking about the ripple effect, in a way that is completely different than was talked about in Jurassic Park. I was very happy to catch up with this classic from 1975. 

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One

 

An interesting thing happened last night at the Mission Impossible Fan Event we attended. After the two short promo reels that were part of the event, the wrong movie started running. "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" is a joint Paramount/Disney production but when we saw the Disney Studio credit logo, we knew this was not Mission Impossible and that the wrong IMAX film was running. Two dozen people got up immediately to inform the management, but it still took nearly fifteen minutes of running the wrong movie before it was corrected. That accident allowed us to see the difference between a completely CGI train fight, which would later compare unfavorably to the practical train fight in the movie we came to see. This was an inadvertent reveal of how meticulous director/writer Christopher McQuarrie and star/producer Tom Cruise are about making their movies. They sure put in the extra effort to make it work for the audience.

"Dead Reckoning" has the kind of plot that could easily befuddle you the first time through. I know a lot of people had difficulty with the first of the Mission Impossible movie plots, and those folks may be happy to learn they are not the only ones who can get confused by the events in these movies. I've got a pretty good grasp on some of the elements but I will probably need a re-watch to clarify some other points of the story. I don't think audiences will be put off however. We know that Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is the good guy, and that his team can be trusted, although uncertainty about Ilsa Faust is understandable. This is the third film in the series in which Rebecca Ferguson's disavowed MI-6 agent has been a part. After "Fallout" we are pretty confident she is on our side, and that's a good thing because she is incredibly competent and formidable. 

The other members of the team return and they continue to provide both humor and some grounding for the series. Simon Pegg is as always, a gas who can lighten up a situation with an ironic acknowledgement of the difficulty in front of the team at any time. Ving Rhames brings calm and gravitas to his scenes and makes the tech crew a lot more humanly relatable. The newest member of the team is Haley Atwell, who gets involved with the team and is completely unreliable from the start. Atwell has experience playing a spy so she will be a good fit, although it was jarring to see he character so quickly develop the combat level qualifications that make her equal to some others in the group. She is fit enough and fine, and when her character has to improvise, especially in the climax, she is terrific, but her character is supposed to have a different background and that difference gets ignored as the film moves on. 

All the Mission Impossible Films are anchored by great stunts and clever visual sequences. The opening of the film riffs on "The Hunt for Red October", with the same outcome for a Russian sub that was seen in that movie. This is where the confusion starts as well. Although we get an exposition scene from an under utilized Cary Elwes, that comes almost two hours after we have witnessed the opening and we are still trying to figure it out. Of course that is part of the intrigue, but the audience may be wary of everything after this. Elwes and the returning Henry Czerny as former IMF director Kittridge, are set up to be the partial villains of the bureaucracy, the real bad guy appears to be Esai Morales as Gabriel, working on behalf the the real big bad, "The Entity, a self aware A.I. that has taken control of the digital world and is using it to achieve an end that we are not yet sure of. Gabriel has a team, the Intelligence Community has a team, multiple local jurisdictions are involved, and there is a band of bounty hunters, and all of them are after Ethan and Atwell's Grace. At times this feels like one long continuous chase movie. The moments of tension are less about achieving an objective than giving us a bit of a break from the chase. But damn, those are some good chases.

Tom gets to do his patented running man routine at least three times during the film. There are two excellent motorcycle sequences and two equally great car chases. There is certainly a lot of action to go around. The shooting that takes place exhibits the usual poor marksmanship of the bad guys, and the hero team never seems to miss. That is boiler plate stuff. The real highlights come in the train sequence at the end of the film. There is a solid fight on the top of the train, and the Spielberg/Hitchcock inspired action after the train begins going off the edge is going to make your butt clench, even though we know it is just a movie. Once again, the stunt team and the practical effects, make this movie feel completely different from so many action films nowadays. The film ends on a cliff hanging moment, but since it it Part One of Two, no one should be too surprised by that. There is no teaser sequence during or after the titles, these film makers are keeping it real.

This was my most highly anticipated movie of the year with the possible exception of "Dune Part II". It lived up to my expectations and the audience I saw it with was quite responsive. Once more Lalo Schifrin should be getting a huge residual check, his theme is used in the right places and it provides the audience energy needed to propel us through the story. The release of this movie is one of the twisted tales that resulted from the Covis-19 shutdowns. This movie got held up in production by the Pandemic, and the studios juggled how to release this and last years Tom Cruise vehicle "Top Gun Maverick". And just like last year, there is a good chance that Tom Cruise will break the movie going doldrums and get folks out to the theater. Like last year, Cruise may save the summer and the cinema experience. Who says there are no movie stars left? 

Enter the Dragon (2023 Visit)

 

I wrote about "Enter the Dragon" on my original project and you can read that post here. I can pretty much stick with what I said then, although I may have been a little harsh on the story structure and the acting. It is true that the evil fighters working for the villain Han, seem to get more menacing as we go along. The level of loathsome is ramped up to make us feel the catharsis that comes when an injustice is addressed, and that happens several times in the movie. I probably should not have been so harsh on those aspects of the film. One of the things that has led me to this conclusion, is the reaction of the audience in last night's screening at the Paramount Theater. 

Paramount Theater's Summer Film Classic Series is drawing a lot of movie fans like me. People who have seen a film before and are looking to recreate their first experience by seeing it on the big screen again. I last watched this movie just a couple of years ago for an Episode of The Lambcast. We had a terrific time talking about the movie and you can listen here:

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/lambcast/episodes/2021-09-15T11_45_43-07_00

I had watched the film on my Special Edition Laserdisc, which was pretty darn good, but it is nothing compared to seeing the movie in a real theater with an audience, amped up to see the Mater kick some butt. I was barely prepared for the grunts and ahhs and cheers that I heard from my fellow movie goers last night. When an amazing moment from Bruce Lee happened, you could hear a collective WOW from the audience. There were enough people with pain empathy in the audience to insure that there was a groan whenever Bruce executed a groin kick, head slap, or leg break. It was all enhanced by the sound system last night. I never realized how much the foley in this picture makes the fight scenes so intense. The volume of the punches to the solar plexus, the slap echo from a hand across an opponents face, all of it may seem like a cartoon out of context, but it works when we are in our seats together. Oh, and you should have heard the audience howls of anger and fear when it looked like Blofeld's cat was going to get guillotined. 

Listen, I know we have to suspend disbelief occasionally in a movie and I willingly do so on a regular basis, but someone needed to cast the guys in the black gees in the scenes in the prison cells. Those are two completely different sets of prisoners and it undermines the final battle royale for a minute. None of it undermines the main attraction however, Bruce Lee is as amazing as you remember. The speed of his strikes against O'Hara was incredible. It looked like a magic trick. The nun chuck display that Lee puts on is also flawless and speedy. This is part of why his legend continues. The cool factor of Bruce Lee comes out repeatedly. The corner of his mouth moves up only slightly when he has mentally bested his enemy before there is even a hit. When he tastes his own blood in his fight with Han at the end, we know that Han has just sealed his own fate. Maybe there is a little too much Eastern Philosophy in some of the early sequences, but there is nothing inscrutable when the three leads are in fighting form.

Jim Kelly gets a pretty good fight scene before he is required to get his ass kicked by a guy he easily outmatches, it's just the way the script goes and Director Robert Clouse can only do so much to sell it. Although you might think John Saxon is an actor who had to be carried through the fight scenes, nothing could be further from the truth. He is great in the action, getting off kicks and punches that don't look like movie fighting but seem like real martial arts. He did have training and you can see it in the movie.  

Bruce Lee moves like a silent cat when he is in those scenes where his character is spying on the inner workings of Han's island. He dances nimbly around the furniture, machinery and guards, as if he were a ballet dancer, on point and filled with helium. The loss of Bruce Lee was a tragedy, but his legacy is secure as long as people can see this movie. Lucky for me, I also got to see it in a theater. 

KAMAD Throwback Thursdays 1975: The Black Bird

Throwback Thursday #TBT

Throwback Thursday on the KAMAD site will be a regular occurrence in the next year. As a motivational project, to make sure I am working on something, even in a week where I don't see a new film in a theater, I am going to post on movies from 1975. Along with 1984, this is one of my favorite years for movies and it is full of bittersweet memories as well. 1975 was my Senior Year in High School and my Freshman Year in College. The greatest film of the last 60 years came out in 1975, as well as dozens of great and not so great cinematic endeavors. Most of the films in this weekly series will have been seen in a theater in 1975, but there are several that I only caught up with later. I hope you all enjoy

The Black Bird

This week is a little different. This is a sequel of sorts to one of the greatest films ever made, but don't take that description seriously, because it is more spoof than follow up. Another thing that is different is that the video above is not the trailer for the film, I could not find that. Instead, you have a YouTube link to the whole movie, uploaded by a random person on the site. I'm OK with sharing this link because the movie is not available in any other way. It did have a VHS release, but as far as I can tell, there was never an official DVD/Laserdisc/Blu-ray edition of the movie. It is currently not streaming although it is listed as being on TUBI, it is not available there at this time. Before I found this link, I purchased a burned copy from a boutique site, and it was not very good. It looks like they had the captions on and I could never turn them off, and the captioning was terrible.  This is probably the best way you can experience the film, should you wish to do so in spite of the comments I am about to make.

The premise of the film is simple, Sam Spade's Son Junior, has inherited the family business, and suddenly, there are people looking for the Maltese Falcon again. George Segal is Spade Jr., and he has always had an easy time delivering smug comic lines in movies. He made a lot of comedies over the years, in fact, it was one of his comedies that introduced the world to Denzel Washington ("Carbon Copy", a movie that may have almost as much blowback on racial politics as this one). Spade Jr. is not particularly successful. His Dad's old offices, which he now occupies, are located in a rundown section of San Francisco, and his clientele are inclined to pay him with Food Stamps. This caustic approach to humor will continue throughout the movie. Characters are mocked because of their ethnicity, size, social standing and a variety of other casually cruel things. This is quintessentially a 70s film. It would never be made in today's environment. Like "Blazing Saddles ", it often steps on the third rail of culture. Unfortunately, it is not as clever as "Blazing Saddles" and it is not a satire which would justify those moments, it is a farce, that simply uses them as punchlines not as commentary.

I will start with a couple of positive things. To begin with, two of the actors from the original film make appearances in this movie. Lee Patrick, who was Bogart's secretary Effie, in the original, is back as the same character, doing the same job for Junior. Her character has undergone an unfortunate transformation in an attempt to create some humor, but it was more off putting than funny and she was ill served by the script.  Elisha Cook Jr. fares a little better, getting a chance to remain trapped in time, spouting lingo from 1940 in the 1975 of the film. The anachronistic patter is one of the jokes that actually works in the film. Segal also has the same sort of insolence that Bogart had but the tone is not "tough guy talk" but "smart ass banter". He looks pretty good in the hat as well. 

Stéphane Audran is the femme fatale of the story, and she amusingly strings Spade along with implied sexual dalliances that never took place. Old hand Lionel Stander is playing a role, the equivalent of Joel Cairo, but with less subtlety or implied homosexuality.  Neither of these characters is needed for the story, they are baubles that are being hung on the framework to make the film more like the original, of course they do no such thing. Little Person actor Felix Silla, who played Cousin It in the Addams Family TV show, is the villain of the story, playing a Nazi who wants possession of the Maltese falcon, and who employs Giant Hawaiian Thugs to carry out his orders. 

There are fight scenes that are staged as slapstick, and others that are just not that interesting. As a former Angeleno, I enjoyed the joke about parking on the streets of San Francisco. Any jab at the supposed more sophisticated town to the North was always appreciated. There are cops in this movie, somewhat like the two in the original, but don't hope for anything interesting in that regard, it all goes nowhere. This is a movie that makes a racial joke out of the lead character's last name, not once but multiple times. That reflects the times but also the lack of creativity in the script. 

I remembered the movie as being more amusing than it turns out to be. I did only see it the one time in 1975, It was a Christmas time release, so I can't say for sure if I saw it at the end of the year or the start of the new year, but it was a film I saw on a date with my future wife, so at least I have that good memory about the movie. Oh, they did do an excellent job on the titles for the film, so you can watch that for ninety seconds and then skip the rest of the film. 

 

Jaws (2023 Entry #2)

 

Regular visitors to this site will not be surprised at the fact that we had a return visit to "Jaws" on the big screen, just a month after our recent screening. Yes the 47 year old film is widely available for home viewing, yes there is an expense and inconvenience of  traveling to a theater thirty miles from home, but those things don't matter. Seeing "Jaws" in a theater is a chance to share the experience with an audience, it is an opportunity to treat the moment as special, and it is one more instance where we can sit in awe of the accomplishment of the film. 

The screening was promoted as a "Movie Party" and the audience was provided with some tools to participate, including a shark fin hat that I tried on but took off while watching the movie. The bloody inflatable drink cozy was not needed in the theater but might come in useful in a hot tub. We were encouraged to respond to lines in the movie but the audience was relatively subdued. I did sing along with Quint about those fair Spanish Ladies and with all three of our hunters when they were tired and wanted to go to bed, but I did not hear others doing so. There was one audience member enamoured of the response line when Hooper Identifies the kind of shark the skiff load of fisherman hauled in, he repeated the line "A What? " with a great deal of impressionistic accuracy. 

Another example of the advantages of seeing a film with an audience is being able to see the reactions of others to the moments you are reacting to as well. The man sitting next to me jerked involuntarily when Ben Gardner's head appeared in the hole in the hull of his own boat. The audience laughed together at several points and you could also feel the pall that fell over everyone, on -screen and in the audience, when Mrs. Kitner confronts the Chief. At that moment it doesn't just feel like a story, it feels like a tragedy. 

I think we also felt a collective sense of community joy when Mayor Vaughn tells Brody and Hooper, "For Christ' sake tomorrow is the 4th of July and we will be open for business". Since we were all sitting in a theater together, the day before the Fourth of July, it just seemed especially relevant to us. Whenever someone asks what a great movie to watch for the Independence Day holiday, this is always the first answer. 

 

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

 

So there there is no doubt by the time you reach the end of this post, I loved the film. It was a terrific visual experience with a real human set of stories to care about. There was sufficient humor to keep it fairly light, but there are dangerous and dark moments in the film. There was a huge amount of creativity expended to make this movie into the "WOW" experience they want you to have. That said, there are issues that I had with the film that keep me from declaring it perfect as an animated movie.

Let me start with the run time of the film. Two hours and twenty minutes is pushing the endurance level for a movie so filled with visual texture, easter eggs, and action. I found myself looking at my watch and wondering if I could take a break. This will be no problem when the film hits streaming and video platforms, but as a continuous experience in a movie theater it sometimes felt like I was being assaulted over a long period of time. There is a lot to see and the screen is rarely static, so when you spend a longer amount of time watching, it can be a bit of a strain. 

There are two or three distinct stories in the film, and as such, it felt like a lot of things were being stuffed into the movie. It is true that some of the stories have parallels in them, so showing them in the same film allows us to make comparisons, but each of those stories felt like they could have been a movie unto themselves. Maybe a little trimming on each of them would allow the film to move along more efficiently. One of the problems with these multiverse stories is that there is always another villain/hero conflict to explore, so it never feels like you are getting anywhere. Like a swimmer fighting a riptide, there is so much weight that keeps pulling you away from your desired destination. 

I suspect that everybody's favorite sequence in the film will be  Mumbattan on Earth-50101, with the local Spider-Man Pavitr Prabhakar. He is a hoot and the visualization of him in the densely populated and high traffic version of India is a blast. The character has skills that are great but a personality that is self mocking and appealing at the same time.  Hobie Brown as the puck rock version of Spider-Man also appears in this sequence, and without much context, we understand him but maybe can't quite relate to him. I'm sure fans of the comics will have a different outlook because they will know his story more and so his attitude may be less off-putting. 

Keeping track of all the Spider-Man variations, and all the Universes they inhabit, is something that should be left to the fans who want to keep flow charts and infographics. The idea that there are canon events in the Spider-Verse makes sense, but we are left to guess what they are. Obviously, some are self apparent, but the one that turns out to be the driving force of the movie is not. It is difficult to reconcile heroes who protect their worlds with the self interested individuals willing to allow deaths that are preventable for "The Greater Good". Miles Morales may only be a kid, but he has a pretty good sense of right and wrong in contrast to the members of the Spider-Society who have decided to play God. 

One more word of warning/slight hesitation. The movie is long, but not because it takes a while to get to a resolution. It does not arrive there. This is an "Empire Strikes Back" middle chapter in a trilogy, and the story stops on a cliffhanger. The final segment is supposed to come next year, it was supposedly written and worked on simultaneously with this film. So unlike the Star Wars film, we will not have to wait three years to find out what happens. But you will need to see this one again before then, and that should not be a problem. 

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

 

Fifteen years after the last Indiana Jones movie set some fans on fire and lead to a mass hypnosis that it never happened, we once again pack our hats and whips and head off on an adventure with our favorite archeologist. Some fans expect to hate this as much as the "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", some are hoping it will wash out the bad taste they have in their mouths after experiencing "Crystal Skull" but no one seems to think this movie will in any way live up to the first "Raiders".  You can't capture magic in the bottle over and over without running dry at some point. Pixar proves that and most other franchises confirm that premise. If however you hold your animosity about the last film aside, recognize that time marches on, and accept that human frailty will be a part of even the most staunch heroes life, you can enjoy "The Dial of Destiny" for what it is, a final Indiana Jones Adventure featuring star Harrison Ford.

Although CGI de-aging threatens to keep certain characters on the screen after the passing of the stars that created those roles, it has not yet come to pass. It is true that for a few segments in this film, computer trickery is relied on to restore Indy to the robust figure we remember from our childhood. The real story however takes place late in Dr. Jones life, and he is a figure that is a little time worn and dispirited. Someone I know said the most unbelievable part of the movie is that an aging Professor is retiring. So many undergraduates have experienced a faculty member who is not as sharp as they must once have been, because tenure and comfort make it easy to hang on past the most productive teaching years. Indiana is not exactly enthusiastic in the classroom, and neither are his students. That does not make him a failure, it just reminds us that time marches on. I saw one on-line discussion where one of the participants was ticked because Indiana was turned into a broken old man, and the critic in that point of view thought it was a betrayal of a character and a reliance on an overused plot point for similar films. Let me simply say that as one gets older, it is easier to fall asleep in the armchair, that does not mean we have expired. The fact that someone is bored with a part of their job that has become unrewarding is also not just a trope, it is a reality for some people in certain occupations. Artists can change their technique and try something new, that is harder if you are a contractor, physician, lawyer or college professor. Fortunately for Indy, he has other options, he just needs to be pushed towards them. Near the end of the film, there is an exposition reveal which also explains his demeanor. Too many parents will know what a burden some things in life can be. The fact that Indiana is still fighting through it is not an indication that his character is a loser. If you try to put this movie in the same corral as "The Last Jedi", I think you are making a mistake.

On the plus side, the opening sequence with the younger Indiana in a WWII adventure is solid. The train effects at time may be a little wonky, but the characters are great, I thought Toby Jones was just right, and we get a set up of the later villain played by Mads Mikkelsen that works for the later part of the story. In essence, Indy gets to keep fighting Nazis thirty years after the war is over. The McGuffin in this adventure is an interesting concept, that gets a little confusing along the way, but it does lend itself to the phantasmagorical climax of the picture. I don't know if the people who hated interdimensional aliens will care for this any better, but the sequence is not overwhelmed by visual CGI that is all about creating an impossibility, but rather special effects that are designed to show us somethings that are possibilities. Along the way there were a mixture of practical and CGI moments that kept me involved. Maybe there were a few too many car chases, and maybe the transitions seemed a little too repetitive, but that is typically the fault of the quest structure, not necessarily the screenwriters. 

If there is something to be concerned about, it is that sometimes the movie turns into Indiana Joan. Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Helena, Indiana's goddaughter, is frustrating as a main character because we barely understand her motivations. Indy is as befuddled as we are as to why she has simply become a not very pleasant adventuress, rather than someone who has a better appreciation of the antiquities that she trades in. I suppose her story arc  can't take up too much time, but by the end her position on things has changed and it is not particularly clear why. She has her own less appealing version of Short Round as a side kick, and she does a lot of the heavy lifting in the adventure department in the last third of the film. I can see some people legitimately complaining that Indy has been turned into the damsel in distress by this turn of events. 

John Rhys-Davies comes back into Indiana's life as Sallah, but he is really there for fan service rather than the plot. Still it was nice to have him in the story. Antonio Banderas is in this movie, but if you blink, you will miss him. There is no character for him to play, he is simply a plot device to get to the next action moment. At one point, Indiana wants to have a chance to breathe after the loss of this character, but we have little idea about why this is supposed to be a meaningful moment. I suspect some footage has been excised to move the story along. The same can be said for Shaunette Renée Wilson, who seems to be developing a character story, but then it goes nowhere. 

It is an example of the nostalgic pull the character has for me, and the failure to always take advantage of that, when we do not get a visual joke at the start of the credits, based on the Paramount Mountain. It's a small thing, but it is one of those moments that is noticeable for shifting the humor tone down a bit. The best example of continuing the right sort of humor is the use of the whip to freeze deadly opponents into place, and their response to it. Just like that moment in "Temple of Doom" when Indy reaches for his empty holster, we get the joke. Phoebe Waller-Bridge should be contributing more humor in the story, but her character is too off putting at first to get much warmth from humor centered around her activities or lines. 

I like Indy riding the horse to escape the motorcycles in NYC. The Tuk-tuk chase has some good moments but it goes on a little long. The airplane action feels the least realistic of the action spots in the film, but whenever Indy is lighting a torch and crossing a bridge, I was glad to be back in his company. So "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" is only the fourth best Indiana Jones film, that still puts it miles ahead of most action/adventure films. Director James Mangold has made some films before that I really admire, "Walk the Line", "Ford vs. Ferrari" and "Logan" all worked for me. His stepping into Steven Spielberg's shoes is perfectly fine, I did not feel neglected when it came to the action bits. What complaints I have are mostly about secondary characters and how they were used. Those things won't matter if you will just surrender to the idea, which is what I did.