Film Freak Central

Indiana Jones: The Complete Adventures - Blu-ray Disc

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)
****/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras B-
starring Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Ronald Lacey
screenplay by Lawrence Kasdan
directed by Steven Spielberg

INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984)
***½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras C+
starring Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Ke Huy Quan, Amrish Puri
screenplay by Willard Huyck & Gloria Katz
directed by Steven Spielberg

INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989)
**½/**** Image A+ Sound A+ Extras C
starring Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Denholm Elliot, Alison Doody
screenplay by Jeffrey Boam
directed by Steven Spielberg

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (2008)
**½/**** Image A Sound A+ Extras C-
starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LaBeouf
screenplay by David Koepp
directed by Steven Spielberg

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by Walter Chaw Let's talk about hats--fedoras, in particular, and how they evolved from the image of the hard-boiled detective in the American noir cycle into the chapeau-of-choice for Coppola's gangsters in the anti-hero '70s. How Harrison Ford's Deckard from Blade Runner was originally conceived with one of the hats to go with his trench coat before Raiders of the Lost Ark made an American icon out of Ford's swashbuckling archaeologist Indiana Jones, and how that didn't stop child-killing child-molester Freddy Krueger from getting a fedora (singed and blood-stained, but so was Indy's) in 1984--the same year, as it happens, that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas turned their American icon into the star of his own horror movie with Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The relationship between Americans and the hats their heroes wear is a complicated one. A Freudian would offer that hats are tumescent--the loci of masculine power, a metaphor for the penis/head--and that losing a hat is the equivalent of castration. My favourite example of that theory in practice is Joel McCrea losing his in a field of windmills to the trilling, mocking laughter of ladylove Laraine Day in Foreign Correspondent. The Coen Brothers make it a throughline in Miller's Crossing, too, as Tom loses and reclaims his hat in cycles of power and powerlessness. I think it means something in the fourth Indiana Jones flick that evil Russkie Spalko tips Indy's hat up on his head in an attempt to read his mind instead of knocking it off entirely.

The Horse Whisperer (1998) - Blu-ray Disc

****/**** Image A- Sound A Extras D+
starring Robert Redford, Kristin Scott Thomas, Sam Neill, Scarlett Johansson
screenplay by Eric Roth and Richard LaGravenese, based on the novel by Nicholas Evans
directed by Robert Redford

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by Bill Chambers SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT. Revisiting Robert Redford's The Horse Whisperer fifteen years after I last saw it, I am relieved to encounter a film that isn't simply marking time until a climactic moment that was for me a cherished eureka at the movies. Sweet and cinematic if not without flaws, the picture begins with Grace (13-year-old Scarlett Johansson) rising at the crack of dawn to go horseback riding with her friend Judith (Kate Bosworth, billed as "Catherine"). Redford focuses on Johansson's socked feet slinking past her parents' bedroom door, and subsequently draws a lot of attention to legs and feet here--not in a fetish-y way, but as if they're a person's "tell." I misremembered this scene, for what it's worth, as Grace doing something wrong by sneaking out, but in fact her parents are not at all surprised to find her gone by the time they're up and around. Mom (Kristin Scott Thomas) is basically Anna Wintour--her name's even Annie--and Dad, Robert (Sam Neill), is, we infer, the kind of lawyer who does a lot of pro bono work.