Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Saw it with the grandkids this afternoon. Perfectly cromulent. They were thumbs up.
If you’re expecting Oscar material or screen breakthroughs, this ain’t it. The deaging was fine. It is vintage Indiana Jones. Lots (I mean LOTS) of chases destroying uncounted sidewalk stands. Explosions (more guns but less whip than I was expecting). Train fights, horses, planes. Whew. A great afternoon with barrels of popcorn in a recliner theater on a 100 deg. day.
Oof. I didn’t see the movie and so don’t have the full context, but I would note that that word also has a terrible usage/meaning that has nothing to do with the card game.
Not a solely black game but it’s popular at the BBQ. Lots of table talk and clowning. Good times. A couple of main variations; Aces or big/little joker with 2 of diamonds. I play both and it’s an adjustment. Some regional variations.
Oh, I know, but that isn’t how it is used in the movie. They are straight up talking about the card game Spades. I should warn, however, that this movie is filled with the n-word slang that is commonly portrayed in movies and TV between Black people. I’m not a fan in any context, but it is prevalent in this movie and it wasn’t done with bad intent.
Great movie!
No Hard Feelings
Very cute comedy with Jennifer Lawrence. I guess you’d call it a romantic comedy, but the focus is very much on the comedy. There is a lot to like in this movie, but the entire film really depends on Jennifer Lawrence and she again demonstrates why she is a star. She’s terrific.
She’s hired by a very helicopter-parent set of parents to date their son. She gets a car for it. Sounds terrible, but she predictably falls for the son. There is a 12+ year age gap between her and the male lead, but their chemistry is actually quite good.
I laughed a few times.
Note: The Blackening is way funnier. This is a nice, cute movie. Nothing more.
As I mentioned above, the difference in the ages of the characters played by Lawrence and Feldman is 13 years, given that she is 32 according to the film and he is 19 according to the film. Actually, since the movie was shot in September and October of 2022, Lawrence was 32 at that time and Feldman was 20, so the difference in the ages of the actors was 12 years. But at the time of the shooting of the film, Broderick (the father) was 60 and Benanti (the mother) was 43, so the difference in the ages of the parents in real life was 17 years, which no one seems to be mentioning.
I really don’t think anyone cares.
So why do people care about the difference in ages of Lawrence and Feldman but not about the difference in ages of Broderick and Benanti?
I don’t care about either difference.
…because that was a plot point of the film and the ages of the parents were not. And I am talking about the characters, not the actors. No one cares about the actual ages of the actors.
OK, I haven’t yet seen the movie so I didn’t know that the age difference of the younger characters was a plot point but unless the age of parents was also a plot point or at least mentioned, it’s possible that their ages are different from that of the actors playing them.
Yeah the whole idea of the film is that the parents put an ad out for a 20-something to “date” (have sex with) their shy socially awkward teen son before he leaves for college, and in return they’ll give her a car. Her actually being in her 30s is something that comes up because the age difference is bigger than they wanted. The ages of the parents don’t matter in the slightest, it’s never mentioned and has nothing to do with anything. No one cares. For all we know they are the same age.
Maybe because the maturity difference between a 19 year old and a 32 year old is more significant than an age difference between older people.
My grandparents are 20 years apart. At the time my grandma married him (second wife) she was basically my young mother’s age - 21 or 22. That raised some eyebrows. Now they are in their 60s and 80s respectively and they are equally mature. Not that I ever knew any difference. Grandma was always Grandma.
Both couples consist of two adults. The interesting thing is that you’re not surprised by the difference between the two parents’ ages while you are by the main actor and actress’s ages. The interesting thing is how typical that is. In the U.S. currently, in 51.2% of marriages, the husband is at least three years older, while in 14.9% of marriages, the wife is at least three years older. The interesting thing is that your lack of surprise in the difference between the parents’ ages. This is typical of Hollywood. There’s a famous case where a 37-year-old actress was told that she was too old to play the love interest of a 55-year-old actor:
The human brain doesn’t fully mature until around age 25, so I really don’t think of a 19 year old as an adult. Especially today’s 19 year olds who are unlikely to be independent. The law isn’t really consistent with reality. I think a 32 year old dating a 19 year old is gross and exploitative.
Sorry to interrupt this discussion of age differences, but I watched another bad 1950s monster flick last night
The Curse of the Faceless Man (1958)
At first glance it’s just a cheap knockoff of The Mummy, but if you look closer
— well, it’s really just a cheap knockoff of 1931’s The Mummy. But it does have it’s points.
In the first place, the screenplay is by Jerome Bixby, the guy who wrote the short story “It’s a Good Life” that got turned into one of the most memorable episode of The Twilight Zone. And wrote four episodes of Star Trek TOS. And rewrote the screenplay for Fantastic Voyage. And, lest we forget, scripted one of the better science fiction movies of the 1950s, It! The Terror from Beyond Space, from which they lifted the plot for Alien.
This is not one of the better science fiction films of the 1950s. In fact, I think it’s his nadir. Worse than The Lost Missile.
But it does show some originality. Quintillus Aurelius, the titular Faceless Man, isn’t just another mummy. Bixby was clearly influenced by those plaster castings they made from the cavities left in the hardened pumice and ash in Pompeii. The FM (I can’t keep writing “Faceless Man”) was obviously supposed to be one of these, but they apparently realized that this would be stupid and unbelievable. Instead, he’s the body of a Pompeiian Gladiator who was transformed by some weird biochemical process involving the ash nd the heat, and was thus kept alive underground until they started excavating. Because that makes much more sense. It doesn’t explain his lack of a face (or clothes, for that matter), but, hey, you work with what you have.
Charles Gemora (spelled “Gemmora” in the credits) created the monster suit. If you don’t know who he is, .he practically had a monopoly on playing gorillas in the 1930s through the 1950s movies (the Rick Baker of his day). He made his own ape suits. Some papers reported that he played King Kong in the 1933 movie. (He didn’t, of course – that was all stop motion and one life-sized model. But he did play the Kong role in an unreleased remake with marionettes – The Lost Island)
The movie starts with a workman doing some very unscientific-looking excavation in what is supposed to be Pompeii, when jewelry box falls into his pit, apparently pushed by the FM’s still-buried hand. They excavate him and take both back to the Pompeii Museum, where they’re immediately put on exhibit. En route, he kills the deriver of the van. Later, Tina, fiancee of the Handssome American Scientist, feels a psychicv connection with the FM. She returns late at night to sketch him (she’s an artist), and the FM “comes to life”, stiffly rising from his slab and lurching towards her. Despite his incredibly slow pace, she does not, in the best tradition of Helpless Damsels in Monster Movies. Of course, she screams. This brings a guard, who shoots the FM, to no effect. (You gotta ask – why shoot him? ) But the slow-moving FM can move fast enough to hit the guard and kill him, leaving a body count of 2. Tina faints, and the FM puts a brooch from the box on her dress before falling stiffly into his original pose, like a toy from Toy Story.
Well, I won’t go into details. Suffice it to say that Tina is really the reincarnation of the FM’s love from his original life – another trope they stole from The Mummy. In fact, this one’s so common that I made a webpage about it –
The film is a great one for MST3King, between the hackneyed plot, the inconsistencies in the FM’s construction and story, and the Jack Webb-style voiceover narration. His demise is positively anticlimactic. He confusedly walks off with Tina in his arms (a walk of several miles, evidently) to the Cove of the Blind Fisherman, where, believing the eruption of Vesuvius to be in progress, he carries her into the water…
…and dissolves. Like the Wicked Witch of the West. Or the Triffids in the 1963 movie. Or the aliens in Alien Nation. This rock-hard preserved monster (axe blows have no effect on him) simply dissolves? Even if he HAD been made of plaster of Paris he wouldn’t dissolve like that. And so quickly and completely, too. But I guess that’s what happens to weird biochemical creations in the wake of volcanic eruptions.
There was no sequel, of course. Quintillus Aurelius was soup. But if one Pompeiian could be living petrified, then there’s no reason that other Pompeiians couldn’t also be so preserved. And nothing to keep them from coming back in more movies. Except a lack of marketability.
Continuing the ongoing hijack, I was 21 when I got into my first adult relationship, and it was with a 36 year old woman. When I met her, I was a virgin, so I was an unusually inexperienced 21 with no prior live-and-learn about being in an ongoing sexual relationship to bring with me.
Seems to me if it was gross and exploitative, she was the one being taken advantage of.
Fortunately we’re still on good terms (not as an active couple) (I do owe her a phone call).
Cal, I just want to say that any time you want to give an in-depth review of bad 1950’s horror / sci-fi, I’m here for it.
I think you both may appreciate this youtube channel. FanboyFlicks
Although there is gentle mockery of a lot of B movies, similar to the one Cal posted above, you can tell it comes from a place of affection.
Aw, gee. Thanks