On 35mm at the Century San Francisco Centre with Lucía on 2 June 2008 at 20:35.
I enjoyed this much more than I expected. Harrison Ford is as entertaining as usual and while the story is ridiculous/formulaic the dialogue is not painful. I can’t say that I was ever really that excited about Indiana Jones (or at least I don’t remember being excited), the amount of effort and imagination that went into this film really showed. It’s hard enough to make an adventure film in the 80s that people really care about, but to do as good a job twenty years later when that style of filmmaking is long dead is really a remarkable accomplishment. Was this better than the other Indiana Jones films? Hmm… maybe if I remembered the previous ones better I could say.
Cate Blanchett was clearly the other star of the film, and John Hurt is distinctive as always. None of the other actors brought anything special to the film, however, and could probably have been easily replaced.
Hollywood soundtracks have definitely dropped in quality over the last decades, and this was a refreshing return to form for John Williams, much more so than with Star Wars I–III.
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