Film Forum: Sex and the City; Reprise; Stuck; Bigger, Stronger, Faster; Body of War; Savage Grace; The Edge of Heaven; Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull;

Courtney:

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Sex and the City is ambitious for all the characters, emotions, and crises it tries to shoehorn into two and a half hours. But the attempt elevates is above most chick flicks and romantic dramedies of late. SATC offers well-developed characters, smart dialogue, interesting plots and sub-plots, and a ton of heart.

Lane:

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Is this really where we have ended up—with this superannuated fantasy posing as a slice of modern life? On TV, “Sex and the City” was never as insulting as “Desperate Housewives,” which strikes me as catastrophically retrograde, but, almost sixty years after “All About Eve,” which also featured four major female roles, there is a deep sadness in the sight of Carrie and friends defining themselves not as Bette Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm, and Thelma Ritter did—by their talents, their hats, and the swordplay of their wits—but purely by their ability to snare and keep a man. Believe me, ladies, we’re not worth it. It’s true that Samantha finally disposes of one paramour, but only with a view to landing another, and her parting shot is a beauty: “I love you, but I love me more.” I have a terrible feeling that “Sex and the City” expects us not to disapprove of that line, or even to laugh at it, but to exclaim in unison, “You go, girl.” I walked into the theatre hoping for a nice evening and came out as a hard-line Marxist, my head a whirl of closets, delusions, and blunt-clawed cattiness. All the film lacks is a subtitle: “The Lying, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe.”

Wells:

[Earlier] I called Sex and the City a Taliban recruitment film. All I know is that I felt ashamed, sitting in a Paris movie theatre, that this film, right now, is portraying middle-class female American values, and that this somehow reflects upon the country that I love and care deeply about. It's a kind of advertisement for the cultural shallowness that's been spreading like the plague for years, and for what young American womanhood seems to be currently about -- what it wants, cherishes, pines for. Not so much the realizing of intriguing ambitions or creative dreams as much as wallowing in consumption as the girls cackle and toss back Margaritas.

Is this a case of "the men will hate it, the women will love it"? The reviews linked at GreenCine Daily show it's not at all that simple.

Take, for example, Manohla Dargis at The New York Times:

Somehow it all goes lugubriously south. Carrie is let down Big Time, and she licks her wounds down Mexico way, accompanied by her amazingly accessible gal pals. Jokes about Montezuma’s revenge ensue (really), along with hard laughter and free-flowing tears and yet more clothes (and clothing montages) and jokes and jokes, most of them flatter than Carrie’s steely six-pack. Unlike the show, which allowed the men to emerge occasionally from the sidelines with lines of actual dialogue, the male characters in the movie stand idly by, either smiling or stripping, reduced to playing sock puppets in a Punch-free Judy and Judy (times two) show. I’m all for the female gaze, but, gee, it’s also nice to talk — and listen — to men, too.

There was something seductive about the bubble world that the show created back in 1998, in the fantasy that all you needed to make it through the rough patches were good friends and throwdown heels. That was a beautiful lie, as the show acknowledged in its gently melancholic return in the wake of Sept. 11. Back in Season 3 Carrie asked, “Are we getting wiser, or just older?” The ideal, of course, is to do both. There is something depressingly stunted about this movie; something desperate too. It isn’t that Carrie has grown older or overly familiar. It’s that awash in materialism and narcissism, a cloth flower pinned to her dress where cool chicks wear their Obama buttons, this It Girl has become totally Ick.

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Edelstein:

Diner an exhilarating weave of childhood remembrance, projection, literary digression, and impish commentary

Gonzalez:

spiked with an arresting, hyper-saturated mix of sadness and joy

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GreenCine Daily is rounding up reviews.
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McCracken:

Bigger, Stronger, Fasterpresents a foreboding look at our collective conception of the human being

Much more at GreenCine Daily.

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BODY OF WAR

Spiro:

Body of WarBody of War

Remarkably, despite all this physical and psychological pain, Young is a sardonic, appealing, likable screen presence who seems to have turned the absurdity of his situation into a source of dark comedy. An outspoken critic of the war, Young's disgust with the Bush administration's rush to war and his efforts to speak out keep Body of War from succumbing to self-pity.

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Edgar:

Savage Gracethere’s no focal point or explanation for why seemingly normal people would resort to such depravity and abuse.

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Howe:

A nuanced and sobering study of exile, escape and familial responsibility

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Davis:

Raiders of the Lost Arkparts of it are more thrilling than anything else in the entire series

Zacharek:

the kind of contradiction that great showmanship can bridgeCrystal SkullIndiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

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Greydanus:

One way Crystal Skull actually does hearken back to Raiders is the welcome return of Karen Allen as Indy’s one true love, Marion Ravenwood. The rapport of their scenes together, even when they’re bickering, underscores all that was lacking in the earlier sequels, with Temple of Doom’s shrilly unpleasant Willie Scott and Last Crusade’s one-dimensional femme fatale Elsa Schneider.

In other ways, though, the film continues the trajectory of the sequels, which got progressively sillier and more over-the-top. Part of the appeal of Raiders is the vulnerability of its mortal action hero; in the sequels, he’s increasingly become an invulnerable super hero. Crystal Skull does have some rollicking action scenes, but without the restraint and minimal sop to realism that make for real excitement. Ironically, the more they ramp up the action, the less exciting it is.

McCracken:

Indeed, while many fans have decried the outrageous ending of Skull (as somehow going “too far”), I absolutely loved it. Is it really that much more ridiculous to imagine an ancient civilization being built by aliens than it is to believe that the Ark of the Covenant melts peoples’ faces off? Or that Indy can walk on air to get to the Holy Grail? C’mon, people: these films are not about verisimilitude or physical reality. They’re about the fantastic and wonderful possibilities of cinema to throw some craziness in front of our eyes.

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Honestly, I don’t think Skull could possibly have been any better than this. As a 20-years-later installment with a 65-year-old lead actor and two decades of imitators (The Mummy, National Treasure, etc) to overcome, Skull faced a major uphill battle. Amazingly, it all turned out brilliantly — with a little originality mixed with a LOT of referentiality, some appropriate newness (CGI, Shia LaBeouf) complimenting a huge amount of necessary old stuff (the hat! the snakes! the bugs! the music!), and a formidable sense of blockbuster exuberance that Spielberg has — since Jaws — evoked better than just about anyone.

Ebert:

Raiders of the Lost Ark compelled want

Johansson:

Crystal SkullI hadn’t stopped grinning like a little kid the whole time

Look: Steven Spielberg and George Lucas are not attempting to break new cinematic ground here, like could be arguably said about Raiders, in that it was its own kind of accidental metacommentary on movie history -- if nothing else, Raiders certainly had just the right impact at just the right time to influence an entire generation’s taste in pop culture. That’s not gonna happen with Crystal Skull -- we’re just revisiting an old friend. Raiders was the asteroid crashing into the old entertainment world, making room for the fantasy action movie (as distinct from the sci-fi blockbuster, even if the two subgenres have since meshed). Crystal Skull couldn’t hope to have that same kind of impact... no pun intended. I can’t imagine why anyone would have imagined it would.

Turan:

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When you think about it, all the pre-release concern about just how good the new "Indy" was going to be, though understandable, is not completely rational. After all, given its Saturday matinee genre nature and the fact that star Ford, creator Lucas, director Spielberg, composer John Williams and editor Michael Kahn, among others, have all returned, it was inevitable that this film was going to fall within a very narrow range in terms of quality. It was either going to be a worse- or better-than-average Indiana Jones film.

It turns out it's one of the better ones and everyone involved can breathe a sigh of relief.

O'Heihr:

inflated and creaky fourth incarnationnot

Fibbs:

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Crystal Skull is pervasively playful but only occasionally fun. And a lack of fun is a failure of the highest magnitude in a film of this nature. In fact, much of the over-the-top comedy is misplaced and completely inappropriate. Several moments induce laughter at but not with the action onscreen.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is like bumping into an old friend you said goodbye to years ago and thought you’d never see again. The reunion is undeniably pleasant but somewhat cheapens the meaningful and eloquent goodbye you once shared.