“I’ve got something to tell you -”
“Don’t get sentimental now, dad -”
“The floor’s on fire. And the chair!”

The opening of this one is a clunky, cheesy, bitter disappointment after Temple and even after that it takes a while to get going, but I think once I got a severe case of the giggles over the old man/rubber stamp scene I found myself back in the mood that these movies require (it was definitely a good idea to re-acquaint myself with them before seeing the fourth tonight: I’m sure it’ll be awesome but you certainly need to be in the right frame of mind to get the most out of this franchise). Once Sean Connery shows up, of course, the movie enters a league all its own.

It’s a little clinical and clunky in production quality for me in the end, with as many duff notes as there are sweet ones. It feels a lot more like an Indy movie once they get inside the Holy Grail place at the end, and that “Let it go,” line from Connery really caught me offguard, I hope there’s something “deep” like that in the new movie (as well as the insanity of the end of Raiders and the whole of Temple). I’d really take the more iconic original or the joyous second over this any day, but in the end it’s still all good.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull seems, oddly, to look like the best film I’ll have seen so far this year come later on this evening – okay, I haven’t seen much, but there hasn’t been much to see … and it’s Spielberg, I’ve got faith. Though I was never a massive fan of this series, except in that horrid way that young boys are compelled to be rabid about such things, I’m pretty excited about it, so I’m watching the originals in preparation, I’m sure I’m not alone

The thing that I noticed more than ever before watching this installment was just how episodic the script is. I know this was like the whole point, etc, to recreate the old 30s and 40s serials and what-not – but it never before struck me as so crazily disjointed, each segment is its own separate short movie almost.

In so many ways, it’s an un-reviewable film: personally because I seem without ever really trying to have committed the whole darn thing to memory; because the Macfarlane/Groening/etc parodies in the intervening years make it impossible not to smirk in inappropriate places; and generally, because you can’t deny how perfectly iconic it is and how huge an impact it made on movies. John Williams’ score is one of the greatest, Karen Allen is gorgeous (_very_ excited about her being in the new one) and the finale is awesome, even more of a WTF moment, again than I ever recall it being – I mean, the movie’s just so nice and gentle up to that point, lol!