Tag: Harrison Ford

Monday Morning Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

The Portly Politico6 Comments

While I was visiting my older brother in Indiana in July, he took me to see the new Indiana Jones flick, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023), on an IMAX screen.

I did not go into the film with high expectations.  Everything I’d heard about the movie was negative:  Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character was obnoxious; Indiana Jones’s advanced age is played to denigrate the character; the whole thing is another one of Kathleen Kennedy’s wish-fulfillment films (in which she casts an unlikable British brunette to be a stand-in for herself, an unlikable feminist studio exec).

Perhaps it’s because I went in with such low expectations that I actually found the movie to be not that bad.  Was it good?  Not really.  Should it have been nearly three hours long?  Absolutely not.  Was it as bad as critics made it out to be?  Well, that depends.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Witness (1985)

The Portly Politico2 Comments

Just to prove that I don’t just watch cheesy horror movies (and that Hulu actually has more to offer than such films), this Monday I’m reviewing something a bit different:  the 1985 neo-noir Amish thriller Witness, starring Harrison Ford as Detective John Book, a clean cop hiding from his dirty colleagues in Pennsylvania’s Amish Country.

The movie is unique in that it contrasts the grittiness of the city with the tranquility and traditions of Amish country life.  There seemed to be a vague cultural fascination with the Amish that lasted from the 1980s up to around the turn of the century (take, for example, 1996’s Kingpin or Weird Al’s hit “Amish Paradise” from the same year).  The Amish are, indeed, interesting, but I’m not sure what accounts for this brief, generational curiosity in the rural pacifists.

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