Molly and I finished watching through the first three Indiana Jones movies this weekend.

I: Raiders of the Lost Ark

4/10

• In the beginning, why did he bring along two morons that would turn on him when he was located so close to the river with the airplane on it?
• Having a snake in the cockpit of the plane was a dumb way to let us know Indy hates snakes.
• The girl is annoying.
• Why did she take Indy’s money and tell him to come back tomorrow?
• The pistols in the bar room fight sounded like cannons.
• The Asian guy in the bar slowly picked up the hot medallion, held it for a while, made a face, then finally dropped it.
• What is with the Asian guy anyway? He just randomly shows up in places and laughs like an idiot.
• When Indiana told Gimli that the girl was dead, he says something like “Oh well, get on with your life.”
• In the snake pit, Indy crashes through a wall that is dripping snakes out of it and there is a passageway to the outside. That is lame.
• How did snakes survive underground like that for so long anyway?

As you can see, I thought this movie was ridiculous. I had heard that the first was the best, so I was wary of watching the other two, but I trudged on…

II: The Temple of Doom

5/10

• The scene where they fall out of an airplane in an inflatable raft was laughable (and I don’t mean in a good way).
• There were way too many gross-out moments throughout the film.
• The “love scene” where Indy and the girl decide to have sex and then make each other mad and then decide to have sex again was hokey.
• Being burnt brings people out of a poison-induced trance?

I did enjoy the Short Round character and the action was more exciting.

The sequel wasn’t much better than the first.

III: The Last Crusade

7/10

It had the least amount of unbelievable action, which made every action scene more enjoyable for me. Henry Jones played off of Indy for a great balance of humor and drama. Marcus was also a good source of comedy.

This was, by far, the best of the three movies.

8.5/10

Tony Stark runs the largest arms manufacturing company in the world. On a trip to the Middle East to sell their newest weapon, he is kidnapped by terrorists and forced to build a copy. Instead, he builds a high-tech suit of armor and escapes. Upon arriving back in America, he decides to finesse his invention and use it to fight evil.

Not only does this movie have an amazing cast (Robert Downey Jr, Terrence Howard, Jeff Bridges, Gwyneth Paltrow), but the mix of action, humor, and romance strikes just the right balance. The action scenes are awesome; much better than Transformers because you can actually see what is going on. The character progression of Tony Stark from self-absorbed playboy to a humanitarian superhero is believable.

On the other hand, there are a ton of unbelievable things in the movie. When Tony first uses the suit to fly, he crash lands into a sand dune and emerges from the rubble of his suit virtually unharmed. Trying to perfect the jet propulsion on his boots, Tony shoots up into the metal ceiling so hard he should have broken his spine or cracked his head. And so on and so forth.

Molly wanted to be sure I mentioned the cool computer system Tony used to design his suit. It was sort of like the computers in Minority Report, but taken to the next level: 3D. Given the advanced technology used, I think the film should have been set in the future.

Even though I could critique a lot of the movie, there are enough things that they got right to make me forgive the ridiculous aspects. I thoroughly enjoyed watching it in the theater and will make sure to enjoy it again when it comes out on DVD.

Molly assisted in the writing of this review.

This book was an amusing quick read. It does a good job of presenting the thoughts and attitude of a middle schooler through text and drawings in a (mostly) accurate and entertaining way.

Unfortunately, the main character doesn’t seem to learn any lessons by the end of the book. Because of this, I wouldn’t recommend it for actual middle schoolers. As for high schoolers and adults, I think it is a book worth borrowing from the library.

10/10

John Cusack plays a recently widowed science fiction writer who adopts a child that claims to be from Mars.

This has to be 2007’s feel-good movie of the year. Don’t get me wrong, there is conflict and pain, but none so intense as to make me hate the situation. The story plays out wonderfully and hits all the major points perfectly. You can see the bond growing between the writer and the kid. There are some witty and memorable lines ("I think hysteria is a way of life. It’s a clothing line at least."). The love interest wasn’t played up so much as to reduce the impact of the father/son relationship.

My only (slight) complaint is that the writer’s female friend was too optimistic to be completely believable.

I highly recommend this movie.

6/10

My memory might not be serving me well, but I remember Bean being funnier than this movie. There were some outright hilarious scenes, but they were too few and far between. I did enjoy the wide-shots of French landscape, though.

Despite having a G rating there were two swear words exclaimed by a child. I was sort of shocked by that.