Harrison Ford – Spinning Platters

Film Review: “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”

A bounding thrill ride caps off the iconic hero’s adventures in pure escapist fashion

Let’s first recall that Indiana Jones films were inspired by campy serials and pulp novels of the 1930s and 1940s, thus an unperturbed sense of adventure and eagerness for escapism has always been key to enjoying each film. Regarding suspension of belief, every viewer’s tolerance may vary, perhaps hitting a ceiling somewhere between powerful holy relics and extraterrestrials. That being said, the enjoyment of any given Indy film is not all on the viewer’s shoulders. An Indiana Jones film needs to be filled with adventure, introduce us to exotic locales and archeological lore, and look good while doing so. Of course, it also needs the willing participation of Harrison Ford. The first three films, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade have all these ingredients and are universally considered iconic examples of the action-adventure genre (even if Doom remains polarizing). The fourth film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, featured a sixty-five-year old Ford, underdeveloped side characters, and a plot that aggressively pushed the boundary between escapism and ridiculousness, with mostly cringeworthy results. But even Crystal Skull has its defenders. Not here. Not today. With a great sigh of relief, then, I’m happy to report that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the fifth and final Indiana Jones film, manages to deliver a thrilling adventure and an emotional send off, even as it doubles down on its own outlandishness.

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Show Review: Raiders of the Lost Ark Live in Concert with the SF Symphony

A lovely night with Williams’s score, Ford’s performance, iconic scenes… there are no ***bad date*s here!**

Raiders of the Lost Ark is the quintessential action-adventure film. One could confidently claim that it is the greatest action-adventure film of all time! There is nothing about Steven Spielberg’s 1981 classic that isn’t famous — the giant boulder, the snakes, the hat & whip, every single line of dialogue, Marion’s alcohol tolerance, the airfield fist fight, the melting faces, poisoned dates, and so on. Yet, one component of the film is arguably more iconic than all the rest: John Williams’s score. The awe-inspiring, galloping main theme that nearly all humans can identify is a benchmark against which all other adventure film music is compared, and it is the basis for which this amazing night at the San Francisco Symphony exists!

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Film Feature: Carrie’s Top 10 Films of 2015

Spinning Platters film critics present their top 10 films of 2015

Spinning Platters film critics Carrie Kahn and Chad Liffmann each share their ten favorite films of 2015. Here is Carrie’s list, presented in alphabetical order. (And you can find Chad’s here.)

1.) Brooklyn
Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) shares a tender moment with boyfriend Tony (Emory Cohen).

The immigrant experience in America is exquisitely captured in director John Crowley’s finely crafted film about love, loss, and longing in 1950s Brooklyn. Based on the novel by Colm Tóibín, Nick Hornby’s screenplay presents us with the intrepid young Irish woman Eilis, who leaves her family in the Irish countryside for adventure and opportunity in New York. Saoirse Ronan suberbly conveys Eilis’s gradual shift from shy newcomer to confident cosmopolitan. Called back home for a family emergency, Eilis must choose between familiar comforts and new possibilities, and Ronan depicts Eilis’s struggle with heartrending openness and aching honesty. Emory Cohen and Domhnall Gleeson, as competing suitors on opposite sides of the Atlantic, also deliver strong, sharply drawn performances.

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Film Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the New Star Wars Movie

han-chiew-force-awakens-1280jpg-8e4aaf_1280w — One has aged. The other has not.

[KINDA SPOILERS AHEAD]

Don’t let my subtitle fool you—I actually really enjoyed Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I saw it twice and can’t wait to see it again! However, as one of the most highly anticipated films in decades and what will likely be the highest grossing film of all time in the next week (with every word I type it probably makes another $1 million), it was hard to put all my thoughts together in an unbiased film review — after all, I don’t want to be one of the few saying “it’s really not that good”. But what I know now is that as The Force Awakens has marinated in my mind over the past two weeks, I now know that I didn’t just like the film, I actually loved the film. Everything I initially took exception to I have now found justification for, and that’s how my review will unfold:

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Film Review: 42

Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson in 42.

In 1947, the baseball world was introduced to the first black Major League player, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Jackie Robinson. This momentous occasion in the history of our national pastime (and the world, quite arguably), was met with mixed feelings from all points of the sociopolitical spectrum. 42 aims to capture the tension and excitement that surrounded the breaking of the baseball color barrier, but a hokey script forces the emotion in this disappointing and awkward historical re-enactment.

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Sketchfest Review: Stella at Mezzanine, 1/21/12

Spinning Platters’ writers Christopher Rogers and Dakin Hardwick both got to enjoy a performance by Stella: Michael Ian Black, David Wain, and Michael Showalter‘s nightclub show.

Instead of boring you with a typical “review” of the show, Spinning Platters is opening the fourth wall, and allowing you into the personal lives of these two legendary journalists. This is a transcript of a private chat between the two, discussing the show on Google Chat.

After the jump, you will learn how a writer thinks.

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