Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) review

the rating: ****

the story: Indy has a chance for one last great archeological find.

the review: I now have my second favorite movie in the series.  And who knows?  It might even become my favorite.  This is not likely something you've heard about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny before.  Certainly not with someone saying their favorite is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  I don't come to the franchise as a diehard believer.  I caught up with Raiders of the Lost Ark much later than other fans.  To me it's the first movie (and Temple of Doom is just another in the series).  I liked Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, thought it was inconceivable that Lucas and Spielberg struggled to make what was such an obvious entry in the series (aliens) for the kind of careers each otherwise had.  But it took James Mangold to reach Dial of Destiny, which achieves its greatness in much the way he did with Logan.

By finally just doing the kind of story that should have been told in the first place.

Henry Jones is an adventurer.  But that's just the stories he finds himself in.  He's actually, in his normal life, a professor, a lover of history, who sometimes goes on archeological searches, which happen to blow all out of proportion.  But mostly a lover of history.  I think Dial of Destiny is the first time that's really emphasized.  By the time we reach the ending (anyone quibbling about what happens is perhaps forgetting about the leaps of faith the other entries ask of us), it's what he always wanted, the thing that he was destined to experience all along.

Mangold previously achieved this with Logan, as I said, the first and to date only Wolverine appearance from the X-Men film franchise to stop worrying so much about superhero adventures and just let the guy be himself, in his own life.  The Wolverine, which was supposed to be the one that fixed that, buried him in a moody superhero adventure anyway.  X-Men Origins: Wolverine tossed him throughout the timeline, and forgot who the villain was supposed to be (Victor Creed, not Deadpool, regardless of how he was portrayed).  Logan made up for all of that.  It told a complete story, and even played out symmetrically with the first standalone movie (by having Wolverine fight himself, it finished the story the first one abandoned).  It also let him by the hero in an X-Men movie, which the X-Men movies kept dancing around, even when it was clear he was the star.

Dial of Destiny throws the accustomed Nazis at Indy, enemies and allies to work off of, but for the first time it's not the adventure that drives the plot (as with a lot of modern filmmaking the screen is too dark anyway) but rather the awareness that Indy himself is the star, which is also why Last Crusade worked so well, because it put the focus on Indy and his dad (which is what inspired the National Treasure movies).  While Disney continues to marvel at the technology that allows it to de-age faces, it's the older Indy that fascinates, and he's still very much up to the task, incredibly, all these years later.  And at five films and a little over forty years, we've gotten to see a complete arc of the good professor's life.

What's most remarkable, perhaps, is that if you were to watch only one Indiana Jones movie, you could absolutely make the case for it being Dial of Destiny.  Partisans will always default to Raiders, while Last Crusade has its selling points, too, but Destiny has young Indy, and it has old Indy, essentially a complete arc unto itself, and a single story uniting both, and a story linking his teaching life definitively to his private life.  It's all there.  That's why it's easy to sell.

Rounding out the cast this time are Antonio Banderas (I confess to missing everything but a glimpse of him), Mads Mikkelsen as the obligatory Nazi, Boyd Holbrook (who was also a standout in Logan), and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as a more youthful audience surrogate in case you're not that interested in seeing old bones revisited.  

They say this is the last one.  It should be.  What a way to go! 

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) Review

rating: ****

the story: Grindelwald tries to trick his way to political power, with Dumbledore standing in the way.

review: I've been struggling with how to view this one since its theatrical release earlier this year.  I continued to struggle after reading the screenplay published last month.  A large part of this is that Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore was caught up in the continuing scandals surrounding J.K. Rowling, Ezra Miller, and Johnny Depp, which dampened interest in its predecessor, The Crimes of Grindelwald (which is otherwise my favorite movie in the Wizarding World cinematic saga, barring Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire).  Depp's legal hassles continued into production of Secrets, as so he was replaced as Grindelwald by Mads Mikkelsen, and Rowling, previously lone scripter of the Fantastic Beasts films, was joined by Harry Potter veteran screenwriter Steve Kloves.  After being unabashedly wowed by Crimes, I knew I wasn't with Secrets on first viewing, and second viewing didn't change that, and reading the screenplay didn't, and I began to wonder, were my reservations justified?  Or was this simply a different movie experience?

I kept trying.  Eventually my conclusion was that this is perhaps the first film in the saga where the human drama is more important than the wizarding drama.  I understood this on one level.  It's the first time the material has acknowledged what had previously only existed in Rowling's tweets, that Dumbledore is gay, and his relationship with Grindelwald is complicated by that, and by extension, his ability to fight him.

The film opens with a quiet conversation between them, in which Dumbledore explains that he has moved past their youthful ideas, and this offends Grindelwald, because of course he hasn't, and has become a notorious figure in the wizarding community as he presses on with them.  The conversation, and the film, and the series (this is Dumbledore's second appearance in them, after Crimes), still ignores how Dumbledore could ever have shared them, except by extension through the complicated nature of his sister Ariana, and her death, which ties into the character of Credence Barebone, whose story began in the first film, and whose true lineage was revealed in Crimes, but explained here in Secrets: he's Aberforth Dumbledore's son.  Dumbledore is his uncle.

Grindelwald has been manipulating Credence, as we saw him operating throughout Crimes.  He trades on fear in order to achieve his goals.  He also won Queenie Goldstein to his side last film, shattering a relationship with muggle baker Jacob Kowalski.  Dumbledore maneuvers against Grindelwald as best he can throughout Secrets.  He recruits Jacob, an unlikely ally as ever, as well as the Scamander brothers, Newt and Theseus, as well as others.

Newt was ostensibly the star of these films, certainly in the first one, until Dumbledore appeared in Crimes and then dominated Secrets.  And it might seem as if Newt indeed takes a definitive backseat, here, especially with the near absence of Tina Goldstein, the American wizard he fell in love with previously (some reports are that Katherine Waterston's participation was diminished, this time, due to her stance against Rowling).

And yet his unabashed enthusiasm for the title beasts, and his otherwise bashful demeanor, remain the heart of these films, as he gets to spend time with his brother as an actual colleague for the first time, which along with Jacob and Queenie and learning the truth of Credence's existence moves original stories from the first film along nicely.  Newt and Theseus have the best sequence of the film as they enact another of Newt's trademark beast-centric performances, this time scuttling like a crab.

Eddie Redmayne's star has dimmed in recent years.  I'm hard-pressed to think of his work outside these films, and yet the films themselves remain clearly affectionate of his unique charms.  Callum Turner, as Theseus, has become a more distinguished actor (for me, anyway, as I discovered in Emma.), so it's nice to see him in an expanded role.  Alison Sudol has been a standout as Queenie from the start, and I doubt anyone could've been more quintessentially American for the time period than Dan Fogler's Jacob, who has threatened to steal all of the movies.

But is there any real doubt that Jude Law's Dumbledore is the center of Secrets?  He had better be, getting his name in the title!  By the time Dumbledore and Grindelwald duel, we've seen Dumbledore do everything possible to avoid that moment.  When it's suggested he become the new leader of the wizarding community, the moment becomes the heart of how to interpret the movie around it.  No attention is called to Dumbledore, until he's pulled from a crowd as it happens, and he talks his way out of it, the way Harry Potter once convinced the Sorting Hat to place him in Gryffindor, and the moment passes.  No one argues the point.  No one draws attention to him at all.  It happens.  And the story moves on.

How to interpret it, and the whole film, rests on how comfortable you are with the rapid ascent of Grindelwald, and his just as rapid descent.  As viewers we're privy to nearly every beat of how this is accomplished, so relentlessly, throughout the movie.  The opening scene of Crimes was said to be distractedly dizzying, when Grindelwald breaks out of prison, and yet this is a whole movie in which, to accomplish what it needs to, the viewer has to accept two hours of logic that makes internal sense, and yet also feels as if, in a different reality, would have played out over several films.  Possibly.  The studio has been expressing doubt for years.  I follow a website that breathlessly reported every negative aspect of production, cheering on the possibility of failure.  Was this what it was always supposed to be?

And perhaps so.  This is what we never got to see with Voldemort, after all.  The other arcs feel so natural, this must always have been in the cards, surely?  Crimes ends dramatically with Grindelwald having split the wizarding community in half.  Secrets suggests winning the right allies makes even the impossible possible (from criminal to candidate, which even the Star Wars prequels didn't dare attempt; Palpatine appears the innocent even after his drastic transformation).

And...the more I live with this, the more comfortable.  At no point does the film dwell on Grindelwald as a real threat, except as Dumbledore's opposite number.  This is all supposed to build (like the Star Wars prequels) to a legendary duel, against which the one that happens in Secrets is mere prelude.  In some respects, there are notes in Secrets that feel like a possible concluding note (Jacob and Queenie marrying), should the studio decide to end the series early.  And yet Dumbledore acknowledges Newt as a valuable ally, even as Grindelwald has lost his (Credence, whose arc concludes here, too), which ought to sound...ominous.  The fight isn't over.  Grindelwald only becomes more dangerous, once more on the loose, nothing left to lose, and he has already endlessly proven his inventive resilience.  

The conclusion, for me, of how to view Secrets of Dumbledore is as a quiet success, in much the character of Newt himself, watching as all the drama around him boils down to Dumbledore and Grindelwald, as they're forced to confront the reality that they will one day have to fight each other.  Forget everyone else, every thing else.  This really does hinge on that conversation, at the start of the film.  And that's actually refreshing.

Doctor Strange (2016)

rating: ***

the story: An arrogant doctor loses the use of his hands, but his mind becomes greatly expanded.

review: The MCU Avengers cycle is a full-blown phenomenon that has come to define the modern cinematic era, and the twenty-three movies to date that comprise it have seemingly explored just about every kind of superhero movie imaginable.  Doctor Strange did it with magic (although it's also one of the few outright examples of superpowers in the franchise, too).  That's the main calling card here.

A lot of fans saw too many parallels between Stephen Strange and Tony Stark.  One of the few criticisms fans have leveled against these films is that the plots tend to be the same: brilliant individual has a fall, builds themselves back up, defeats villain in spectacular fight.  And the villain tends to be fairly uninspired (with a few exceptions).  But you can level the plot critique against just about any story.  I tend to think the specifics are worth considering.  Strange and Stark are only tangentially worth comparing at that level.  Stark may be a tech genius, but he's also building on a family legacy.  Strange is a brilliant physician.  They both may possess out-of-control egos, but Strange is far more likely to use his skills to actual benefit than Stark, who initially just wants to make easy money, without caring about the consequences.  For Strange, he may alienate colleagues, but he's undeniably saving lives.  He believes he can save more lives if he can just perform his research undisturbed.  Essentially, Stephen Strange is House on a grander scale.  (It's really hard not to envision the producers using the Hugh Laurie breakout role as a pattern for Strange, and how they determined Benedict Cumberbatch to be the best pick for the role.)

Then Strange goes on the journey to becoming Doctor Strange, and the visuals take over.  Clearly the movie itself was inspired as much by Inception as the Harry Potter films, and letting the blend of them run wild.  Too wild, really, however awesome the results.  The characters never really treat them as anything but meaningless backdrop.  They're audience eye candy, nothing more.  But still hugely notable.

Doctor Strange is the "Sorcerer Supreme," but he is also, essentially, a superhero wizard.  And that's the role he fills in the MCU.  The ending features a nifty time-repetition that the character's later crucial appearance in Avengers: Infinity War suggests is how he discovers the only way to beat Thanos (in all fairness, that's probably the best sequence of this film, watching Strange repeatedly confront what is otherwise a pointless CGI effect just as doggedly each time, so it would probably have been just as pointless to repeat the sequence, especially when we know Strange can't win this time).

Cumberbatch has a meaty role to play in this appearance (he doesn't have nearly as much to work with in later appearances to date), and is once again thoroughly Cumberbatch.  Rachel McAdams is probably the most credible female supporting player, having often played this type where others in the MCU felt hamstrung in similar roles.  Tilda Swinton is perhaps about as perfectly cast as she's ever been as the Ancient One, Mads Mikkelsen letting his eyes do all the work in the way he so creepily often does.  Benedict Wong is the kind of actor who doesn't need much to make an impact.  Benjamin Bratt has a tiny role that makes you kind of wonder why they even bothered.  Chiwetel Ejiofor is the most baffling case.  He went from starring in the highly acclaimed 12 Years a Slave to this rather than, say, Black Panther (who instead is played by Chadwick Boseman, who is an utter charisma void).  I don't get it. 

This is not a movie that expects much from its audience, and so it doesn't really try much, aside from visually.  It slides by on mumbo jumbo.  Why Strange is as good at magic as he is at surgery, not particularly explained.  It just sort of happens.  But if you don't care, you get a movie that does just about what it needs to.  And at that, it's about as good or better than the average MCU film.  It knows what it really needs to accomplish, and at least nails that.  Knowing what Strange does in other movies is just kind of icing on the cake.