Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Im in the minority here since many people loved the film. I certainly didnt hate it and as it stands, The Kids are All Right gets 2 and a half stars out of four roughly a B minus. The Kids are All Right is a solid first draft and has all the ingredients for a good film-an interesting story, real character flaws, that the film isnt a political piece about how good lesbian mothers are but that the film shows how Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull families have problemsthe film just has to be tightened and padded a bit more. Another draft or two would turn The Kids are All Right into The Kids are Excellent, but as it stands know the title is unfortunately accurate. The Kids are All Right is a good first draft. The film is about the problems that families have. That the film is honest and doesnt solve all its problems at the end is a plus of the film. A weakness is that the film doesnt mix humor and drama smoothly and that the characters arent interesting enough, thereby making the film fail as a drama. The Kids are All Right has all the ingredients for a successful drama; it just hasnt learned how to mix the ingredients well so the film is tasty. The situations that the characters have seem to suggest that the people in the film are well-drawn, but that isnt the case. The drama in the film isnt convincing and there are moments when Julianne Moore overacts which are during the scenes where she is crying. Mark Ruffalo does a good job making his character sympathetic as least, although his portrait as a ladies man is hard to swallow no pun intended. The children, Jules and Laser are sweet kids who seem to have very real problems, but they arent fully developed yet. The storyline is there for The Kids are All Right to be a good film, but is Lisa Cholondeko wants her film to be more than just alright, she needs to make her characters more realistic, identifiable or sympathetic, and interesting. I thought of ending my review of Stieg Larssons The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by writing, if the second part of The Millennium Trilogy is half as good as the first one, the movie will be well worth seeing. I stick to this statement, unfortunately The Girl Who Played with Fire the second part of The Millennium Trilogy isnt half as good as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo ; its about a quarter as good. I was highly looking forward to The Girl Who Played with Fire, but unfortunately this film suffers the curse of the sophomore slump. The first movie in the trilogy was directed by Niels Arden Oplev and written by Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, whereas the second movie had the same main characters but a different director and writers. The second movie was directed by Daniel Alfredson and written by Jonas Frykberg. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a very well-made blockbuster hit, so why change the director for the second installment, when Niels Arden Oplev did such a great job at directing the first? As the expression goes, if it aint broke, dont fix it. While sometimes having different directors working on each part of the series can improve the series, like in the case of The Twilight Saga where each film got better than the one that preceded it or more accurately, less bad, if the series starts on a high note to begin with why higher another pitcher?! Niels Arden Oplev is a much better director that Daniel Alfredson. Oplev did a fantastic job in creating an immersive atmosphere, piecing together a complex plot into a cohesive whole, and making the audience feel emotionally invested while taking them on a kinetic ride. The twist and turns in the film felt real and the violence felt appropriately tense. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo didnt just have an intricate plot; it had a believable, emotional, and involving one. Director Daniel Alfredson was unable to achieve what Mr. Oplev did. The Girl Who Played with Fire isnt involving and is directed with any of the original style and passion that Mr. Oplev gave to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The sudden surprises in The Girl Who Played with Fire come across as laughable and lack the conviction of the first part of the trilogy. Unlike the first movie which brought the audience into the film to be a participant in trying to piece together the clues and find out what is going on, this film makes the viewer passive. We dont work with the film, we simply see the twists and turns happening followed by expository dialogue while we shrug our heads. The violent scenes in The Girl Who Played with Fire mostly appear as if people are just moving their arms while grunting instead of appearing like a real fight. There is a scene in the film where two men are fighting inside a building and they simply follow the choreography of a fightthey reenact what a fight should look likeinstead of fighting naturally. They attack people with their arms while grunting every few seconds while their face remains emotionless. The fight scenes are certainly not convincing and there is even a use of slow-mo when falling from a fall, thereby making the fighting appear even less realistic. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo seems as if the storyline, characters and actions are just going through the motions instead of having us buy into the manipulation that what is happening is real which is something necessary for all Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to achieve in order to succeed. There are one or two scenes of violence and shocks that do work and there is a line that Zala says to his daughter that did manage to put a lump in my throat, but there arent enough gripping moments in the film. The plot concerns a murder mystery where an editor was murdered because he was about to expose sex trafficking and one of the ring leaders murdered him to prevent this expose from being leaked. The answer to the mystery and what leads to it isnt interesting. One of the best parts of the first film was seeing Mikael Blomkvist Michael Nykvist and Lisbeth Salander Noomi Rapace working together and seeing the dynamics of their relationship. Unfortunately, Mikael and Lisbeth are separated through most of the film and for some reason neither of them is as interesting to watch as in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I liked the characters of Mikael and Lisbeth and the audience felt some compassion for them, which this film doesnt have.