Yes, I know.
My favorite movie is a black and white silent film on Joan of Arc. My daughter is (sort of) named after a character in a John Wayne movie. I cried when Spock died. I am convinced of the greatness of a sort-of-science-fiction film made in the Soviet Union which features a seemingly endless and probably pointless ride in a taxi. Black and white films about icon writers inspire me.
I am not, therefore, a good judge of what will be popular or what you might enjoy. What I do know is that this summer there are at least two films that we are eager to see . . . eager to give Hollywood enough money to buy a new house given the rise in ticket prices and the slaughter of home values in our neighborhood.
I must wait, but I cannot stand to wait for Prince Caspian.
As a book, this is the weakest of the Narnia series. As a movie, it has great potential. The fight scenes in the first film had to be padded. Caspian centers on fighting, which my thirteen year old son says is good. As my fifteen year old daughter pointed out, it is also a chance to introduce a character with appeal to people like my fifteen year old daughter. It includes magic and the best character in the books, Reepicheep, which my ten year old daughter says is great.
It is C.S. Lewis, which you know by now means I cannot wait.
The three Indiana Jones films are the best series of summer blockbusters ever made. They form a perfect trilogy marred only by the weaknesses of the second film and the absence of Marian. It was with dread we all heard of a new film with the elderly Harrison Ford reprising his best role. Why mess with memories other than a desire to milk money out of the franchise? But what we can see about the film looks promising, along the lines of the Sylvester Stallone modest revival of late. Marian is back . . . and that means Jones may have grown up. They also don’t look to be hiding his age, but are dealing with it in a Star Trek VI (a decent film by all measures) way. The character is old, is dealing with it, but has become a more interesting person.
That might work.
Or it might not.
The key is Harrison Ford. He was an actor who could pick no bad films . . . who suddenly got a new wife, a new earring, and lost all sense of what makes a movie a good movie. He allowed himself to play young parts far past his expiration date and this harmed him as well. Has he learned anything? Did he get a director strong enough to make him act and not just glower? Sean Connery still has sex appeal as an old man, my wife reports. Has Ford decided to grow old properly like Connery?
We shall surely see.