Over & Overs: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

In this new series, members of Team Experience wax rhapsodic on films they've never been able to stop watching. Here's Lynn Lee...

Conventional wisdom holds that Raiders of the Lost Ark, the O.G. Indiana Jones, is also the best Indiana Jones.  Yet the Indy installment I love the most is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which I’ve watched more times than I can count and can practically quote from beginning to end.  It’s one of my cinematic comfort food go-tos. I can count on it to put a smile on my face and – perhaps more surprisingly – a tear in my eye.

I suspect my deep affection for The Last Crusade is at least partly rooted in the fact that it was the first Indiana Jones movie I saw, and the only one I ever saw in a theater...

Click to read more ...

Yes No Maybe So: "Bombshell"

On the heels of Showtime’s unheralded miniseries The Loudest Voice, Lionsgate and director Jay Roach are diving into the zeitgeist with Bombshell (formerly titled Fair and Balanced). The film details the #MeToo fallout at Fox News and stars three of today’s greatest working actresses. For whatever reason, Bombshell is being mostly ignored by many early Oscar prognosticators.

This despite, well...let’s dive into that teaser shall we?

Click to read more ...

Doc Corner: 'Cold Case Hammarskjöld'

By Glenn Dunks

Sometimes a movie can turn you off in such an extreme fashion that it almost becomes interesting. Almost. Underlined and in bold for effect. After all, I don’t want to give the false impression that Cold Case Hammarskjöld is in any way a movie that you should watch. Lord knows, my reaction to this smug and smarmy directorial ego trip and non-fiction lark was violently negative, and while I admit that there’s something striking about a documentary that so callously appears to mock its subject and audience, Danish director Mads Brügger can’t spin it into a film that I enjoyed the experience of watching.

It’s also, sadly, completely of the moment. It’s themes of international intervention and conspiracy are probably the sort of thing that will no doubt appeal to certain audiences who can't help looking over at the metaphorical grassy knoll. But this story of (possible) intrigue, (maybe) scandal, and even (potential) AIDS warfare (!!!) is treated with none of the acute seriousness that it (probably) deserves...

Click to read more ...

No Time to Link

• Variety cultural conversations about a TV show lift its Emmy prospects
• The Guardian on Leonard Bernstein's 10 year affair with a Japanese fan
• /Film Bond 25 has a title No Time to Die
• Daily Xtra Joey Moser remembers seeing movies with his father on the weekend - lovely

After the jump Love Simon, Spider-Man divorce, cool film festivals, and Marvel Comics avoiding anti-fascist "politics" in a genre built on just that...

Click to read more ...

Soundtracking: Toni Erdmann

by Chris Feil

Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann is one of the decade’s most exacting looks at depression and the human cost of the global corporate mindset. These two thematic points of view ebb and flow in and out of one another in the film as suddenly as the film’s comedy and tragedy do, showing the malaise of how we live today that’s symptomatic of impersonal capitalistic remove. It’s a state of being that is symbiotically personal and societal, desperately funny and deeply sad.

Click to read more ...