Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

 This is a very good Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) movie except for just before the end.  Indiana Jones is in pursuit of the Dial of Destiny, as is Dr. Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelson).  Voller is a Nazi who wants to go back in time and effect a different result to the war.  His men are unscrupulous.  They seem to kill people right and left.   They are trying to get a piece of the devise from Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), Dr. Jones' god daughter.  She knows that her father gave the piece to him to destroy it.  Of course Dr. Jones did not destroy it, but has stored it safely in the university vaults.  Helena gets the device, and is away with it, leaving Dr. Jones to deal with the peopler chasing her.  They both get away in the end.  They all end up in Morocco, where Helena is selling her piece.  In all the action Voller ends up with the piece.  Helena has a young friend, Teddy (Ethann Isidore) she rescued from the streets when he tried to steal her purse.  

The next stop is scuba diving in order to find the other piece.  Of course our villains show up just as they are finding it.  More murders take place, Dr. Jones' friend Renaldo (Antonio Banderas).  The the hel of dynamite they are able to get away and then decipher the clue which leads them to caves in Cicily.  In the end Voller comes away with both pieces and puts them together.  He then calculates how to go back in time to 1939 as he intends to kill Hitler, thus freeing Germany from him, so they can win the war.  Dr. Jones tases him that his calculations are wrong--and in fact they are.  They over shot their time and end up in the Roman Greek war long ago.  Having gone back in time in an airplane, they meet Archimedes (Nasser Memarzia), the inventor of the Dial of Destiny, who then took it apart so it couldn't be used.  He is the only person who could help them get back to their own time.

Now the part I don't like.  Suddenly Dr. Jones wants to stay in the past.  Helena punches him in the jaw to knock him out and the take him back.  I do not think there was motivation for Dr. Jones to stay nor for Helena to knock him out.

Karen Allen as Marion and John Rhys-Davies as Sallah have cameo parts.  They were both in the first Indiana Jones.

Movie Review: *****Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

 What a fun ride the Doctor Jones has been; and it all started with The Lost Ark.  The first Dr. Jones episode is in South America where Doctor Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) rescues a rare artifact, only to have it stolen by Belloq (Paul Freeman).  Then we get to the real story of the movie--the search for the lost ark and covenant, in which is kept the ten commandments.  This reportedly has great power and the Nazis want anything with power; so they too are searching.  Indy first visits a former girlfriend, Marion (Karen Allen) in Nepal, whose father was an archeologist and had collected a piece to help find the ark.  They both escape a murder attempts and head to Egypt, where they meet the third member of their crew, Sellah (John Rhys-Davies).  Belloq is working with the Nazis, but they are digging in the wrong lace.  One of the cute things of this show is the persistence of Indiana Jones.

This movie is terrific fun. It puts Harrison Ford in his second successful trilogy and indicates he is truly a star performer.  

Moview Review: ***Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" is a bit flat compared it to the other Indiana Jones films..  However if I compare it to other action adventures it is a fun romp.  I especially like it that they bring in a son, and a marriage at the end.  Shia Labeouf plays the roll of the son.  He rides a motor bike with wild abandon.  Kate Blanchett is with the bad guys the Communists.  Karen Allen is back as Jones' love interest.  The parallel universe left me a bit flat.  It is going on the theme that the gods are aliens.  However I did like the return of the Jones story to Latin America, and the many archeological finds there are in that area.  It is only appropriate that the story heads there.