What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

Indochine from 1992 with Catherine Deneuve, Linh-Dan Pham, Vincent Perez and Jean Yanne


Indochine is a beautifully filmed epic that observes more than it comments on the final decades of French colonial rule in Indochina, a part of which became Vietnam. But it is observation with an opinion.

Catherine Deneuve plays the French owner of a large rubber plantation she inherited from her now widowed father. Unmarried, Deneuve adopts an orphaned girl, played by Linh-Dan Pham, who was born into a dynastic Vietnamese family.

Opening in the 1930s, Deneuve is confidently in charge of her rubber plantation as she firmly commands her native "coolie" labourers. She loves the plantation and the country, but of course, in the construct that has her as part of the ruling class.

Outwardly, Deneuve is aristocratically reserved, but we see she has clandestine sexual affairs and secretly visits opium dens. Libidinous passions and psychotropic desires course through her blood, no matter how haughty she may appear.

Deneuve deeply loves her adopted daughter, openly stating her life's passion and goal is to pass her large plantation on to her. Quite likely, Phan would have accepted the plantation and lived a life of wealth and privilege but for the brewing revolution.

The catalyst that breaks Deneuve's plan is a young, handsome French naval officer, played by Vincent Perez with whom Deneuve has a brief, but passionate love affair. Fast-forward and Perez, innocently at first, becomes entangled with Deneuve's daughter, Pham.

His entanglement is sparked by the sweeping societal changes that will see Pham transform from a daughter of privilege into a catalyst and hero of the revolution almost by happenstance. She and Perez become part of a story that is much larger than either of them.

Indochine tells that story, the story of Vietnam's fight for independence, through the lives of Deneuve, Pham and Perez. The movie, which begins in the 1930s, closes with the defeated French leaving Vietnam in 1954 as the country splits politically into the North and South.

If it is a detailed history one is after, this is not the movie. Indochine does, though, provide a passionate feel for the beauty and tragedy of the country's final colonial days. The movie is also visually stunning.

Filmed mainly in Vietnam, with the plantation scenes shot in Malaysia, the country becomes a character itself. Director Regis Wargnier captures the beauty of Vietnam's mountains, inlets and verdant jungles with gorgeous sweeping shots.

Wargnier also pays great attention to detail by showing the beauty of the French colonial architecture and clothing and the beauty of Vietnam's extant royals in their stunning palaces and colorful robes. But he sets all that against the poverty of the bedraggled lower classes.

Wargnier mainly observes, but by constantly juxtaposing the nearly abject poverty of the average Vietnamese worker and family against the opulence of the French colonialists and indigenous royals, he quietly connects the dots to the coming revolution.

Nearly fifty and still beautiful, Deneuve delivers an Oscar-nominated performance as a singular Frenchwoman in a unique place and time in history. Her screen presence and acting talent drives a movie with a strong cast and rich story.

Pham and Perez also deliver impressive performances as does Jean Yanne as Deveuve's friend, the modestly corrupt, but also effective and moral in his own way, French official. He sees the signs of the end of French colonial rule earlier than most.

Indochine isn't perfect - it is soapy in parts and forced in others - but those are quibbles in a movie that beautifully and powerfully captures a time, place and moment that is now part of history. It uses all the strengths of cinema to deliver a rich movie-viewing experience.

 

[Fading Fast]

Alice in Wonderland from 1933


If you enjoyed Alice in Wonderland as a fairytale when you were a kid, you might enjoy this movie version of the story; if you didn't enjoy the book version, this movie is a hard pass as it's a reasonably faithful rendition.

One take on the story is to see the fairytale as an allegory for the confusion children have when discovering the hypocrisy and nonsense of the adult world. However, the popular psychedelic-drug-trip take has a pretty strong argument for itself too.

Once you see it the drug-trip way, though, you're faced with the problem of trying to understand why someone would write a drug-trip allegory as a children's fairytale.

There's also this: maybe it is the influence of Jefferson Airplane's “White Rabbit -“ the psychedelic rock song inspired by the fairytale - but song or no song, without a drug explanation, the story searches for an logical interpretation.

If you can somehow unpack all that, or pack it up and forget about it, the movie can still be tough sledding for an adult, even one who enjoyed the story as a kid. Part of the issue today is the magic the movie had in 1933 isn't there for a modern audience

A large element of the fun of 1933's Alice in Wonderland is being wowed with the set and trick photography that, of course, has been long-since bettered by improved analog technology and, now, the meta-game-killing CGI.

CGI, unfortunately, took away a big part of modern movies' wow factor. Before CGI, a rocket ship flying through space or a fantasyland like Oz, had audiences thinking, "how'd they do that" or "that's really creative," but that's over now as today it's all just zeroes and ones.

This leaves you needing to put yourself into a different mindset to enjoy the movie. You have to try to appreciate the creativity of a pre-CGI 1933 world required to make all the neat tricks of the "looking glass" world. It's a big ask of present-day viewers

There are also some interspersed animation sequences, which maybe felt fresh then, but feel hokey today. Then and now, the transition to animation undermines the illusion of the "looking glass" world being a real parallel universe.

The cast too is a challenge. Yes it's impressive with Gary Cooper, W.C. Fields, Edna May Oliver, Cary Grant, May Robson and other notables, but most are so buried in costume, makeup, silly voices and sillier dialogue that they often feel wasted in this movie.

The actress playing Alice, Charlotte Henry, is very good at conveying childhood wonder with a bit of an "adult in the room" vibe mixed in, but it is a one-note performance. Perhaps not her fault, as the character was written that way, but still, it becomes wearisome.

Fan's of Alice in Wonderland can watch and decide if this early attempt captured the magic they see in the fairytale. For everyone else, it's pretty hard to sit through, what amounts to, an awful lot of babble.

 

[Touchofevil]

Thank you. I just write these reviews for fun and to share here and on a classic movie forum. I hope, as you note, some people are encourage to watch some of the movies I comment on. I do write professionally, but in my field, which is finance.

As to the mushy stuff, my favorite genre of movie is the romcom. I'm a proud fan of the mushy stuff.

The love triangle - the mushy stuff - did, though, in "The Charge of the Light Brigade" feel forced, but I think they wanted a female lead, so they built in the love triangle for that reason.

I too enjoy and look forward to your reviews of movies and books and not just for their content but for the way in which they are constructed. Very entertaining and informative. Thank you for your contributions to the FL, FF!

 

[Touchofevil]

Finally saw all of Where Danger Lives earlier this morning on TCM’s Noir Alley. As per usual, I enjoyed Robert Mitchum’s work but it was the performance of Claude Rains which stole the show for me. An entertaining story and some nice cinematography made it a nice way to start the day.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Two Mrs. Carrolls from 1947 with Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart, Alexis Smith and Ann Carter


The Two Mrs. Carrolls is a good movie whose whole is worth less than the sum of its parts. With Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart and Alexis Smith starring and a script from a hit Broadway play, this should be a better move than it is.

Part of the problem is that most of the surprise in this murder mystery story is drained right out of it as we learn early on that an artist, played by Bogart, is a killer. We see him poison his first wife to marry a wealthy woman, played by Stanwyck, whom he just met.

Along for the wife-swap ride is Ann Carter playing Bogart's preternaturally mature pre-teen daughter. She's not the most-realistic character, few adults are as poised as she is, but movies have a certain latitude and, here, The Two Mrs. Carrolls uses its latitude well.

Probably to protect her own sanity, this highly intelligent and thoughtful child doesn't see that her father is a murderer. She, instead, indulges her father. It's an engaging performance from a child performer.

For a time, Bogart and Stanwyck's marriage seems to be going well, still, there are signs of Bogart's insanity that kind wife Stanwyck passes off as a temperamental-artist thing. But when a pretty neighbor woman starts scratching at the back door, things heat up.

Alexis Smith, the pretty, tall and door-scratching neighbor who looks like she could eat peanuts off the top of Bogart's head, makes a hard run at Bogart seemingly because she likes stealing other women's husbands.

Bogart, not for the reason you think - the real reason is the "surprise reveal" in the mystery - likes to be stolen away. So once again, out comes the poison. But there are a couple of problems.

The British government isn't stupid and requires a signature to be obtained whenever poison is sold. This gives scheming, immoral "chemists," pharmacists to us today, like the one played here by Barry Bernard, an opportunity to commit blackmail.

Bernard is outstanding as the blackmailer you love to hate. Even though Bogart is a murderer, Bernard is such a greedy low life - he's willing to let Bogart go on killing as long as Bogart pays him off - you hate him more than Bogie. Bogie, afterall, is insane.

Bogart's other problem is that Stanwyck and Stanwyck's friend, played by Patrick O'Moore - it's good to have an ex-lover still pining for you when your husband is a psychotic killer - aren't going to let her go gently into that good night.

The climatic scene, no spoilers coming, is dragged out and exaggerated a bit to create drama. Still, it's pretty well done by director Peter Godfrey as rain and crashing thunder outside set a Gothic-like atmosphere for a struggle to death in Stanwyck's bedroom.

Stanwyck is the standout performer in this one. The woman is so talented you forget she is acting as she just becomes her character. While the script drifts now and then into implausibility, Stanwyck's realistic portrayal is always there to give it credibility.

Bogart is a professional who doesn't give a poor performance. Still, his ideal role is playing the antihero, not the psychotic killer. Here he is natural when playing the kind husband and father, but you feel him "acting" when his insanity shows through.

Smith's character is written as two dimensional, so she can only do so much. You don't like her, which is what the script called for, so mission accomplished. Had she had a bit more Hollywood luck, the tall and talented Ms. Smith could have had a bigger career.

Nigel Bruce turns the ham factor up just a bit too high on his country doctor schtick in this one. Conversely, Anita Sharp-Bolster is spot on in her spirited portrayal of Stanwyck's sarcastic housekeeper who doesn't take BS from anyone.

Many pieces of this movie are good, some are even very good, but the story lacks the full punch it needed, in part, because too much is revealed early on putting too much pressure on the disappointing "big reveal" later.

The Two Mrs. Carrolls has enough talent and pedigree to have been a great movie. Yet In the busy Hollywood subgenre of psychotic-murderous-spouse movies, it's just a good one. Maybe the twist that spurs Bogie to murder will make it a great one for you.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

I watched Big Valley over here and Barbara Stanwyck I thought far and away much more alluring than
her daughter the lovely Linda Evans. And her later appearance in The Thorn Birds aced it completely.
As with Myrna Loy, Barbara Stanwyck had an indescribable quality beyond mere physical beauty.

 

[Fading Fast]

I watched Big Valley over here and Barbara Stanwyck I thought far and away much more alluring than
her daughter the lovely Linda Evans. And her later appearance in The Thorn Birds aced it completely.
As with Myrna Loy, Barbara Stanwyck had an indescribable quality beyond mere physical beauty.

I know I've posted about this before, but as a young kid in the 1970s, my introduction to Barbara Stanwyck was watching "The Big Valley" on reruns. It took a bit for me to connect her to her younger self in the old movies I'd see on late night or Sat/Sunday afternoon TV.

On "The Big Valley," she stood out as she was no "matriarchal" gray-haired lady who ran the ranch from behind a desk. She was a crack shot, an experienced rider and had no fear - she was cool.

 

[LizzieMaine]

And to think she came from Pigtow--uh-- East Flatbush.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Fast, matriarchial wasn't exactly my perception either.
There are scenes in The Thorn Birds where Miss Stanwyck throws all the darts at once; chastity upended with immediate and entirely provocative effect. Far and away beyond all the silly noblesse oblige idiotic nudity to show absolute raw emotion dredged heart and mind.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Black Hand from 1950 with Gene Kelly and J. Carrol Naish


The Black Hand, while a bit obvious in its storytelling and plotting, is still an engaging 1950 period movie set in the early 1900s in Manhattan's lower east side Italian immigrant community.

Of interest to students of film will be some of the movie's scenes that so foreshadow scenes in The Godfather Part II, one is forced to believe director Francis Ford Coppula saw this movie before making his famous Mafia sequel.

Gene Kelly, in The Black Hand, in a non-dancing dramatic role, plays a young man whose father, when Kelly was a boy, was killed by The Black Hand (think the Mafia) when his father went to the police to report on The Black Hand's extortion of the Italian community.

Kelly, who after his father's death was sent back to Italy, has now returned to the US and wants to find and kill his father's murderer and destroy The Black Hand.

After reuniting and beginning a romance with a childhood friend, a now young widowed single mother, Kelly is encouraged by her and an honest police detective, played by J. Carrol Naish, to forgo the vendetta justice he had planned to, instead, focus on becoming a lawyer.

The long-term strategy is for him to study, pass the bar and, then, work with the police and prosecutors to legally expose and bring down The Black Hand.

Most of the movie is Kelly pinging back and forth between passionately trying to avenge his father's death vigilante style now and doing the long, hard work of becoming a lawyer to fight The Black Hand legally in the future.

Along the way, as noted and a part of the movie that will be incredibly enjoyable for film historians, there are several scenes that foreshadow The Godfather Part II.

When Kelly moves through the street hussle and bussle of the Italian immigrant community, stalks his prey in the dark and narrow hallways of the tenement buildings or escapes across their ramshackled rooftops, it's as if you're seeing the black-and-white screen test of a young Robert De Niro for The Godfather Part II.

The Black Hand does a good job showing how the Mafia used pressure, fear and murder to extort money from the Italian immigrants, while the police, often already corrupted, looked the other way. It's a simplistic, but not inaccurate portrayal of the period.

The plot, also, can feel a bit too simplistic as we see a few good cops, detectives and immigrants who are selflessly willing to risk their lives ban together to fight for justice.

There is, though, a good twist about a detective, the J. Carrol Naish character, going over to Italy to gather evidence on the Black Hand that, literally, takes the fight back to "The Old Country."

Kelly is excellent as the young man torn between the instant gratification of taking justice into his own hands and doing the hard work of fighting The Black Hand from within the slower moving justice system.

Many of the characters we'd come to know in mob movies, including the smooth and likable mob boss who only uses violence as a last resort because it's bad for business and the psychotic thugs who work for him, are represented.

The scared honest citizens who "pay up" because they "don't want trouble," the cops on the take and the few honest cops and forthright citizens willing to risk their lives to change things are also here in early versions of what would become stock characters of the mobster-movie genre.

The Black Hand is a bit too studio-system formulaic to be a great movie, but it is interesting to see a version of the Mafia-comes-to-America story in an early incarnation.

You'll also want to see it for Kelly and Naish's engaging performances and the, as noted, foreshadowing scenes of the The Godfather Part II, which feels like cinematic archaeology.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Samurai from 1967 with Alain Delon, Nathalie Delon and Francois Perier


"Neo Noir" is definitionally meta as it uses classic film noir for its foundation, often adding color and current cultural references, but in an overall style that is an homage to noir's original fatalistic and often bleak black-and-white mid-century American crime movies.

The Samurai, then, is possibly the most neo-noir movie ever made. French writer and director Jean-Pierre Melville all but blended noir and neo-noir in his paean to the genre's original style by stripping it down to its essential elements in this 1967 French film.

Alain Delon stars as an emotional stunted and laconic hitman. At the open, we see Delon murder a man, but he is seen by a few witnesses. Knowing this, he creates an ex-post-facto alibi with his girlfriend, played by his real-life wife at the time, Nathalie Delon.

The police commissioner - the cinematic version of the French police commissioner is up there with the baguette on the list of wonderful things the French have given the world - played by Francois Perier, sees through Delon's alibi, but can't yet prove it.

Delon has another problem as the mob that hired him, because he was questioned by the police and because, well, they don't really want to pay him, try to kill him. Injured in the mob's first failed attempt, Delon is a man without a redoubt.

The movie's plot is an isolated Delon trying to find a way out of a world closing in around him. With the police openly tracking his every move and the mob doing the same from the shadows, there are few places for him to turn.

Delon, with great skill, eludes the police surveillance for longer than he should be able to. He also audaciously tries to turn the tables on the mob, but this is noir and happy endings aren't part of its metier.

The story is minimalist noir as we never learn much about any of the characters including the lead himself. We know little more than that Delon is a hit man living a spartan life in a bleak one room apartment with his caged bird being a metaphor for Delon himself.

Delon seems to realize this as in several scenes he looks sadly at his bird flying from one perch to another in his small cage. Delon will later be briefly held prisoner, like his bird, in his apartment. It's all meta noir.

Like most (all?) hitmen, he is a sociopath, but other than dressing in a throwback style with a trenchcoat and fedora, and showing a talent for thinking on his feet, the man is an enigma.

His girlfriend, despite her small role, is somewhat more developed - she hates the police and loves Delon - but the question of why hovers. The only answer hinted at is Delon's lovemaking and if that is the answer, then Godbless and we'll all tip our hat to him.

Perier doesn't overplay his part, a risk for anyone in the role of a cagey French police commissioner; instead, he marshalls the large resources at his command to slowly encircle Delain. It's a noir cat-and-mouse game played out with slow methodical resolve.

This leaves the movie's raison d'etre its style and theme. Shot in color, but with the brightness muted and the greys emphasized, it looks noir. Delon's attire, smoke-filled rooms, narrow streets and claustrophobic chases through the subway are all classic noir style.

The second subway "surveillance" scene, where the police have an army of men and women following Delon, as he tries one trick after another to get away, is almost a film course on the narrow but popular movie sub-genre of subway surveillance scenes.

But what does this visually beautiful movie add up to? Is it style for style's sake? (Yes, to a point.) Is Delon a noir antihero? It's hard to sympathize with a man who kills people for money. Is he an outsider fighting the system? Don't all criminals fit that description?

You can go down the existential angst and meaninglessness of life route - the perfect nexus of film noir and French philosophy - if you want, but again, without knowing more, Delon's just a psychotic thug.

Melville's movie is a visually and psychologically gauzy world of cops and criminals. It also pulls a neat noir trick: it has you not really rooting for the cops even though you know you should be and would be if this was real-life and not cinema justice.

Classic film noir is a criminal world of gangsters with cops barely in control; it is sex that is never fun; it is money that never brings happiness; it is a perverted honor code and it is a criminal style perfected on screen in a way that never happened in real life.

Melville's movie is a blend of noir themes, done with noir style for noir's sake itself. And that's almost enough, but it can also feel as if the film isn't a real movie with real characters. Which brings us back to Melville, neo-noir and homage.

The Samurai is a love letter to the classic American film noir era. Melville made several similar movies in his career with 1956's Bob the Gambler being an outstanding earlier effort at bringing American film noir style and themes to French Cinema.

In The Samurai, though, Melville all but perfected his noir reverence by stripping noir to its essential elements - style and theme - but maybe in doing so, he also stripped out a bit of his movie's heart.

 

[Trenchfriend]

@Fading Fast
Simply a must!
Upsetting in its purity.

 

[Fading Fast]

@Fading Fast
Simply a must!
Upsetting in its purity.

"Upsetting in its purity."

Well said.

 

[RockyR]

Indiana Jones... from the beginning (yes, Temple of Doom and all). I'm just starting Crystal Skull now.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Couldn't ever be sold Delon. Zilch credibility. Skipped Samurai deliberately though your review Fast is so spot on I wish I had seen this so to pitch a penny or two here.

 

[Fading Fast]

Remains of the Day from 1992 with Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, James Fox and Christopher Reeve


It is hard to turn an outstanding book into an outstanding movie, but Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's screenplay of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Remains of the Day, with James Ivory's deliberate directing, realized on screen a movie worthy of Ishiguro's subtle and moving novel.

A butler, the head of staff for a prominent English estate, sees being "in service" as a calling. Like his father before him, he has devoted his life to his work and has reached the pinnacle of his career, only to then, in the quietest way possible, have his values challenged.

Anthony Hopkins plays the perfect butler, Mr Stevenson, who, just prior to WWII, runs Lord Darlington's estate with firm and thoughtful leadership. Hopkins takes great pride in his position, in Darlington Hall and in the respect that Lord Darlington, himself, commands.

As a butler should, Hopkins has submerged his personal feelings beneath a surface equanimity. He runs the estate with complete efficiency so that Lord Darlington, played by James Fox, can, without disturbance, deal with the "important affairs of state."

Presented early on, Hopkins is a content man until very slowly his beliefs and decisions are called into question. The arrival of an attractive and strong-willed new housekeeper, played by Emma Thompson, is the first ripple.

Thompson is, like Hopkins, professional in her work, but she has a fire for something more out of life than just being "in service." When, tactfully, she alights upon Hopkins as the object of her affections, he brushes her romantic hints off with feigned professional obtuseness.

Amidst this low-burn attempted romance in his head staff, Fox, as Lord Darlington, is advancing those earlier noted "affairs of state." He fancies himself a diplomatic éminence grise trying to help England, in the late 1930s, negotiate a peace with Hitler's Germany.

Fox believes England and the Allies set such oppressive conditions for peace with Germany at the end of WWI that they did not act with honor and, thus, share the responsibility for the problems in Germany today.

All of this is seen through flashbacks as Remains of the Day opens in the 1950s with Hopkins meeting the new owner of Darlington Hall, a retired United States senator, played by Christopher Reeve.

Reeve had been the American representative at one of Fox's pre-war "conferences," where Reeve called Fox out on his naive view toward Germany and on his amateurism. Things have come full circle for Hopkins.

Nineteen-fifties Hopkins is a man who has somewhat lost his moorings. The now-deceased Fox, if remembered at all, is universally derided as a "Nazi sympathizer" or even traitor. It's hard to see your career in service to that man as being a success.

Perhaps a presently more "flexible" Hopkins will, at least, have a second chance at romance. Thompson has written to him that her marriage, she left Darlington Hall in the late 1930s to wed, has failed. On the pretext of wanting to rehire her, he takes a trip to see her.

The climax, no spoilers coming, is Hopkins reunion with Thompson. For Hopkins it is a last chance at romance. It is also a chance for him to come to terms with the man he was when Thompson first knew him and the man he has become.

Hopkins embodies the character of Mr. Stephens. Being "in service" was a calling for many back then. To have the tenets of that world smashed up, as quietly happened to Hopkins' character, is a shattering experience that the actor captures with incredible nuance.

Thompson is equally well cast as the "change agent" in Hopkins' life. At Darlington Hall, she tries to push him out of his celibate comfort zone. Thompkins, like Hopkins, has to show a lot of emotions - love, fear and heartbreak - with little outward display.

Fox, a man born to play an English Lord, is wonderful as an Englishman who acted with honor within his cultural framework. It was, though, a framework horribly out of step with the times.

You'll also want to catch Hugh Grant popping up in a small but fun role as Fox's upstart godson who sees how out of touch his sincere but obtuse godfather is.

Author Ishiguro layered in so many "small" stories - look for the brutal vignette about the Jewish maids or the sad end to Hopkins' father's life - that the two-plus hour movie requires several viewing to take everything in.

All of this subtly, and subtly is Remains' genius, is beautifully portrayed by director James Ivory's lush sets and locations, plus, his meticulous directing. Every scene and moment is there for a reason, even if it takes a few times to consciously see all the connections.

Remains of the Day is also an early example of a period movie working very hard to get the era's details right. Experts will, no doubt, find flaws, but the overall feel for the viewer is one of being transported to another time and place.

Through the life of one seemingly nondescript man, author Ishiguro manages to combine the disparate elements of a heartbreaking tale of a suppressed love with the story of a well-intentioned, but ultimately ignoble international appeasement of a genocidal regime.

Remains of the Day is a thoughtful, moving and poignant novel. Driven by a talented director, screenwriter and cast, the movie's greatest achievement is that it did not let this wonderful book down.

 

[GHT]

Zulu, first screened sixty years ago in 1964. A tale of imperial derring-do from the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879. A film that revels in one of the most heinous, most blood-thirsty chapters of British colonial past, one tinged with technologically enabled white supremacy.

A war film about 140 white soldiers who take on a Zulu force of 4,000 and defeat them, thanks largely to the rapid and orchestrated fire of short chamber Martini-Henry rifles. 'And a bayonet,’ as Nigel Green, in the role of colour sergeant Bourne, puts it, ‘with some guts behind it.’

Zulu’s appeal lies in the personalities at its heart. A film supposedly about a British imperial success, it was directed and co-produced by Cy Endfield, an American filmmaker. Zulu makes for an exciting David & Goliath war film.

 

[Zombie_61]

Indiana Jones... from the beginning (yes, Temple of Doom and all). I'm just starting Crystal Skull now.

When you get to the part of the credits that says "The End", you can stop. Dial of Density is not worth the time spent trying to figure it out and, with all of the injuries he's sustained over the years, Mr. Ford is just too old to continue playing Indy.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Dad met Michael Caine in a pub after Zulu was filmed, both Cockney Korea vets, and Caine swore he had the chance to play an upper crust officer was soley due to the film's director being a Yank. A British director would have put him in the ranks, no question the Cockney lower rung.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

When you get to the part of the credits that says "The End", you can stop. Dial of Density is not worth the time spent trying to figure it out and, with all of the injuries he's sustained over the years, Mr. Ford is just too old to continue playing Indy.

I understand completely. Yet I liked this glimpse into the elder swashbuckler's bachelor-professor life.
Now there's the Mouse House matter which upon post viewing I agree with, all done neither right nor respectful.
That is what tripped the tale but the film is watchable. And worthwhile. I only wish Mouse gets an exorcism.