1) Cate Blanchett as Irina Spalko
If only because it serves to remind us, after her criminally overlooked turn in “Bandits,” what an undervalued comedienne she is. (Don’t believe me about “Bandits?” Watch her first scene, where she’s getting down to Bonnie Tyler in the kitchen as she prepares a casserole, and ask yourself how many other actors could make so much out of so little scripted material.)
Back to “Indy 4,” she’s the only actor in the whole cast who seems to have judged the right comic tone for her character. It may be bizarre, wigged-out camp, in her case, but that’s what the script tells her to do, and damn it if she doesn’t have fun channelling a thousand hokey “Ry-aw-shun” villainnesses from Hollywood’s B-movie back catalogue. After “Elizabeth: The Golden Age,” she seems to have established a nice line in (not quite) saving po-faced, overboiled schlock with stylish, balls-out burlesque. And all this from an actor equally capable of rendering a character’s crucial moral decision with a simple, silent glance. (If you haven’t seen “Heaven,” do so.) Mr Foote recently made a good case for Sean Penn as the greatest actor of this generation; my vote would go to Blanchett.
2) Um… uh… no, actually there was just one thing
I side with Kris on this one. The film’s an utter wash.
Comments
4 responses to “Two things I like about ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’”
I liked her a lot. But I liked Ford better in this film.
There is no doubt in my mind that she is the best actor of her generation… but I would go as far as to say that she is the greatest living acting talent.
Yes, very sinister.
It was a very unfortunate film. I can’t say there’s much about it that I liked or that appeared to make any sense. The climax made me feel like I was watching “Laura Croft: Tomb Raider.”