Downey

I love the combination of butter flavoring, a half gallon of Mr. Pibb in a paper cup, and three hours of air conditioning. In other words, I love summer movies, and this year has already been one of the best since…well, let’s say 2003. For those willing to argue the point, the top three films that summer were "Finding Nemo," "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl," and "Matrix Reloaded." Not every year is great. Take 2006. "Superman"? "Returns"? Boo. The movie was in the top ten for the year and still didn’t break into the black. But for every big-budget studio clunker, for every "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace," there is the chance of a "Blair Witch Project" or even a big studio hit, as evidenced by the two Narnia films thus far. But I’d go back as far as 1984 for one of the all-time great summer blockbuster seasons: the top three films of that summer were also the top three films of the year. "Ghostbusters". "Beverly Hills Cop". "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom".
Speaking of Dr. Jones, I saw the fourth installment yesterday, and I’m sorry to say that it does not bear up to the wait or the hype. Harrison Ford will be 66 in a couple of weeks, and the trappings of a contemporary Spielberg action blockbuster reinforce that fact, and painfully. Ford was always great at playing stiff and sore after a long fight; now he’s stiff and sore going in. He’s older than Sean Connery was when the Scotsman played his father, and Spielberg treated Connery with proper respect. Here, the director has the sense to bring back Karen Allen and treat her like a gentleman would, but too bad that isn’t the case with the hero this time.
And the plot! What the—? Spielberg doesn’t always know when his access to Industrial Light and Magic and CGI gets the better of him. In fact, the best film of the four Indiana Jones movies is the second, "Temple of Doom". The special effects there support the story and the action, which is pretty realistic. In fact, the film caused a ruckus because of the scene where the Thuggee cult leader takes a living heart out of a man’s chest. I’d be willing to bet that if there had been the amount of metaphysical nonsense there is in the other three films, that scene would have passed by relatively unnoticed. In "Temple" the action sequences, no matter how farfetched, remained otherwise plausible. Sure, they pushed the limits of plausibility, but they succeeded.
I’ve already written about "SATC", but I want to put a plug in for "Iron Man". If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s by far the wittiest and savviest and liveliest of this summer’s popcorn movies. In fact, even in its weaker moments, it’s everything the Indiana Jones franchise is at its best. Downey has always been an amazing actor, part of his talent being his self-conscious awareness of his awesome talent. He has very nearly become a larger-than-life personality, and the movie plays to that idea. Pitt and Clooney are much-too-much larger-than-life. It makes it hard not to see their star power despite roles as simple and good as the ones they had in "Babel" and "Syriana" respectively. Johnny Depp, on the other hand, has learned since his Viper Club and Winona days to play his celebrity cards more discreetly, and has remained not quite larger-than-life. This continues to allow him to slide into roles as diverse as J.M. Barrie or Sweeney Todd, just as Downey slid in and out of the underrated "Zodiac" and the unseen "Singing Detective". I hope he'll be able to learn from Depp’s example. He’s talented enough to take your breath away and should play Indiana Jones in the next movie. Speaking of breath, it would resusitate all of Spielberg's stale ideas. Imagine Downey in a Spielberg film! He’s all the special effects a director needs.