#Sleepwalker (2017)

[fanofspooky]

Scream King - Haley Joel Osment

[randommoviess]

[drinkinboilingcoffee]

william with party like it's 1987 ?

Party Like It’s 1987 for William and Below The Surface For Michael! I’m gonna ruin both their days!

(Ummmmmm are black and white and shading cheating?)

[thezombiegeekinthehawaiianshirt]

[riepu10]

Dr. Scott White Sleepwalker (2017)

[wolfboywarmachines]

+

song holds every color of the rainbow

"rose colored boy" - paramore (2017) // "red" - taylor swift (2012) // "something in the orange" - zach bryan (2022) // "yellow" - coldplay (2011) // "colors" - halsey (2015) // "green light" - lorde (2017) // "sleepwalker" - of monsters and men (2019) // "violet" - hole (1995) // "edge of seventeen" - stevie nicks (1981) // "back to black" - amy winehouse (2006) // "sober up" - ajr ft. rivers cuomo (2017)

[haveyouseenthishorrormovie]

Stats from Movies 201-300

Top 10 Movies - Highest Number of Votes

Return of the Living Dead had the most votes with 1763 votes.

The 10 Most Watched Films by Percentage

The Shining was the most watched film with 78.96% of voters saying they had seen it.

The 10 Least Watched Films by Percentage

The Human Centipede was the least watched film with 74.6% of voters saying they hadn't seen it.

The 10 Most Known Films by Percentage

The Shining was the best known film with only 0.48% of voters saying they'd never heard of it.

The 10 Least Known Films by Percentage

Late Phases was the least known film with 86.64% of voters saying they'd never heard of it.

The movies part of the statistic count and their polls below the cut.

Detention (2019) Deep Freeze (2001) Five Nights at Freddy's (2023) The Boy (2016) Spree (2020) They Look Like People (2015) Proxy (2013) 28 Days Later (2002) Grave Encounters (2011) Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) Nosferatu (1922) The Toxic Avenger (1984) The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009) Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) Haunt (2019) Blood Quantum (2019) Videodrome (1983) Splinter (2008) The Last Days on Mars (2013)

Late Phases (2014) The Wolf of Snow Hollow (2020) Watcher (2022) The Blackening (2022) No One Will Save You (2023) The Sadness (2021) Sleepwalkers (1992) Mimic (1997) His House (2020) Get Out (2017)

Barbarian (2022) Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022) Men (2022) Phantasm (1979) The Belko Experiment (2016) The Purge (2013) The Strangers (2008) The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018) Overlord (2018) Sinister (2012)

Candyman (2021) The Shining (1980) Doctor Sleep (2019) The Stuff (1985) The Blob (1988) Signs (2002) The Visit (2015) The Fly (1958) Sleepaway Camp (1983) The Brood (1979)

Intruder (1989) The Evil Dead (1981) Evil Dead II (1987) Army of Darkness (1992) Evil Dead (2013) Evil Dead Rise (2023) Pontypool (2008) Final Destination (2000) Final Destination 2 (2003) Final Destination 3 (2006)

The Final Destination (2009) Final Destination 5 (2011) StageFright (1987) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) Ju-on: The Grudge (2002) Centipede! (2004) Excision (2008) Return of the Living Dead (1985 Frankenhooker (1990)

Crash (1996) Orca (1977) Wish Upon (2017) Things (1989) Cooties (2014) Glorious (2022) Terrified (2017) Diabolique (1955) In My Skin (2002) Death Bed: The Bed That Eats (1977)

Funhouse (2019) Blood Rage (1987) Carnival of Souls (1962) The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) Horror of Dracula (1958) Bride of Frankenstein (1935) City of the Living Dead (1980) Piercing (2018) Spider Baby (1967) The Haunting (1963)

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) Malatesta's Carnival of Blood (1973) The Blob (1958) Tourist Trap (1979) Death Game (1977) Knock Knock (2015) Funny Games (1997) Funny Games (2007) The Company of Wolves (1984) The Stepford Wives (1975)

[smoshidiot]

hey guys: i ranked every smosh video

yes, every. single. smosh video. (every main channel sketch from 2005-2017 + 2023)

here it is under the cut if for some damn reason you're curious

♡ ABSOLUTE FAVES ♡ Paranormal Easy Bake Oven Sleepwalking Disaster Mortal Kombat Theme Food Battle 2006 Food Battle 2023 The Legend of Zelda Rap Axe Murderer Battleship Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Theme Boxman's Girlfriend Pokemon Theme Ian's Birthday Anthony Gets a Haircut Pokemon Theme REVENGE That Damn Neighbor Assassins Creed 3 Song My Dead Friend Boxman 2.0 Boxman Smosh Short 1: Dolls Unitarded A Very Hairy Situation w/Billy Mays Anthony is Mexican Left Handed Magic Keyboard Food Battle 2007 That Damn Yard Sale Four Years Foreplay Pokemon In Real Life Stuck in a Toilet My Mom's AMAZING Video Sex Ed Rocks Going to the Mountains Stop Copying Me! Cursed Magic 8 Ball We Rule High School Dixon Cider Smosh the Movie Real Death Note Firetruck I Broke My Foot 1 Hour Special Ghostmates Food Battle 2008 The Ultimate Shoedown WTF! I'm Old! Food Battle 2010 Dolls: 10 Years Later The Real Party Song Kiss Currency PRETTY DAMN GOOD

Smash Rap Molester Moon Hand Bomb Sleeping Pill Disaster My Grandpa's Dirty Secret Food Battle 2011 Quest for the Scooter Smosh Found Dead Garrett's Blog How Not to Act on a First Date Longest Staring Contest Ever Extreme Sleepover Hardcore Max Real Voodoo Doll He's Driving Me Crazy First Person Shooters Suck Drink Your Own Piss Parents SuckWe're Stuck Together We Finally Released Our Banned Video Boxman for President Cat Soup I Caught Every Pokemon Ian is Dangerous Ian's First Girlfriend Ian Gets Lucky Manspider Happy Cow Food Battle 2012 Pizza Zombies Food Battle 2013 Evil Fortune Cookie Hardcore Max 2 Food Battle 2014 License Test Toy Airplane Food Battle X Finger Guns Google Glass SUCKS My Mutant Rash The NEW Smosh TV Show That Damn Shower EDITOR! Camp in a Van Sexual Sun Every Smosh Video Ever Addicted to Selfies Hide and Seek My Best Friend is a Robot How Google's Space Ship Failed Business Boy Emoji Curse Human Pokemon Battle Rejected Zelda Games We're Stuck in Fan Fiction

I LIKED THIS ONE

A Hairy Situation w/ Billy Mays Anthony's Death That Damn Prison Break Anthony's Resurrection Evil AI Tried to Kill Me We Summoned a Demon Help I Became an NPC Stranded Transformers Theme How Not to Make a First Impression The Best Car EVER Reunited? The HauntingMale Model Replacement Needed Easy Step April First Evil Chain Letter Power Rangers Theme Life as Ghosts Ep 1-4 Crybaby I'm Not Racist Pokemon In Real Life 2 The BEST Bottled Water Meeting My Identical Twin I Killed the Tooth Fairy Guys' Guide to Hugging Guys My Real Pet Pikachu Homeless Millionaire The Ditto - Movie Trailer Meat In Your Mouth I Love Lou Ferigno Anthony Poses for Playgirl?! Vader and Me Killer Teddy Bear That Damn Punishment Arm Wrestling TO THE DEATH If Superheroes Were Real Worst Twist Endings Ever I'm Naked Pokemon In Real Life 3 How to Cover Up a Murder The World's First Internet Tutorial Motion Games Suck I'm Possessed By a Demon Addicted to Honey Boo Boo Child My New Best Friend is a Robot My Weird Addiction Food Battle 2013 Assassins Creed 4 Song So Many Hickies Guns Suck My Morning Routine Guy's Guide to Being Manly Jurassic Pokemon Magic iPad 21 Things I'd Rather Do Than Smoke Netflix Rap Video Game Items In Real Life My Hot Online Girlfriend Murder Party

[lemonwater8600]

playlist I wrote out for my sister if any of you care

Songs

Harpy Hare - Yaelorke

Emo Boy - Ayesha Erotica

dumb dumb - mazie 

Nights like these - pigeon pit

The moon will sing - the crane wives

Rule #34 - fish in a birdcage

Liquid courage - McCafferty

Big mouth strikes again - 2017 master - the smiths

I bet on losing dogs - Mitski 

I wanna be yours - arctic monkeys

Bad idea! - girl in red

Get it up - mindless self indulgence 

Blue hair - tv girl

Lovers rock - tv girl

Frances forever - Mitski

HEAVEN SAYS. - chart

I like the way you kiss me - artemas 

Call me what you like - lvjy 

4 morant ( better luck next time) - com truise 

Inside out - duster

Honey I’m home - ghost and pals

Pork soda - glass animals

A crows trial - vane lily

Rät - Penelope Scott

Bottom - McCafferty

Father - the front bottoms

505 - arctic monkeys

Digital silence - Peter McPoland 

Gasoline - Halsey

Where is smiley? - serani poji

Strawberry blond - Mitski 

Under my skin - jukebox the ghost

Be gay, do drugs, hail satan - super cassette 

Saint Bernard - Lincoln

Brutus - the buttress

Community gardens - the scary jokes

Spamton - Toby fox

Meet lime cookie - twintails edition - tsundere twintails

Nepo baby - fox szn 

Jersey nova - cactusteam 

Last words of a shooting star - Mitski

The moss - cosmo sheldrake

2econd-2ight-2eer (that was fun, goodbye) - will wood

Katamari - femtanyl

Dogmatica- femtanyl

Sex, drugs, etc. - beach weather 

Art is dead - bo burnham

Control - halsey 

Plug me in - lil soda boi

No children - the mountain goats 

Home where - sir Chloe

Angel eyes and basketball - foot ox

Sleepwalk - Forrest day

Wasted summers - juju<3

Crass - neovaii

Kiss me, son of god - they might be giants

We will commit wolf murder - of Montreal 

Puppet loosely strung - the correspondents 

Spy? - WHOKILLEDXIX

Why’d you only call me when your high - arctic monkeys

Cold weather - glass beach

Person in the mirror - naethan apollo 

[onboardsorasora]

Fic Masterlist 2

I'll add all my Dewis/ OT3 fics here.

My Ao3: Quesorasora

Dewis Sleepwalking fic - Rated everybody

Dewis Sleepwalking Pt2

Ao3 link - sleepwalker, don't be shy

summary: Daniel wakes up in Lewis' room... that's not where he fell asleep

Vampire AU Kisses | Fluffy Vampire AU

summary:

Lewis' new boyfriend Daniel is a vampire. That's it, that's the tweet.

The Marriage Certificate

Summary:

Dear Mr Hamiltion, We regret to inform you that your application of Engagement and Betrothal has been REJECTED for the following reasons:

There is already a Certification of Marriage and Family in your name. 

If you would like to…

Sugar Baby Daniel :

How they met | Lewis Signed to Ferrari | Winter break | a lil backstory | Dior Fashion Show afterparty | The apartment | John Elkann | Future Pregnancy drabble | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Australia | Bowling | Dirtbiking in Perth | Lewis Wins Silverstone |

3 Roses

summary:

Roses inked into the skin can be a symbol of love lost and won. Of passion and desire. Lewis and Daniel have matching rose tattoos.

The story of Dewis from the 2017 season - situationship -> heartbreak -> getting back together

The First of Everything

summary:

Baby Gay Daniel goes to the club for a good time. Lewis wants to eat him whole.

PWP inspired by this photo

you can have my everything

summary:

This was on par with the kind of pictures Daniel would send him to tease. Normally a precursor to a full nude photo– artistic or otherwise. But this wasn't a photo sent to him by his boyfriend. This wasn't a teasing picture of what he was going home to.

No, this was a PR approved photo posted to 7.2 million people.

Anxiety Drabble - Cop!Lewis Sex Worker!Daniel

Escort Drabble

Corporate AU

Dragon Knights

Hidden Pregnancy AU | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Aus Quali Feel Good

Bodyguard AU - Bodyguard Daniel Tag - Daniel teaching Italian | Little Spoon Prompt | Rowdy Fan

Something Something Drabble

Misunderstanding Drabble

Designer!Lewis

Lewis/Daniel/Max

The Chalet

Summary:

This was not the holiday Daniel envisioned when Charles proposed a group trip. Switzerland was beautiful, no doubt about that. Daniel had prepared to be cold and the sleepy village in the Alps had not disappointed on that front either.  What he hadn’t expected was the roommate situation.

Notorious Criminals Drabble

Daniel Turns into a Girl Drabble

Blake/Daniel

Pre Wedding Day Drabble - silver moon's sparkling on AO3

Daniel/Josh

RicAllen Beats Commercial - the legend of ricallen on AO3

Christian/Daniel/Max

Mob Wife Daniel

Mob Wife Daniel pt2 + More thots

[april-is]

April 8, 2023: Neither Time Nor Grief is a Flat Circle, Christina Olson

Neither Time Nor Grief is a Flat Circle Christina Olson

The camellias are blooming in the rain, red and pink, real-life Valentine’s Day decorations. Their petals are not confetti or streamers, their petals are decaying organic matter that will fall and rot and feed the ground. And whoever said that grief was a flat circle was wrong, too; our friend Andy is dead now, and my grief is not flat. My grief is a sharp, hot thing that pokes me in the spine whenever I am crabbily unloading our dishwasher or I spend another Saturday sleepwalking the internet. Your one precious life, says my grief. Huh. I tell my grief to get lost but it stays here with me, wedges itself between my hip and the arm of the couch, like a dog that wants to be close but doesn’t really understand physics. Like it is a dog, I push my grief away and then I feel bad and invite it back, pat the cushion next to me, smell its wet breath. It’s oppressive, this grief, yet without it I feel terribly alone, wandering through the pandemic. The virus didn’t kill Andy—his heart quit. He went into a coma and he died. One day he was alive and now he’s not. The camellias are wet in the rain, no one told them about Andy. One day I’ll have more dead friends than living ones and people will think I’m lucky because that means I’ll have lived a long time. And that I had friends. I thought that writing this poem might help, but it didn’t. And so I tip this poem into an envelope and I mail it to you, reader. It’s yours now: the grief, the dog, the shuddering flowers. When you are lonely, this poem falls out of the book you’re not reading. You’re crying now, or maybe it’s just the rain.

--

(Did you catch the Mary Oliver allusion?)

Other poems on COVID and on grief.

Today in: 

2022: Pippi Longstocking, Sandra Simonds 2021: Waking After the Surgery, Leila Chatti 2020: Gutbucket, Kevin Young 2019: Insomnia, Linda Pastan 2018: How Many Nights, Galway Kinnell 2017: The Little Book of Hand Shadows, Deborah Digges 2016: Now I Pray, Kathy Engel 2015: Why I’m Here, Jacqueline Berger 2014: Snow, Aldo, Kate DiCamillo 2013: from The Escape, Philip Levine 2012: Thirst, Mary Oliver 2011: Getting Away with It, Jack Gilbert 2010: *turning, Annie Guthrie 2009: I Don’t Fear Death, Sandra Beasley 2008: The Dover Bitch, Anthony Hecht 2007: Death Comes To Me Again, A Girl, Dorianne Laux 2006: Up Jumped Spring, Al Young 2005: Old Women in Eliot Poems, David Wright

[randommoviess]

[moviesandseriesscreenshots]

Movie And Series (Screenshot COLLECTIONS 2024)

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈•

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈• Oscar Isaac

(part1)

MOVIES I'VE WATCHED FOR OSCAR ISSAC (but didn't get any screenshots):

The Addams Family

Moon Knights

Inside Llewyn Davis

Ex Machina

Sucker Punch

The Two Faces of January

Won't Back Down

Triple Frontiers

Life Itself

The Promise

A Most Violent Year

The Card Counter

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

In Secret

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Dune

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈•

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈• David Tennant

(part1 | part2 | part3 | part4)

Doctor Who

Doctor Who (part1 | part2)

MOVIES I'VE WATCHED FOR DAVID TENNANT (but didn't get any screenshots):

Good Omens

Bad Samaritan

Fright Night

Jessica Jones S1

Staged

Inside Man TV

A Much Do Ado

Casanova

Single Father

Doctor Who (not all)

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈•

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈• Aidan Turner

Poldark S1 (part1 | part2 | part3 | part4) And Then There Were None (part1 | part2) Love Is Blind / Beautiful Darkness (part1) Desperate Romantics (part1 | part2 | part3 | part4 | part5)

Being Human S1 (part1 | part2 | part3) Being Human S2 (part4 | part5 | part6 | part7 | part8 | part9)

(ON HOLD)

MOVIES I'VE WATCHED FOR AIDAN TURNER (but didn't get any screenshots):

Hobbit

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈•

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈• Richard Armitage

SleepWalker (part1 | part2) Fool Me Once (part1 ) Uncle Vanya (part1)

MOVIES I'VE WATCHED FOR RICHARD ARMITAGE (but didn't get any screenshots):

Hobbit

Ocean's 8

The Vicar of Dibley: A Handsome Stranger

Obsession

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈•

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈• Dean O'Gorman

Pork Pie 2017 (part1)

MOVIES I'VE WATCHED FOR DEAN O'GORMAN (but didn't get any screenshots):

Hobbit

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈•

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈•

Judd Nelson

The Breakfast Club (part1 | part2 | part3) St. Elmo's Fire (part1 | part2) Relentless (part1 | part2 | part3 | part4)

•┈••✦ ❤ ✦••┈•

For more screenshot contents: @randommoviess

EXTRA Our Flag Means Death (part1) Wallpaper (part1) Seven Brides for Seven Brothers 1954 Beauty and the Beast 2016 part1 | part2)

Wednesday

Dead Poets Society

Oscar Isaac

The Promise

Anne With An E

Sweet Tooth

Good Omens

Disney's Once Upon a Studio

The Lord of The Rings

[tygerbug]

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (2023) - A local carpenter and weed dealer who transitioned into bit-part acting in the 60s, Harrison Ford is now 80 years old, and still somehow unretired. Indiana Jones, meanwhile, is supposed to be about seventy. The equivalent would be if Indy's father, Sean Connery, was still playing James Bond in 2010. I'd say that Ford (and by extension all Boomers and above) should step aside and let someone like Chris Pine, Ryan Gosling or James Marsden make a movie like this, but we'd probably get Chris Pratt, Jared Leto, or Shia LeBoeuf instead, so I'll just have to let it slide. This time.

With a $294.7 million budget (Raiders of the Lost Ark cost 20 million in 1980), a large amount of CGI has been employed, along with green screen, stunt doubling, deepfaking, de-aging, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, to make it seem like Harrison Ford is still a viable action hero. To be clear, he absolutely is too old for this, and it is absolutely a bad idea to make this movie. The $185 million "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" was an equally bad idea back in 2008, and it has somehow been 15 years since then.

I don't know if it's elder abuse or simply audience abuse to keep making these, but in both cases, an aging Harrison Ford is more engaged and interested in this role onscreen than he is in just about any other. 1982's Blade Runner gave us Harrison Ford in his prime, sleepwalking, disinterested and sullen. Now in 2023, Ford is visibly too old to be doing this CGI superhero bullshit, in a sequel that is forty years too little and too late, but he's committed to the role enough that he just about gets it to work. After a tepic reception at Cannes, the film is getting very good reviews and buzz, so I'll be the one to break from the pack and say that it doesn't work for me. Oh, no one involved embarrasses him or herself. Under the circumstances, it's a miracle that the movie is as good as it is. It's a bad idea that just about justifies its own existence.

A small caveat here: There may have been something wrong with the sound setup at the theater where I saw this. I couldn't understand a word being said for large chunks of the runtime, starting with a chaotic sequence in Morocco. But I don't think I actually missed anything. Maybe the sound mixing is just like that, Chris Nolan style. The opening sequence, with a younger Ford de-aged via CGI, was very dark and murky visually. In Imax, I could see the pixels on the screen, especially the bright white on black titles.

But I think the key problem for me is that I guess I don't like James Mangold as the director for this sort of thing. I haven't seen his full filmography, and he's clearly well regarded. But I have seen his dreary films about an aging Wolverine. 2013's "The Wolverine" sees the Hugh Jackman X-Men character travel to Japan and murder every single person he meets with his adamantium claws. At one point the female sidekick is mulching guys into paste with a snowplow. In 2017's Logan, he's older and unhappy about the situation, as he gets into danger with a child. These were, for me, examples of taking a superhero film way too seriously, as if gunning for the Oscar with a script that doesn't stand up to thinking about it for more than a minute or so. You wouldn't see a movie about Superman murdering a few thousand Japanese guys, because it's not a fair fight. "The Wolverine" (2013) wounds Logan just enough that he can plausibly act like the underdog, but he's a more-or-less immortal killing machine with knives coming out of his wrists.

It's hard to make a good film, and these films are polished, stylish, action-packed and memorable in many ways. But they also leave a bad taste in my mouth, comparable to the work of Zack Snyder. There's a lack of humanity to them. I could have predicted that in this Indiana Jones movie, Indy would constantly be murdering people, and that people would constantly be getting into accidents that kill them in horrific implied ways, and that the bad guys would kill any notable character that the plot isn't relying on.

That is what you get here, and admittedly it gives the film a certain energy. You don't get the sense that this is the cleaned-up Disney version of Indiana Jones, where everything is censored. You feel the danger. But it also forces me to be the party pooper and point out that this film lacks the magic that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas brought to the property. Steven Spielberg is hard to replace. He is the most famous and beloved film director of our time, and he has always brought an aura of wonder to the screen that other filmmakers can't really imitate … with only occasional exceptions like the uncanny valley animated "Tintin" film.

It's unfair to expect James Mangold to fully replace Spielberg, and under the circumstances I'm not surprised they went with a director who presumably considers his work to be Very Important Cinema. Mangold manages to deliver lots of action, and make it feel like "an Indiana Jones movie," when forty years later it probably shouldn't. But it's just not the same, for a lot of reasons.

Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) is an extremely tight two hours which works like clockwork. There's a lot of wit and character to it, but it's that precision filmmaking which makes many people call it "a perfect film." It doesn't slow down very often. It's always doing something interesting visually, and always moving forward. Every Indiana Jones film ever since has tried to recapture that.

We have a problem here, which is that an eighty (or seventy) year old Indiana Jones is more of a character role, who we could expect to talk about what he's learned over the years. And an Indiana Jones movie cannot slow down for something like that, even for a second. Or at least this movie can't. The script is also not funny enough to lend much character to the proceedings, so we don't get much sense of who these people are as they're speeding around on green screens at a hundred miles per hour. The end product is chaotic, often to the point of incoherence. Everyone is almost always moving at great speed, for reasons which aren't always adequately set up. To repeat, they're moving at great speed whether or not there is a good reason for them to be doing so. They are often on green screen, or visibly stunt doubled, and one of them is eighty years old.

There's also a lot of fighting on the tops of trains and from moving vehicles. Why do the bad guys take a wounded Indy along with them as they enact their entire plan? As far as I can tell, no reason is given, except that it's a movie and Indiana Jones needs to be there for it. Helena also manages to board the plane while it's in flight, and Teddy manages to get another plane going, for the reason that these are the characters who are in the film, and they need to be there for the end of it.

The script contradicts itself constantly, and feels like bits of different drafts were combined with one another randomly. Why is Indiana Jones teaching in July, preparing his students for mid-terms or finals, then also retiring in July on the same day? Why is he coincidentally teaching his disinterested class about the same subject that the film is about, when it's a touchy subject which secretly tore entire families apart in the film's backstory? Why do we keep meeting his close friends, that he's apparently spent decades with, for about two lines of dialogue before they get shot?

The result lacks character. As with the Crystal Skull film, stunt casting is used in place of giving us scenes that show who these characters are. I can believe that Antonio Banderas is a salty old scuba diver who has had many good times with Indiana Jones over the years. I can believe that because he's Antonio Banderas, but the film expects that to be enough for us, and gives him very little of interest to do. And Toby Jones' character, an academic who's not cut out for being an action hero, would be very uninteresting if it wasn't played by a character actor like Toby Jones. (Crystal Skull pulled similar shenanigans with Jim Broadbent, John Hurt, Ray Winstone, and Cate Blanchett.)

John Rhys-Davies shows up briefly as the returning character of Sallah, looking every day of his 79 years of age. I expect they wanted to keep any action with Rhys-Davies to a minimum, so we find him appearing in the movie for no real reason, except that this is an Indiana Jones movie and therefore he ought to be in it. I agree with that, but bringing these characters back one last time has an eerie David Lynch quality about it.

Mads Mikkelsen plays the memorable (if very standard) villain, a semi-retired Nazi called Dr. Voller. It's ideal casting, although it raises questions to have the 57-year-old actor playing the part in both 1944 and 1969. He is noticeably de-aged in the 1944 scenes, with a few less lines and wrinkles, but Harrison Ford manages to age 35 years in the same time (ten more than he ought to). A whole lot of CGI is used to give Indiana Jones one more adventure in 1944, and it's technically impressive, if still a bit noticeable and distracting. Toward the end of the sequence, a little too much of it takes place in the dark - not to hide the quality of the CGI but because movies tend to be too dark now.

Boyd Holbrook is memorable as a trigger-happy American who gives off Neo-Nazi vibes which aren't deeply explored. Ethann Isidore plays the sidekick, a thieving street rat kid called Teddy. Shaunette Renee Wilson plays a CIA agent, I think. Olivier Richters plays the guy who is 7 foot two. You know, I'm not sure that an 80 year old Indy and a 16 year old Teddy are really a match for this guy.

It is getting into spoiler territory to say that Karen Allen appears as Marion, although that won't surprise anyone either. It is definitely getting into spoiler territory to say what became of their relationship after the Crystal Skull film, and these are some of the only moments in the film where Harrison Ford really gets to act and lay out his character's backstory. I wish we'd gotten more of this. I've seen complaints about this storyline, saying it robs the character of a lot of his charm, and is too similar to plotlines in the Star Wars sequels, and the Blade Runner sequel. I can see that, but when sequels come this late, they really have to be about regret, and this storyline works better than anything else in the film. Although I couldn't help but think that this elderly couple began - in Raiders - with Marion punching her former Professor, who had clearly had an inappropriate relationship with her when she was a minor. The 30s were a different time, and so were the 80s. Marion's role is also very small here. It is crucial that she be present, but the film is not interested in exploring her character any more deeply than that.

We don't get Ke Huy Quan's Short Round, as his career only picked up this past year with a memorable role in Everything Everywhere All at Once. It's easy to imagine the character showing up in either Crystal Skull or this film as one of the leads, rather than these new characters, but that wasn't something they considered writing for the slightly embarrassing kid sidekick from "Temple of Doom." And speaking of embarrassing …

The "Crystal Skull" character of Mutt, played by Shia LeBoeuf, was covered in the press at the time as a character who could replace Harrison Ford in the Indiana Jones films, played by an up and coming young actor whose career was given a huge boost by the Spielberg seal of approval here, leading to the equally annoying character of Sam Witwicky in the Michael Bay Transformers films (the first in 2007). And yes, in the actual film, Shia LeBoeuf is deeply uncool and mostly just a nuisance.

Pretty much every male nerd of a certain age wanted, and still wants, to be "cool" like Indiana Jones. Any internet reviewer, of the Angry Video Game Nerd variety, will put on a complete Indiana Jones cosplay for their review of this film, as they did with Crystal Skull, and they'll think they're being slick with it. The leather jacket, the shirt, the hat, the whip. All clothing items that they already, apparently, had. Nobody wanted to be Shia LeBoeuf's Mutt Williams. He's got a 50s greaser look which doesn't suit him, making him look less like Marlon Brando than like Michael Cera's Wally Brando, from Twin Peaks. Indeed Cera might have been better in the role. Shia is a very reactive actor, and could theoretically have pulled off a Michael J. Fox type role which required that. But planting the idea that he could replace Indiana Jones nearly ruined his career here, because he very clearly doesn't have the necessary swagger. The movie itself even confirms this. In the end, Mutt picks up Indy's trademark hat, and Indy grabs it right back from him. This can be seen as a metaphor for how this series has gone, and also for how the Boomer generation, and older folks who came of age in the 60s and 70s, have refused to retire and let the younger generation take over for them.

Okay, so maybe Shia LeBoeuf was never going to replace Indiana Jones, a character originally offered to the hairy-chested Tom Selleck. But perhaps another actor could have. Harrison Ford seems iconic and irreplaceable now, but in the 70s he was a weed dealer and carpenter who did bit parts on the side. While it's fun to see Indiana Jones come back one last time, it's also a metaphor for Hollywood leaning back on successes from over four decades ago, and refusing to create anything truly new. Shia was set up to fail, because he looks and acts young in a movie that sees his youth as embarrassing. It didn't actually give us a "new Indiana Jones type," and Dial of Destiny doesn't either.

Shia LeBoeuf eventually left the Transformers franchise. We're told that he was killed off between films. And then there were the allegations, as his behavior, according to the newspapers, became ever stranger and more erratic. "FKA twigs Sues Shia LaBeouf, Citing ‘Relentless’ Abusive Relationship. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles by the musician, accuses the actor of sexual battery, assault and infliction of emotional distress."

Shia LeBoeuf does not appear in this film.

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V ernyyl gubhtug jr'q trg gjb Vaqvnan Wbarfrf gubhtu. V gubhtug gung'f jul gurl jrer frggvat hc gur gvzr geniry ryrzrag naq gur qr-ntrq Vaql ng gur ortvaavat. V gubhtug gung jr jrer tbvat gb ybbc nebhaq naq trg zber jvgu obgu Vaqvrf. V jnf abg rkpvgrq nobhg jung jr npghnyyl tbg.

I have not yet mentioned the rest of the plot, which involves the Greek mathematician Archimedes and is stupid. At one point there is a dull scuba-diving sequence where Indy is attacked by equally dull CGI eels. At another point we get the welcome return of the red line on a map which marks which country Indiana Jones is going to next.

There's also the matter of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who wrote and starred in Fleabag on the stage in 2013, and on television in 2016 and 2019. Her character is equal parts charismatic and off-putting, attractive and reprehensible. (Phoebe also appeared in "Broadchurch," contributed to "James Bond 007: No Time to Die" and created Crashing and Killing Eve.) Despite a strong outing in Fleabag, it took Lucasfilm some time to do anything interesting with her. Her voice role as feminist android L3-37 in "Solo: A Star Wars Story" (2018) is baffling. It may have made more sense before rewrites and reshoots replaced directors Lord & Miller with Ron Howard. But it also runs afoul of a recurring problem in Star Wars, which is that droids seem to be fully developed, intelligent, sentient beings, who are never treated as if they're deserving of human rights. Star Wars never deals with this in any meaningful way, and it's an exposed electrical wire that they often get tripped up on, especially in animated television shows like The Clone Wars.

Anyway, I think this movie, the Dial of Destiny, has a problem with women. There are a lot of characters in this movie that aren't deeply explored or explained, but none of them quite like Helena Shaw, played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Unless I missed something during all the dialogue I couldn't understand, this doesn't feel like an actual consistent character. It feels like several very different characters from several very different drafts of several very different movies, all stapled together more or less randomly.

The performance is fine - Phoebe Waller-Bridge is charismatic and delivers every line with a wink and a twinkle. Her character is also just deeply insane, and her motivations never make sense. She is also, I think, playing an entirely different character by the end of the film, who is a more traditional hero, and expecting us to believe that she's been playing that character the entire time. As with her character in Solo, this should probably be funny, but isn't, because it's not written to be funny or make very much sense. Helena is, depending on the scene, the puppetmaster in charge of the entire adventure, or coming along reluctantly and making it up as she goes. She is also, depending on the scene, only in it for the money, or very deeply invested in this academic mystery and adventure. She is ready to sell off the Dial of Destiny to pay off gambling debts, because it's either the most meaningful thing in the world to her, or not meaningful at all. Sometimes she's a straightforward hero, or sidekick to the hero. She is also just deeply insane and often untrustworthy, going goblin mode in a way that may have been funny or interesting in a different draft of this script.

It is likely, considering her repeated lines that she's "in it for the money," that they intended Helena to be similar to Harrison Ford as Han Solo. But I think this movie has a problem with women, and failed to write her as a complete person with motivations that make sense. There is one scene in Greece where, to test how a location echoes, Helena starts shout-singing Beethoven's Fifth. Phoebe plays this a little bit wacky, so this feels like the setup for some comedic banter, probably with Indy being annoyed by this. But he just goes along with it and does the same. Helena Shaw is an eccentric performance in search of a better script which would actually explain what she's doing, or make it funnier.

The character clearly has a sense of humor, and is carrying a lot of trauma, and has a lot going on in her backstory, and none of it matters. This could have been a journey where her character changes over the course of the adventure, and maybe they think that's what they accomplished here. It feels more, to me, like this is four different characters held together by one performance.

The character we get as a result is acceptable, and at least she doesn't have the weight of having to possibly replace Indiana Jones, which made Mutt Williams so worrying. But it's also a character delivered with a wink to the audience, and another wink to Indiana Jones himself, as if this is all one grand joke that we're all in on. At no point was I in on this joke, so that didn't work for me. Throughout the film she does things that could easily cause the death of the very elderly Indiana Jones, as well as herself, and it just never matters because this script was rewritten a thousand times and has inconsistent internal logic.

Early scenes in the film set Indy up as a man out of time in a changing world, an interesting character note which is largely forgotten once he puts that hat back on, something he only does because it's an Indiana Jones movie and that's what Indiana Jones wears. For all of the film's chaotic, frenetic action, it's at its best when it's about an old man complaining about his life. There's a brief scene where Indy complains to Helena about the state of his body, and this angle really is curiously underexplored in The Dial of Destiny. At 80 years old, Harrison Ford is not a young action hero. This has become, whether Lucasfilm likes it or not, a character actor part. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is also performing Helena as more of a character-actor part. So I think this could have been a better movie than it is if they stopped pretending that this is an Indiana Jones movie and let it go completely off the rails and become a disaster. Like when a Sam Raimi or David Lynch film loses interest in what it's supposed to be doing, and pursues something more nonsensical for awhile. I think that would be better than what we got. I don't think the Dial of Destiny is bad, but I question all of the cultural decisions that led it to be made in the first place.

Does Indiana Jones, even at eighty, deserve one last hurrah? Sure, but we all deserve one last hurrah and we don't usually get them. If you wanted to make this movie, the time to do so was in the 1980s, or 90s if Ford was interested then.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came out in 1989. (Remember "It belongs in a museum!" "So do you!") It was intended as the last hurrah for an aging Indiana Jones, and we've now gotten three of those, which is more than the two movies that preceded it, both of which purport to be Indiana Jones' first adventure. If you take into account the Young Indiana Jones TV series, all of Indiana Jones' live action adventures are either his first ever adventure, or his last ever adventure. Sometimes they're both - Last Crusade has a Young Indiana Jones segment (the weakest part of the film), Dial of Destiny has a Relatively Young Indiana Jones segment, and The Young Indiana Jones has Indy as a one-eyed old man. Or at least it did; George Lucas has cut those scenes from re-releases. At least we get one episode in season 5 where a bearded 1993 Harrison Ford plays the saxophone.

That wasn't what we wanted either; we wanted Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis in 1993. The Indiana Jones film series was based on older adventure movies whose influence is, I think, nowhere to be found in the new film. Those films were probably familiar to audiences in 1981 but unfamiliar to even the filmmakers in 2023. Enough time has passed that many other series trying to recapture the Indiana Jones formula have come and gone. We've had The Mummy series. We've had multiple Lara Croft Tomb Raiders. We've had multiple Scrooge McDucks. Everyone is trying to capture that sense of old-fashioned adventure with a little comedy, and they're usually better at the comedy than Dial of Destiny is.

Full disclosure: I don't think Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull is as bad as its reputation, or at least I didn't when I saw it in theaters in 2008. I've not bothered with it since. As I recall, I was invited to see it in Los Angeles, with a friend from high school and his friend group. We couldn't all get tickets together, so I was separated. I was in either another row, or in another theater entirely. After the show, they greeted me with sarcastic feigned enthusiasm, saying "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull rocks!" and high-fiving me. I hadn't especially liked the film either, but soon realized that I'd made a complete fool of myself, in their eyes, by having any opinion about it more complicated than "wow, that was complete garbage."

Folks, Harrison Ford was 66 years old at the time. It was two decades late to be as good as "The Last Crusade." Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had both gone to some weird places in their careers, and George's contribution was always going to include some peculiar story beats and very obvious CGI. It was about aliens.

The writers included David Koepp, who as far as I could tell is a terrible writer who was often paid a lot of money to write films that turned out very good in spite of him. David Koepp was also a writer of The Dial of Destiny. It's hard to tell, from a finished film, whether the actual screenplay was well written or not. People in Hollywood know this - that a bad movie can come from a good script, and that sometimes they know enough to judge a writer for that script rather than that film. David Koepp is credited for writing films that I like, so I might wonder why I was so convinced he's not a good writer. But those movies were mostly based on strong IP which did a lot of the work for him. It felt like Panic Room and War of the Worlds (2005) succeeded in spite of their screenplays. And what about the Johnny Depp thriller Secret Window (2004)? Show me what he can do without Steven Spielberg to clean up his messes.

Anyway, my expectations were not that high for Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. I wasn't expecting something as good as Raiders or Last Crusade. I was expecting an elderly Harrison Ford, with a pretty bad script, and pretty obvious CGI, that would be trying to look like a vintage adventure visually but be easily dated to 2008 throughout. Dated before it was even released. I expected some distracting casting, of recognizable famous faces. I expected that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas would both be so successful now, and so deeply into their own individual eccentricities, that they wouldn't have been able to agree on what this movie should actually be, and that it would show.

I think it was a bad idea to have made that movie. I expected, more or less, what we got. And Steven Spielberg happens to be a great director who gave us, under these unusual circumstances, some of that Spielberg magic.

That magic is not present in The Dial of Destiny. As a movie, The Dial of Destiny is reasonably well made. It's action-packed. There is some obvious CGI, but it's trying to do things which are very difficult and expensive to do, like de-aging Harrison Ford or a cartoonish parade for the Apollo 11 astronauts.

Dial of Destiny is an okay movie. A lot of people are saying it's better than The Crystal Skull. I don't think The Crystal Skull is as bad as people are saying, and I don't think Dial of Destiny is as good as people are saying. I don't think either are fully successful in what they're trying to do. Indiana Jones really was too old for this, and Hollywood could have let some writer come up with a new idea instead.

I think it was a bad idea to have made both of these movies. I'm not sorry I watched them, because I'm old enough to be nostalgic for the property, but I also think they're trying to recapture something which they would have struggled to recapture forty years ago. I think, under the circumstances, both movies are pretty good and have some pretty good stuff in them.

I am also begging, begging, begging Hollywood to stop making movies like this.

These sequels that come twenty, thirty, forty years late. We watch them because they're familiar, but we don't need Indiana Jones, we need the next thing that could be as big as Indiana Jones. There won't be a sequel to the Dial of Destiny forty years from now, with a 120 year old Harrison Ford. Or maybe there will, because Hollywood wants to keep repeating itself. And we'll all be dead or dying from climate change by then, so what does it even matter?

I love slop, I love garbage. Pour it into my mouth.

[ibtravart]

Sunday Funday poll time!
Which Stephen King movie is your favorite??

Pet Sematary (1989)
IT (2017)

Sleepwalkers
Children of the Corn (1984)

Vote now!

[riepu10]

Richard Armitage - Filmography 5/X

2014 Into the Storm - Gary Fuller 2014 The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies - Thorin Oakenshield 2015 The Old Vic's 'The Crucible' - John Proctor 2015 Hannibal - Francis Dolarhyde 2015 Urban & the Shed Crew - Chop 2016 Alice Through the Looking Glass - King Oleron 2016 Brain on Fire - Tom Cahalan 2016 Berlin Station, season 1 - Daniel Miller 2017 Sleepwalker - Scott White