One Giant Leap: For All Mankind Review

In college I became fascinated with NASA’s Apollo program. The grandiosity of the project to send people to the Moon astounded me. Technologies nowhere close to existence would need to be invented. Thousands upon thousands of people would need to work together to build rockets, spacecraft, clothing, and even food that ensured the pilots of these new contraptions could not only survive escaping Earth’s atmosphere, but would also land on another terrestrial body and return intact. I was in awe of the dedication, creativity, and courage it took for people to send others to walk on the Moon. I don’t know how many times I watched Ron Howard’s 1995 film, Apollo 13 or HBO’s excellent 1998 miniseries, From the Earth to the Moon. I read countless web pages, books, and even wrote more than one college paper that dealt with the Apollo program as its subject, which is a hard thing to do since I was a psychology major and a religious studies minor. I became fascinated with the multi-stage launches, the strange-looking Lunar Module, and the powerful Saturn V rocket, what author Andrew Chaikin calls, “NASA’s answer to the Pyramids.” When I was a kid, I had a poster of the famous picture Neil Armstrong took of Buzz Aldrin on the Moon during the Apollo 11 mission, but I had thrown it out in junior high. In college, I bought another copy and framed it. Through college and seminary I would look at the space explorer to inspire me when I felt bogged down by schoolwork.

It is thus surprising that it has taken so long for me to watch Al Reinert’s 1989 documentary, For All Mankind. I’ve known about the documentary for at least a decade, but it was hard to find in rental stores. With the advent of movie rental subscriptions, I had the film delivered to my house. On viewing it, I loved the film, but I know I would have just about jumped out of my seat had I watched it at the height of my fanaticism for all things Apollo. Also, I imagine this splendid documentary would render a viewer speechless if seen on the big screen.

Lots of Fun, But…: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Review

Born as an homage to pulp serial films, the Indiana Jones franchise has always shrugged in the face of reality, opting instead for unadulterated entertainment. The films are exciting, funny, engrossing, and unbelievable, all at the same time, and to varying degrees. I recently returned to Raiders of the Lost Ark in preparation for the latest sequel and found myself enraptured again with a story that sets out to do one thing — entertain the audience — and does it perfectly. Perhaps the surprising thing about the popularity of the Indiana Jones series is its utter lack of social or philosophical commentary. Other popular stories such as Star Wars, The Matrix, or even Jurassic Park have tapped into mythical or ethical discussions that have shaped Western society. After watching Raiders again, I asked myself, what was the point, the deeper message of the film? Nazis are bad? If I ever come across an important Old Testament artifact, be careful? In the end, I had to shrug and admit I haven’t learned much of anything from this series, but I’ve had a great time anyway. Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Harrison Ford, and company just wanted to entertain and the Indiana Jones movies should probably be judged on the criterion of how well do they achieve that entertainment.

Thus we come to the sequel nineteen years in the making, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Indy and the world around him have aged. The Nazis are history and the Soviets are now the bad guys on the scene. I won’t describe much of the plot because it’s a classic case of the MacGuffin — everyone is looking for an item because that item is powerful. The Soviets want the item, the crystal skull of the title, for world domination and Indy wants it so that the Soviets can’t get it. Like the Ark of the Covenant, the Sankara Stones, or the Holy Grail before it, the crystal skull is an excuse to set up epic and hilarious chase sequences, booby-trapped ruins, and show Indy taking and giving punches that sound like howitzers firing. Indy’s older and there are enough appropriate jokes about this. His love-interest from the first film, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) has returned, but that’s about it in terms of familiar faces. Indy’s father (Sean Connery) and friend Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) have passed on. Instead we get a new set of characters such as Marion’s son Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), Marcus’ replacement at the university Charles Stanforth (Jim Broadbent in an underused role), Indy’s underdeveloped sidekick Mac (Ray Winstone), and the new villain, the femme-fatale Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett, who looks like she’s having a lot of fun).

In the World, but Not of It: All the Pretty Horses (Book) Review

I have quickly become enamored with Cormac McCarthy’s prose. He writes with an unmistakable voice characterized by quiet immediacy and a sure style. Reading a McCarthy novel is like reading one long prose poem.

All the Pretty Horses (1992) earned McCarthy a National Book Award. It is the first of his Border Trilogy and follows the sixteen-year-old John Grady Cole whose father is distant and mother ran away when John Grady was a toddler. The story opens with the funeral of his maternal grandfather on whose ranch John Grady has lived his whole life. His mother, the heiress of the ranch, has made it known that she intends to sell the land. Disenfranchised and convinced there is nothing left for him in Texas, John Grady sets out on horseback with his friend Lacey Rawlins for Mexico.