Disclosure Day: The truth is out there

Disclosure Day (2026) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for action violence, gruesome images and some profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.14.26 

This is 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind writ very large.

 

Director Steven Spielberg’s original story — fleshed out by skilled genre screenwriter David Koepp — hits the ground running, and trusts viewers to catch up.

 

Despite being surrounded by shadowy agents with orders to apprehend them, each
one unexpectedly steps aside as Margaret (Emily Blunt) and Daniel (Josh O'Connor)
slowly walk toward potential freedom.

The film opens suspensefully on a late-night hostage swap. Dr. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) apparently stole something quite valuable from Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of WARDEX — “Waived Reporting, Development and Extraction” — a shadowy Department of Defense contractor that apparently answers to nobody. 

This is made clear by the fact that Casper Boyd (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), Scanlon’s go-to “dirty work” field agent, kidnapped Daniel’s girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), in order to facilitate this exchange. It looks fairly cut and dried ... until Daniel raises a small, slender, metallic bipyramid that he holds in one carefully gloved hand.

 

Scanlon and all of his black-garbed associates carefully back away.

 

Daniel and Jane flee, which kicks off the first of this film’s several pell-mell chase sequences. They manage to escape, much to Scanlon’s vexation. (Firth displays an impressive level of barely controlled rage.) But how can they stayhidden, given all the high-tech surveillance resources available to Scanlon? 

 

Meanwhile...

 

Chirpy Kansas City KCXE-TV news meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), after completing a day’s work, returns home to boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell), a low-stress musician and Fruit Loops-loving Everyman. The following morning, before she leaves for the morning shift, they’re startled when a red cardinal flies in an open window and perches on the kitchen table. 

 

And stares at her. She stares back, trance-like, Blunt’s expression suddenly a blank, wordless slate.

 

Shaking herself from this fugue, she rushes off to work. After arriving at KCXE, she suddenly starts speaking in foreign languages ... including, as this scene’s uneasy atmosphere builds, a series of guttural clicks, burps and grunts that don’t sound the slightest bit human.

 

Shortly thereafter, she feels a strange, strong pull to go “somewhere else,” much to Jackson’s bewilderment. Somewhere north. 

 

Throughout scenes with these two sets of characters, disturbing radio reports and TV news broadcasts warn of the rapidly increasing probability of a world-wide nuclear war. The threat level jumps to DEFCON 2.

Music by John Williams: Rhapsodic

Music by John Williams (2024) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG for brief violent film clips

Available via: Disney+

By Derrick Bang

Full bias disclosure:

 

I’ve been a soundtrack nerd since junior high school, when I fell in love with John Barry’s jazz-oriented scores to the early James Bond films.

 

Since meeting in 1972, John Williams, left, and Steven Spielberg have collaborated on
29 feature films ... so far.

And let’s just say that didn’t sit well with my late 1960s, rock-oriented peers, when they caught me listening to soundtrack albums in our local public library. The scornful snickers always made me wince ... but did nothing to diminish my passion.

No surprise, then, that this new documentary was greeted with considerable anticipation.

 

It definitely delivers.

 

My soundtrack library expanded to include John Williams in the wake of 1975’s Jaws. Two years later, his score for Star Wars was a game-changer; it revived enthusiasm for classically hued orchestral soundtracks at a time when many films relied on “jukebox scores” of then-current pop tunes (a transitional detail covered in this documentary).

 

I mean, let’s get serious; who wasn’t blown away by that dynamic opening anthem, as the text crawl slid into the depths of space?

 

That film debuted May 25, 1977, but — unlike these days, when ancillary merchandise is coordinated for simultaneous release — the soundtrack didn’t show up for weeks. I haunted record stores almost daily, to the point that one shop owner simply shook his head when I peered inside the door.

 

But when it finally, finally, finally arrived — oh, my stars and garters — it was a double-album gatefold. Darn near unprecedented, for an orchestral film score. Like, wow.

 

Okay, enough of all that.

 

Director Laurent Bouzereau’s detailed profile of Williams covers an impressive degree of territory in 105 minutes, given that a multi-part miniseries would be necessary to do full justice to the composer’s career. The 92-year-old Williams was an enthusiastic participant, and his anecdotes, close encounters and sage observations are deftly blended with vintage photographs and home movies (both his own and, later, some shot by Steven Spielberg).

 

Bouzereau also employs the talking heads that have become obligatory in such films, but unlike far too many lesser documentaries, these aren’t obscure academics or fawning pop stars of the moment. The list here is meaty and meaningful: filmmakers Spielberg, Ron Howard, George Lucas, J.J. Abrams, Chris Columbus and James Mangold; fellow soundtrack composers Alan Silvestri, Thomas Newman and David Newman; and celebrated musicians Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gustavo Dudamel, Branford Marsalis and Anne-Sophie Mutter.

Ready Player One: Game on!

Ready Player One (2018) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for dramatic intensity, sci-fi action violence, bloody images, suggestive content, partial nudity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.30.18

Pop-culture junkies will love this one.

I haven’t had so much fun with an iconic characters mash-up since Daffy Duck met Donald Duck, in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

As Aech (far left) and Art3mis (far right) listen attentively, Parzival queries the Curator
about a particularly telling incident in the life of the eccentric genius who created the
virtual reality enviroment in which they spend so much time.

While there’s no question that Ready Player One will resonate most with avid video gamers — and folks whose homes are clustered with artifacts from the 1980s — this exuberant sci-fi/fantasy certainly is approachable to mainstream viewers. It’s brash, boisterous and breathtaking by turns, and augmented at all times by the cinematic sense of wonder that Steven Spielberg has brought to his films since, well, seems like forever. (And aren’t we lucky?)

That said, the narrative — co-scripted by Zak Penn and Ernest Cline, from the latter’s popular 2011 novel — relies more on momentum than plot logic and common sense. Viewers are likely to exit the theater with plenty of questions that begin with the phrase “But what about...?” Even so, it’s not entirely soulless eye-candy; a strong cautionary note beats at the heart of this fast-paced thrill ride.

One hopes that civilization won’t come to this ... although I also whispered that fervent prayer after seeing 1982’s Blade Runner the first time. And just as that film has proven prophetic in a variety of disturbing ways, there’s enough current self-indulgent behavior to suggest that the message illuminated by Ready Player One should be taken very seriously.

The year is 2045, and our young hero — Wade Watts, played by Tye Sheridan — lives in “the Stacks”: a rundown vertical trailer park in Columbus, Ohio. (High fives to production designer Adam Stockhausen, for this terrifying vision of the near future’s life on the edge.) He shares this tight space with his grouchy aunt and her nasty, loser boyfriend; unemployment, poverty, overcrowding and utter hopelessness are rampant.

The U.S. government apparently has abandoned any pretense of environmental mitigation, human rights, corporate restraint or beneficial socio-political oversight; “outlying” cities such as Columbus have simply become huge trash heaps of discarded vehicles and other manufacturing refuse. The (rather too vague) impression is that the country has been split between the lucky 5 percent in the tech sector ... and everybody else.

In other words, life in the real world ain’t too good.

The Post: Fast-breaking drama

The Post (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, and too harshly, for profanity and brief war violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 1.19.18

Although Steven Spielberg’s riveting new film gets most of its dramatic heft from the democracy-threatening events that swirled around the release of the Pentagon Papers in June of 1971, we’re most emotionally involved with the plight of Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham: at the time, the only woman in a position of power at a major national newspaper.

The entire Washington Post editorial staff — including executive editor Ben Bradlee and
publisher Katharine Graham (Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, third and fourth from left) —
reacts with stunned silence after learning that The New York Times has been forced, by
a federal injunction, to cease reporting on the Pentagon Papers.

As the film begins, and as we’re introduced to Graham via Meryl Streep’s thoroughly engaging performance, the poor woman is hopelessly — helplessly — out of her depth.

We spend almost the entire film waiting for her epiphany, and for the “Meryl Streep moment” when the actress — Graham finally having found her spine — verbally eviscerates one of her patronizing male colleagues.

It’s a long wait ... and well worth the anticipation.

The Post isn’t opportune merely as a reminder — at a time when the White House is occupied by an infantile gadfly who defends his lies by screaming “Fake news!” — of the crucial role played by our Fourth Estate. Scripters Liz Hannah and Josh Singer couldn’t have known, as their film was being shaped, that its parallel focus on Graham would resonate so well at a moment when American women have risen en masse to challenge male hegemony.

The resulting drama serves both mindsets, while also taking its place alongside top-drawer journalism dramas such as All the President’s Men and Spotlight (the latter having brought Singer — also a veteran of TV’s West Wing — an Academy Award).

The sequence of events taking place during just a few days in the early summer of 1971 almost defy credibility. The film opens on a sidebar issue, as Graham prepares for a presentation to The Washington Post Company board of directors, in anticipation of raising badly needed capital via a stock offering when the paper goes public, on June 15.

Streep’s Graham is nervous and flustered, despite having solid notes prepared with the assistance of longtime friend and confidant Fritz Beebe (Tracy Letts, nicely understated), a former Wall Street lawyer and chairman of the board. Even before knowing anything about this woman, we feel for her; Streep makes her anxiety palpable.

We therefore groan inwardly, when — her moment having come — she’s too tongue-tied even to speak, and her carefully prepared details are introduced by Fritz.

This is before Graham learns, a few days later, that the stock offering could be scuttled by her paper’s growing involvement in the nation-shattering spat between Richard Nixon and The New York Times: the first time, in the history of the republic, that a U.S. president has attempted to silence a national newspaper.

The BFG: A colossal triumph

The BFG (2016) • View trailer 
Five stars. Rated PG, for fantasy peril and some scary scenes
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.1.16

Roald Dahl’s children’s books are cherished for all sorts of reasons, including his ability to concoct astounding creatures and astonishing realms that require a reader’s imagination, because such wonders couldn’t possibly be replicated on the big screen.

After gaining the trust of her immense new friend (Mark Rylance), Sophie (Ruby Barnhill)
learns of his skill at catching and bottling "dream stuff," which then can be used to help
London's denizens sleep more peacefully.

At least, not until quite recently.

Dahl has done quite well by Hollywood over the years, with fabulous adaptations of The Witches, James and the Giant Peach and Fantastic Mr. Fox, not to mention a couple of quite popular renditions of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The many talented individuals behind those films notwithstanding, nothing approaches the pure magic — the jaw-dropping sense of wonder — delivered by director Steven Spielberg and an amazing team of collaborators, in The BFG.

Back in the day, the producers of Christopher Reeve’s first Superman film promised that we’d believe a man can fly. Well, Spielberg and his crew make us believe that giants stride the earth. The verisimilitude is so natural, so persuasive, that we often disregard the boring technicalities of special effects, choosing instead to accept the fantastic at face value: no small thing, in these jaded times.

Everything is orchestrated to perfection: the late Melissa Mathison’s poignant, deftly sculpted screenplay (her final completed assignment); Janusz Kaminski’s lavish cinematography, rich with warm color tones that enhance the film’s cozy atmosphere; the ingenious production design and set decoration by Rick Carter and Elizabeth Wilcox; and — most particularly — John Williams’ delicately intricate score.

Williams, recently the first composer to be honored with the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award, is no stranger to ornately layered soundtracks and iconic character themes. But even in a lengthy career distinguished by scores of memorable scores, this one is one of his finest.

Williams’ music for The BFG is all-encompassing; it feels as if every scene, every character, has its own theme. His score plays like a continuous, massive symphony that brings Spielberg’s handling of this gentle parable to even greater emotional heights.

Dahl published his book in 1982, and Spielberg’s film is set in the same decade. It opens with a slow pan of late-night London, Kaminski employing some sort of cinematographic trick that makes the streets, vehicles and buildings seem somehow smaller than usual: almost like an immense, three-quarter-size fairy tale village. We glide into an orphanage, where the matron’s final rounds are watched, surreptitiously, by 10-year-old Sophie (Ruby Barnhill).

Bridge of Spies: Riveting Cold War thriller

Bridge of Spies (2015) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for war violence, dramatic intensity and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 10.16.15

Atticus Finch lives.

Harper Lee is known to have based the iconic hero of To Kill a Mockingbird on her own father, Alabama lawyer Amasa Coleman Lee, who — like the book’s character — represented unpopular defendants in a highly publicized (and politicized) trial.

As the trial that might send Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance, left) to the gas chamber proceeds,
defense attorney James Donovan (Tom Hanks) is surprised to see his client remain so
calm. "Aren't you worried?" Donovan asks. Abel's response becomes the film's best
signature line.

How ironic, then, that at the same time Harper Lee was fine-tuning the novel that would make her famous, newspaper headlines across the United States pilloried the country’s most-hated lawyer, James Donovan, who had bravely accepted the assignment to defend captured Soviet spy Rudolf Abel.

I can’t help wondering if any of Donovan’s characteristics wandered into Lee’s depiction of Atticus.

Donovan’s name and historical significance have remained buried for decades, although Abel might ring a few bells. Sirens are likely to go off, however, when both men are linked to American pilot Francis Gary Powers, who was captured after his U-2 spy plane was blasted out of the sky during a photographic reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union.

The interlinked saga involving Donovan, Abel and Powers has been resurrected and transformed into a thoughtful, fascinating and thoroughly absorbing period drama by director Steven Spielberg and scripters Matt Charman, Joel and Ethan Coen. It’s Cold War-era spyjinks right out of John Le Carre, except that these events actually took place: yet another reminder that truth can be far stranger than fiction.

(The film credits make no mention of Donovan’s well-received 1964 memoir, Strangers on a Bridge: The Case of Colonel Abel and Francis Gary Powers, which I find odd; it’s impossible to imagine that Charman and the Coen brothers didn’t read that book.)

Spielberg’s film is anchored by a commanding performance from Tom Hanks, who channels every dedicated and deeply honorable character ever played by Henry Fonda and James Stewart. At the same time, Hanks brings his own wry, subtle humor to this depiction of Donovan: a capable and hard-working family man caught up in events far beyond his imagining.

(Or so we’re led to believe. Given Donovan’s WWII service as General Counsel at the Office of Strategic Services, he may not have been as “ordinary” as this film suggests. But this portrayal makes for a better story.)

War Horse: A truly incredible journey

War Horse (2011) • View trailer
Five stars. Rating: PG-13, for intense war violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.30.11


The first act is breathtaking.

The second act is grim, horrifying and heartbreaking.

The third act is transcendent.

Albert (Jeremy Irvine, center) defiantly holds onto his horse, after realizing that
his father (Peter Mullan, right) has just sold the animal to Capt. Nichols (Tom
Hiddleston, far left). The "Great War" has begun, and horses are needed at the
front; Albert knows what this likely means for his beloved, four-legged friend.

Once again demonstrating a facility for extracting compelling, first-person narratives from the faceless, senseless morass of war, director Stephen Spielberg has delivered another masterpiece on par with Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

The twist, this time, is that the “person” is a horse.

War Horse — sensitively adapted by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis, from the celebrated novel by Michael Morpurgo (with additional material from Nick Stafford’s inventive stage play) — is alternately exhilarating and shattering. The film is riveting from the first frame, the plot points — major and minor — delivered with such skill and imagination that one wonders how this saga could have been anything but a visual experience. (A book? Really?)

Spielberg, acutely aware of the emotions to be stirred at any given moment, orchestrates this World War I saga with a brilliant blend of subtle suggestion and harsh, jarring brutality. The juxtaposition is both unsettling and ferociously clever; time and again, we’re set up for what seems a welcome lull in the dramatic intensity, only to be caught off-guard as grim events once again overtake apparent tranquility.

As one character bitterly reflects, along the way, war takes everything from everybody.

But that’s getting ahead of things. War Horse actually opens gently, majestically, in the dappled English countryside of Devon. Young Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) watches as a hunter colt is born in a neighboring farmer’s field; the boy remains close, as time passes and the animal matures into a regal thoroughbred with four white socks and a white diamond on its forehead.

Come auction day, Albert’s father, Ted (Peter Mullan), attends with the intention of purchasing a strapping plow horse. But something about the skittish, four-legged youngster touches a chord; goaded into a foolish winning bid, Ted returns home with this wholly impractical “farm” animal, much to the vexation of his wife, Rosie (Emily Watson) ... and the delight of their son.

But harsh reality merely emphasizes the folly of Ted’s purchase. Having spent what should have been the rent money, Ted gambles his entire farm on the ludicrous promise that this new horse — which Albert has named Joey — can successfully plow an impossible, stone-laden lower field, so that a crop can be planted and brought to market.

The Adventures of Tintin: Thrills, spills and great 3D frills

The Adventures of Tintin (2011) • View trailer
Four stars. Rating: PG, for plenty of peril and action violence
By Derrick Bang


Director Steven Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson respectfully honor their source material during the opening scene of The Adventures of Tintin, which finds the intrepid boy reporter having himself sketched by a street artist ... who bears an uncanny resemblance to the character’s Belgian creator.

A "simple" plane ride is anything but, when intrepid boy reporter Tintin is
involved; our young hero and his faithful canine sidekick, Snowy, barely
survive a crash-landing in the desert. The bigger question: Will the nasty
jolt stir long-forgotten memories in Tintin's companion, Captain Haddock, so
that they can get on with their treasure quest?

Better still, the finished drawing — granted a nod of approval by its subject — is Tintin, as illustrated for close to half a century, from 1929 to ’75, by Georges Prosper Remi, better known by his pen name Hergé.

It’s a brilliant prologue by Spielberg and scripters Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish, because it immediately connects Hergé’s style and vision with this film’s motion-control characters. Call it a hand-off: much the way George Lazenby faced the camera after his pre-credits escapade in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and, acknowledging his having taken over the role of James Bond from Sean Connery, cheerfully quipped, “This never happened to the other fella!”

Spielberg actually begins The Adventures of Tintin with a smashing title credits sequence: very much in the vein of both Hergé’s work and the equally memorable opening credits to 2002’s Catch Me if You Can. As was the case with that earlier Spielberg romp, soundtrack maestro John Williams delivers another deliciously retro title theme, echoing the “cool jazz” mode of his emerging career in the late 1950s and early ’60s. (Williams, let us remember, was the pianist in Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn sessions.)

I place a lot of weight on opening credits, as slick credits often signal great things ahead. That’s absolutely the case here: The Adventures of Tintin is a marvelous mash-up of comic book thrills, movie serial clichés and — most particularly — ferociously clever animation that allows exhilarating action sequence “camera angles” that simply wouldn’t be possible in a live-action film.

And yet this rich, suspenseful fantasy feels very much like a live-action film, thanks to next-gen motion-control visual effects geniuses Joe Letteri, Scott E. Anderson and Jamie Beard. The “dead eye problem” — which turned the children of The Polar Express into creepy zombies — is no longer an issue; Spielberg also wisely avoided the trap of using animated characters who resemble the film’s “stars,” which made Jim Carrey’s version of A Christmas Carol equally weird, for different reasons.

No, with the exception of that initial tip of the hat to Hergé, these characters look like fully dimensioned versions of their graphic novel selves, and definitely not like the actors voicing the parts. Tintin and his spectacularly resourceful dog, Snowy, are realized superbly; I’m also impressed by the fidelity with which bumbling inspectors Thomson and Thompson have been brought to life.

Cowboys & Aliens: When genres collide

Cowboys & Aliens (2011) • View trailer for Cowboys & Aliens
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, and rather generously, for intense sci-fi action and violence, brief partial nudity and a fleeting crude reference
By Derrick Bang

Scientist and sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke once observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Scott Mitchell Rosenberg had plenty of fun with that concept, in the 2006 graphic novel he created and chaperoned with artist Luciano Lima and writers Fred Van Lente and Andrew Foley. The basic premise is so beguiling, that it's amazing nobody else thought of it first: What if, instead of repeatedly bothering post-WWII Earth, extraterrestrials had arrived 100 years earlier?

Having tracked an unknown whatzis to its rather unusual lair, cattle baron
Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford, left) and wanted train robber Jake
Lonergan (Daniel Craig) ponder their next move ... while both men wonder if
the strange gadget on Jake's left wrist will prove helpful.

Surely the average citizens of our Wild West would have believed themselves beset by demons who wielded magic beyond their comprehension.

Director Jon Favreau's big-screen adaptation of Cowboys & Aliens takes numerous liberties with that original graphic novel; a press-gang of six (!) credited writers has shaped this rootin', tootin' saga around its two big-name stars, while also moving the core plot in different directions. But the story's foundation remains the same: How would 19th century folks have reacted to such a threat?

While Favreau sends up hoary film western conventions with a few chuckles here and there — the sort of levity he also brought to his two Iron Man films — Cowboys & Aliens is, at all times, a much grimmer saga (grim enough to test the boundaries of its PG-13 rating). We're quite removed from the cute, inquisitive outer-space visitors of Steven Spielberg's E.T.; the aliens in this tale are brutish, nasty and Up To No Good. They think nothing of kidnapping hapless Earthers and then studying them at great length.

And you can forget about the eyebrow-raising rectal probes discussed with such insistence by obsessed modern "victims" of alien abduction; these extra-terrestrials go straight to vivisection and cellular disintegration. Not nice folks. At all.

But that's getting ahead of things. Favreau's film opens as a man with neither memory nor name (Daniel Craig) wakens one morning, in the sun-blasted land just outside the small New Mexico town of Absolution. It's 1875, and our protagonist hasn't the faintest idea how he got there, or how he wound up with such a peculiar bracelet-type gadget around his left wrist.

The latter won't come off, and its purpose remains hidden.

Shortly after wandering into Absolution — following a brief encounter with three would-be bounty hunters — our stranger learns that he's Jake Lonergan, and that he's wanted for all sorts of crimes. He encounters a young woman — Olivia Wilde, as Ella — who seems unusually interested in him; he also realizes that the entire town is in thrall to local cattle baron Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford), whose ne'er-do-well son, Percy (Paul Dano), is an untouchable thorn in everybody's side.

Until Jake touches him, anyway. Quite a solid touch, at that.

Super 8: Plenty of pizzazz

Super 8 (2011) • View trailer for Super 8
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for action violence, dramatic intensity and grody monster behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.10.11


This film reminds me how much I’ve missed the family-friendly action/suspense flicks of the 1980s, which introduced an entire generation of young stars to movie fans: The Goonies, Poltergeist, the prologue of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (the “young Indie” sequence, with River Phoenix), The Lost Boys, Fright Night and — most particularly — E.T.

And you thought your day was going badly? All heck is breaking loose in the
small Ohio town where our young heroes — from left, Martin (Gabriel Basso),
Cary (Ryan Lee), Joe (Joel Courtney) and Charles (Riley Griffiths) — have
been trying to make an amateur zombie movie. They're about to discover
something far worse than even their imaginations can concoct.

Super 8 plays like an energetic cross between E.T. and The Goonies, and I mean that in all the best ways. I’d expect no less from producer Steven Spielberg and writer/director J.J. Abrams, who make a great team. To a degree, Abrams has re-visited his “unseen monster on the loose” concept from Cloverfield, but (thankfully!) absent the irritating, jiggly video verité point-of-view that ruined an otherwise nifty little film.

Spielberg’s touch as producer was present on some of the above-named thrill rides; he’s clearly able to help bring out the best in other directors. The same is true here, with a nifty premise that hits the ground running and maintains a palpable level of suspense, while allowing sufficient time to explore the key characters and their varied relationships.

And while our heroes are (for the most part) middle-school nerds, their savvy doesn’t come at the expense of adults who behave like boobs. The principal grown-ups here are just as resourceful, when necessary ... and there’s a whole lotta “necessary” populating Abrams’ cheeky, mildly retro script.

Two things to bear in mind:

First, this is a very loud film. The premise demands plenty of crashing, smashing and heavy gunfire, and sound effects editors David Acord and Dustin Cawood, and supervising sound editor Matthew Wood, definitely earn their paychecks. Given a theater with a well-tuned sound system — as was the case at Tuesday evening’s Sacramento preview — this flick will leave you wide-eyed and breathless.

Second, the PG-13 rating is deserved. The occasional shocks and jolts are on par with the severed head that unexpectedly bobbed into view, back in the day, during an underwater search in Spielberg’s Jaws. Since the whatzis is this story is large and carnivorous, draw the logical conclusions and be prepared accordingly.

Abrams opens his story with a doleful prologue, as young Joe Lamb (Joel Courtney) has just lost his mother to a freak workplace accident: a sequence handled with poignant subtlety. The loss also is felt keenly by Joe’s father, Jackson (Kyle Chandler, familiar from TV’s Friday Night Lights), who works as one of the town deputies. For reasons not immediately made clear to us — or Joe — Jackson blames Louis Dainard (Ron Eldard) for the accident. To makes matters worse, Jackson is a distant father at best, and their shared loss further strains the dysfunctional family dynamic.

Four months then pass, putting Joe and his friends at the beginning of summer vacation. The small gang takes its marching orders from Charles (Riley Griffiths), who serves as director on an amateur zombie horror flick they’ve been making with his Super 8 camera. Joe handles make-up, model work and occasional script tightening; Cary (Ryan Lee), something of a nascent firebug, takes care of explosives and pyrotechnics; Martin (Gabriel Basso), the tallest and most mature-looking, is the primary star; and Preston (Zach Mills) does anything else that needs doing.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Magic Kingdom

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) • View trailer
Four stars (out of five). Rating: PG-13, for action violence and a few grody death scenes
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.23.08
Buy DVD: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull • Buy Blu-Ray: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [Blu-ray]

Two decades have passed since 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, but if it really took this long for George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford to be satisfied with the script for Indy's long-awaited fourth film adventure, the gestation time has been well-spent.

After breaking free from their captors, Mutt (Shia LaBeouf, left), Indy (Harrison
Ford) and Marion (Karen Allen) commandeer a truck and crash through the
Peruvian jungle, determined to catch up to the Soviet villains who've abducted
a friend and a priceless relic that supposedly has extraordinary powers.

David Koepp's screenplay is all things to all people: It properly respects the fans and acknowledges Indy's roots while examining — and gently spoofing — the character through an entirely fresh set of (youthful) eyes. That aside, one also must be impressed by a script that covers everything from atomic bomb test sites and the 1950s communist witch hunt to Area 51, Peru's Nazca lines and Erich von Däniken's "Chariots of the Gods."

Toss in a marvelously fiendish villain with an unstoppable man-mountain sidekick, and the result is a welcome return to the light-hearted, thrill-a-minute exploits found in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade ... absent the many mistakes that so badly compromised the original trilogy's middle entry, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

So, the heck with those who may have worried that Indy — and Harrison Ford — were past their prime; when Lucas and Spielberg are at the top of their game, as they are here, movie lovers are in great hands.

I suspect even today's jaded, "show me" teens will be impressed by several sequences.

After an eyeblink credits sequence that makes droll sport of the Paramount studio logo, the story kicks into gear as a kidnapped Indy (Ford) and new sidekick Mac (Ray Winstone) are dragged to a setting that can't help making fans smile: the never-officially titled "warehouse" where the Ark of the Covenant was placed for storage, at the conclusion of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

The year is 1957, and a new set of Soviet enemies — led by the icy-cold Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) — wants one carefully crated item from this massive storage facility.

At the end of Raiders, we only got a glimpse of this warehouse's labyrinthine interior. This time around, Koepp and Spielberg take us inside and stage the first action sequence within its walls.

What can I say? It's fan-geek heaven.

Although he survives this first skirmish, Indy isn't able to prevent Spalko from escaping with the coveted item. This creates problems back at Marshall College, where FBI agents — annoyed by the way Indy "helped" Soviet spies infiltrate a U.S. military base — question our hero's loyalty and order him removed from his teaching position. Longtime friend and colleague Charles Stanforth (Jim Broadbent) resigns in protest, but it does no good: Indy has lost his ability to teach, the one thing he loves best.

The only solution: to find Spalko, recover the missing whatzis and clear his name.

Mere child's play, for the whip-wielding hero who makes all his moves to John Williams' stirring orchestral fanfares.