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Movie review: 'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' and Harrison Ford deliver the goods

"This isn't an adventure," says the title character in "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny." "Those days have come and gone." And come again.

It must be said that "Dial of Destiny" is not what anyone would call an original movie, something that's also true of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which lovingly repurposed elements of classic movies. But it also must be said that director James Mangold's team captures not just the elements fans hope for — enormous puzzles, wily young rascals, picturesque settings, ciphers, thrilling escapes, a smidge of romance — but also the spirit of the three good movies in the series (let's just forget the lousy "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull").

One of the smartest decisions was to acknowledge that 42 years have passed since we met the snake-hating archaeology teacher in "Raiders." It's not clear how old Indy is supposed to be in "Destiny," partly because Harrison Ford — who still has a six-pack — doesn't look like most 80-year-olds. Jones is retiring from teaching in the film's present day, 1969, so maybe he's supposed to be 65? That would fit the blink-and-you'll-miss-it detail that he's in the middle of a divorce and recently lost his son, presumably in the Vietnam War.

He's grieving and crabby most of the time, perhaps because he isn't as nimble as he used to be when he found himself in the path of speeding boulders or a villain's bullets. But it's clear there's plenty of adventure left in Indy. He's on the trail of a Nazi madman (I probably don't even need to tell you he's played by Mads Mikkelsen, who always plays Nazi madmen). Mr. Psycho wants to acquire the "dial of destiny," a clock, created by Archimedes, that is said to grant its owner the power to rule the world. Which is nonsense but an Indy movie needs something like that to get the plot going.

Much of the fun of this particular Indy comes from him having a more involved female counterpart than in previous films. Phoebe Waller-Bridge, from the brilliant "Fleabag," plays Helena, Indy's goddaughter, who also wants to get her hands on the dial. The women in other Indy movies seemed like they were written by someone who never met a woman but Waller-Bridge's intelligence and insouciance are perfect for Helena, a devil-may-care mercenary who knows her godfather's weaknesses and would cheerfully exploit them.

There's impressive stunt work in "Dial of Destiny," with thrilling set pieces that include one featuring everyone running atop a speeding train as well as a chase through jammed Moroccan streets. Even the de-aging special effect, a major distraction in movies such as "The Irishman," is fairly well done in flashbacks that feature Jones at the end of World War II, when he first dallied with Mikkelsen's artifact-nabbing character.

"Destiny" often feels like an "Indiana Jones' Greatest Hits" collection, especially in those flashbacks, so it may not attract new fans to the series. Although we've been told it's the last time Ford will don the rumpled fedora, "Destiny" definitely leaves room for additional adventures. These kinds of movies always do, of course, but "Destiny" is one case where I actually hope there will be more.

'INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY'

3 stars (out of 4)

Running time: 2:34

MPA rating: PG-13 (for violence, language and smoking)

How to watch: In theaters Friday.

©2023 StarTribune. Visit at startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Dukhtar Reviews

Dukhtar is compelling, visually beautiful and more importantly, an unpretentious well-told story.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 20, 2019

The heartfelt and hopeful story can resonate with audiences around the globe.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 16, 2019

A depiction of the enduring mother-daughter bond as a Pakistani mother saves her daughter from an arranged marriage.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 30, 2016

With its stark imagery and characterizations, the film often feels like a folktale, even though it takes place in the present and addresses ongoing social concerns.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 22, 2015

Dukhtar grabs you from the outset and never lets go.

Full Review | Oct 16, 2015

Heartfelt performances and breathtaking scenery barely compensate for the pedestrian screenplay's shortcomings.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.75/10 | Oct 10, 2015

Oddly enough, a plot similar to "Mad Max: Fury Road" but a million times more interesting--and by a first-time director, no less.

Full Review | Oct 9, 2015

It is an unabashed love letter to Pakistan itself, warts and all. Yet, as a film, it's too by the book to earn a spot of honor in any book, and that's disappointing.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 9, 2015

A gripping story from a place where women are less than second-class citizens that insists that they are, in fact, people who deserve to live as they please.

Its principal merit is the quiet authority of Ms. Mumtaz, who combines a mother's passionate concern with glimmers of an awakening consciousness.

Full Review | Oct 8, 2015

Writer-director Afia Nathaniel's Dukhtar is an unsentimental tribute to the transformative power of maternal love.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 6, 2015

Dukhtar is an issues film with the twisted, heart-pounding feel of a road-trip thriller ...

Full Review | Oct 6, 2015

...a vital, urgent Pakistani film vibrating with life and truth... Rarely have I seen the mother-daughter bond depicted in the cinema with such candor and emotion.

Full Review | Original Score: 9/10 | Sep 20, 2015

Rooting for the safety of the sweet girl, heroic trucker, and vulnerable mother will have you on the edge of your seat.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 9, 2015

Pakistani filmmaker Afia Nathaniel tackles a difficult subject -- child marriages -- with admirable restraint in her impressive feature debut, as emotionally involving as it is visually spectacular.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 11, 2015

• Entertainment

Review: ‘About Dry Grasses’ is a richly evocative 2024 highlight

Movie review.

“About Dry Grasses” begins with blackness, and the plep-plep sound of wet snow hitting the ground. Seconds later comes the startling image of a man alone on a country road, more dot than man in the long shot, trudging along with a briefcase, surrounded by a wind-whipped sea of white.

Yes, you are correct. This is not part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But it’s too striking a shot to dismiss as self-conscious or unpromisingly stern. And this is the latest, and one of the greatest, from co-writer and director Nuri Bilge Ceylan, the Istanbul-based writer-director.

Ceylan ranks among the world’s six, maybe eight reliably exquisite poets of cinema. That sort of description typically makes me urp; too many critics serve it up every week or two and they cry wolf, or masterwork, or not-to-be-missed too often to be trusted. But Ceylan and “About Dry Grasses” can handle it.

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Weirdly, the film is the third feature to open commercially recently that depicts schoolteachers in crisis. First, for laughs and carefully engineered heartwarming, we had “The Holdovers.” Then, from Germany, the clammy nail-biter “The Teachers’ Lounge.” The middle-school art instructor in Ceylan’s first shot is Samet (Deniz Celiloglu), who has returned from home after winter break (though winter clearly isn’t taking any time off) for the final months of his fourth year in a remote Turkish Anatolian village.

Describing Samet as a burned-out case suggests he may have been an effective and dedicated teacher once upon a time, in Anatolia or anywhere. But probably not. With characteristic disregard for redemption narratives, Ceylan and his co-writers Ebru Ceylan (also his wife, also his co-star in the 2006 stunner “Climates”) and Akin Aksu unveil, gradually, a fearless portrait of a cynical, casually arrogant victim of circumstance.

He shares an apartment with his fellow public schoolteacher Kenan (Musab Ekici), as genial and generally happy as Samet is cagey and contained. Samet, we soon learn, favors the best and brightest girls in his classroom, chiefly Sevim (Ece Bagci). He has taken to giving her occasional gifts, such as a compact mirror; his conduct and familiarity with the girl has drawn the attention of the other students. Following a formal complaint regarding both Samet and Kenan, the school district administration gets involved.

The movie does not go where you think it will, or pay close attention to the gradations of Samet’s dangerous misjudgments at the expense of a larger narrative. Every moment of its three-plus hours feels necessary, and its brilliant final third wouldn’t be what it is without the room and time. At heart, “About Dry Grasses” is a wise and sneakily humane chronicle of three adults, one betrayal and the price of living a toxically unexamined life.

The crucial character here is another schoolteacher from a nearby town, Nuray (Merve Dizdar, who won the best actress award at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival). A left-wing dissident and former military soldier, the woman lost her leg in a suicide bombing incident. Like Samet, she’s an artist; unlike Samet, she is genuinely interested in her surroundings, and not just because she’s from the area. Samet and Nuray meet for tea early on in “About Dry Grasses.” It’s clear he’s reluctant to take it further. On a hike to the local hillside well, Samet humblebrags by showing Kenan an Instagram photo of Nuray. Kenan and Nuray soon become friends; Samet grows jealous. As a squirmy revenge maneuver, Samet engineers a dinner in secret with Nuray, which begins with a gripping dinnertime political debate between the blasé realist and the fierce idealist, fraught with more than one kind of tension.

There’s a sly streak of black comedy in so many of the conversations and encounters here. The acting is without fault, and the fluidity and variety in the shot designs represent a stimulating refinement to Ceylan’s technique. Between’s Ceylan’s eye for faces, landscapes and spatial dynamics, and the first-rate work of cinematographers Kürsat Üresin and Cevahir Sahin, “About Dry Grasses” fills every widescreen frame with life.

There are times when Samet’s caddishness becomes too plainly telegraphed in Celiloglu’s performance. And while the movie’s riskiest stylistic leap (no spoilers here) worked for me, the climactic voice-over narration spells things out in ways the near-entirety of “About Dry Grasses” avoids so effectively. Small matters. It’s beautiful work, and not just because it’s beautiful. At one point over dinner, with sexual suspense hanging in the air, Nuray indicates that she’s ready, which in the case of Samet, means she’s ready to make the necessarily moral compromise to lead to the bedroom. “You need time to get to know someone,” she tells him. “On the other hand, certain things, when left to time … would just be a waste of time.”

With Deniz Celiloglu, Merve Dizdar, Musab Ekici, Ece Bagci. Directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan, from a screenplay by Akin Aksu, Ebru Ceylan and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. 197 minutes. In Turkish, with subtitles. Not rated; some language. Opens March 15 at SIFF Cinema Uptown.

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Star Tribune Film Critic Colin Covert Resigns After Plagiarizing Other Reviews

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Colin Covert , the film critic for the Minneapolis Star Tribune , has resigned after the publication discovered a pattern of plagiarizing in his work. The Star Tribune announced December 10 Covert was stepping down from his role as film critic after being a staff writer at the company for over 30 years. Covert’s resignation was the result of his reviews “using the same unique language of writers for other publications, without attribution.”

“In his long career at the Star Tribune, Covert has made many contributions to our cultural coverage,” the Tribune said. “But this pattern of using distinct phrasing from other authors without attribution is a form of plagiarism and is a violation of our journalistic standards and ethics and those of our industry.”

Plagiarism in Covert’s work appeared as recently as November 1 with the publication of his review for Marielle Heller’s “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” starring Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant. Covert wrote of McCarthy in the review, “There’s breathtaking craft and control in her performance, but not once do you sense the tools at work.” The line was directly ripped from Jon Frosch’s 2017 review of “Call Me By Your Name” for The Hollywood Reporter. Frosh wrote of Timothée Chalamet, “There’s breathtaking craft and control in the performance, but not once do you sense the tools at work.”

The Tribune cited other examples of plagiarism in Covert’s work, including a 2009 review of the musical “Nine” that stole lines from reviews written by the iconic New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael. Covert called the film “self-glorifying masochistic mush,” which is a line Kael wrote in 1974. Other Kael descriptions used by Covert included “archaic big-musical circus,” “comic-strip craziness,” and “stardust is slightly irritating.”

According to the Tribune’s investigation into Covert’s work, there was at least eight other reviews that had phrases written by other film critics. Covert plagiarized from publications including The New York Times, Paste Magazine, Vulture, the Wall Street Journal, and IndieWire.

The Tribune said Covert plagiarized from IndieWire’s “Halloween” and “The Oath” reviews. Covert wrote about David Gordon Green’s horror film, “It’s the season for tricks and treats and masks and blood and gore and bizarre, probably psychotic fixations, and few film franchises inspire twisted obsessions quite like the ‘Halloween’ collection.” In an article for IndieWire about giallo films , Russ Fischer wrote, “It’s the season for blood and gore and unhealthy, possibly psychotic fixations, and few subgenres inspire obsession quite like ‘giallo’ thrillers.” Covert also stole the phrase “this madly bleak whirl of violence and suspense” from the same IndieWire article.

“I’m sorry to say that through too many mistakes over the last 30 years I have compromised the Star Tribune’s meticulous reputation for integrity,” Covert said in a statement released by the Tribune. “The paper has given me the opportunity to craft a wonderful, important career and through its benefits safeguarded me through three serious health crises. It is no exaggeration to say that I am grateful from the bottom of my heart. When blunders occur it is proper to admit them, correct them and move on.”

The Tribune added, “We also apologize to our readers, and to the writers and publications from which the material was taken.”

IndieWire has reached out to Covert and editors of the Tribune for further comment.

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'Wicked Little Letters' review: Who wrote letters that sent an English village into an uproar?

The "Wicked Little Letters" start arriving even before the dark comedy has begun.

The movie is about the escalating battle between prim Englishwoman Edith Swan (Olivia Colman), who is given to remarking that suffering is a gift because it strengthens her, and new neighbor Rose (Jessie Buckley). Edith pretends to like Rose, in the same way she pretends to like suffering, but there are plenty of reasons to feud with her neighbor: She is Irish. She is a single mother who lives with a Black man. She is loud (some of that involves the man). She swears like a sailor would if he dropped an anchor on his foot. She drinks. And she isn't especially tidy.

Inspired by events that happened in an English village in the 1920s, "Wicked Little Letters" is an "Odd Couple" situation and the two leads are spectacular. The stakes get high quickly — someone (possibly Edith) reports Rose to child protection authorities, which leads to her being jailed. Meanwhile, the acts described in the profane letters Rose receives, and seems to relish reading aloud, get increasingly vile and physically impossible.

A big part of the appeal of "Wicked" is its leads, who also shared billing (and Oscar nominations) in "The Lost Daughter" but did not share the screen, since they played the same woman at different stages of life. Both actors are adept at cluing us in that there's more to their characters than what's on the surface, which makes their many scenes together especially good.

We know there are secrets, even if we don't know what they are, and we suspect that buttoned-up Edith and knicker-free Rose might be more similar than either would care to admit. Buckley's ferocity often hides her characters' vulnerability (as in "Women Talking"), which Rose eventually reveals. And Colman's half-concealed smiles let us know Edith, who still lives with her domineering parents, gets a bang out of the nasty language. It's almost as if, as in "Lost Daughter," the two are in separate stories that turn out to be the same story.

I suspect "Wicked" might have felt one-note if those two were all it had going for it but a zesty supporting cast fills in additional colors. There's a Greek chorus of villagers — played by, among others, Anjana Vasan, Hugh Skinner (playing a guy even dumber than the one he played in sitcom "W1A") and the legendary Eileen Atkins.

Their shifting takes on the poison-pen letter situation keep us interested in the mystery of who's sending them while also contributing to what turns out to be the theme of the movie: that women in '20s England were desperate to get out of the boxes society thrust upon them, whether they were a belittled police officer with no authority (Vasan) or a single mom, trying to raise her kid under the disapproving eye of her bored neighbor.

About an hour into "Wicked," we find out who sent the letters. You may have guessed by then; it wouldn't take Selena Gomez to get to the bottom of this one. But the movie actually gets richer once we know what's going on. Like many villains, this one doesn't think of themselves as a villain. They're just dying to be heard in a world where no one cares what they say.

'Wicked Little Letters'

Rated R: for language throughout and sexual material.

Running time: 100 minutes

In theaters Friday

StarTribune

The next total solar eclipse will hit these two popular world travel destinations in 2026, iceland-spain eclipse in 2026.

Feeling FOMO from not traveling for the Great Texas-Indiana Eclipse of 2024? Yeah, we know. Then it's not too soon to daydream about the next total solar eclipse, coming to Iceland and Spain on Aug. 12, 2026. It makes for a tantalizing choice for travelers.

Around 5 p.m. GMT, the zone of totality will fall across western Iceland, including the acclaimed, remote Snaefellsnes Peninsula and the Reykjavik region, with more than two minutes of blackout. Then the moon's shadow crosses to northern Spain, on a swath between Barcelona and Madrid, for almost two minutes of totality. It ends near sunset over the Balearic Islands (Ibiza, Mallorca, Menorca, etc.). Eastern Greenland, far northern Russia and a sliver of Portugal will also get in on the total darkness.

Grand Marais, Minn., will see about 6% of the sun eclipsed that day; Minneapolis will see only 0.49%. The next TSEs to be visible in the continental U.S.? Set reminders for Aug. 23, 2044, and Aug. 12, 2045.

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Sammy Hagar in Vegas

Former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar is setting up Sammy's Island at the Palms Pool in Las Vegas, opening May 17. Its signature party platform is the island in the middle of the deck, encircled by pools, cabanas and revelers on deck chairs. Such hits as "I Can't Drive 55," "Right Now," and "Why Can't This Be Love" will emanate from the spot. Sammy's Island is essentially Hagar's famously free-spirited personality adapted to Vegas. The Palms Pool's tropical vibe fits the Captain of Cabo Wabo's general concept to build a rock-party oasis similar to his buoyant beachside birthday parties. "I'm not a big planner. I'm a big thinker. So I just started thinking, let's build something with a Cabo Wabo theme, and have everything I would ever want in one place," Hagar said. "So we created that."

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Movie Reviews

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Godzilla turns 70 next year, and to celebrate, his parent company Toho Studios waited until the end of this year to release the most conventional Godzilla movie in recent memory. “Godzilla Minus One” may also be the most sobering and least flamboyant Japanese-produced Godzilla movie since the original 1954 nuclear lizard disaster pic (though “ Godzilla 1985 ” fans might disagree). Some reviews of “Godzilla Minus One” have already praised the movie as an escapist crowd-pleaser. It’s easy to see why, given the bleak but well-calibrated tone of its human-centric scenes.

Set in 1946, “Godzilla Minus One” follows a spiritually depleted group of ex-military men as they rally to vanquish everyone’s favorite kaiju antihero. Here, Godzilla’s presence is a given, as it probably should be after dozens of movies and spinoff projects. If traumatized survivors like disgraced kamikaze pilot Koichi Shikishima ( Ryunosuke Kamiki ) can’t stop Godzilla, he will destroy Ginza and then stomp all over Tokyo.

Koichi is motivated by survivor’s guilt. In an establishing scene on Odo Island, Koichi takes aim at Godzilla but can’t bring himself to shoot. As a result, several fellow army men die, leaving Koichi to bury their bodies. Reviving Koichi’s ultimately patriotic mojo takes priority since that sort of nationalistic passion is apparently essential to fighting Godzilla. At the same time, Koichi’s loved ones are still very dead, so now he has to take care of other survivors, most of whom have also lost their loved ones, their homes, and their will to fight. That last part is crucial, but overcoming spiritual decline is also a big part of Koichi and therefore, Big G’s story in “Godzilla Minus One.”

“I would like to try to live again,” Koichi says with square-jawed sincerity. His intense need to prove himself is paralleled but never matched by fellow cast-offs like Kenji Noda ( Hidetaka Yoshioka ), a bookish ex-weapons engineer, and Sosaku Tachibana ( Munetaka Aoki ), an ex-Navy mechanic. These guys only hint at their inner demons; they often literally wear their trauma on their sleeves since the ash and grime of post-war recovery have already overtaken them. Some female protagonists, like Koichi’s selfless sweetie Noriko Oishi ( Minami Hamabe ) and his newly-orphaned adopted daughter Akiko (Sae Nagatani), also give him more reasons to fight, though their agency and personalities are even more limited than Koichi’s male co-stars.

Godzilla’s also in “Godzilla Minus One,” by the way, and he’s treated with apparent reverence. “Godzilla Minus One” is a well-calibrated popcorn movie, and you can hear it in the way that its creators play up fan favorite devices and associations. It’s an event when he roars or deploys his fire breath for the first time in this movie. Godzilla fans will probably also feel appropriately flattered by the strategic use of a few song cues from Akira Ifukube ’s now iconic “Gojira” score.

Ifukube’s music is worked in seamlessly without sounding much like new music by “Godzilla Minus One” composer Naoki Sato , who lays down a droning orchestral wall of sound that his string section flits across like a surfer riding a towering and perpetually cresting wave. It’s one of the most rousing and nerve-wracking original scores in a recent Godzilla movie. Tactically deployed silences and mood-setting background noises also punctuate and goose the already overwhelming on-screen action.

The timing of “Godzilla Minus One”’s release might also make it harder to love. This is the first Japanese-produced live-action Godzilla movie since “ Shin Godzilla ,” a stylistically adventurous disaster movie and political farce, as well as a modern take on a beloved character. Toho’s not been idle in the last six years, though you might think so given the relative prominence of the Warner Bros.-produced American “MonsterVerse” franchise. (if you’re curious, Toho’s trilogy of animated Godzilla features is also worth a look ) Neither has the “ Shin Godzilla ” co-director/writer team of Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi , whose faithful and imaginative spins on tokusatsu heroes Kamen Rider and Ultraman were also released this year in America. Those two movies, “ Shin Ultraman ” and “ Shin Kamen Rider ,” had limited theatrical releases here in America. By contrast, “Godzilla Minus One” opened mid-week across the country, sometimes playing in the same “large format” auditoriums as “Renaissance,” Beyonce’s three-hour concert doc extravaganza.

“Godzilla Minus One” is obviously Toho’s attempt at foregrounding their scaly star’s character as a spectacular and traditional crowd-pleaser. They found the right man for the job in director Takashi Yamazaki , who established his populist bonafides with his sappy but irresistible 2005 period family tearjerker “Always: Sunset on Third Street” and its two sequels.

Yamazaki gives G-fans plenty of reasons to see “Godzilla Minus One” in theaters. He’s got a clear eye for action and a firm grasp on feel-good, saber-rattling melodrama. Yamazaki’s style, like his movie’s politics, only looks conservative compared to his predecessors. He made a good Godzilla movie, if not a great one.

In theaters now.

Simon Abrams

Simon Abrams is a native New Yorker and freelance film critic whose work has been featured in  The New York Times ,  Vanity Fair ,  The Village Voice,  and elsewhere.

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Film Credits

Godzilla Minus One (2023)

Rated PG-13 for creature violence and action.

125 minutes

Ryunosuke Kamiki as Koichi Shikishima

Minami Hamabe as Noriko Oishi

Yuki Yamada as Shiro Mizushima

Munetaka Aoki as Sosaku Tachibana

Hidetaka Yoshioka as Kenji Noda

Sakura Ando as Sumiko Ota

Kuranosuke Sasaki as Yoji Akitsu

Mio Tanaka as Captain Tatsuo Hotta

Yuya Endo as Tadayuki Saito

Kisuke Iida as Akio Itagaki

Saki Nagatani as Akiko

• Takashi Yamazaki

Cinematographer

• Kôzô Shibasaki
• Ryuji Miyajima

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