In a few short months — smack in the middle of the holiday season, as it happens — we’ll get the gift of a new Star Wars movie. The hope is that director J.J. Abrams can give the franchise the kick in the pants that it so desperately needs after the disaster of the last three films (the “prequels” to the original trilogy that fans waited for so longingly, and then longed to forget as soon as they left the theater). To date, that hope is riding high on one actor in particular: Harrison Ford.
It’s no secret that the main players of the original cast are returning as aged versions of their old selves, but Ford, who will appear in his old Han Solo role, is the only one whose face has appeared in the early teaser trailers. For fans of a certain age — say, Western Mass movie reviewers in their early 40s — it was an electrifying moment. But as much as I love Ford’s Solo and all the roguish nonchalance he brought to the role, it was, in the end, always just part of the bigger Star Wars machine. It was only a few years after he first donned Solo’s vest that another role would give him a chance to really dominate a story.
That role was the swashbuckling archeologist Indiana Jones, who in four films now has fought Nazis, Thuggee cults, and Soviet agents over priceless artifacts. (If you’re counting, he fought the Nazis twice.) For this reviewer, at least, it was Jones, and not Solo, who best made use of Ford’s seemingly natural dyspepsia. Older, more world-weary, Jones was a crank more at home with relics than relatives. Yet the stories, filled with exotic locales, ancient and booby-trapped ruins, and narrow escapes, have always been great popcorn fare that bubbles along as confidently as the old adventure serials that first inspired Steven Spielberg to make his films.
This week, we get a rare chance to catch Raiders of the Lost Ark (the first in the series) on the big screen when Amherst Cinema brings it in for Sunday and Wednesday screenings. In it, Jones and a misfit crew try to stop a band of Nazis from gaining possession of the Ark of the Covenant, a biblical treasure said to bestow unstoppable power on whoever possesses it.
And if you’re a fan, be sure to track down a copy of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation. Begun in 1982 (and ending much later), the film is an absolutely incredible love letter to Raiders, and proof of the ingenuity of youthful imagination. Put together by a group of three young kids as a shot-by-shot remake of the film, its adherence to the original — including some rather startling scenes where the young actors nearly burn down a parent’s home — is a testament to that film’s enduring effect on moviegoers of all ages.
Also this week: another classic film hits area screens when Cinemark theaters run the Grease Sing-A-Long. John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John star as young lovers trying to navigate the rough waters of high school romance. The ’50s-era setting provides a whole lot of tunes (“Summer Nights,” “Beauty School Dropout,” and many more) for those brave enough to let loose their inner Frankie Valli. If you’d like to stretch your vocal cords, theaters will be running the film Sunday and Wednesday at 2 and 7 p.m.
And finally, if you’re looking for an alternative to the current crop of Saturday morning cartoons, Amherst Cinema is hosting a 10 a.m. show of the wonderful claymation film Chicken Run this Saturday as part of its Family Films Series. Mel Gibson stars as a strutting American rooster who lands on a chicken farm in England just as its owner has decided to get out of the egg business and into the chicken pie game. To save the flock, he and the chicken he loves hatch an escape plan.•
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com
