The Mummy
Still the best Indiana Jones film by far, including all the Spielberg ones, Tomb Raider, Uncharted, The Mummy even. Accept no substitutes for Rachel Weisz’s hot librarian, she is bound to make me hot and bothered.
The director really loves Terminator, there’s several elements nicked from the whole series. This is simpler than Pirates of the Caribbean for example, the central roles are less fluid, so the focus is on the gags, the main couple, the quips and asides. The side show characters are very stereotypical, it’s of its time (pre 9/11), and like Indiana Jones, it apes some dark shit.
The villain is also given a (basic) motivation, clear goals, an almost perfect foil to the protagonist. Beni is my favourite character, Jonathan’s evil foil. I guess that’s the company you keep.
The scene where Beni is trapped by Imhotep and prays to the Christian God, Allah, Buddha, and Yahweh, and the mummy recognises Hebrew as the language of slaves was truly eye opening for me as a child.
It’s incredible how there is no Lawrence of Arabia musical quotes on the soundtrack. One of the first desert films without it, I guess.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.