Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Wasn’t too much to ask to watch all these in one day.

This one makes a very successful attempt to recapture some of the magic of the first film, while developing its characters enough to keep things interesting. It also pulls off a high-concept “let’s have Indy save his own distant father” idea with aplomb, in part thanks to Sean Connery.

Needed Karen Allen back as a love interest, but at least the female role here wasn’t a total shrieking mess.

River Phoenix is good as a young Indy in the prologue, but he seems to acquire his hat, his whip, his scar and his fear of snakes all in a 10 minute action sequence. George Lucas would go on to do this for every character he ever created in Star Wars so perhaps we got off lightly here.

More of the same, and in this case that’s not always a bad thing.