"At Gabriel’s, an Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side, Ms. Allen joined family and friends, including her son, Nick, 17; ex-husband, Kale Browne; manager, Joan Hyler; the poet Michael Lally and his son, Flynn, and friends Christy Zea and Frosty Montgomery.

"There was talk of whether Mr. Spielberg and George Lucas would make yet another Indy movie. 'George had been saying no,' Ms. Allen said with a poker face, 'but lately in the press, he doesn’t seem to be ruling it out.'

"In a lull between courses, she did her best to answer a barrage of questions about the movie: Where was it shot? (Los Angeles, mostly, she said.) Was the scene of a nuclear mushroom cloud made with government footage? (Hotly debated.) Was the motorcycle chase through the college library shot at Yale University? (Yes, Mr. Spielberg’s son studies there.)

"After dessert, 10-year-old Flynn looked up from his chocolate cake and offered Ms. Allen an unsolicited review of the film. 'The funny thing about the movie is that you punch him and then you kiss him,' he said.

“'Well, that’s love,' Ms. Allen said." [NYT]

Crystal Skull is intended, and works effectively, as instant nostalgia — a class reunion of the old gang who in the '80s reinvigorated the classic action film with such expertise and brio. So don't expect the freshness of the what-one-man-can-do plot in Iron Man, or the oneiric visuals of Speed Racer. Spielberg and Lucas, and screenwriters David Koepp and Jeff Nathanson, are looking not forward but back, to the first three films. They know that moviegoers would be disappointed not to see the talismans of Indys past reappear here [...]

The Paramount logo dissolves into some kind of mountain. Every Indy film opens this way, from one monument to another[...] In Raiders the logo became a mountain in South America; in Temple of Doom, a bas-relief on a Chinese gong; in The Last Crusade a big boulder in Utah. This time, suggesting more modest aspirations, or maybe kiddingly deflecting the audience's gargantuan expectations, it's a weeny prairie dog hill, from which a critter emerges just before being nearly run over by speeding cars. We're in Nevada, near Area 51, and it's 1957, a time of rock 'n' roll [...]

Nazis in the first and third Indys, Indian Thugees in the second. But it wouldn't be the '50s without Commies, in the chic person of Irina Spalko (played by Blanchett with the severe demeanor of Cyd Charisse's Ninotchka in the 1957 MGM musical Silk Stockings and the black bob Charisse sports in The Band Wagon). Rather than the simple matter of conquering the West militarily, Irina is part of a Soviet plot to cloud our minds by getting access to some secret technology that is concealed either in an Area 51 warehouse or in the remotest jungle mountains of Peru. "We will change you, Mr. Jones, all of you, from the inside," she proclaims. "We will turn you into us." [Time.com]

Allen, 56, appears to have left her face alone and kept her body trim with yoga (she used to run a yoga studio here in Great Barrington). 'People all want to know why I haven't been doing more films,' she said, sitting over coffee at her country breakfast table several weeks ago and shooing away one of her cats with a spray bottle.

"These days all somebody has to do is Google you and they know how old you are. I would show up for roles that were written for somebody in their early 50s, and people would say, 'You can't do that, you look too young,' but if I showed up for a role for somebody in their early 40s then the people would say, 'Well, but she's 50.'

"I'm from a generation of fantastic actresses. It's a big pool of really wonderful actresses, and so many of them we never even get to see on the screen anymore."

She ticked off several — Jessica Lange, Debra Winger, Julie Hagerty. [LAT]