Movie night: THE ROCKETEER

Three thoughts about THE ROCKETEER:

* This is a movie from the last days of practical effects, before TERMINATOR 2 wowed everybody with CGI and things started to change.  By the end of the decade, George Lucas would be making movies entirely with green screen and computers. Here, though, there are lots of scenes that were shot in the real world - particularly the scenes involving airplanes. I miss real airplanes in movies.

* I was thinking that the movie owed a lot to the INDIANA JONES films, afterward looked it up -- THE ROCKETEER was directed by Joe Johnson, who got his start in movies doing effects on STAR WARS and the INDY movies. He learned at the feet of Spielberg and Lucas in the 1980s, and man, does it show. There ought to be a ROCKETEER/INDIANA JONES mashup, like Batman v Superman, or Alien v Predator.

* Alan Arkin is a sign of quality every time.