Mark Kermode on… Kathryn Bigelow, a stylish ruffler of feathers

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From vampire noir to Bin Laden, Point Break to Detroit, the first woman to win an Oscar for best director has never pulled her punches Watching new Jeff Nichols release The Bikeriders , starring Austin Butler and Tom Hardy as 60s Chicago greasers, I was reminded of two other movies: László Benedek’s 1953 Marlon Brando vehicle The Wild One , explicitly cited as an inspiration, and The Loveless , the 1981 feature debut of Kathryn Bigelow , the American film-maker (b.1951) who would go on to become the first woman to win a best director Oscar with her 2008 war drama The Hurt Locker . A symphony of leather-clad posing (with just a touch of Kenneth Anger ), The Loveless was a staple of the late-night circuit in the 80s, often on a double bill with David Lynch’s Eraserhead . Sharing directing credits with Monty Montgomery, Bigelow playfully deconstructed masculinity and machismo in a manner that was one part wry to two parts relish. I remember seeing The Loveless at the Phoenix in East
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny review: Harrison Ford cracks the whip in taut sequel

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There’s still much to dig about the octogenarian archeologist as he teams up with Phoebe Waller-Bridge to re-defeat the Nazis

So the boulder of intellectual property and franchise brand identity rolls on … bringing us Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the fifth film in which the legendary archaeologist and whip-cracking adventurer is back for another go-around. He is, of course,. played by the legendary Harrison Ford, now 80 years young, but carrying it off with humour and style and still nailing that reluctant crooked smile.

It’s the first Indiana Jones film not to be directed by Steven Spielberg – James Mangold is now at the helm – but despite that, this one has quite a bit of zip and fun and narrative ingenuity with all its MacGuffiny silliness that the last one (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) really didn’t.

We all sat down to this movie hoping for a resurgence comparable to what JJ Abrams did with The Force Awakens, and if that didn’t exactly happen, it still gets up a storytelling gallop. Phoebe Waller-Bridge has a tremendous co-star turn as Indy’s roguish goddaughter Helena Shaw, who wears shorts and shirt making her look like a grownup, naughty Enid Blyton heroine. And in fact some amazing digital youthification effects give Indy himself a great opening flashback section back in the second world war.

Back in the bad old days of 1944, with the Third Reich beginning to crumble, intrepid young spy Indiana Jones is captured by the fiendish Nazis along with his pal, Professor Basil Shaw, in which small role it is a pleasure to see Tony Jones.

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