SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Harrison Ford and Alice Braga in "Crossing Over"

Harrison Ford plays Max Brogan who leads immigration officers into routine busts in Los Angeles to collect illegal immigrants working factories and depot them back to their own countries. Along with his partner, Hamid Baraheri (Cliff Curtis) and the other officers, Max Brogan’s job involves little humanity.

During one of the crackdowns, Brogan finds Mireya Sanchez (Alice Braga) hiding behind a rack of clothes. He initially decides to let her get away but fellow officer sees her and voila, there is nothing he can do about it. Even when Mireya begs Brogan to find her son and brings him back to Mexico, Brogan cruelly rejects her. Behind the scenes however, Brogan is a man with conscience as he comes back to collect the piece of paper he garbles earlier containing the address of Mireya Sanchez’s son. Throughout the movie, Brogan never cease finding the status of Mireya as she didn’t return home to Mexico.

Everyone struggles to achieve legal status in the film. While some like Aussie actress Claire Shepard (Alice Eve) attempts to get her document illegally by having sex with an immigrant officer, Cole Frankel (Ray Liotta), others like Gavin Kossef, an atheist Jewish musician has it easier as he pretends to be an Orthodox to get his green card.

Ashley Judd plays Denise Frankel, wife of Cole Frankel and works in the children welfare department. Contrary to Cole, her job is to take care of the children whether they are immigrants or citizens of the United States.

Overall, the movie touches on sensitives issues such as religion and race but it evens it out by playing a melancholy tone as some manage to get green cards while others have to be deported and some even ends up dead.

My ratings: 6 out of 10.

The star of Ally McBeal has been together with Harrison Ford for seven and a half years. No wedding date has been set yet.

Both their age adds up to 110. It’s about time to get serious.

SPOILER WARNING: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), “Mutt” Williams (Shia LaBouef) and Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The movie opens with a group of teenagers joyrides through the Nevada desert in a vintage car, listening to deafening rock music from the radio. It is obviously the 1950’s. Indiana Jones and his friend George “Mac” McHale (Ray Winstone) have been kidnapped by the Russian military led by Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett) and are brought to Area 51. Spalko wants Jones to locate a mysterious object in the warehouse and when they have found the box and unearthed it, it seems to be something from another world. Before long, Indy escapes after realizing his friend “Mac” works for the communists.

After surviving a nuclear test by hiding in a refrigerator, Indy’s back to the classroom teaching. While in the train, he is pursued by a young man called Mutt Williams (Shia LeBeouf) who looks like James Dean with slicked hair, motorcycle and a pocket knife. Mutt tells Indy that an old colleague, Professor Oxley (John Hurt) is going to be killed and gives him letters from Oxley. This leads them to find a crystal skull in Peru without knowing “Mac” and Spalko are following them relentlessly.

Indy and Mutt manage to find and rescue Oxley and Mario Ravenwood (Karen Allen), Indy’s love interest from Raiders of the Lost Ark who happens to be Mutt’s mom. Together, they make a daring escape not once but twice, the second time succeed after a rough topsy-turvy battle through the jungles. Along the way, Mutt displays some superb skill of swordplay and even he even swings like the monkeys and ends up in the jeep with Indy. When Indy encounters “Mac”, “Mac” tells Indy that he works for the CIA and Indy believes him as easy as a pie. Everyone runs helter-skelter after they all landed on the colony of gigantic siafu ants. Miraculously, the ants avoid crystal skull, so Indy and Colonel Dovchenko (Igor Jijikine) are able to battle it out hand-to-hand combat on the ant’s colony.

After escaping from the Russians, Indy and the gang (including “Mac”) ends up in the water when Ravenwood makes an unbelievable attempt at driving through the cliff only to land on a tree besides the cliff which safely brings Indy and the gang down to the ground. After falling through three waterfalls, everyone survive without barely a scratch (we are not talking about the normal waterfalls, these waterfalls are almost like the size of Victoria Falls). Through the final waterfall, they have discovered the entrance without knowing “Mac” has secretly dropped a tracking device for Spalko to track their location.

The Indiana Jones movies are always exhilarating and bring never-ending excitement and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is no different. Though there are flaws in the movie like none of core characters got injured, jumping jeep from the cliff and landed safely, falling and surviving waterfalls, surviving nuclear bomb in a refrigerator, we all know Indiana Jones is an action hero and Harrison Ford does it right again. Shia LeBeouf has apparently grown up from the Transformers movie into a rougher young adult while Cate Blanchett plays her role well as a Russian communist, in fact, she even speaks flawlessly in Russian accent. Besides the usual heart-pounding excitement, the movie is somewhat lightheartedly funny. Like it or hate it, the movie is put together perfectly by the brilliant Spielberg and Lucas and are played well, every bit of it.

My ratings: 9 out of 10.