G.I. Joe: Retalliation (2013)

I admit that I had been looking forward to this movie. You could almost say that the first G.I. Joe movie (and the Transformers movies) was a guilty pleasure, except I don't feel that guilty about it. They did not remake the cartoons I watched as a kid, nor the comic books I read. But let's be completely honest here, those cartoons and comic books served the sole purpose of selling more toys. Marvel worked a little bit on trying to make the Autobots and Decepticons fit into their universe, mostly with a mini series that featured them and G.I. Joe and Cobra with a small part, little more than a cameo really, by Spiderman. The G.I. Joe comic at least had some mini series spin-offs and developed some story lines far away from what the cartoon did, however they were obligated to throw in at least some of the new characters and contraptions whenever Hasbro released another batch. They mostly provided simple stories for us kids to act with our toys if we had right ones. Present company included. I've got to say that I personally, when left to myself, i.e. not playing with my dollies with my friends, saw G.I. Joe teaming up with the Rebel Alliance to fight the evil Empire which had joined forces with Cobra because those generic Cobra soldiers looked a lot like the Bespin guards who we all know are Stormtrooper wanna-bes. Then legos would get involved to make fortifications quickly followed by the Transformers and some other robot toys, as mechs to help their sides do battle. But, eventually they all joined forces to battle He-Man and his posse. He-Man even though vastly outnumbered would lead his giant troops to victory, only to appear to be thwarted by the Warlord (from DC comics) who lead forces including Hercules who were the same size as the He-Man figures, but they would join forces at the crucial moment and the Star Wars/Transformers/G.I. Joe army would be defeated with the rare exception when the Justic League of America would show up to fight the giants. But mostly I built defenses and little vehicles to prepare for the epic climax.
The first movie was a sci-fi action film with some surprisingly strong characters. This time around the sci-fi is pretty much dropped. Oh, it's there, but is secondary at best. What has replaced the sci-fi part is a ninja part, or more correctly, G.I. Joe seems to be part of a ninja movie.The character building has been completely replaced by more ninja action
With that being said, it's not a very good sequel, but it is a decent movie. Aside from a very small number of characters, it's new folks all the way around. Don't they know that the new toys were always fun because you integrated them with the old toys, not replace the old toys?  I guess not.
I had heard before the first one came out that there was a planned trilogy. I wonder if those plans still exist or if two and three got pushed together. They totally leave the end open for more, but the story arc seems to be pretty well wrapped up. I guess I'll have to just wait and see.

G.I. Joe: Retalliation on IMDb

Hudson Hawk (1991)

I watched this the first time when I was a kid. Well, if being college aged counts as being a kid. During my senior year of college, I had an apartment that had cable, and while now the first thing that pops to mind is how I managed to get any school work done at all, I recall that I saw this movie on t.v. and not from a video I rented. I certainly know that the version I saw had no profanity in it, whereas the theatrical release has the dialogue peppered with it. This  is neither good nor bad, just really obvious because the version in my memory had the language dubbed over.
I never thought of this as a great movie, but I was fond of it. It is pretty much your typical Bruce Willis fair, an action film with elements of comedy and romance strewn about throughout the course of the film. Like I said, not great, but completely enjoyable. I was really concerned that the Suck Fairy would have come and made this unbearable to watch. But, maybe she only visits films you watched before the age of 18 or something along those lines, because I think that I actually liked it better this evening than I did 20 years ago.
There ar really a couple of things worth commenting about, first, this film gets all meta a couple of times, including right at the end where highly unlikely things are explained by something equally as unlikely, all of which happened off camera, and second, David Caruso looking much younger and thinner than he would very shortly in NYPD Blue plays one of the bad guys - I kept looking at his face and thinking that he seemed really familiar and then finally figured it out.
As far as corny action flicks go, this is certainly one of, if not the best Bruce Willis vehicle and maybe one of the better ones starring anybody.

Hudson Hawk on IMDb

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

I think this is the first time I've seen Bruce Willis in a film in many, many years where he doesn't drop the f-bomb. He also had hair, so maybe this film was more of a fantasy than it seemed at first blush.
This is a quirky little film. It takes place in September 1965 but seems like it could take place a decade earlier. It is both a film about an adventure that some kids have, while also having the female lead read from her favorite books which are about kids having a fantastical adventure. I guess that makes it kind of meta. It's not only an adventure that some kids are having, but the reaction of the (few) adults in their lives. By the end we can see that two bachelors are actually the heroes and both save Sam and Suzi in their own way.
The cast for this film is amazing, with the aforementioned Willis, along with Ed Norton, Frances McDorman, Bill Murray and Harvey Keitel, not to mention all of the young actors, led by Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward. The acting often doesn't feel natural, but it does feel perfect for this little world that is set up. The kids all act like adults while the adults are busy trying to come to terms with the secrets each bears.
I definitely recommend this film, but it might be too weird for the more mainstream crowd. I don't know, I guess the Cohen brothers do well enough and this is no quirkier than one of their films, even if it is a little less antagonistic, which is good since it seems to be aimed at kids. But of course this is a Wes Anderson film as you would guess by the actors associated with this project, not to mention the quirkiness (see above). It's really more like Anderson-lite to be honest. It felt like all of the dark side was stripped away. Sure the 12 year old girl has some issues, but everyone in the film just dismisses them, and I guess so do I. It's almost like this is his (Anderson) take on the other side of the family question, an answer if you will to the Royal Tenenbaums.

Moonrise Kingdom at IMDb

A Good Day to Die Hard (Die Hard 5) (2013)

When I saw that very first Die Hard film, I never would have guessed that they would still be making them 25 years later. Back then, sequels were the exception in action films, not the rule. But a lot of films from that era spawned series - Die Hard of course, Rambo, Terminator, Predator, Highlander and probably a bunch more that I just can't quite think of at the moment. Most of these series got worse, or were so bad to start off with that you couldn't really tell if the sequel was worse or not. But, I think the Die Hard franchise has gotten better, well after it got worse.
Last time out, the film was all about reconnecting with the daughter, this time around it was about connecting with the son. Next time? I think  we either see him saving his grandkids or reconnecting with the ex-wife. Either one seems to offer ample opportunity for that unique brand of Die Hard humor.
This film is non-stop action. All of the male bonding that takes place, happens during quieter moments in an action scene. I've got to say this formula works better for them than that used in the first two films where there are lots of throw away scenes with minor characters that establish just how mundane and ordinary they are while also serving to break up the longer action scene. I think this probably holds true for most blockbuster-style action flicks then and now, respectively. Still, it's nice to see that they're perfecting the genre.
Interestingly enough, this is the first 2013 film I've seen. Half-way through June, I thought I would have seen a couple by now, since most turn around times are about three to four months for the film to hit DVD. I guess this isn't too far off since it was released in theatres over Valentine's Day. I can't help but wonder who took their date to see this film. On the other hand, the biggest Die Hard fans I know are women who for some reason just love this series. Or maybe it's just John McClane aka Bruce Willis. It's hard to tell where the character ends and the actor begins, though presumably Mr. Willis kills a few less people in real life than he does in the movies under the guise of McClane. I guess that bad-ass, no tim for sentiment because I'm too busy protecting my family and the free world has it's appeal.
I think they've got maybe another two Die Hard films left unless they pass off teh main role to McClane Junior. Willis is starting to get up thee in years, and while he's probably got another 20 years of film left in him, I don't think he has even that much of this kind of ultra-physical action film left. Though, I'm hearing that 30 is the new 20 and 60 is the new 40, and seeing that both Schwarzenegger and Stallone have new ultra-physical action films coming out this year, maybe we can expect to see a bunch of muscle bound spetagenarians running around killing anything they can point their gun at.

A Good Day to Die Hard on IMDb

Looper (2012)

It would be so easy to focus solely on the time travel aspect of this movie. Granted, time travel is integral to the movie so that might not be amiss, but the conversation would invariably be how they screwed up. You know, because I know how it works. It's all those years I put in with the Doctor, don't you know.
I was really digging on the second half of the movie and the whole nod to Akira. Pierce Gagnon, who plays Cid, is one intense little actor. I hope he doesn't get offended by my referring to him as little, and send back some kind of future me to talk me out of posting this, or you know, just blowing my fucking head off. Of course not, that would be silly. I am clearly mistaking the actor for the character. But his eyes were so intense. Pierce, I mean little in the totally most respectful way.
It's hard to watch a time travel movie that also involves killers and not think of the Terminator and it's sequels. Other than one of the gat men having played a terminator in the Sarah Conner Chronicles, there's not a lot of similarity. In fact I wish there was, not that I think Looper was lacking, but that they could have done more with the Terminator films and television series dealing with the paradox of time travel. Or do they...I think Looper and Terminator take a different approach to what time travel does to the space-time continuum. Looper goes for a direct causality in a closed universe, while the Terminator goes the less direct approach and exists in a multiverse. What do I mean? In Looper if someone kills the younger self, the older self is gone because they could not logically exist, but in the Terminator, when parents are killed after the person exists, they are just forgotten by everyone else, they do not just disappear; the out-of-time person has side-stepped into an alternate universe.
Of course Looper violates it's own rules, in a pretty big way. You can't set up a mechanic that is shown to be universal and then not follow it through because you want the happy endind. Well, I guess you can because they did that in this flick, but you shouldn't. It's terribly inelegant and a bit embarrassing I imagine. And I'm not even talking about paradoxes here. I'm just talking about wrapping up the movie without following through on the consequences of removing one piece of the puzzle.
I still really like this movie, though. It took a while to get used to JGL with that fake nose bridge. It looked good and all, but I just keep watching him and thinking, "that's not what he looks like". Once I got passed that, the film was great.

Looper on IMDb

The Last Boy Scout (1991)

I saw this when it first came out on video. I remember thinking that Bruce Willis was such a bad ass. It seemed with Die Hard and this flick that he was now the preeminent action star on the planet. Somehow it didn't work out that way, which is kind of too bad. This film had some things going for it that Die Hard didn't, but for some reason wasn't the big success that everyone thought it would be. I can't figure out why not, except maybe what I said in the first line that I saw this as soon as it came out on video, not when it played in the theatre.
I also thought this should have been the movie that set up Damon Wayans as a legitimate action movie star. I thought that he played very well against Willis. At the end of the movie they even set it up to make one or more sequels. If they had made them, and presuming they still had Wayans and Willis, I would have watched them.
I wonder if the problem was that this film came out after Die Hard 2? The second DH movie had a lot of nice explosions, but it wasn't very good. Admittedly, it was a lot better than the third one which could have rocked, hell, should have rocked since it had Samuel L. Jackson alongside Willis.
One of the reasons this film didn't shine at the box office was definitely not the decisions made on who to cast as the "family" that Willis would interact. I thought that Chelsea Field as the wife and Danielle Harris as the daughter were great choices. But, I had to look in the credits to find out their names, so this film didn't launch them into superstardom.
Was this film jinxed or something? Maybe this is one of those films that will be looked back on by a tabloid television show in another 9 or 10 years, as the movie that ended careers. It stopped Wayans and Field and Harris from hitting the big time, it forced Willis to do Die Hard 3, it led to conspiracy theories speculating on why this film wasn't as successful as it should have been. You know. That kind of thing.
Every time I try to watch a Bruce Willis film to find some reason not to like them, or maybe it's not to like him, I'm not sure, I find myself liking it at least enough to not think of it as a waste of time and sometimes like with this film, liking it a whole lot more. Maybe I've tricked myself was some kind of intellectual bull shit rationalizations for why I want to watch Bruce Willis movies? Instead of just saying, "hey, I wanna see ol' Bruno kick some ass tonight." I invent some load of crap about trying to out the film as not high-brow enough. Who am I trying to fool? There's no one to answer to for my film watching. Not once has a librarian ever commented about any of my movie choices other than to ask what I thought of the film - they're pretty cool like that, though there is one who will tell you if she thinks a movie sucks and in fact will announce it loudly for the whole world to hear. There is no one at home to tell me they wish I had gotten another. Therefore I conclude at this moment that I need to get over myself. It is kind of ironic, because now that I appear to be coming clean about my Bruce Willis movie addiction, I think I've watched all of them.

The Last Boy Scout at IMDB

Live Free or Die Hard: Die Hard 4 (2007)

A long time passes between the rhird and fourth films in this franchise. I'm guessing that after the third tanked, they decided to put McClane to bed until there were actual terrorists for him to defeat.
We finally get them in this film. In complete opposition to the first three films, the bad guys are terrorists this time, but he doesn't think he's a terrorist. He's also stealing billions of dollars, so maybe he is crook and not a terrorist, but I'm going to have to go with greedy terrorist.
There are no mentions made of the second or third films at all in this installment, though this does set up number 3 to have been the true and canonical sequel to number 2 - McClane has always been a New York cop. They also expanded on the separation from his wife so that now he is divorced. The only bit of continuity that gets messed up is the age of his daughter, Lucy. In the first film (the only other time that we see her) she is roughly six to eight years old, let's lowball it and say six. This movie is 19 years after the first one and Lucy is now a student at Rutgers. Ok, 25 year old co-ed isn't too far of a stretch maybe she took a year off to travel and another year or two to work. Except that she looks 19 or 20 and acts the same. It is strongly implied that at the beginning of the film that she is newly on her own. Now, if they had made her a law student or something, I could have save a few pixels here.
The producers learned from the mistakes of 2 and 3 - in 2 it was that he was the Rodney Dangerfield of police detectives and in 3 it was giving him a partner who was also a bad-ass. This time around, the FBI listen to him from very early on, and the sidekick is a kid who needs McClane's protection to stay alive. Plus, they give him his motivation back - he has to stop the bad guys in order to save his daughter's life.
Less stuff blew up this movie than in the first 3, but the effects were cooler - you didn't just get a truck blowing up in the tunnel, you get a truck blowing up that sends other cars flying through the air that McClane and his sidekick barely dodge. You don't have a car chase shout-out, you have a fighter jet chasing and demolishing a big rig and the highway that it's on. And very noticeably, you don't have a tough assassin chick that only engages minor characters, you have a tough beautiful assassin chick that takes it to McClane and for the most part kicks his ass.
I watched the unrated version this time around. I honestly couldn't tell any difference from the theatrical version. Whatever was different was minor.
Now that I'm on the far side of Die Hard, I can recommend the first and fourth movies. They have a relatively simple and straight forward plot and stick to it. The characters are all motivated to act the way they act. The second was unnecessarily complicated - they weren't just pulling the wool over McClane's eyes, they were pulling one on the viewer too. And the third one...well, it just kinda sucked.

Live Free or Die Hard at IMDB

Die Hard with a Vengeance: Die Hard 3 (1995)

It's now several years later, and for the first time it's not the Christmas season. Which is too bad, that was quite a nice motif they had going, but it doesn't make sense to the big movie companies when switching from the Christmas release schedule to the Summer Blockbuster release schedule to put out a summer-time movie that takes place at Christmas, because apparently, we audience members are too dumb to imagine a winter movie in the summer. Or something.
Theoretically, this movie is a sequel to Die Hard and Die Hard 2: Die Harder. Bruce Willis is in it, that is certainly the same. He plays a policeman named John McClane, which is also the same. And that's just about it. This McClane never was an L.A. cop, and is estranged from his wife and kids who live in L.A. In fact, there is no reference to the second movie, though there are numerous references to the first, even a brief flashback of the main baddie dying at the end of the film. I'd like to think of this as the alternate universe sequel to Die Hard - the one where McClane has gone from being a good cop with the occasional disagreement with his immediate superiors, to a rogue cop, alcoholic who cares more about his own pride than he does about his wife or children.
I missed this movie when it came out and had to verify the date on IMDb. This film turns out to be nothing like the first two really. It's not about a man doing whatever it takes to save his wife. This is a buddy cop movie, well a buddy movie where the main buddy is a cop and the other buddy is Zeus, a bad-ass shopkeeper who gets tangled up with McClane.
McClane has reached true bad-assness in this third film. It's the first time that we see him go all Super Saiyan. Nothing can stop him, not bullets, not exploding subways, not flooding aqueducts, not falling 50 feet and landing flat on his back. In fact the only thing that even gives him more than a second's pause is calling his wife, whom we learn that he hasn't spoken to in over a year. There's nothing that a little bandage, an aspirin or a cigarette can't heal. McGoku is beyond the human reality of toughness.
The baddie in this installment is a combination of the first two - a German robber and a military man. This time the baddie pretends to be a psycho out to get McClane, which is of course a diversion, but towards the end, Simon pretends to be a terrorist to insure that the authorities are looking in the wrong direction. The group of baddies includes a woman for the first time, who is like some type of East German trained Assassin Savant using her wickedly curved knife, but it's not enough to save the film. Maybe if they had her fight McClane or Zeus at some point, but they don't and the movie was lamer because of it.
This film brings Samuel L. Jackson on as Zeus, and Jeremy Irons as the villain Simon. But Jackson and Irons cannot save this film. Maybe if Jackson had been allowed to bring his light sabre and if Irons or his knife-wielding babe had actually gotten into a physical altercation with McClane. But they didn't.
Oh, one last thing, the tossing in of "Yippie-kai-yea mother fucker" has taken the phase from being a witty if irreverant offhand response to a mantra repeated when you take out the first of the main bad guys.

Die Hard with a Vengeance at IMDB

Die Hard 2: Die Harder (1990)

Christmas again, but now McClane lives in L.A. and is in Washington D.C. for the holidays with his in-laws. He's switched from being a detective in the NYPD to being a lieutenant in the LAPD, apparently conceding that his wife's career has at least some significance. I'm just glad that they got all of the actors back to play their respective roles, even if it's a bit far fetched that McClane would call L.A. to ask Al for help or that the asshole reporter would be on the same plane with Holly.
As I recall, when this movie came out in theatres, it was a big deal because of the amount of money spent on the special effects - it cots a lot of money to blow up a couple of 747s. I didn't see it in the theatre though, I hope it was because I was too busy studying, getting ready to go off to college. I did see it in the next couple of years though, on VHS. I got the action aspect, but I missed a lot of the humor. This movie is very self-referential, and at times almost self-aware by which I mean the characters seem to be talking directly to the audience. I mean of course McClane's rhetorical questions to the aether about why this kind of stuff keeps happening to him, a remark about 'what are the odds', etc. Plus, you can't overlook the title - "Die Harder".
This movie isn't as good as the first one. But, I give it credit for sticking with the characters and developing them, giving them a story that has some of the same aspects, but that isn't a carbon copy of the first film. I do find it interesting that in both films, criminal elements masquerade as terrorist organizations because they know how the government will react to terrorists. I can't help but wonder if they would have gone with the same premise after 9/11. I don't think so - I think they likely would have been terrorists.
This movie did see a departure from the character of McClane in one respect - one that will only grow in the third and fourth movies - McClane is no longer the every man cop who wins because he cares the most, he is now the Action Hero cop - along with references made throughout the film as to as much. The only thing that keeps McClane from being a true bad-ass, something which he will achieve in the next film, is that Holly is still in the picture, both humanizing John and showing quite a bit of her Action Hero-ness. I mean come on, not just anybody would taser a dude just to get him off the phone.

Die Hard 2 at IMDB

Die Hard (1988)

I think my recent rewatch of this film was the first time since I saw it originally, back in the day. I think I saw this in the theatre, but not the first run - when it hit the discount, cheap theatres.
Bruce Willis with hair, and it might even have been his hair. He was such a hot commodity when this film dropped. He can actually act, unlike the big three action stars at the time - Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Van Damme. Ok, there might be a few of you out there that think that Stallone can act a little, but it's only because you watched Oscar and it made you laugh, really though, Sly is Sly is Sly.
I had completely forgotten that Alan Rickman and Bonnie Bedelia's hair co-starred with Willis. Future-Snape is so young and thin and really in a different league than everyone else in this film. I think Bonnie Bedelia might have already been a big deal before this movie, and I think that because it certainly wasn't because of this movie. Seriously, you stick that hair on any woman who can read the lines without looking directly into the camera, and voila! You have Holly Generro (until she punches the reporter in the face and defiantly announces, "Holly McClane").
Willis's portrayal of McClane, along with Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon movies redefined the action hero in the late 80s through mid-90s. No longer was he the biggest, most buff, best trained guy with a funny sounding voice, he was the almost-every-man who won because he was basically a good guy, usually a cop, and because he was the most determined. He was as likely to use his brain as his gun. On television, this change was mirrored but a little more subtle, as we went from shows like Hawaii-5-0 to Miami Vice. The white hat was now likely to get knocked off a couple of times, and the hero was no longer the toughest S.O.B. you ever saw, just the one who wanted it the most. At this moment, I am prepared to take this even one step further, and say this mental shift was being played in the economic sector, where the Captain of Industry was being replaced by the MBA whiz kid and soon the dotcom whiz kid.
Two things about this movie surprised me. First, I found McClane uttering, "Yippee-kai-yea, mother fucker" just as entertaining at 40 as I did at 20. Second. it didn't suck. It's actually a pretty good movie and most of that is McClane. He's a cop, and he acts like a cop. He tries not to kill anyone if he can help it. He gets tired and he gets frustrated, and he certainly gets hurt. The character is very interesting - he desperately wants to get back together with his wife, but he wants her to apologize at the beginning of the film, though every attractive woman he walks by, he stops to gawk, I presume to show that he had been faithful to his wife and hadn't had sex in so long that he forgot how to act in public. By the end of the film he not only has come to grips with his own mortality, he has more importantly embraced the idea of a life without Holly, either because she has died or left him for good to stay in L.A. while he lives in New York.
If the above isn't a reason to give this classic action flick another watch, take a look to count how many of the 12 robbers/terrorists survive the ordeal, and out of those that die, how many do we see die and who do we just hear about. Go ahead, you have my permission to make this film a little more interesting for yourself if you need to.

Die Hard at IMDB