John Hanlon says “Die Hard” is a Valentine’s Day Movie

Posted on February 14, 2013 at 8:37 am

My friend John Hanlon has a funny column on CNN today about why “Die Hard” is a perfect Valentine’s Day movie (for guys).

Men often imagine winning a girl’s affection by proving their worth in a battle against someone or something that threatens their loved one’s life. While many women want the men in their lives to be sensitive like Ryan Gosling’s “Notebook” character Noah, guys aspire to be like the renegade John McClane in “Die Hard.”

But he leaves out my favorite quote in the movie, Mrs. McClane’s tender but knowing assessment of her estranged husband: “He’s still alive. Only John can drive somebody that crazy.”

Related Tags:

Holidays

A Good Day to Die Hard

Posted on February 13, 2013 at 6:00 pm

Chases. Explosions. Guns. Crashes. Wisecracks. Punches. Repeat. Repeat again. Yes, it’s the fifth “Die Hard” movie.

Bruce Willis returns as cop John McClane and this time the setting is Moscow. Though he repeatedly says throughout the film’s zippy 90 minutes that he is on vacation, McClane is in Russia to help his estranged son Jack (Australian actor Jai Courtney of “Spartacus”), who has been arrested for attempted murder. It turns out that Jack, who uses his mother’s last name and has not spoken to John in years, is actually under cover for the CIA. Both the Russians and the Americans want a “file” that has been hidden away by a man named Komorov (Sebastian Koch), who is about to go on trial. It contains incriminating information about a high-ranking Russian official. He wants it destroyed. The Americans want to use it to discredit him. The stakes are very high. The chases are very fast. The explosions are very big. The repartee is….not great, but thankfully minimal.

Unlike his “Expendables” colleagues Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, whose 2013 action film releases managed to be both lackluster and overheated, with so much work done on their faces they looked like bad copies of Madame Tussaud’s replicas of themselves, Willis is every bit as good and better than he was in the first “Die Hard” film a quarter century ago. Regrettably, we get only a glimpse of the fabulous Mary Elizabeth Winstead, briefly returning as John’s daughter, Lucy, to drop him at the airport and admonish him to behave (as if!). But Courtney is well-matched to Willis, with their bullet heads, truculent glares, and cocky pleasure in their own outrageous badassery. John may pause for a brief “Cat’s in the Cradle” reverie with Komorov in between dodging bullets, as they ruefully reflect on their failures as fathers, but shortly afterward, as John and Jack awkwardly observe a tender parent-child reunion, they agree that nothing like that would work for them. “We’re not a hugging family,” Jack says. “Damn straight,” agrees his father.

The locations are exotic, and the chase scene through the streets of Moscow is wilder than any since the last “Die Hard.” The titles may be getting increasingly labored but Willis and the stunts make it work.

Parents should know that this film has constant peril and violence. Many characters are injured and killed, and there is a lot of shooting, punching, chases and explosions, some graphic and disturbing images, and strong language.

Family discussion: How are John and Jack alike? Why was Jack so angry with John? What changed his mind?

If you like this, try: the other “Die Hard” movies, especially the first and third

Trailer: Red 2

Posted on January 21, 2013 at 8:00 am

What could be more fun than the first “Red?” Putting the band back together and adding Sir Anthony Hopkins!

Looper

Posted on September 27, 2012 at 6:00 pm

B+

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong violence, language, some sexuality/nudity, and drug content
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking, drug use and addiction
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense and graphic violence with adults and children injured and killed, suicide
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	September 28, 2012
Date Released to DVD:	December 24, 2012
Amazon.com ASIN:	B005LAII8A

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Bruce Willis play the same man in a twisty time-travel thriller about “loopers,” assassins who use short-range guns called blunderbusses to kill targets sent back in time from the future. The first thing we see is an ornate antique pocket watch as young Joe (Gordon-Levitt) waits next to a cornfield, a cloth spread out on the ground in front of him. The seconds tick by and then the target appears on the cloth, hands cuffed behind him with a bag over his head. Joe shoots, turns over the victim to retrieve the silver bars under his jacket, and disposes of the body. The criminals in the future have found a neat (in both senses of the word) method of dispatching their enemies.

It is 2044. The dead man was sent back from 2074.

Young Joe goes out clubbing with other loopers, the hapless Seth (Paul Dano) and another looper who has been retired. In what is called “closing the loop,” his last target is his future self. These final assignments bring payment in gold along with the knowledge of what will happen to the young assassin when he faces himself in three decades. Seth lets his future self escape and gets in trouble with Abe (a superb Jeff Daniels) the man in charge of the loopers. There are some special challenges that come with the problem of two different versions of the same person running around at the same time; apparently, you can’t just shoot him/them without disturbing the time-space continuum or something like that. Old Joe and Young Joe know themselves/each other too well to trust each other and too well to hide from or outsmart each other. And just like Marty McFly, they have to reckon with the fact that any big changes they make in the now will result in even bigger changes in the future. Which is Old Joe’s past.

Still with me?

As with his brilliant and ground-breaking “Brick,” also starring Gordon-Levitt, writer/director Rian Johnson has an engaging and compelling way of mixing genres. There are some overlays of the Western, the noir crime story, and a “Terminator”-style time travel mind-bender. The efforts to make Gordon-Levitt and Willis look even a little bit like they might be the same guy are ineffective and distracting, but other than that, this is a smart, exciting, mind-bender and a lot of fun.

Parents should know that this film has intense and graphic violence and peril. Adult and child characters injured and killed. The film includes a suicide, disturbing images, drinking, drug use and drug addiction, nudity, sexual references and situations, and very strong language.

Family discussion: Do you agree with Joe’s decision at the end? How did his experience with Seth affect his choices later on? What elements of today’s society inspired this idea about the future?

If you like this, try: “Brick,” from the same writer/director and star and time travel stories like “12 Monkeys” (also with Bruce Willis) and “Frequency”

The Expendables 2

Posted on August 23, 2012 at 4:37 pm

The Botox budget must be bigger than the catering costs but less than the ordnance in this sequel to Sylvester Stallone’s first round-up of the 80’s and 90’s A-Team for an action extravaganza. That’s A as in AARP.

This time, our heroes: Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture, along with their summer intern and obvious redshirt Liam Hemsworth are on a rescue mission. I’m not going to bother with their character names because the point of this movie is the actors, not the characters.

The guy tied to a chair and about to be tortured is hooded, so you know we are in for a big wink-wink surprise, and yes, it is former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said, “This is embarrassing.” The group rescues him and the Chinese billionaire he was guarding and then literally drops the client off by tossing him out of a plane with Li to guide him down. Li wisely exits the movie at this point, so my hopes for a rematch with Lundgren were tossed out of the plane with him.

Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) calls in a favor that has Stallone and the gang out for a job he insists is simple. All they have to do is retrieve the contents of a safe in a plane that crashed. They will need to take Maggie (the “combat proficient” Nan Yu) along, despite Stallone’s grousing that he does not want to be anyone’s babysitter. Hemsworth comes along for what he says will be his last job because he wants to quit to be with his wonderful girlfriend. He might as well be wearing a sign that says DBTA.

Or, he could be wearing a sign that says, “I am here to let the bad guy show everyone how really, really bad he is. Here I am, cute as a kitten and calling everyone ‘Sir’ and sacrificing myself for the others, so he must be really, really bad.” We also know he is really, really bad because (a) he is played by Jean Claude Van Damme wearing very mean-looking sunglasses and (b) his character’s name is, I am not kidding, Vilian.

The over-the-hill gang engages in various shoot-outs punctuated by lame wisecracks that refer to their iconic roles. Do you want to guess whether someone says, “I’ll be back?” At its best, it’s like watching a theme park stunt spectacular, one set-up after another, with brief distractions as the guys bond by discussing what they would pick for their last meal or just by the usual macho put-downs. Not that any of these guys were great actors to begin with, but they are less so, now. Between the Botox and the scar tissue, their faces don’t really move anymore. As the movie goes on, Li’s decision to literally bail out seems like the wisest move.

Parents should know that this film includes constant mayhem, peril, and violence, chases, explosions, fights, assault weapons, many characters injured and killed, drinking, smoking, and mild sexual references.

Family discussion: What did Barney mean when he said “we keep it light until it is time to get dark.” Why did he agree to fight the bad guy without weapons?

If you like this, try: the earlier action films starring these actors and the first “Expendables” movie

Related Tags:

Action/Adventure Series/Sequel