Movie Review 20.May

Title: Die Hard
Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Reginald Veljohnson
Rating: 3 1/2 terrorist attacks
Review: Again with this Christmas thing? One would think that terrorists plan all their mass attacks around Christmas. -1 for that.
Now, i saw Die Hard a few years ago on TV, and I don’t recall what point I came in at, but it was a good watch then, and I’ve been meaning to watch the whole movie without any commercials in between the good parts. I also remember the original video game in the arcade, which was close to the same thing, but with different plot twists. At the end of the day, it still came to the same thing.
I’ve hardly been a fan of Bruce Willis movies, and I couldn’t name three of them if I tried. But in this movie, one can’t really get enough. He is slowly stripping down over time and he has a pretty mice bod and the type of green eyes I like. Okay, enough of that, but I also enjoied his role in this. He was rather convincing and believable. However, there were a few things he said or did that I didn’t totally follow, and I had to think about it for a while.
Alan Rickman is an actor I find hard to find in a movie, and it wasn’t until I read the credits that I realised it was him at all. He has always been a good bad/undertone character player. Either you know he is evil or you know he is plotting something. But at the end of the day, even he was amusing in this film.
What I didn’t like in this film, as in others, is the following...
* Major characters heal too quickly.
* Professional terrorists/assassins etc cannot shot a target unless it is with a sniper’s riffle or a pot shot with a pistol. Semi=automatics, machine guns, etc, will never hit the target.
* The one thing that will weaken the good guy is always on hand for the bad guys.
Since these things were in this film, I gave it a -1, but I put half back, because at least this time we get to see John (Bruce Willis) tending to his wounds, so at least we know he did something about them, rather than just letting them heal magically/unexplainably.
Looking at it, I probably would go out and by Die Hard on DVD for myself, because it is not too slow to start and you get into the thick of things very quickly.
Now, as you will notice further down, I have watched Die Hard 4. I know that it is not in order, but they refused to give all the Die hard’s numbers, so I didn’t know which was which in what order, and a friend had suggested I watch number 4, so I did. I will endevour to see the others. Having had a look through the Adult fanfiction archives, there is a reoccuring name on the list that means either John gets a partneer or he is the next hottest actor on list. Either way, I wanna find out.

Title: Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Starring: Harriosn Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman
Rating: 4 Lost Arks
Review: This movie proves three things. One is that if lost artifacts/their clues aren’t in Venice, they are in Egypt (religion not withstanding), and that there is only one way to do an archiological quest, and that is with the artifact changing hands several times. The last is that if you are travelling with an ancient artifact, for God’s sake, don’t go on a water craft. Both Tomb Raider games and this movie suggest that when (not if) the power of the artifact is left alone, it will activate and either kill everyone and sink the ship or use it’s power to summon the enemy to you. Either way, you’re doomed. Next time Indiana, take the damned thing by plane.
What makes me worried is Hitler’s focus on Holy relics and not a lot else during his campeign. But I haven’t done a lot of research into Hitler’s life in many years, so I couldn’t tell you where he placed his faith, if he did at all.
I did see the end to the film quite some time ago, but it is always good to see the full thing from start to finish, as I keep saying. My viewing of the original Indiana Jones series is now complete. There are two more movies out there to be seen and I am not sure if I want to see them. The Emerald Skull didn’t strike me as that interesting, and ‘Young Indiana Jones’ doesn’t come across as a movie that is going to follow the ‘Indiana Jones’ theme idea, but I haven’t read into it.
What I look for in a movie, this one had, even if some of the old fails that appear in the era of movies still exist. This movie had action, suspence and a little bit of gore to go with it. The only thing I find more fasinating than whatching someone do an archilogical dig with a bit of action thrown in is doing an archiological dig with some action thrown in, hence my love of Tomb Raider and my planning to get Lego Indiana Jones, just to see what it is like. The other thing I enjoied was how organised with backup plans each team was, even if they were making it us they went along. There was always a counter move for a counter move made by the oppossition and it became like a giant chess game.
But there is a point off, and this is mainly due to the major errors that are in the movie, either through consistancy or simple error of human understanding. the one that pissed me off the most was all these bad guys and their army running around dressed heavily in army gear/suits and they don’t seem to be sweating. They are less than a time zone north of the equator and they are not sweating goddammit! Again, wounds seem to miraculously heal, but at least there was a bit if a time lapse before they did. And the last thing to piss me off was when the german soldier found Indiana getting dressed, he didn’t realise that he was an American. Slight error!
Would I put this movie on my shelf? Of all the Indiana Jones movies, it isn’t the most thirlling of stories in comparrison to the other two, as it carries the same genre as a lot of archiological movies. The bad guys never learn to let sleeping dogs lie. When they do, it means no more movies, but hey, you gotta have some realism about all this. So the answer is maybe. I haven’t totally thought it out yet.

Title: Die Hard 4.0 (Also known as Live Free or Die Hard)
Starring: Bruce Willis, Maggie Q, Justin Long, Timothy Olyphant
Rating: 3 1/2 computer hackers
Review: Wow! I know that big things happen at Christmas, but Independance day seems to be a major attraction as well. What ever happened to Easter being a good target for phychotic attacks and electronic espionage?
This movie was advised to me by a friend, and I can see why. It fits in nicely with this era’s genre of films... high speed car chases, women with major attitude problems and good-looking bad guys. I swear if the villains in 2 and 3 are hot I am dedicating a fan fiction to an orgy between the lot of them... but I digress. This film also had the edge of sophistication and callculating that is needed when it comes to dealing with computer hacking. What it didn’t come with was the survival edge that the original Die Hard had, so that is a -1. I prefer my action and horror movies to be survival, and this, while armogedon was suggested, didn’t quite cut it.
Bruce Willis is still cute after all this time, but he seems to have fine-tuned his profanity, which I didn’t really like. But this time he has a tag-along, which I wasn’t sure about. For the most of the movie, I was asking them why he didn’t get a gun at one point or another. He might be a nerd but he can defend himself, surely?
I also took a point off for the same thing that seems to appear in a lot of movies of this sort, and that is the momentary survival of the hero. Once is fine, twice is pushing it, three times is just plain rigging it. At least Bruce came out with the marks to show he had been there. Marks, I might ad, healed over without medical attention, – 1/2. This half also goes for the bad coinsidences that are in the film. Surely ‘Warlock’ would have been found and killed, if Matt Farrell was on the list, surely Warlock was too. Little things like that which seemed to bew over-looked are somewhat annoying.
The best thing about this movie is that it started quickly and kept moving from start to finish, which is better than some movies of it’s type where you need to wonder why they are doing something. While I’m not a nerd, I at least understood the most of what they were saying, and I got the general idea of what the bad guys were up to. It became a bit predictable when the FBI unravelled their plot, and I was close to quoting it.
I did notice one thing though, and I tend to find it a bit stereotypical. It is for the nerd section of my readers, and I just want to see if they agree with me. Do evil nerds get better clothing than average nerds? Surely the average nerd wants to dress like a Star Trek villain in well pressed clothing that is either black or black with red/yellow? But no, your standard nerd (apparently) lives in the basement of his Mother’s home and has more computers than the IT store down the road and collects action figues of the aforementioned Star Trek or Wars. Their hygene also looks somewhat in question, and the laundry probably wasn’t done this side of the financial end of year. Evil nerds, however, get a bonus and a minus. The bonus is they are dressed better and look more hygenically satisfying abd probably get laid more. The down side is that they have fewer computers than the standard USA nerd.
Now, when a film or series I have watched ends in such a dramatic shoot down, missiles launch, destroy target reguardless of human life and tear the city down while you are doing it fight, I have one simple question to ask, that I am sure has crossed people’s mind more than once. WHO THE FUCK IS GOING TO CLEAN THIS MESS UP? Seriously, I want a movie about the clean-up process that is post one of these sorts of movies. That would be funny!


Title: Tron
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan
Rating: 3 Memory Discs
Review: I’ve heard about this movie on and off for years since I was just a little boy, and now that I have finally seen it, I have mixed emotions about it. Tron appears as one of the visitable worlds in Kingdom hearts 2, and it displayed the world in a very odd sense, and made Tron look like a simpleton who couldn’t get angry about someone killing his pet dog. The movie portrayed him as a tougher character for the most part. This I liked. It also helped me make sense of a few things about the game.
I already had an average idea of how the world worked, but now I get to see it in a proper light. For an eighties movie, it didn’t do to badly considering that the best vision they could offer of the future back then was shiny furniture and oddly placed fluro lights. But still, the world you are sent to has a lot of rules that, without prior knowledge, you need to pay attention to pick up.
A bit of a jumpy start with a lot of ‘fill in the past quickly’ plot points that require you to remember for future reference, so I took half a point off for that. I also deducted half a point because some of the actors seemed very... I don’t know.... unreal in physical appearance.
There were a few points in the movie with Flynn and either Ram or Tron where I was screaming ‘Oh for heaven’s sakes just kiss already!” because that was certainly the body language being expressed. If they did, I am sure that would have been the very first homosexual cyber sex. Cyber flirting didn’t seem out of the question at any time or any place with the good guys.
The acting was a bit flat, so that dropped off another pont. Tthe last half point got dropped off because towards the end of the film, the rules seemed to change every few minutes. And when all the towers lit up, was that the technical birth of the internet as we know it today? If so, MCP had better be gone. I don’t want him filing through my files and seeing what is in there.
Perhaps not a movie to go onto my shelf, because I juust didn’t hold enough interest to it, but if anyone says “Hey Perry, wanna sit down and watch Tron?” I wouldn’t say no either. But for seeing it for the first time and understanding what the (longstanding) hype is about, I think I understand why. Brings a whole new level to the terms ‘Game play’ and ‘living on/in cyber space.’ And I’m sure the actors do daily comparrisons of the world they acted in and the world today.

This weeks movies have been a pretty good line-up, from the fast and dangerous to the interesting and bizarre. Thanks to Jane and my Sister for their contributions to my list of movies to see, I will endevour to pick them up (perhaps not all at once) for the next week of DVD’s.
I’ve also decided at the end of the month to list all the movies I’ve watched in order from best to worst. Presntly, I think the winner is Indiana Jones and the Last Criusade, but I don’t have my blog open while I’m typing this, I’m copying and pasting it all from Microsoft Word.
At the end of the year, there might be a list of the top ten movies, along with a repeat of their reviews. Who knows? I will also be adding reviews to any movies I go and see in the cinemas, just before anyone asks. Until next time,
Perry