Talking about Die Hard is complicated for lots of reasons. Besides Aliens, I think it’s the best popular action film ever made and, given when it came out, it’s very familiar. It shouldn’t be full of surprises and, in many ways, is not (though Theo and Karl having a bet on Takagi is something new […]
Entries Tagged as '20th Century Fox'
Die Hard (1988, John McTiernan)
December 25th, 2007 No Comments
Recommend on MahaloFantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007, Tim Story)
October 10th, 2007 No Comments
The quality of the Fantastic Four franchise (and I hope it’s a franchise, not a duet) is apparently on an exponential growth curve. Rise of the Silver Surfer is, with one exception (Jessica Alba’s straining superpower face is bad), as good as a superhero movie about saving the world while wedding planning could be. It’s […]
Barricade (1939, Gregory Ratoff)
August 31st, 2007 No Comments
Barricade is a nice bit of pre-World War II propaganda, one of handful of ones supporting the Chinese government. The film lays it on rather thick, with heart-warming flag moments, frequent prayer, and reminders to the audience there are some people in the world worrying about more than a run in their stockings. Except the […]
The Driver (1978, Walter Hill)
August 29th, 2007 No Comments
There are limits to how much patented Walter Hill machismo one person can take and The Driver pushes its limit early on. Well, maybe not too early on, since the movie runs ninety minutes. It doesn’t help Ryan O’Neal doesn’t talk, Isabelle Adjani chokes through her English dialogue, and Bruce Dern turns in an exceptionally […]
A Millionaire for Christy (1951, George Marshall)
August 22nd, 2007 No Comments
A Millionaire for Christy exemplifies why the screwball comedy doesn’t work outside it’s era without a lot of tinkering. I can’t even think of a good example of one working outside the 1930s right now, but I’m pretty sure there have been some. Maybe even recently. But Christy adapts a regular screwball comedy script for […]
Willie and Phil (1980, Paul Mazursky)
August 6th, 2007 No Comments
I think I made a mistake before watching Willie and Phil. I went looking for its running time and, in addition to that information, I also found some mention of the film satirizing the 1970s, references all sorts of little details in dialogue and such. They were really distracting–not just in dialogue, but also in […]
Idiocracy (2006, Mike Judge)
July 6th, 2007 1 Comment
Idiocracy has one fundamental flaw–and plenty of little ones, but the fundamental one is too glaring and too fixable–the two leads do not have a romance and the film pretends they do. Foul-mouthed prostitute Maya Rudolph all of a sudden starts talking without slang and doing sweet things. Then, at the end, there’s supposed to […]
