Die Hard 2: YOU’RE A LOOSE CANNON, MCCLANE

The first time it happened he was surprised. The second time it happened he was REALLY surprised.

Watching the Die Hard movies has been interesting.  For one, I learned that I have never actually watched any of the Die Hard movies from start to finish before now.  I’m not sure how I managed that, saying as how I was alive during the late 80s and early 90s.  If I had to guess, I’d say my mother had something to do with that.  For years she didn’t let me and my brother watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom because the heart-ripping scene was “too violent” in a futile attempt to protect her children from totally awesome gore.  So Bruce Willis running around popping terrorists like tick tacks probably was a little above the violence threshold.

A few months…  or so?  ago, I reviewed Die Hard, which was also the first time I watched that movie in its entirety.  Suddenly, as if by magic, Die Hard 2: Die Harder appeared on Netflicks and I knew what I had to do because, to quote Homestuck (and honestly, is there any time when I’m not quoting HS?), “we are motherfuckin entrenched in this bitch.”

Die Hard: Blow it all up, okay?

COMING SOON TO A 1988 NEAR YOU

So, apparently I shouldn’t decide to start trends that are supposed to last longer than say, a week, because just one week into Ridiculously Bad Movies month and I’ve already decided to not review a ridiculous movie.  Well, okay, I suppose Die Hard is pretty wacky in its own way.  The amount of carnage, enormous.  Explosions, liberal.  Immortal Bruce Willis’s, present.  I actually watched this one a while back but never wrote on it, what because Die Hard is one of those films that everyone has seen and knows, and railing on and on about the plot points is kinda trite at this point.  But, while cruising IMDB today, I noticed that the third film in the series, Live Free or Die Hard, also went by the name Die Hard – Mega Hard in Denmark, which I took as a sign that I should write about it anyway.

Die Hard is one of those films I can dimly remember watching way back once upon a time, when I’m guessing I was either too young or too distracted to actually pay attention.  Since the film came out when I was four, that’s a pretty solid theory.  In any case, this is a movie about organized terrorists, and about killing said terrorists.  With guns.  And explosions.

Stronghold: A series of games that I hate

More bullshit for you, m'lord?

This post may or may not make much sense to anyone outside my head.  That’s okay by me, I am waaay beyond the point of caring now.  I’m feeling a bit delirious and unsure if I might throw up sometime in the next 12 minutes, and to offset this unfortunate turn of events I spent the past two hours watching Die Hard on Netflicks, because nothing calms the stomach and heals the body quite like Bruce Willis going on a murderous anti-terrorism rampage.  Now I know what you’re thinking:  “Really, Tophat?  Another review for an ancient cult classic movie?  Come on, man!”

Not to worry.  I decided to do a review for a string of games that I’ve had the misfortune to pick up recently.  While I haven’t put nearly as many hours into this franchise as I have, say, Civilization, I’m fairly confident that I can make up the facts about this game that I don’t know, and no one would be the wiser.  Maybe someday we’ll have more Bruce Willis shenanigans somewhere else down the line?  Today is not that day.

The Fifth Element: A lot easier on the eyes than Boron

An evil planet, a cabbie, and natural element number 5: Boron

As I might have mentioned in my article last Monday, I don’t really get much of a chance to see too many movies.  Well, that’s not entirely accurate.  I have Netflicks, and there are always theaters around if I really, really want to make a day of it, but generally I tend to avoid watching full length feature films.  Still, I’ve been watching Elrood and Enosh pound out movie review after movie review, I’ve been itching to give it a try myself.

So, after my complete and utter failure to watch the awfully terrible GI Joe movie last week, I decided to try something I knew I could sit through.  I last saw The Fifth Element back in college (which was an increasingly depressing long time ago), but didn’t remember much about the film, which I chalked up to the film being not that interesting.  I was informed by my brother over the weekend that it was actually halfway decent, so I booted it up to see what its deal was.

Turns out, it’s a pretty solid action film, even if it does have a tendency to fall into some pretty obvious sci-fi clichés along the way.  Bear with me!  Spoilers, probably, maybe?  Though since this film was from what?  1997?  I’m willing to bet most people know the plot by now.

Red

Sometimes a movie isn’t what you expect it to be.  I’m sure most of us have seen the trailers (or seen the movie!) for Red by now.  Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich playing retired CIA agents who become the target of assassination attempts, so they all get together to find out what’s going on and fight back.  That plot is pretty generic of course, BUT, with that cast?  I was in favor of checking it out.  It turns out that “the plot is generic” is actually a pretty generous statement.  Red’s plot really only serves to get the razor-sharp cast from one insane situation to the next.  If you can forget logic and just enjoy good actors doing awesome things, Red becomes pretty enjoyable.