Dear Danny Butterman: Your movies suck.

[phosfate]

Watched Die Hard last night, in preparation for a story I'm theoretically writing. Apart from Alan Rickman's rather delightful scenery chewing (om nom nom), it was a tedious piece of bloated crap. I'm glad I didn't pay theater money to see it back in the day, since it would only have helped to kill my love of movies that much sooner. Also, hi there James Shigeta, you are always awesome.

I did like the bit where Bruce, Alan, and stupid exec are all on the phone, and Bruce is trying to save exec's life and exec is too stupid to figure it out.

I can't help but thinking that if Bruce hadn't been there, the robbers would have stolen their crap, blown up some shit, and left. Much lower body count and less property damage.

Still, a more watchable holiday movie than The Christmas Shoes.

Comments

[swankyfunk.livejournal.com]

You ain't seen Die Hard before??

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

No.

[swankyfunk.livejournal.com]

I think you'll learn to love it.

[goddessdster.livejournal.com]

All right, Nicholas, what else is on the list?

Though I do agree that Danny's taste in movies is tremendously terrible (Bad Boys II?), Die Hard has many fine qualities if you're willing to turn your brain off.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

...I don't know how. ;_;

[swankyfunk.livejournal.com]

This should help:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTyw6cq86kY

[ashenmote.livejournal.com]

I saw it for the first time this year too!

I would like to add the disgruntled and incompetent presence of Mr. Vernham Paul Gleason to the list of plus sides to the movie, but maybe I am biased.

Much lower body count and less property damage.

See, you say that like it is a good thing.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

See, you say that like it is a good thing.

Ohhhhhhhh, right.

[saskia139.livejournal.com]

Another small plus: Reggie Vel Johnson as the doughnut-loving cop, a character he essentially recreated in Family Matters. And Rickman is mighty elegant when he chews scenery.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

I...when he tearfully filled the Villain Who Just Won't Die full of lead, despite his Issues With Guns, I...I'm afraid I giggled.

[twigcollins.livejournal.com]

it was a tedious piece of bloated crap.

D :

[viedma.livejournal.com]

Die Hard is only good if there's a decade between you and the viewing of it, imnsho.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

They were planning on blowing up all the hostages already to cover their tracks, but it'd have been a neater sort of carnage if they'd gotten away with it. I think maybe a couple fewer responding cops might have been killed overall.

I've seen Die Hard several times on TV; I think it's rewatchable, obviously, but I don't especially love it. It's overlong, the FBI stuff is just plain obnoxious, and all the good bits are scattered amid an unremarkable police/action drama. I don't think Alan Rickman is that interesting in it, either; Bruce Willis does better playing McClane's frazzled, improbably resourceful supercop. I haven't seen the second movie in the series all the way through. I might borrow it from the library one of these days, out of completism. And the fourth, most recent movie in the series is about three orders of magnitude [building or city to state to country] more bloated than the original: it throws the whole USA into chaos in order to have a series of localised hypertrophied action sequences centered on McClane & co.

I really love the third Die Hard (With A Vengeance), though. It's got problems (like, really, making it a point of attacking the black guy's prejudices against white people?) and it's quite (sometimes ridiculously) contrived, but it's pretty nearly only full of the fun bits. And Jeremy Irons is a more flamboyant villain, and he gets undressed down to a shoulder-baring camisole too.

[nitasee.livejournal.com]

Ah, Alan Rickman. How I love him when he chews the scenery. I figure Rickman knew he was in a dumbass movie and decided to enjoy himself - and his paycheck.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Plus it stops his teeth growing into his brain.

[goddessdster.livejournal.com]

Oh...I thought that was in Robin Hood...

[violetisblue.livejournal.com]

Alan Rickman was fun to watch, everything else sucked. Bonnie Bedelia's character was far too good for her husband so Mary and I pretend she was plotting with Alan all along, he faked his death and they ran off together. Bruce wouldn't care anyway, he's got wossname Second Banana who would totally give up his maiden name for him.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Or a lovely threesome with Bruce, Second Banana, and the driver. That limo's bar isn't going to drink itself.

[teenygozer.livejournal.com]

Someone much cleverer than me (Neil Gaiman, I think) said that Die Hard was an anti-feminist tract about the complete deconstruction of a woman's life as an independent working individual: her boss is killed, her office is destroyed, the building where she works is wrecked, until nothing is left but her life as a wife to this guy and mom to his kids. (Keep in mind he put it way more elegantly than I did.)

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Now, that's just silly. Women aren't important enough to have movies made about them.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's the first time that movie actually makes some kinda sense. Creepy reactionary sense, but sense.

(I can't really watch it now - except to fast forward to the Alan Rickman parts - the whole SHOULDER PADS YAY thing just kinda makes me wonder when Kip Winger and the rest of the band are eventually gonna show up and finish their video.)

[hawkmoth.livejournal.com]

I've had a crush on James Shigeta for forty-something years now...

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Oh HELLS yeah.

Also he was in The Questor Tapes, which makes me all happy 'n shit.

[sorchar.livejournal.com]

A well-meaning lady at church gave me that Christmas Shoes book. I'm pretty sure it was the final catalyst that sent me tumbling into full-blown Type II diabetes.

[annlarimer.livejournal.com]

Kill her. It's the only way.