Diamond Men

Robert Forster is one of the most under-appreciated men working in movies. Maybe some day he will get his big break, like William H. Macy did in Fargo. This might have been a routine “old pro teaches a lesson to the young upstart” formula, but it is much more than that. Excellent.

Dick Tracy

I remember that I was very, very impressed by the special effects, which were amazing for its time, and by the production design. It is all in primary colors, and I mean all. Seven primary colors, in fact. Seven colors with no different shades. The red they use, for instance, is the same for a neon light, a man’s coat, a car, or a wall. Tracy’s yellow coat is the ... Read more »

The Dictator

Sacha Baron Cohen can be a very funny man. I nearly hurt myself watching Borat: Cultural Learnings … etc., etc. I haven’t seen Brüno, but I intend to one of these days if I can talk Lee into seeing it. He can also be quite good as an actor, in small parts like the cop in Hugo and the barber in Read more »

Dicte

When looking through the TV series available to stream on Netflix and coming upon this, the last thing in the world I would have thought this word was would have been a woman’s name. But that is what it is, and it must be a fairly common one in Denmark. No one, when introduced to Dicte Svendsen, says “What a strange name!” Dicte is a reporter for a newspaper in Aarhus, and is played by a ... Read more »

Die Hard

When all is said and done, this is one of the best pure action movies around. I say this in spite of certain plot idiocies inherent to the genre, at least these days. Things like the inevitable standoff with a gun to the head of someone dear to the hero, forcing him to drop his gun, the bad guy who points a gun at the hero’s head when he has absolutely nothing to gain other than giving the ... Read more »

Die Hard 2

When you get to five films in a franchise it can sometimes be hard to remember who did what to whom, where, and why. I had to refresh my memory about this one. Okay, it’s happening at Dulles Airport, it’s Christmas Eve again, and the baddies are about nine hundred and ninety-nine renegade soldiers, including most of the people we were led to believe are good guys, who want to free a Latin ... Read more »

Die Hard 2: Die Harder

It always becomes a question of how many unbelievable things can you ignore and still have fun. The usual supertanker-load of high caliber bullets are expended, 99.99999% of them hitting nothing important, 100% of them missing John McClane, even though about 50% of them are expended in his general direction. Well, that’s standard, if you can’t shrug that off you shouldn’t bother with films ... Read more »

Die Hard, A Good Day to

A very sad and totally unsuccessful attempt to wring the last drops of blood from the filthy used bandages of the previous four Die Hard movies. Every stupid cliché from every bad action movie you have ever seen is here, and worse than ever. Human skin that is impervious to glass, or impact, or anything else. Thousands and thousands of bullets that are always a ... Read more »

Die Hard, Live Free or

This was the fourth, and the last of the watchable Die Hard movies, six years before the terrible A Good Day to Die Hard. Yes, it’s getting a little tired, and yes, most of the action scenes are way beyond preposterous, but it’s possible to have fun here if you don’t think about it too much.

The most interesting thing about it, ... Read more »

Die Hard With a Vengeance

Number Three in a series! Collect them all! Location: New York City. For once Bonnie Bedalia is not tied to some railroad track somewhere with Snidely Whiplash looking on and chortling. In fact, she is nowhere to be seen, nor is scumbag reporter William Atherton. John McClane’s Negro sidekick (so far, there has always been a black ally) is a big star this time around, Samuel L. Jackson. ... Read more »