Now this is populist cinema.
A number of highly cathartic moments had me really locked in. Don't know another movie that makes Stockholm syndrome seem so appealing. Tempted to give another half-star but I can feel my brain's dominant logical side quickly reasserting itself. Rest in piss, Brian Thompson.
Die Hard's too fresh in my memory this holiday so thought I'd give the second another go, and this time I enjoyed it. While it's not as good as the first, there's a workmanlike quality to Die Hard 2 that I appreciated. Simple but well-crafted, it moves from beat to beat in logical, mostly plausible fashion with some fun McClane-isms peppered along the way. The meta "I can't believe this keeps happening to me!" stuff still felt fresh here, and…
A future so dark, so dystopic, that... a corporation is having trouble... forcing a single employee to resign? Now *those* are stakes.
Strange movie. Low-key. Always feels remote, at a remove. The stuntwork for the imagined sport looks dangerous, but well-shot as the action often is, it never generates any tension or ongoing interest.
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor plays us in and plays us out. As its drone faded back in after the anticlimatic end shot I…
