Live Free or Die Hard

Stupid title.

The copy I watched actually announced the film as Die Hard 4.0, which I prefer. It even makes sense, since the film focusses on technology and hackers. But the official title seems to be Live Free or Die Hard. Well, so be it.

John McClane is sent to get a hacker and bring him to the FBI in DC, because there are some serious technology based security issues and several hackers have had their hands in them. Unwittingly, as it turns out. These hackers are now being killed off by the people that originally used their services. McClane saves his package, one Matthew Farrell, from death by explosion and/or multiple gunshot wounds. They will spend the rest of the film running from henchmen sent by the bad guy, one Thomas Gabriel.

Thomas Gabriel is played by Timophy Olyphant, who makes a wonderful baddie, I always thought. My earliest recollection of him is in Scream 2, where he was bad, bordering on insane. Here, he is more of an evil genius, always keeping his composure and cooly disposing of everyone who has done his part in the operation and is no longer of use to him.

An additional complication is thrown into John McClanes path in the form of his daughter, who is upset with daddy right up to the point when he is her only hope of survival. His son we will meet in A Good Day to Die Hard, which is nowhere near as good as any of the other parts.

You know what? I like this film. I am down with turning off my brain and watching Bruce Willis save the day. It's good fun.

7/10

Mission: Impossible

I have watched this film for the second time and I still don't know what the hell is going on. Double agents everywhere you look, everybody is ready to turn on you at the drop of a hat and people are dropping dead left and right. One of them Emilio Estevez, who I had totally forgotten was in this at all. Well, he barely is. Rest in peace.

To make comprehension even more difficult, people that one presumed to be dead resurface later on in the movie. They may or may not be on your side (probably not).

The cast is full of acting heavy weights. And I am not even referring to Tom Cruise here. Kristin Scott Thomas (alas, another agent we lose too early in the game), Jon Voight (good guy? bad guy? alive guy? dead guy?), Emmanuelle Béart, Vanessa Redgrave (I mean, come on), Ving Rhames, Jean Reno (who always makes a film immediately better).

Whenever the blot gets to confusing, there is an explosion to distract the cast and the audience. Or, I think that it the reason. Some of them are caused by exploding gum. James Bond didn't have exploding gum, did he? So, there.

There is also the famous Topkapi-rip-off-scene. If you do not know what I am talking about, that means you have not seen Topkapi, in which case we can never be friends.

Also, a helicopter in a tunnel dragged along by a train. Fighting, danger, gum, explosion! Such fun!

5/10

Nightcrawler

Jake Gyllenhaal is the greatest actor of his generation.

Agreed? Good.

What a despicable weirdo he plays in Nightcrawler. The film makes you question how much of what you are presented on the news is actually real and what has been manipulated for the sake of ratings.

This is not the first film about the exploitation of tragedy by the media. Billy Wilder already tried his hand at this in the brilliant but underrated Ace in the Hole (watch it!). Back then it was a newspaper reporter that milked his story for all that it's worth, Nowadays, as an extra, there is also speed to consider. Everyone has a camera phone and being faster than the rest is pivotal.

But of course, once you have mastered the speed part, your new problem is how to make what you deliver more appealing to the people you are trying to sell your footage to?

Louis "Lou" Bloom, who has an eye for a good scene, stops being content with however a, say, car accident, looks as is. To put the victim(s) in the best light possible (very literally), he simply pulls a bleeding body closer to where it should be for maximum impact. Also, to make bullet holes in a fridge more shocking, he adds the all-important human element, by placing the family photos on the fridge just so before filming the holes.

And it gets only more ethically questionable from there. He starts to not only manipulate the scene of the crime, but orchestrates one himself, waiting with camera out for tragedy to unfold. In the aftermath, when questioned by police about his involvement and his footage, he tells them, us and himself that he only did his job. And he gets away with it.

What an asshole.

8/10

All Good Things

If you need prove that real life is more exciting than fiction, here it is.

This is also the story of Robert Durst. Andrew Jarecki, the documentarian that interviewed Durst for The Jinx, also made this film. Actually, this film is what set everything in motion. Durst was arrogant enough to contact Jarecki and offered to tell his side of the story. As we all know now, this got him in all sorts of trouble. Again.

The film tells a fictionalized account of, mainly but not only, the disappearance of Durst's wife. Here the couple is called David and Katherine Marks and all the other names have been changed, as well. But if you watch The Jinx you can clearly see that this was pretty much all that has been changed.

The film is solid and entertaining, but whereas the incoherent story telling of the latter telling of the events works well enough, here it just feels like it is jerking you in and out of the story. The Galveston events have been thrown in in little chunks, at seemingly random intervals.

Now, I have watched the two versions of events in reversed order and went into viewing All Good Things knowing what happened when and where things headed. This may have helped me with wrapping my head around the narrative. Especially since the murder and subsequent trial in Galveston, TX, were only skimmed over. I feel that this should have gotten more attention, seeing that the trial was what the film was actually anchored in.

The acting, from everyone involved, was very good. I am not usually a fan of Kirsten Dunst, but in here I liked her a lot. Ryan Gosling holds his own in a film that does not rely on his good looks, which is also nice to see (though not as nice as Ryan Gosling at this sexiest *sigh*).

Decent.

6/10

The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst

You can't make this stuff up.

The life story of Robert Durst is so weird, it can only be true. This is the account of the man himself, made after the film All Good Things by the same film maker, Andrew Jarecki, which was based on the same events then discussed in The Jinx interviews. Giving those interviews and letting a camera follow him around may well be the worst decision Robert Durst ever made.

The details of the series have been chewed over often enough recently and all the connections to the Serial podcast have already been drawn, so I will not go there. Here are simply my own thoughts on the whole mess.

The Jinx is quite brilliant and very engrossing. Andrew Jarecki also made the exceptional documentary Capturing the Friedmans (if you haven't seen is, please consider this a recommendation to do so). Documentaries have been getting larger audiences in recent years, which is a good things. Life, after all, does tell the best stories.

The final punch of the show, of course, has a weird after taste. The timing of Durst's recent arrest coinciding with the airing of the last episode is curious, and accusations of holding back evidence for the sake of the sucker punch of that scene have flown, but I tend to give the film makers the benefit of a doubt. The inclusion of the team's discussions of the evidence they had in hand (the inciminating letter) even before Robert Durst muttered his confession to himself while wearing a live microphone and their sharing the evidence can be taken as an indicator, that they were acting in good faith.

In conclusion: watch more documentaries. Some of them are well worth your time and long gone are the times when reality banned on film are presented in a way that will bore you to tears.

9/10