My Favorite Scene: Independence Day (1996)

This will undoubtedly win the award for Shortest Favorite Scene Ever.  I know there’s drama around it, what with the running and the helicoptering and Jeff Goldblum staring at his laptop, but this is probably the best explosion in movie history that doesn’t involve a Death Star.  I remember in summer 1995, my best friend and I went to see Apollo 13 and they played the teaser trailer for ID4 and it was pretty much just this.  That’s how you do a teaser trailer.  We’re going to blow up the White House.  Wanna come see?  BOOM.  ID4 coming Summer 1996.

This was before Roland Emmerich went on to make a career out of blowing up any landmark of significance worldwide.  If there’s something left he hasn’t blown up, it’s not significant.  It’s like the cool kids table for monuments.  Has Emmerich blown you up?  Pssht, go sit with the national parks.

There is a sequel to Independence Day coming in 2015 (the year of all movies ever being released).  There’s no Will Smith, but Jeff Goldblum and Bill Pullman are on-board, so we definitely still have the star power necessary to repel another attack.  I’m guessing it took 20 years, but the alien race noticed that all those frisbee ships they sent Earthward never checked back in, so they’re back.  If there’s a shot of a carpenter satisfyingly hammering in the last nail into the reconstructed White House right before they reduce it to splinters again, I will have a new favorite movie explosion.

Also, depending on the inhabitant of the real White House, I sometimes find this cathartic to bring up and watch several times alongside the news.  My dad does the same thing with Die Hard after a bad day at work.  It’s how we could all tell it was a bad one.  “Dad’s going for Die Hard,” stay out of his way.  Thank you, movies, for helping us “cope”.

Trailer Time: The Butler (2013)

Oscars.  That was the first thing that went through my mind after I watched the first trailer for The Butler.  The cast is phenomenal as is the scope of the story they’re telling, covering over thirty years of Presidential history through the eyes of a White House butler who served eight US Presidents.  I have to say, some of the casting is really strange.  Alan Rickman is Reagan?  Liev Schrieber is LBJ?  John Cusack is Nixon?  Also, if the film was the Academy Awards powerhouse it appears on this first look to be, why is it being dumped in August?  It’s certainly an interesting film to keep an eye on for late summer.  The Butler is scheduled for release on August 16, 2013. Official synopsis below:

The Butler tells the story of a White House butler who served eight American presidents over three decades. The film traces the dramatic changes that swept American society during this time, from the civil rights movement to Vietnam and beyond, and how those changes affected this man’s life and family. Forest Whitaker stars as the butler with Robin Williams as Dwight Eisenhower, John Cusack as Richard Nixon, Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan, James Marsden as John F. Kennedy, Liev Schreiber as Lyndon B. Johnson, and many more. Academy Award nominated Lee Daniels (‘PRECIOUS’) directs and co-wrote the script with Emmy-award winning Danny Strong (‘GAME CHANGE’).

Movie Review: Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

So here’s the thing: I like Die Hard.  Die Hard was a great movie.  I like several of the other Die Hards.  People need to stop copying Die Hard.  It’s been 25 years and there’s a Die Hard copy once a year.  Die Hard on a boat, Die Hard on a plane, Die Hard for kids (cough Home Alone cough), and now we have Die Hard in the White House: Olympus Has Fallen.

The plot, such as it is, doesn’t deserve a lot of summarizing but essentially North Korean extremists (the new movie villains de jour) infiltrate a South Korean delegation to the White House and then in coordination with a small army that pops out of nowhere, take down the White House and have the President (Aaron Eckhart) hostage.  The implausibility of all of this is so ludicrous that it even by action movie standards, suspending disbelief is impossible.  The movie makes the Secret Service look like the most ineffective law enforcement agency in cinematic history.  Plus, I don’t know if the post-9/11 world we live in, or if I’m just sick of it, but I find watching national landmarks being destroyed by terrorists to not be entertainment so much as it is tap dancing on cultural fears.  Maybe that’s an overreaction, I don’t know.  If  others feel the same way, Roland Emmerich is completely out of work.

At any rate, Gerard Butler, playing a Secret Service agent (the only effective one) who made his way into the White House during the assault (because really anyone can get in there apparently) is now the only hope America has of not being nuked.  Die Hard in the White House.  I’m not sure how much longer Antoine Fuqua can get away with billing himself as “the director of Training Day”, but I think this would be as far as he can go.  But what do I know?  It’s doing well at the box office so it could just be me.

There’s nothing original here.  It’s trope after trope after trope.  There are multiple Oscar winners slumming in Olympus, so it’s not badly acted (though Melissa Leo was…not good….when she started belting out the Pledge of Allegiance at one point, I believe my eye-rolling was so prominent it was audible).  I like seeing King Leonidas kick butt to save President Two Face while Speaker of the House Lucius Fox leads the nation (I love that everyone has done a comic book movie by now).  It’s just dumb.  Not badly done dumb, but dumb nonetheless.  I’m rating it the same as I rated GI JOE 2, but at least that movie had an awesome 10 minutes.
3.75/10