Latest Reviews
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD a.k.a. DIE HARD 4.0 (***)
Those close to me wonder how I can justify liking John McClane over Optimus Prime. Jean-Luc Godard once said that the best way to criticize a movie is to make another. And though LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD is not a remake of TRANSFORMERS, it is the superior action film, and comparing both reveals one’s strengths and the other’s weaknesses. Yes, both movies involve spectacles of mayhem and destruction, and involve preposterous plots, but DIE HARD 4.0 is a fine example of how managing expectations and a coherent visual strategy can be crucial in gaining a rapt audience.
TRANSFORMERS (**)
For followers of the series, how much you love Michael Bay’s TRANSFORMERS will depend on how much you have grown up (and probably how many decibels your eardrums can take). It seems natural that many of us who collected toy autobots and decepticons might have had great interest in the fields of science, as the mechanics of how these robots transform required inquiry during our younger years. So if you’re like me, watching this movie may not only reveal an onscreen battle between good and evil, but also one's own personal battle between nostalgia and common sense.
