Bruce Willis

watching him to try to be cocky while navigating english was so rough

i find this movie pretty unobjectionable except insofar as like, civilization is objectionable

also great

watching him to try to be cocky while navigating english was so rough

― da croupier,

rubbish, he does this very well in die hard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1daIIDQsXI

^ compelled to watch this every few months

die hard is a master class in a lot of ways, mctiernan is (was, i guess) a pretty incredible director.

mctiernan was great, but don't forget the script! it's not exactly shakespeare, but it's beautifully proportioned. i don't think mctiernan ever worked with a script that good again (though i do like hunt for red october).

it's hard to believe mctiernan directed rollerball before you get to the part that's arbitrarily shot in night vision

I'll defend the second Die Hard too, although if you're not down with its ridiculousness I understand.

HFRO is pretty great in how its two heroes spend the entire film trying to avoid getting into any kind of life-or-death conflict. also for its devotion to sharing little moments that give a sense of minor characters (also a die hard trait), and how it doesn't really have any straight-up bad guys (except for the stowaway agent on the sub, and i guess joss ackland's soviet diplomat, and probably tim curry's role.) i liked the scene with the hardass carrier commander who was being all cliched army swagger dickhead and then the admiral told him a story abt jack ryan, and then in the next scene they shared his swagger was gone.

mctiernan was great bc he didn't cut those bits for time.

i'd defend DH3 as well, based on its stature in my eyes as the 90s version of the taking of pelham 123.

the technical chops brought to bear are definitely apparent; there's no wasted scenes/shots, everything in the script and in the direction is economical and coherent, it's just all brought to bear in the service of something I find fundamentally objectionable (so, ban civilization I guess, in response to amateurist).

There was one line that did elicit a genuine laugh from both myself and the wife: "We're gonna need to get some more FBI guys"

xp

^^ I liked it at the time but rewatched it last spring and couldn't get past J-Irons as quasi-fag with peroxide do. Also: Pulp Fiction hadn't affected casting directors so Samuel L. Jackson still cast like he's in Loaded Weapon 1 and Amos 'n' Andrew.

kinda afraid to revisit 3 or 4 (which i'm tempted to defend as an '00s version of the searchers), but i'm sure 2 is the simple pro job i remember it being

5 was just atrociously boring

i guess i feel no need to revisit the sequels, you'd think one near-perfect die hard is enough, right?

whichever one w J Irons and SL Jackson was I saw that in the theater and hated it

i'd rather move on to other parts of the mctiernan canon, like uh the 13th warrior

xpost

2 ridic 4 ridic but both competent
13th warrior is GREAT

DH 2 was at the airport and co-starred John Amos as an evil but benign paramilitary officer helping a terrorist or something

john amos vs john stamos

if you haven't seen The Prince, get on that shit. kind of a student-film Taken

bruce willis is...... Out Of Death

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12528166/

??

In an interview with Vulture, director Mike Burns said that they planned to have Bruce Willis shoot all of his scenes across two days. However, due to COVID-19 shutdowns, Willis could only be on set for one day. Therefore, they filmed all of his scenes in a single day.

a new movie project can literally be "all in a day's work" for Bruce these days

morelike out of breath, amirite?

Out of Death is the best Helloween album imo

I don’t know if we can call what he does “work”

there was an amusing article in vulture abt these kinds of movies recently, calling them "geezer teasers"

Needs to do a movie with Steven Seagal IMO.

i fundamentally don't understand these movies. coming from the standpoint of someone who will watch shitty action movies: you have to have some standards. they tend to fail in being "so bad its good" also. like watch a recent nic cage or seagal, try and finish it, i dare you.

suggest remake of The Hidden Fortress with Bruce Willis, Nic Cage and Danny Trejo filmed in one day and then the rest deepfaked in the editing suite for 6 weeks

It bugs me how shameless Bruce Willis is about wasting his potential/ phoning in his performances. It's one thing to take roles in bad movies for the money, but he really goes out of his way to do the absolute bare minimum of acting in exchange for the paycheck. It wouldn't be so annoying if he weren't obviously capable of much more.

ClaudeRains.jpg

just to reaffirm the sentiment from the previous decade, Hudson Hawk remains a delight to watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd1eNS9HtXo

(Actually feature doesn't start until maybe minute 9)

Huh, I guess there are rumors he's been struggling mentally and physically? If so that's kind of sad that he's doing these shit movies rather than just retiring and enjoying old age. Though god knows, these movies can't possibly take much time out of his schedule.

The new category, titled “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie,” includes the eight feature films that Willis made in 2021

https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/bruce-willis/razzie-awards-2021-nominees-bruce-willis-category-movies/

I found this comment under that video, so grain of salt, but:

I know quite a few people who worked on Apex. Most of the movie was shot with a picture double on Vancouver Island, with Bruce's coverage being shot by a different unit in Washington. The Vancouver Island shoot turned into an absolute nightmare, as they had hired an entirely unqualified non-union special effects department, which led to a couple of incidents where pyrotechnics went off without the crew on set being notified beforehand. This led to most of the camera department walking off the show, taking their carts and personal kits but leaving the rented gear behind. The rest of the movie was shot by the DP with the help of anyone who had any camera experience from the other departments. They were also unable to hire any union stunt performers or extras as an indie production during early covid, so most of the bad guys getting shot are actually random crew members in costume.

Jay is right in that Bruce's lines are being read to him through an earwig by the script supervisor, but unfortunately this is more due to dementia issues than laziness. The guy couldn't remember his lines if he tried, and often has issues interpreting direction and the instructions being given to him.

Other comments:

I have a buddy that worked on one of these movies last year in Vancouver.

He said it was really hard to watch Bruce struggle to just get his lines out. He was forgetting that he was filming a movie and they had to wait for him so they could record his lines.

They were not able to get everything they needed from Bruce because they only had him for a few days and then he was off the movie. They ran out of time to film all of his lines.

I'm not aware of the title of that movie but Bruce was actually in Vancouver for this one, in Nov 2021. Apparently the scripty would be reading him his lines as well as giving him direction on what to do, but he would often confuse the two and repeat his stage directions aloud. Kinda like saying "I'm getting too old for this shit. And now I'm sitting down on the couch to my right.

Pretty sad, honestly.

I generally like those Red Letter Media guys & that video was fun but yeah, even before reading those YouTube comments, I was surprised that it didnt occur to them as they were ripping on him that old age memory issues might have been a factor for the earpiece stuff

so basically elder abuse

I dont think Nic Cage is suffering from any mental issues (outside of just being Nic Cage) but it's a similar story for him, he's in a ton of movies that nobody knows about every year even outside of the cool critically acclaimed stuff like Mandy and Pig. Did you know there's a Nic Cage movie where he beats up a ton of animatronic animal robots that have been possessed by Satan? And that he does not speak an entire word throughout the whole film? And that it just came out last year??

The difference (and I am not a Cage fan at all, though I enjoyed Pig) is that Cage picks projects that are challenging — in an "I've never done anything like this, let's go" sense — and throws himself into them 100%, where Willis is clearly punching the clock and not the least bit invested in what he's working on. Whether it's because he's got dementia, or is just doing it for the money because his kids have no apparent life skills, the result is the same.

I never really thought of Willis as 'old', but he's 66, which is I guess is quite old, but not so old I would have immediately assumed memory issues were the reason he was having his lines fed to him through an earpiece. I didn't realize he's been mostly doing direct-to-video schlock for the last 8 years or so.

Yes that movie is good

Cage, though, famously (and publicly) spent millions on dumb shit like castles and comic books. I saw somewhere that claimed he burned through $150 million and also owed the IRS close to $20 million, so he def. needed the cash to maintain his lifestyle. But Willis? I have no idea. Looks like his most blatant cash ins began somewhere around 2008. 2012 he had both Moonrise Kingdom and Looper, but since then it's been pretty dire. The earpiece stuff is of course conjecture, but if you can't do your job, then ... retire, you know? Why do a high profile two-person stage play with a great actor if you can't do it? I wonder who is pushing him to do this stuff.

throws himself into them 100%,

This is an important distinction. Cage is def. in it to win it, no matter what loser of a movie he picks. But Willis? Those clips alone they show are so sad. He's barely acting, just reciting short lines with no enthusiasm.

Here's a look at that insane authorized deep fake Russian ad they mentioned:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp4jbs7ivSY

66 is old enough for dementia to be an issue-1 out of 5 of all Americans have signs of it by 60.

pacino also famously uses an earpiece