Common Sense

I took my own advice and brought two more people with me to see SiCKO last night at the theater: My mom and my mom’s new boyfriend, Buddy.

Unfortunately, all three showings were sold out! Word is getting around and I don’t care if you are a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent or a fucking Martian, after seeing that movie you will demand universal health care here in the United States. It makes no sense when countries we denigrate like Cuba give better health care to our heroes from 9/11 than our own government.

Unless you are my Aunt Sis, who believes that the government will take over everything and that it is Biblical prophecy that the End Times are coming. She went to go see Evan Almighty instead.

We didn’t get to see SiCKO, either, so we chose Live Free or Die Hard.

I have mixed feelings about the movie. Yeah, there was lots of explosions and John McClane being John McClane. But every character Bruce Willis is a burnt out cop, so it’s not an Oscar-worthy stretch for him. And some of the action is just over-the-top unbelievable. Jumping on and off of airplanes and barely escaping gattling gun rounds while driving a semi? Really, at times I didn’t understand why they decided they needed to add to the franchise.

At other times, I was on the edge of my theater seat rooting for McClane to kick the shit out of evil asian ninja bitch so Justin Long (who played his sidekick role pretty decently) could avert disaster; one of many disasters.

I guess they were banking on us wanting a good, honest, decent, hero type who believes in the America we all believe in our hearts to save us from some terrorists again. Lord knows we need a guy like that in real life to keep us safe from the real bad guys since we know our government would rather line its own pockets and that of its wealthy friends than do anything to protect us. 9/11 kind of proved that.

I guess they were also banking on us not looking at the plot too hard. How is it that an NYPD detective and a 20-something hacker kid are the only ones that can save us? It seemed literally that all the FBI agents in the world numbered about 20 and they were stuck in a trailer outside the Hoover building. Do we really employ that many idiots to protect the digital infrastructure of our country?

Because if we do, I’m taking one of my new Myspace friends up on their offer to move to England. I probably wouldn’t be any safer, but hey, free health care!

And they bad guy, if he really did that in real life, he’d probably be sharing a cell with Khalid Sheik Mohamed getting his daily cattle prod enema. The Bush Administration, after all, only likes certain kinds of leakers. You can leak covert CIA operatives and compromise our national security, but if you do something that makes them look foolish they’ll strip you of all your rights and lock you away somewhere without due process.

Of course, if the writers had imagined a world where Al Gore was president, we’d be living in an Mac world where there would be no computer viruses and our entire federal government and digital infrastructure would safe and secure and we’d never have to worry about anything. And everyone would have an iPod.

I’d be annoyed all the time because I’m a PC person, but there is a price for everything after all.

There would have to have been some other terrorist danger for Bruce Willis to fight against, though, so they left it a Bush world where our weaknesses are left wide open, the people who try fix them are ruined and the people put in place to protect us are morons who can’t do shit.

God bless America.

I give it 3 and half American flags out of 5. It did come out on July 4th after all.

This movie could have been way better, but that would have been too much to expect since the franchise was pretty much over and everyone was scratching their heads as to why another Die Hard movie was getting made. Kudos to McClane, who apparently gave up smoking because it sent the wrong message, as did the PG-13 rating. To keep that rating, when McClane is saying his signature phrase “Yippee-ki-yay motherfucker,” the ‘fucker’ is cleverly drowned out with a gunshot, teaching a valuable lesson to those impressionable 13-17-year-olds: The sound of a gun is better than the sound of a dirty word. Good job MPAA.

I took my own advice and brought two more people with me to see SiCKO last night at the theater: My mom and my mom’s new boyfriend, Buddy.

Unfortunately, all three showings were sold out! Word is getting around and I don’t care if you are a Republican, a Democrat, an Independent or a fucking Martian, after seeing that movie you will demand universal health care here in the United States. It makes no sense when countries we denigrate like Cuba give better health care to our heroes from 9/11 than our own government.

Unless you are my Aunt Sis, who believes that the government will take over everything and that it is Biblical prophecy that the End Times are coming. She went to go see Evan Almighty instead.

We didn’t get to see SiCKO, either, so we chose Live Free or Die Hard.

I have mixed feelings about the movie. Yeah, there was lots of explosions and John McClane being John McClane. But every character Bruce Willis is a burnt out cop, so it’s not an Oscar-worthy stretch for him. And some of the action is just over-the-top unbelievable. Jumping on and off of airplanes and barely escaping gattling gun rounds while driving a semi? Really, at times I didn’t understand why they decided they needed to add to the franchise.

At other times, I was on the edge of my theater seat rooting for McClane to kick the shit out of evil asian ninja bitch so Justin Long (who played his sidekick role pretty decently) could avert disaster; one of many disasters.

I guess they were banking on us wanting a good, honest, decent, hero type who believes in the America we all believe in our hearts to save us from some terrorists again. Lord knows we need a guy like that in real life to keep us safe from the real bad guys since we know our government would rather line its own pockets and that of its wealthy friends than do anything to protect us. 9/11 kind of proved that.

I guess they were also banking on us not looking at the plot too hard. How is it that an NYPD detective and a 20-something hacker kid are the only ones that can save us? It seemed literally that all the FBI agents in the world numbered about 20 and they were stuck in a trailer outside the Hoover building. Do we really employ that many idiots to protect the digital infrastructure of our country?

Because if we do, I’m taking one of my new Myspace friends up on their offer to move to England. I probably wouldn’t be any safer, but hey, free health care!

And they bad guy, if he really did that in real life, he’d probably be sharing a cell with Khalid Sheik Mohamed getting his daily cattle prod enema. The Bush Administration, after all, only likes certain kinds of leakers. You can leak covert CIA operatives and compromise our national security, but if you do something that makes them look foolish they’ll strip you of all your rights and lock you away somewhere without due process.

Of course, if the writers had imagined a world where Al Gore was president, we’d be living in an Mac world where there would be no computer viruses and our entire federal government and digital infrastructure would safe and secure and we’d never have to worry about anything. And everyone would have an iPod.

I’d be annoyed all the time because I’m a PC person, but there is a price for everything after all.

There would have to have been some other terrorist danger for Bruce Willis to fight against, though, so they left it a Bush world where our weaknesses are left wide open, the people who try fix them are ruined and the people put in place to protect us are morons who can’t do shit.

God bless America.

I give it 3 and half American flags out of 5. It did come out on July 4th after all.

This movie could have been way better, but that would have been too much to expect since the franchise was pretty much over and everyone was scratching their heads as to why another Die Hard movie was getting made. Kudos to McClane, who apparently gave up smoking because it sent the wrong message, as did the PG-13 rating. To keep that rating, when McClane is saying his signature phrase “Yippee-ki-yay motherfucker,” the ‘fucker’ is cleverly drowned out with a gunshot, teaching a valuable lesson to those impressionable 13-17-year-olds: The sound of a gun is better than the sound of a dirty word. Good job MPAA.