Stryder-56897

Phone Booth has always been my favorite film directed by the late Joel Shumacher, I know a lot of people hate him just because he made Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. People say that he's a bad director, I can't agree when he made films like this, The Lost Boys, 8MM, The Client etc.

Released back in 2002, Phone Booth follows Stu Shepard (Colin Farrell) who's a real jerk who is a publicist who cheated on his wife (Radha Mitchell) with his client (Katie Holmes). Stu usually calls the latter from a phone booth so his wife won't find out. One day while using a booth, Stu get's a call from a mysterious caller (Kiefer Sutherland), who has a sniper planted on Stu from a window. Now there's conflict and stuff happens that I won't spoil.

This a great movie and I wish it got more love and recognition. Granted a lot of people like it but I wish it was iconic in most people's eyes. Colin Farrell absolutely nailed this role as this guy who thinks he's on top of the world until this experience, Kiefer Sutherland's performance as the "Caller" was absolutely perfect, his voice alone was so creepy and menacing. Joel did an amazing job directing and the script was also really well written by the late Larry Cohen. Overall check this out it's so great and more people need to discover it.

Live Free or Die Hard is the fourth film in the Die Hard series and it really doesn't disappoint. This film is an example of how to make the 4th movie good in which films such as Jaws the Revenge failed to accomplish.

Bruce Willis is once again great as John McClane, awesome seeing John bald the time. Justin Long portrays computer hacker Matt Farrell, Justin is good in this film you can believe him as this socially awkward computer guy. The villain of the movie is Gabriel Thomas played by Timothy Olyphant, who is a really good actor he's proven himself time and time again. Olyphant does a decent job as the villain even though he could have done better, to make it short he's no Alan Rickman from the original. Another stand out for me was Maggie Q from the previous year's Mission Impossible 3 also does a terrific job as a badass female assassin, even if she's not in the film enough sadly. Kevin Smith plays Justin Long's friend who lives with his mother and is a "die hard" Star Wars fanatic. The scene with Kevin Smith is hilarious and it will make you crack a smile as did I.

This film had the controversy of the PG-13 rating, and granted Die Hard is an adult action franchise primarily I feel that the rating of this movie doesn't affect the movie at all. I admire the filmmakers for taking a risk like that, and if you want an R rated version there is one out there so go on. The action in this movie is very well done and it still feels real even if it's unrealistic. The chemistry between Bruce Willis and Justin Long during the action scenes is very entertaining, reminds me of the chemistry between Danny Glover and Joe Pesci in Lethal Weapon 2. My main problems with this movie and there isn't very many but there are some like the runtime, Live Free or Die Hard runs at 2 hours and 9 minutes and I know that does not sound very long but believe me it feels longer than it is. My other problem is the color tone in some scenes not very many but it just looks kind of dull with all the dark blue. One more thing I want to touch on is the director who is Len Wiseman who also did some of the Underworld films as well as the Total Recall remake, He did a good job directing.

So overall I really enjoyed this sequel, check it out if you haven't already seen it.

By no means is this as good as the original, not even close for me. But I gotta be honest I really enjoyed this remake.

Johnny Utah (played this time by Luke Bracey) formerly an "Extreme Sport Athlete" is now a new FBI agent. He is assigned a case involving extreme sport robbers doing crazy heists around the world. The FBI boss this time is played by Delroy Lindo. Utah declares that the robbers seem to be doing the Ozaki 8, which is eight extreme ordeals that honors the forces of nature. Like the original Utah must work with Pappas (now played by Ray Winstone) to uncover the case. They go to a surfing party in France where Utah almost drowns when surfing a gigantic wave, but is saved by Bodhi (Edgar Ramirez), Utah being undercover of course requests to join Bodhi's crew, Utah also meets Samsara (Teresa Palmer) who he of course falls in love with. I'm not gonna spoil the whole film but last thing I'll say is that there's a bunch of extreme sports scenes that are awesome to watch.

First off again there was no way they were gonna capture the original, the original is a favorite of mine and I knew going in it wasn't going to come close. This remake actually has a lot of differences to the original. There a lot of extreme sports scenes that are nowhere present in the original which I appreciate that director Ericson Core and writer Kurt Wimmer tried some stuff original to their version so to speak. Another difference I really liked was that Utah was already an adrenaline junkie before whereas in the 1991 film he had to learn to do these things, here he's already somewhat familiar as we see in the opening of the movie. Also Utah in this iteration seems more like a tortured man which I thought was a great difference. The cast does a fine job, Luke and Edgar give good performances as Utah and Bodhi, granted they wouldn't be my first picks for the respective parts but for what they had to do they did a fine job. Ray Winstone was really good as Pappas I thought, I wish he had more screen time but it is what it is. Lastly I want to highlight Teresa Palmer as Samsara, her character is completely different then Lori Petty's character in the original, Teresa did a great job considering she had just given birth at the time of filming. The cinematography was once again fantastic and Core actually did it himself which I thought was cool. The soundtrack was also really good, great songs by Andrew Watt and Dig the Kid. Overall I really liked this remake and I don't get why it's so universally hated, it ain't that bad at least to me.