"Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho."

Another Christmas movie. Die Hard (1988) holds a special place in my heart. Not only is it one of my favourite Christmas movies, it's also one of, if not my favourite action movie(s). The movie is actually based on a novel by Roderick Thorpe called Nothing Lasts Forever, which was a sequel to The Detective (which in turn was a film starring Frank Sinatra, and on another note Willis made his debut in an uncredited role in The First Deadly Sin which starred Frank Sinatra, it's always six degrees in Hollywood). Bruce Willis stars as John McClane, a New York cop visiting his wife and kids in L.A. on Christmas Eve, they seem to have hit a bit of rocky patch his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) as even reverted back to her maiden name Gennero, however Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), the leader of a group of German terrorists take over the Nakatomi Plaza (Holly's place of work)

The film is action packed from start to finish, with a number of great action sequences, excellent quips and wonderful characters, take Ellis (Hart Bochner) for example, a complete weasel, but utterly memorable because of it, Reginald VelJohnson as Al Powell is also great as are Paul Gleason, Robert Davi, Grand L. Bush and William Atherton. Some of my favourite moments include sending the dead terrorist down in the elevator in tinsel, a Santa hat and the words "Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho" written on his top. I didn't mention Alan Rickman in the group of other great characters earlier because I feel he deserves special mention, certainly one of my favourite villains of all time.

Probably the most kick-ass action packed Christmas movie. This movie is probably among my top movies of all time. Bruce Willis' movie career was born from this movie and you can see why. Recommended.

Sin City: Extended and Recut

Take this for what it's worth: this was my favourite film so far of 2005, granted I haven't had chance to see that money (there wasn't much disposable income for 2005 because of saving for Holiday) but the film in my opinion absolutely brilliant- arguably the most loyal the original comic book adaptation since Mario Bava's Danger Diabolik in the 60s, every stunning frame of Sin City comes straight from the comics by Frank Miller (who co-directs with Robert Rodriguez).

The film concentrates on three of the stories "That Yellow Bastard", "The Big Fat Kill" and "The Hard Goodbye" (renamed from Sin City), all three stories are terrific and amazingly shot mainly using blue screen (cars and buildings where added on later) and features some brilliant performances- recommended are Devon Aoki, Brittany Murphy, Rosario Dawson and best of all in an amazing comeback turn: Mickey Rourke- the once faded 80s star not only takes the film from everybody else who builds a new career on it. Also look for Quentin Tarantino doing a spot of guest directing and more then one top action sequence.

There are people out there who didn't like this film (my brother for one), I found this bewildering- this film was one of the fresh, most innovative films to come around for a few years. This set comes with graphic novel copy of the Hard Goodbye and the extended version is in four stories (There is a bookend for the movie) which you can watch as self contained little movies (R1 only/R2 expected)

*****