A Christmas Classic

During this Christmas season, it's easy to think fondly back to holiday classics such as "It's a Wonderful Life", "A Christmas Story" and "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation." But often times we overlook a gem of a holiday film. If you didn't recognize the picture from above, I'm talking about "Die Hard" from 1988.



Because this movie succeeds as an action film, it is often forgotten as a Christmas movie. The reason it works well as a Christmas flickis because like all great holiday films, it's about the power of giving and the importance of being with the ones you love at Christmas. And as everybody knows, there are always complications. Flights get delayed, the store is sold out of the gift someone needs to survive, the cornbread gets burned, you know the deal. All these roadblocks are represented in this guy the terrorist Hans Gruber:
In his first feature film role, Alan Rickman(who would perfect this weasly character by playing Severus Snape in the Harry Potter films) nails the role of the nefarious villain who stands in the way of the good guy John McClane.
Over the course of the film, McClane uses various Christmas related supplies including Santa Hats, gift wrapping tape, and sub-machine guns to save his wife and family (and many other hostages) from the forces of the world that hamper our Christmas enjoyment.

So, it may have higher body count than "It's a Wonderful Life" (Hey that film has suicidal thoughts, "Die Hard" just has evil Eastern European bad guys), but you are looking to snuggle down with an exciting film while the yule log burns, "Die Hard" consistently delivers the goods. Merry Christmas.

This is a movie about fear. In an era of movies like Hostel and Saw that try to freak the viewer out with gore, Will Smith and Francis Lawrence have a created that isn't inherently scary, but rather a study on fear and the effects of it on the human mind. Why is this important, because as a culture we are obsessed with fear and in this upcoming election, FEAR is the crucial part of it.


But enough about politics, let's talk about "I am Legend" and how this movie captures the mood of our time. In the film, Will Smith chills out in the day time doing the things that people do: wake up, workout (maybe not everybody get's jacked in the morning), goes to work, drives around, watches TV, listens to music, and then goes to sleep. Normal day, sweet life. It's all in the preview



But then at night as you can see, all the monsters roam the streets. Essentially Will Smith gets jiggy with it in the day time, and then once the sun sets has to deal with all the problems in the world. How does he deal with it, by locking himself into his fortified and extremely cozy brownstone.

In one sequence of the film, Smith goes into a building to look for his dog. It is here, where Will Smith's flashlight cuts through the darkness that we finally sense that even though Will Smith has a groovy life in the day, he is petrified of the darkness, i.e. the true problems in the world.

And this is how the world operates today. We go about our lives, very consciousness of the world's problems like Global Warming



War


And Poverty
These are just some of the problems that are lurking in the dark of the world today. I am Legend is a great movie because it captures this mentality of the material life that we live (myself) and the problems that are lurking when we go to sleep. Hopefully someone will come and deal with all of them. That person would truly be a legend.