Her separation from him, and her subsequent guy, were poorly used in the plot.

Does the shacking up add to the plot?

Thanks for the warning. I don’t go to many movies anymore. I think the last one I saw was The Aviator. Leo was pretty good as HH. I’ve enjoyed African Queen, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Treasure of the Sierra Madre (We don’t need no stinkin badges), and To Have and Have Not with Boggie, Bacall, and Walter Brennan(You do know how to whistle, don’t you). I’d like to hear about some good current movies, if there are any.

100% agreement. Looks like it’s a consensus. One minor correction though: it’s the 4th Die Hard movie that was recently in theaters. It goes Die Hard, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, Die Hard: With a Vengeance, and Live Free or Die Hard. The first and third are actually worth watching too.

sedonaman,

I think you missed the point on Boondock Saints. The excessive profanity was intentional and intended to be humorous, as the movie is in many ways intended to be a caricature of a typical action movie.

I used to work in a movie theater while going to college in the early ‘60s, and I can say with a little authority that there has been a definite decline in the quality of movies. Cursing, once banned, now is what writers rely on in lieu of creativity.

Consider 1952’s Ivanhoe starring Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor, one of those movies that proves your emotion can be evoked without any f-bombs, or any swearing at all.

The climax comes when, for political reasons, the Jewess Rebecca is accused of witchcraft. Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, the antagonist and supporter of evil Prince John, had been making advances to her throughout the story, to no avail, because she was in love with Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe.

To save her from burning at the stake, Ivanhoe challenges the verdict by an offer to combat the prince’s champion. To play one off the other, the evil prince chooses Guilbert to fight Ivanhoe against Rebecca’s cause, the idea being if Guilbert wins, Rebecca burns; if he loses, he dies – not exactly what Guilbert had in mind. Guilbert, however, has a proposal for her:

Guilbert: “Rebecca. I can yield now, and Ivanhoe will win by default, and you will go free. I will have to live out my life in disgrace; all this I would do if you will be mine.”

Rebecca: “We are all in God’s hands now, Sir Knight.”

Guilbert: (Angrily) “Then prepare to die – both of you!”

A tense combat follows in which Ivanhoe is almost defeated, but Guilbert is mortally wounded in a quick turn-around of events. As he lies dying, Rebecca goes to him out of sorrow, and he says to her, “Rebecca, fate had me instead of Ivanhoe love you. God be with you always.” And he dies.

I know this dialog might sound a little corny by today’s standards, but I think good actors saying, “We are all in God’s hands now, Sir Knight” is a lot more moving than, “F*** you and the horse you rode in on, a**hole!” and “Fate had me instead of Ivanhoe love you. God be with you always” is infinitely better than, “F*** you, b***h!”

On the other end of the spectrum, by contrast, we have several recent “marvelous” pieces of work, The Departed, an over-bloated-with-”f’ing”-dialog Parsifallian test of your endurance; and at the very bottom, The Boondock Saints, a movie that was not released … it had to escape! There is no plot. I suffered through one hour of it waiting for something to get started. It never did. As close as I can figure, because of all the unintelligible shouting, most of the first hour is spent off on tangents. I stopped watching it because if it takes over an hour for a narrative hook to appear, it’s too long.

Here is an example of its brilliant dialog: “I f***’n killed your f***’n cat, and if you f***’n can f***’n tell me the f***’n name of your f***’n cat, I’m f***’n going to f***’n take this f***’n gun and f***’n blow my f***’n brains f***’n out!”

The most insufferable character of all is a bartender with a stutter: “Fffffffff***’n – fffffffff***!” is about all he can manage to struggle out.

Whoever got paid to write such trash was grossly overpaid, and if he’s on strike, the arts are way ahead. My advice: don’t watch it even if it’s f***’n free.

Bottom line on all this is that because there are lots of old movies out there that are really worth while, you could spend the rest of your life watching them instead of today’s trash.

P.S. I believe the phrase is “could not care less”. “Could care less” means I still have some care left in me.

Keep up the good work.