John McTiernan | the m0vie blog

394. Predator – All-ien 2024 (#—)

Posted on October 5, 2024 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn, Darren Mooney and Jess Dunne, this week with special guests Joe Griffin and Alice Griffin, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This season, the podcast is taking a look at the Alien and Predator franchises. This time, John McTiernan’s Predator.

Major “Dutch” Schaeffer leads an elite squad of commandos on a rescue mission behind enemy lines in Central America. These American troops are crossing borders that they are not supposed to cross, and very quickly find themselves embroiled in a life-and-death struggle against a creature from far outside their frame of reference.

At time of recording, it was not ranked on the list of the best movies of all time on the Internet Movie Database.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: alien, Arnold Schwarzenegger, colonialism, guns, jess dunne, joe griffin, John McTiernan, masculinity, podcast, predator, The 250, the predator, violence | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: Predator

Posted on November 19, 2013 by Darren

Predator is an absolutely brilliant piece of work. It’s elegantly constructed, beautifully directed and cleverly written. Perhaps the smartest thing about Predator is the way that it so fantastically plays on audience expectations, offering the perfect bait-and-switch, teasing a jungle adventure in the style of Schwarzenegger’s Commando before morphing into something else entirely. It’s so well handled that the film’s reputation and prestige has done little to dampen its thrills.

A predator stalks…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: afghanistan, alien, aliens, Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Berlin, Carl Weathers, Central Intelligence Agency, Chicago Blackhawks, cia, Dutch, H.R. Giger, Health, Horror film, james cameron, John McTiernan, Libya, monster movie, Nashville Predators, predator, Richard Anderson, Stan Winston, Universal Monster | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Die Hard

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Darren

I know it’s a bit cliché at this point, but Die Hard really is my family’s ultimate Christmas movie. The season hasn’t truly started (or, if we’re delayed, truly ended) until all of us have sat down on the couch and indulged in the seasonal spectacular. Even if you don’t quite buy into the “Die Hard as Christmas movie” argument, it’s still impressive how tall John McTiernan’s action movie stands when compared to the bulk of eighties action films. Like Nakatomi Plaza itself, it towers over the competition – and it’s not because it does anything especially or novel or innovative in a genre that has always been fairly conservative. Instead, I’d argue, Die Hard succeeds because it executes all the conventional action movie beats exceedingly well, and because it doesn’t treat any of its plot points as necessary items on a check list.

Jump-starting Bruce Willis’ action career…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: Action film, bruce willis, christmas, Christmas by medium, die hard, Fox Plaza (Los Angeles), john mcclane, John McTiernan, los angeles, Los Angeles Police Department, McClane, sylvester stallone | 4 Comments »

Non-Review Review: Alien vs. Predator

Posted on June 5, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate the release of Prometheus in the United States this week, we’ll be taking a look at the other movies in the Alien franchise.

I like cheesy movies. I have a fondness for those old fashioned mix-and-match creature features from back in the day. I have a remarkable tolerance for some of those incredibly awkward B-movie adventures featuring relatively bland characters trapped in a strange and slightly illogical situations. As such, I’m probably a bit fonder of Paul W.S. Anderson’s creature-feature fight-night beat-’em-up schlock-fest Alien vs. Predator. I’m not so fond that I’d argue it’s a good movie – in fact, I’d readily concede that it’s a disappointing lifeless husk of a movie. However, I will concede that there are some interesting concepts and ideas buried quite deeply in the middle of that film.