A Good Day to Die Hard
Directed by John Moore
Written by Skip Woods
Starring: Bruce Willis, Jai Courtney, Sebastian Koch, Yuliya Snigir
20th Century Fox
Rated R | 97 Minutes
Release Date: February 14th, 2013

“Yippee-Ki-Yay Mother Russia.”

Directed by John Moore (Max Payne), A Good Day to Die Hard sees former police detective and all-around bad-ass John McClane (Bruce Willis) travel to Moscow to retrieve his estranged son, Jack (Jai Courtney), a CIA operative who has been detained after a botched mission.

Jack’s mission is to recover political prisoner and government whistleblower Yuri Komarov (Sebastian Koch) before he’s executed by Chagaran (Sergei Kolesnikov), a corrupt, high-ranking government official. Father and son must put aside their personal and professional differences, and work together to stop the Moscow underworld from obtaining enriched weapons-grade uranium – or something.

Robert Rodriguez has been promising a sequel to Sin City, the 2005 over-the-top noir comic adaptation he co-directed with its creator Frank Miller, since the original became a smash hit in theaters and on home video. Up until a few months ago there had not been much movement on the project outside of unfulfilled promises and expectations, but production on the upcoming Sin City: A Dame to Kill For – a sequel that will be a combination of previously published comic stories and all-new material conceived by Miller – has been going on at Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas for a while now.

Every week seems to bring exciting news on the casting front with original stars Mickey Rourke, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, and Jaime King reprising their roles alongside new cast members Josh Brolin (playing Dwight, Clive Owen‘s character from the original), Jamie Chung (stepping in for Devon Aoki as the deadly sword-wielding Miho), Dennis Haysbert (replacing the late Michael Clarke Duncan as brutal underworld enforcer Manute), Ray Liotta, Juno Temple, Christopher Meloni, and most interesting of all, Joseph Gordon-Levitt.

I understand why most people are reluctant to embrace the films of Wes Anderson. They are clearly not for all tastes. Anderson makes movies about lost souls searching for emotional support and redemption in meticulously-created worlds where everything is filtered through a child’s pure sense of wonder. He is one of the most unique voices in American cinema today and though his films are set in places not fully grounded in the reality that we are all accustomed to, his characters’ actions and emotions are. Their feelings of joy, despair, grief, hatred, and love make them cinematic personalities as authentic in their thoughts and words as those of their creator.

Anderson does not always succeed when he sets out to make a movie, but even his greatest failures – of which there are precious few – are way more enjoyable than the vast majority of films being released these days. There is a reason why the Criterion Collection has released nearly every film directed by Anderson on DVD and Blu-ray, and I am still waiting with great anticipation for that Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou Blu.

2012 was a fantastic year for movies. Films like The Dark Knight Rises and Marvel’s The Avengers entertained audiences with blockbuster action sequences and the ultimate in childhood wish fulfillment, while movies such as Drew Goddard‘s Cabin in the Woods and Gareth Edward‘s The Raid: Redemption will long be remembered as putting the nail in the coffin of their respective genres.

We saw new films from acclaimed directors like Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Ridley Scott, Christopher Nolan, Ang Lee, David O. Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson, William Friedkin, Steven Soderbergh, Ben Affleck, Sam Mendes, and Kathryn Bigelow. Not to mention the latest offerings from Rian Johnson, Joss Whedon, Richard Linklater, and newcomers Colin Trevorrow, Benh Zeitlin, and Stephen Chbosky.

So many memorable characters – so many great lines delivered by talented actors inhabiting their roles. Here are some of the best (and a few of the worst) film quotes from 2012. Feel free to include your own in the comments! You can also check out my Top 25 Films of 2012 here!

Bruce Willis is back as retired government operative Frank Moses along with John Malkovich and Helen Mirren as his fellow aging but still lethal colleagues Marvin and Victoria, respectively, and Mary Louise Parker as his game civilian lady love Sarah in RED 2, the sequel to the 2010 action-comedy that was a box office smash around the world.

The movie won’t hit theater screens until this summer, but Summit Entertainment has nonetheless released the first teaser trailer. You can watch it here below.

Joining the action this time around are Oscar winners Catherine Zeta-Jones and Anthony Hopkins and Byung-hun Lee of I Saw the Devil and the G.I. Joe movies. It looks like once again Frank’s peaceful retired existence is being interrupted by a ton of globe-trotting mayhem and dodging multiple assassination attempts. Thus the time has come for Mirren, also an Oscar honoree, to break out the heavy artillery and Malkovich (MALKOVICH!!) to indulge in some of that crowd-pleasing loony schtick that made his character such a hoot to watch in the original.