Mission Creep

The holidays are upon us! Family members are heading to airports all across the country in order to reunite with their loved ones -- potentially even to rekindle marriages under strain. That means it's time for us to revisit everyone's favorite Christmas movie, 1988's Die Hard, starring Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Reginald VelJohnson and Bonnie Bedelia.We spend a lot of time talking about Ellis. Great character.

This episode is kind of bananas. In a good way, of course.

What would it be like if Sisyphus could take a smoke break once in a while? Historically speaking, what pedagogical purpose did repeated Christological imagery serve for the church? What did this movie get right and wrong in its (then) fully hypothetical imagining of pandemic life? And what was the name of that two-person fighter arcade game that they had for a couple of years in the lobby of University Square Four cinemas in Madison, Wisconsin?

(It was "Killer Instinct," it turns out)

When Bill Murray's character wakes up in the same bed day after day, with the same song playing on the radio, what happens to the other townspeople with whom he's interacted? Does the day just reset for them, too? Or are there massively multiversal timelines spinning off in every direction?

Groundhog Day doesn't have the guts to ask these questions, but we do!

Also: What kind of allegory or parable is this, exactly, and how religious is it supposed to be? Does the romance in a romantic comedy need to be good in order for a romantic comedy to be a good comedy? And if you were stuck in a timeloop as Bill Murray is, what would be the best song to wake up to Every. Single. Morning?

In which we try to make sense of so many things! This is a rom-com that is also an un-love story, featuring an anti-heroine. This is a film at least a little bit about how wealth is wasted on the wealthy. Is it good or an absolute aesthetic disaster that Julia Roberts's look in this movie is coming back? Is "cosmopolitan bliss" -- Dr. Schultz's wonderful phrase -- the happy ending that Julia Roberts's character ought to desire, or is it a consolation prize? Or both? Whatever else it is, the film is a love letter to the city of Chicago, to the act of saying goodbye to your 20s, and -- obviously -- to wide-legged pants.

In which we talk about the original Terminator and T2 together. NO discussion of posthumanism or cyborg ethics or the late 20th century depiction of AI, but quite a lot about motherhood, the apocalyptic possibility of the death of a child, the ethos of friendship and care in opposition to authoritarian and genocidal forces. And above all, an answer to this question: To which particular piece of contemporary military hardware might we compare a literal angel descended to bestow an annunciation on Sarah Connor?

This film is classic of the late-90s teen rom-com resurgence, and anyone who enjoyed filmic and TV comedies at any point over the past 20 years will recognize the murderer's row of screen talent assembled here. Talking to friends after seeing it in theaters, I distinctly recall declaring it "Shakespearean." Does that hold up?It is hard to see the anxieties around burgeoning identities, threats to masculinity, and teenage relations of domination and bullying in the innocent way it may once have been possible to do.

But wow: Susan and I start off complaining about how Jennifer Love Hewitt's character is this typically empty female lead that the male protagonist simply has to win through virtue and pluck, etc. And by the end of our conversation, we have completely reversed ourselves on this. Is this Jennifer Love Hewitt's finest work?

Is it weird to think of The Matrix as agreeing with Leo Strauss's Plato on the moral worth of truth? Is the matrix itself -- and particularly the way that normies are subject to demonic possession by "agents" at any moment -- a metaphor for complicity in systems of oppression? How is keeping the faith in right relation with others involved in struggles for collective liberation?

None of that was on our minds, perhaps, when we first saw the film, as you'll hear.

How much coke could $100,000 buy in the mid-80s? Is Turner and Hooch the second-best buddy cop movie of all time? Can we describe this film as a neo-noir, grappling (literally, in the climactic scene) with the dueling ways that foreign wars return home -- through nihilistic crime facilitated by the deadly arts learned in the military and the true-believer heroic violence in defense of a good and pure nation?

Bet your sweet bippy we can.

What does it mean when the protagonist of a 90s rom-com (or, as Jay calls it, a "romactionedy") is a Gen-X hitman whose efforts to woo the one who got away (or really, the one whom he foolishly got away from) are crucial to what he clearly understands as his own redemption? Are the movie's final 10 minutes -- in which John Cusack's character is simultaneously professing his love for Minnie Driver's character and asking for her hand in marriage while also engaged in a firefight -- intended as a comedic take on action tropes? Or is it just a very typical action-movie ending? Asking the hard questions right here on the Point 10 podcast.

What does education policy have to do with a self-serious vengeance flick like Face/Off? Almost nothing, which makes it an ideal break from our day jobs! In this episode, Jack and I talk about what moviegoing used to be like, the way that writers and directors imagined high-flying criminal masterminds in a world before the antiheroes of prestige television, and the rock-solid science behind face transplants.