It’s been a quarter of a century since the first Die Hard movie was released. I doubt anyone including star Bruce Willis would have imagined he’d be starring in the fifth installment in the franchise all these years later, but star he does in A Good Day to Die Hard. He’s also been announced for a sixth installment due to be released in 2015 when the actor will be 60 years old. Sad to say, but the once exciting franchise seems well past its “sell by” date.

All of the Die Hard films stretched credulity, but not so much as A Good Day to Die Hard which has a plot so contrived it makes no sense at all. Basically it’s about an undercover CIA agent (Jai Courtney) who murders a Russian agent in Moscow so he’ll be sent to a Moscow prison where he can engineer the escape of a Russian counter-agent (Sebastian Koch). All of this takes about five minutes followed by a chase scene that takes at least thirty minutes. Then we’re in for more killing, more chases and more killing. Where does Willis come in? He’s Courtney’s father sent to rescue the CIA agent on behalf of the family. The film’s worldwide gross exceeds $300 million on a budget of $92 million. I’m sure the producers consider it money well spent even if all it amounts to is time wasted.

A Good Day to Die Hard is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD.

It’s not that they didn’t make bad movies in the past, it’s just that there seems to be more of them these days.

An example of a bad movie from almost forty years ago is 1974’s Earthquake which has been given a Blu-ray upgrade by Universal along with 1976’s Midway, another film made in the short-lived process of Sensurround which helped earn Earthquake an Oscar for Best Sound.

Sensurround was a device that was wired to sets in theatres showing the film that caused vibrations to accompany the loud rumbling during the earthquake sequences in Earthquake and the bombing raids in Midway.

The visual effects in Earthquake, which also won an Oscar, are fairly impressive. They are, in fact just about the only thing impressive about the film which features some of the worst writing and acting ever in a major production.

The screenplay is credited to Mario Puzo, the author of The Godfather and someone calling himself George Fox, a name that doesn’t appear on any other film’s credits, an obvious pseudonym for a writer who was too embarrassed to receive credit in his own name.

Charlton Heston as a building design engineer and George Kennedy as a good-hearted cop have the least embarrassing characters to play, but the dialogue they’re given is just as trite as everyone else’s.

Legend has it that Ava Gardner only took the part of Heston’s nasty wife to be able to spend the summer in Los Angeles. Whatever the reason, it’s her worst performance ever and one of three absolutely dreadful turns in the film. The others belong to former evangelist Marjoe Gortner as a psychotic grocery store manager who doubles as a National Guard squadron leader and Walter Matthau as an outlandishly attired drunk. Genevieve Bujold, Richard Roundtree and Victoria Principal have other key roles. Lorne Green, only seven years Gardner’s senior, plays her father in a role offered to James Stewart who had the sense to say “no”.

The film was directed by Mark Robson who worked as assistant editor on Citizen Kane and directed such classics as The 7th Victim; Peyton Place and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. His direction here, however, is more in line with his tepid direction of Valley of the Dolls.

The other thing Midway has in common with Earthquake, in addition to Sensurround, is the film’s star, Charlton Heston. Heston plays a fictitious character amongst numerous actors playing real life World War II figures on both sides of the war in the Pacific. They include Henry Fonda, Glenn Ford, Robert Mitchum, Toshiro Mifune and James Shigeta, all of whom make an impression though none are anywhere near their career high points. Edward Albert plays Heston’s son, a flyer whose engagement to a Japanese-American girl is thwarted by the war. The film’s big “get”, however, is the archival World War II footage that is used to depict most of the air battles. The opening black-and-white sequence is from the 1943 hit, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

The Battle of Midway was an important turning point in the war in the Pacific which destroyed the Japanese fleet. The film was one of the first to treat the Japanese as equally heroic in their own right and was a huge hit in Japan. Dramatically, however, it is just okay.

Fox, which has been very stingy with its Blu-ray upgrades of its classic films has decided to upgrade 1928’s In Old Arizona which earned five Oscar nominations and won Warner Baxter the second Oscar for Best Actor. Its initial popularity stemmed from its source material, O. Henry’s anti-heroic Cisco Kid and the fact that the film was the first talkie shot outdoors, making it a must-see in its day. Its day, however is long since gone. The 1950s TV series, The Cisco Kid with Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo in which the kid was a gentlemanly hero, not a scoundrel, holds up much better. I suspect the film’s Blu-ray release was timed to coincide with the big screen release of The Lone Ranger a character that was very much like the Cisco Kid, albeit the TV one, not the old movie one.

A far better early talkie western is William Wyler’s 1929 film, Hell’s Heroes, Wyler’s first talkie and the first talkie version of the oft-filmed Three Godfathers. The story of three bank robbers who are redeemed by their care of a newborn baby clocks in at a mean 68 minutes with Charles Bickford, Raymond Hatton and Fred Kohler in the principal roles. This version is harsher and more realistic than other versions. When the three set upon the woman alone in a covered wagon their intent seems to be to rape her until they realize she is about to give birth. Her dying wish is for the three of them to bring the baby to his father in the town where they have just robbed the bank. The baby’s father is the bank’s cashier who has been shot and killed by one of the three.

Warner Archive has this version in a double set with Richard Boleslawski’s even better 1936 version. Boleslawski’s Three Godfathers has an improved script which fills in some of the background missing from Wyler’s version. It also has the baby’s father die of thirst while searching for water rather his being the victim of the robbery, which seems much more plausible. Chester Morris, Lewis Stone and Walter Brennan are all in peak form as the robbers. In this post-Code version the baby is already born when the three come upon his mother. There is no longer any hint of nefarious intentions.

The story’s most famous version is of course John Ford’s 1948 Technicolor production with John Wayne, Pedro Armandariz and Harry Carey, Jr. That version suffers in my opinion from too much color obscuring the dark story at its heart, but not fatally so. More problematic is that version’s tacked on happy ending.

The Internet Movie Database indicates there is yet another version of The Three Godfathers in development. Let’s hope it adheres more to the 1929 and 1936 versions than the 1948 version.

Newly released from the Warner Archive are Jeanette MacDonald’s first two MGM musicals, The Cat and the Fiddle and The Merry Widow, both from 1934. Ernst Lubitsch’s version of Lehar’s The Merry Widow is the more famous of the two, but in my opinion Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach’s The Cat and the Fiddle directed by William K. Howard is the better film. The comedy is richer and the romance between Ramon Novarro and MacDonald is more believable than the romance between MacDonald and Maurice Chevalier in the later film. You don’t have to take my word for it. Catch both films and judge for yourself.

This week’s new releases include Oz: The Great and Powerful and the first season of HBO’s The Newsroom.