Now, mind you, I am not a cinema snob.  Nor do I glory in the pap that most movies turn out to be.  I'm sort of in between: I'm aware of what a good movie should look like, and I'm very happy with the really bad-for-the-sake-of-bad movies that normally feature Action, Car Chases, and Weapons.

So, I'm at home, right?  And I'm parked on the couch, finishing breakfast, when The Last Boy Scout comes on.

Now, if you have seen this movie, you probably think it was terrible.  Or just, meh.  But it deserves a serious second look.  First off, it's Bruce Willis playing the part of Bruce Willis, except the beaten-up old drunk wasted life ex-supercop version.  He plays a private eye called by his co-PI friend (who happens to be sleeping with his wife) to help in a protection / babysitting case.  The subject is Halle Berry, before she was Halle Berry And Her Boobs In: Halle Berry.  She dies (in a rather protracted and darkly violent gun and car fight, where both guns and cars are used to great effect), and her boyfriend (played by Damon Wayans at the height of his career), an ex-star QB ex-junkie ex-celeb is caught up with Bruce in a fight to find out why everyone involved in this case is dying.  Turns out the owner of the NFL has bribed a senator to pass legislation to legalize gambling, and the senator (who Bruce Willis used to protect as a Secret Service agent, I shit you not) didn't take the bribe (it wasn't enough cash), so the owner of the NFL gets Mylo (an excellent psychopath) to kill the senator while framing Bruce.

See?  Easy and possibly the best story of the year, action-movie-with-Bruce-Willis-wise.  Best moments: Bruce finding his friend hiding in his closet after coming home early.  Bruce using jokes to distract "a big pimp-looking motherfucker with a hat" who has a pistol to his head in order to stab him in the neck with a broken bottle.  Bruce dancing a jig after getting stabbed in the femoral artery, after killing Mylo by throwing him into the blades of a helicopter.  Too many one-liners to mention, this movie has it all.

Next, directly after that and well before I could properly prepare, was "Hudson Hawk," which is possibly the greatest bad Bruce Willis movie ever.  This was Bruce in thin, young, just-post-Moonlighting form.  He was a wiseacre ex-con catburglar who timed his jobs by singing songs whose track length was memorized by he and his cohort, at their correct tempo.  I guess it was easier to sing along to, say, "Singing in the Rain" (4:05) than to, say, use watches.

Anyhow, Bruce spends the movie trying to get a proper espresso, which is the one thing in jail that he most missed.  Which implies prison was pretty nice, or that he liked getting raped.

So, Bruce manages (while trying to get an espresso at his favorite neighborhood yuppie cafe) to get involved in an international plot involving The Vatican, The CIA, and a power-couple of bad guys (with their bad-ass butler and yappie dog).  The goal is to make gold from lead using secret DaVinci technology, stolen by Bruce from various Vatican interests.  The real goal is for this power couple to make money useless by flooding the market with cheap gold, and then somehow ruling the world.  Logical, given that we're all still on the gold standard.

In the end, Bruce gets the espresso, and gets to kill the dog.  His partner, after falling off a three hundred foot cliff into the ocean while trapped in an exploding limo, shows up at the end of the movie ("Airbags!  Can you fucking believe it!") along with the erstwhile nun / girlfriend (who speaks Dolphin) at a small Italian village to join Bruce for the cup of espresso.

Seriously.  I didn't make that up.  Someone spent millions of dollars on it, and it is fucking gloriously righteous.

Finally, The Fifth Element came on.  I was firmly camped at this point.  As we all know, the Fifth Element was whats-his-name's only good directorial attempt.  It stars Tricky as a henchman.  Milla as the hero, and Bruce as a beaten-up old drunk wasted life ex-supersoldier turned cabbie who saves the world via Milla Jovovich.  The movie explains the moon's presence in our sky.  It shows Milla's ability to act the coquette.  It stars more than a few fashion models.  Chris Tucker plays a cross dressing galactic DJ who has an awareness of 1980s songs.  And the president of the universe is James "Tiny" Lister.

Any movie with Gary Oldman is good.

Any movie with Bruce Willis that involves blowing shit up, and doesn't involve his ex-wife or any other Charlie's Angel, is good.

Anything with Milla is at least watchable.

Combined?  It's the best scifi movie with supermodels ever.

Later that night one of the cable networks was playing Die Hard 2 (the bad one).  I didn't have it in me, though; I was spent.