Through two months, 2013 has been a pretty awful year for major motion pictures at the box office thus far. If you look at a rundown of the year’s biggest films to date, you’ll see that only Identity Thief, a comedic caper about Jason Bateman and Rex Reed’s tiny penis chasing Melissa McCarthy all over the place, has topped the $100 million mark this year.

That means that star-driven action movies like A Good Day to Die Hard ($63 million), Snitch ($31 million) and Parker ($17 million) have been big old turkey turds at the U.S. box office, while unusual entries like the comedic zombie tale Warm Bodies ($63 million) and horror films like Mama ($71 million) and Safe Haven ($62 million) have been surprising successes. Wait, what? Safe Haven isn’t a horror film? But it stars Josh Duhamel and Julianne Hough and is based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. I can’t think of anything more terrifying than that.

The biggest concern* lies with the year’s first huge budget film, Jack the Giant Slayer, which had a $195 million budget and has only grossed $43 million through its first two weeks. However, before any Hollywood execs go burying themselves to the neck into mountains of cocaine, Oz the Great and Powerful may have pulled us out of this year’s early funk, grossing $80 million in the U.S. and Canada this weekend, with an additional $65 million overseas. Although, while $145 million might sound awesome, Oz cost $215 million to make, so Disney would probably appreciate it if you took your brats to see it 12 more times.

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“I’m thinking next one we should fight aliens.”

Opening Everywhere: A Good Day to Die Hard, Beautiful Creatures, Safe Haven

FilmDrunk Suggests: Vince and I don’t see eye-to-eye very much on movies like A Good Day to Die Hard, because he doesn’t love America like Bruce Willis and I do. So I thought that instead of trying to convince everyone to think one way or another this week, I’d channel Rex Reed in order to tell you what’s hitting theaters this weekend.

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Only an idiot would expect a fifth Die Hard movie directed by the guy who did Max Payne and Flight of the Phoenix to be any good, but it’s still impressive the degree to which it’s been able to limbo under even the lowest of low expectations. And you need only read reviews for 5 Fast 5 Furious or The Last Stand to see how willing critics are to praise a film just for fulfilling the basement-level expectations set by their own marketing. While only seven reviews are in so far (and I made Laremy a deal where I’d have to see this if he’d see Inside the Mind of Charles Swan, so look forward to that), A Good Day to Die Hard is currently pitching a perfect Bucky Larson. For the uninitiated, that’s like a knuckleball that no one can hit because it’s so sucky.

Everything that made the first “Die Hard” memorable — the nuances of character, the political subtext, the cowboy wit — has been dumbed down or scrubbed away entirely. -AO Scott, NY Times

Loud and tedious, “Die Hard” 5 is a shaky-cam/Sensurround blast of bullets and bombs, digital explosions and death defying feats of defying death. Not a decent villain or catchphrase in it  -Roger Moore, McClatchy

Hired hack John Moore taps into the McClane mythology to drain any lingering humanity from the Die Hard series. -John Semley, Slant

A complete waste of time on every level. Loud, obnoxious, boring, cartoonish, morally reprehensible, and just plain stupid. -Brian Tallerico, HollywoodChicago

An asinine, immobile feature that’s dripping with trendy cinematography and toxic banter, while a visibly bored Bruce Willis hobbles through this dud, putting in the least amount of effort possible. -Brian Orndorf, Blu-Ray.com

There’s no artistry to Moore’s work, he’s simply a factory employee who knows how to work a punch press, and his take on the world of “Die Hard” is dispiriting and borderline offensive. -Brian Orndorf, Blu-Ray.com

I can’t decide which scenario is more exciting, Die Hard maintaining its perfect zero percent rating, or reading the barely-perceptible praise from the first critics to rate it “recommended.” On another note, I’m a little sad that so far, no one’s gone with the obvious New York Post-ready headline, “Ho Ho No.”

Though we may be knee deep in Oscar prestige now, a bottomless morass of self-congratulation, we’re only a handful of weeks away from Silly Season, the post-Oscars lull when studios dump their most lackluster fart bombs, then quickly step off the elevator, casually whistling. In what I’m sure is pure coincidence, that’s when Fox releases A Good Day to Die Hard (February 14th, to be precise), the fifth of the Die Hard series, from new-to-the-franchise director John Moore, who last directed Max Payne and The Omen. But how to reinvigorate a lagging franchise about a cop who keeps getting caught in terrorist attacks? Give John McClane a son, Chad McClane, er, Jack McClane, played by Jack Reacher bad guy Jai Courtney. He’s a secret agent, of course! BOOM, a new franchise is Bourne, yo.

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Considering the title of Die Hard 5 is A Good Day to Die Hard, and it already kind of sounds like something we would’ve come up with as a joke, I guess it’s fitting that the tagline is definitely something we would’ve come up with as a joke. “Yippee Ki-Yay Mother Russia,” because it’s set in Russia, you see. By the way, does that make this the official spelling of “Yippee Ki-Yay?” Because to be honest, I probably would’ve spelled it “Yippie kai-yay.” I mean who’s to say whether “ki” should rhyme with “high” or with “key,” right? Job one is being clear. GRR, PHONETICS. Also, if you’re going to directly address Mother Russia like that, you should at least use a comma.

There’s also a new trailer after the jump. I’m not saying the movie’s going to suck, and I actually kind of liked the last one, except for the dumb sequence where McClane fights a Harrier with semi-truck (which was like 20 minutes long), but it doesn’t bode well that they brought in John Moore, the director of Max Payne and Flight of the Phoenix (and the writer of Hitman and Swordfish). I’m not sure if that qualifies as a step down or a step up from Len Wiseman, but the fact that we’re even asking is a bad sign.

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