Willis was also called "perfect as the wisecracking John McClane" and "an excellent casting choice as a sardonic action hero." Alan Rickman's portrayal of villain Hans Gruber was described as "marvelous" and "a career-making performance." Gruber also ranked 46 on the villain side of AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains. In 2007, "Entertainment Weekly" ranked "Die Hard" the greatest action film of all time. The first sequel, "Die Hard 2", received positive reviews, although not as many as the original. Despite only giving the original film two stars, critic Roger Ebert gave this film three and a half stars and called it "terrific entertainment." James Berardinelli called the film "somewhat-muddled but still entertaining." Peter Travers wrote that "however impressively made, "Die Hard 2" begins to wear thin." The third film, "Die Hard with a Vengeance", received mixed reviews. Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" stated that while "McTiernan stages individual sequences with great finesse... they don't add up to a taut, dread-ridden whole." James Berardinelli thought that the explosions and fights were "filmed with consummate skill, and were thrilling in their own right." Samuel L. Jackson also received praise for his role in the film. Desson Howe of "The Washington Post" thought that "the best thing about the movie was the relationship between McClane and Zeus," saying that Jackson was "almost as good as he was in "Pulp Fiction"." The fourth film, "Live Free or Die Hard", received highly positive reviews. Mick LaSalle of the "San Francisco Chronicle" claimed that the film "is the best in the series, an invigorating return to the style of blockbuster that dominated summers back in the early 1990s." "USA Today" film critic Claudia Puig said that the film "delivers when it comes to kick-butt, action-packed mayhem," but "as a convincing techno-thriller, it doesn't really work." The fifth film, "A Good Day to Die Hard", received mostly negative reviews from critics. Critics lambasted the installment for "[entering] generic action movie territory", as written by reviewer James Bernardinelli, with a "cliched [and] uninspired script". Peter Rainer of the "Christian Science Monitor" wrote, "John's appeal was always his ordinariness, but director John Moore has him surviving more explosions than Wile E. Coyote, and with hardly a scratch."