***1/2

Iron Man 2

/ skoce / Leave a comment

So I’ve been away for a while, but I plan to get back to posting regularly real soon.  I had to go to a wedding and I started a new job, but I will soon have a least 3 posts a week going again.  For now, here is a review of Iron Man 2, which I saw this afternoon.

Iron Man 2

First let me say that Robert Downey, JR. continues to be a perfect Tony Stark.  He seems to be having so much fun that is is hard to not have fun with him.  The rest of the cast is really good as well.  Favreau gives himself plenty of time as Happy, but he was enjoyable.  Scarlett Johansson is hot but kind of pointless as the Black Widow, but I assume she will be given more to do in either the sequel or the Avengers movie.  Sam Rockwell and Mickey Rourke play some pretty forgetful villains, but that is more an effect of the script than any shortcoming on their part.  Don Cheadle is a big improvement over Howard as James Rhodes.  The actors were all more than adequate.

The plot was sort of meandering and bloated, not really much worse than the first Iron Man and not really enough to be detrimental.  Tony makes Pepper CEO of Stark Enterprises but that doesn’t really go anywhere, the Black Widow is there but is mostly pointless, as is Sam Jackson’s Nick Fury.  The first half of the movie builds up a Tony is dying plot that is solved, but never really addressed by anyone.  When it is dealt with it is dealt with quickly and forgotten.  I know I’m mentioning a lot of things I did not like, but I really liked the movie.  Iron Man 2 has some of the Spiderman 3 syndrome, in that there is a lot of stuff there that does not really need to be there.  Still the movie is stylish and fun and shallow.  The fight scenes are well done, although I do not buy Vanko as a credible threat to Tony in their first encounter.

Fun is the most important thing to remember when watching Iron Man 2.  Some of the plot is weak, but the actors, especially Downey, Jr. and Rockwell, are a joy to watch.  It is not a movie with any motive or message other than fun.  And that is enough for me.  If you want a Superhero movie that tries to do more watch the Watchmen, which is not very good, or Superman Returns, which is a complex mixture of terrific and terrible, but for pure enjoyment Iron Man 2 is as good as it gets.

The Losers Review And More

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So I went and saw The Losers a few days ago.  I liked it, a lot.  It is not a great movie, but it is the best kind of goofy fun.  The Losers follows a squad of ex-CIA operatives on their quest out get revenge on the man who betrayed and tried to kill them.  They could have played the revenge story perfectly straight and had a mediocre movie with no reason to recommend it over any other such spy/revenge movie.  Instead, The Losers plays it about a third part to comedy.  It is a big action packed 80’s movie that is aware of how ridiculous everything that going on is.  They don’t exactly wink at the camera, but they still have a lot of fun with the whole thing.  It helps that the movie is very well acted.  They got some really good guys that I don’t think are that well known.  Playing the two central characters, Roque and Clay, are Idris Elba and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who should be household names, and their performances are worth the ticket price alone.  Jason Patric, who plays the villainous Max, plays up his role to absurdly dastardly heights.  He is ridiculous, but he has an air of menace about him that makes him a viable antagonist.   The rest of the cast is almost as good.  Despite the comic nature of the bulk of the movie, the action and personal moments actually work well too.  The jokes come not from usually from the situations, but from the dialogue.   The characters talk and joke like old friends and it really works.  It is both a quality action movie and a comedy, but unlike most action comedies, neither part overwhelms or hinders the other.  The Losers provides more than enough laughs and more than enough explosions, and that seems to be exactly what the movie set out to do.  As pure fun entertainment I can’t recommend The Losers enough.  B+
I also saw Balls of Fury on TV.  I had passed on this when it came out because it frankly did not look to be very good.  I’m not sure I was wrong, because this should be a terrible movie, but somehow instead of being awful it is really funny.  It is not a comedy with tons of hilarious moment, but it maintains a steady flow of humor throughout.  It is never great, but it also never fails to entertain.  It is also less a sports movie pastiche, like Will Ferrell has been making with increasingly diminishing returns, but a kung-fu movie disguised as a sports movie.  Ping-Pong has replaced martial arts as the focus, but it is a kung-fu movie, which I am less familiar with than sports movies, but it somehow works.  The makers seemed to recognize the stupidity of everything in this movie and turned it from a weakness to a strength.  Christopher Walken plays it as though his character only barely wants to be involved, and the protagonist Randy Daytona never stops being an over the hill loser.  Even George Lopez turns in an entertaining performance.  In no way is this a great movie, but its worth watching on a slow Saturday.  B-