IRON MAN = AWESOME And Some Other Random Babbling

IRON MAN (Dir. Jon Favreau, 2008)

Now, you ordinarily wouldn't think of Robert Downey Jr. as an action movie star - particularly a comic book hero-type, right?

And you you wouldn't think of Jon Favreau (MADE, ELF) as an action movie director, would you?

What about Gynneth Paltrow as a girl-next-door-type sweetie that is obviously overlooked by our hero or even the idea of Terrence Howard as the black-guy best friend? Hold on, how about Jeff Bridges (the Dude, man!) as the villain?

Sounds all pretty improbable as far as Summer blockbuster premises goes, huh? Well, IRON MAN throws all those folk and a bunch of seamless CGI craft into the mix and it all, and I mean every single bit of it, works.

And remember this is coming from a guy who is not a big fan of the big ass comic book action genre. Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark - a billionaire industrialist famous for creating nuclear weaponry and every kind of arms used in the war on terror. He gets captured by terrorists after a demonstration in Afghanistan and is forced to build them a version of his powerful “Jericho missile.”

Instead, with the help of a fellow prisoner - Dr. Yinsen (Shaun Toub), he constructs an elaborate but crude suit of armour which he uses to escape from captivity. Back in the States he announces that his company will no longer manufacture weapons to the intense displeasure of Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges). In a funny series of scenes Stark works on a new suit with better technology, more firepower, and a cooler looking shininess that, yeah, is a pretty sweet design.

Stark's best friend Colonel Rhodes (Terrence Howard) finds out about his suit in the middle of a killer sequence involving his return to Afghanistan to destroy the terrorist gang's weapon stockpile. Stark's assistant, and of course possible love interest, Pepper Pots (Gywneth Paltrow) suspects something is up and gets caught up in his major mechanical antics of which I will speak no further.

IRONMAN is a blast - the right amount of humor, the precise assembling of a neat narrative, and a great cast. As I'm sure every review will label Robert Downey Jr. an “unlikely hero” but he is perfect in the part - slickly engaged and slyly sarcastic, he plays all the right notes.

A bald bearded Bridges is dead on too in a role that's not just un-Dude it's incredibly non-TRON! Going in I was not at all familliar with the comic book it's based on but a friend who I attended with filled me in a bit concluding that the movie is fairly faithful to its source.

Obviously that didn't matter because it stands alone as a superior formula super hero movie. I usually use the word “formula” as a criticism but here its a good solid thing. Favreau has surprisingly done a excellent job with the tried and true framework and its his best film by far.

IRONMAN indeed transcends the summer blockbuster film form but more importantly - it's a lot of fun.

Some Random Babbling:

MovieZeal wrapped up their excellent April Coen Brothers Blog-A-Thon (though with their banner displaying a different cool Coen Bros. screen capture it seems like it's still going on. It's well worth your while with a stable panel of great film bloggers contributing reviews of all their movies, articles about the Brothers, and a very well compiled The Top 10 Most Memorable Coen Brothers Scenes.

I wrote Part II of my Musings on the Coens' Music which I hope you check out. I recently joined The Large Association of Movie Blogs - I'm LAMB #82!

Please visit and sample some of the other movie blogs. LAMB lists a lot of good ones so click away. I also took part in a survey for Buck On Film. It's a column in Academia - an online magazine and resource for academic librarians. It was about “what are the Oscars to you?” Please visit that too.

Okay, well more summer movies are coming and the birthday of a long gone legendary actor/director is to be celebrated when Film Babble Blog returns so please stay tuned.

More later...

A Marvellous Minimalist Movie Before The Blockbuster Bombast Begins

As you well know we are on the verge of the Summer blockbuster season. We've got IRONMAN, INDIANA JONES, BATMAN, SPEED RACER, and many many more multi-million dollar platters to contend with so it seems apt to have a small scale appetizer of an independent human interest story to snack on beforehand: 


THE VISITOR (Dir. Thomas McCarthy, 2008)



Richard Jenkins, best known as Nathan Fisher Sr. - the father on Six Feet Under, finally gets a leading role in this quietly compelling movie.

After tons of movie and TV roles in which he perfected a weathered hangdog demeanor, Jenkins wears his character in THE VISITOR like an old comfortable suit.

Being that his character is a familiar one - a widowed college professor toiling for years on an unfinished book, isolated from social life and going through the motions in severe need of a wake-up call.

Yes, it's a ‘wake up and realize you're alive’ movie like ABOUT SCHMIDT (or even HOW STELLA GOT HER GROOVE BACK) and a good one at that with its lack of flash and abundance of grace. 

Jenkins returns to his little used in apartment in New York City to find 2 illegal immigrants (Haaz Sleiman and Danai Jekesai Gurira) living there. Realizing they had been rent-scammed they pack up to leave but Jenkins allows them to stay. He forms a friendship with Sleiman who teaches him to play the bongos. 

Scenes showing a business-suited Jenkins and the paisley attired Sleiman drumming away in the park are particularly smile inducing. The good times are short lived as Sleiman is arrested and detained with deportation imminent. Jenkins does what he can to help his new friend and in the process courts Sleiman's mother (played wonderfully by Hiam Abbass). 

Writer/Director Thomas McCarthy's first film THE STATION AGENT was a pleasing personable picture and THE VISITOR is a fine follow-up. So subtle that it may leave some movie-goers with a “with just happened?” feeling but I believe most will savor its subtle charms. Jenkins' measured performance lingers and the straight-forward framework is refreshing in these days of quick-cuts and contrived narrative gimmicks. 

“Please step away from the glass” Jenkins is frustratingly told repeatedly by a immigration station desk jockey in a sober 3rd act scene, and it's a chilling moment; the sad reality of how people are tragically separated for purposeless political reasons inhales all the air of the room and leaves our protagonist on the verge of existential limbo. 

Finding one's own rhythm - to maybe the beat of a different drummer as the expression goes, is the only way back into the human race. There among the beats, both inner and outer, can be found a sense of soul and way of life that Jenkins learns shouldn't just be visited. 

More later...

Second Hand Smoke: Catching Up With Harold And Kumar

When I heard that my local hometown theater, where I work part-time, was going to be showing HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY I decided to give in and finally watch the first one. I had heard that HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE was funny from various friends but just never got around to seeing it. 

Since the sequel has been getting fairly decent reviews (and is #2 at the box office right now) I'd put the first one in my NetFlix queue and thought I might make a double feature out of it by going to see the second on the big screen directly after viewing the first one on DVD (yes, I have no life). Of course this plan depended on whether I liked the first one. Well, let me tell you:

HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE
(Dir. Danny Leiner, 2004)



In the four years since this was released I got the picture from trailers and friend's quotations that this was basically a crude comedy about a couple of geeky Asian stoners who get caught in a silly series of mishaps while trying to get to a fast food restaurant to satisfy their extreme bout with the munchies. 

Yep, that's exactly what is - a base teen demographic-aimed R-rated raunchy romp filled to the brim with profanity, gross scatological humour, and every stock stereotype you could put a stamp on. The fact that the DVD has a featurette entitled “The Art Of The Fart” says it all, right? That's not to say it doesn't have a certain clever charm to at times. The leads - John Cho and Kal Penn (as Harold & Kumar respectively) are likable and carry the tone with a crisp chemistry. 

A bevy of B and C-list film folk appear in cameos - Fred Willard, Ryan Reynolds, and Jamie Kennedy are on hand to randomly pop up and provide punch to the proceedings, but the cake is taken by Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser!) playing himself. NPH, as some refer to him, is a horny Ecstasy-fueled celebrity ego exaggeration who throws one of many wrenches at the feet of our THC-driven burger-craving heroes and steals the movie just like he steals their car .

This kind of comedy isn't really my thing - the bathroom base-ness of it all wears intensely thin with every compromising situation easy to predict, but there are a few decent laughs and a loosy-goosey go-with-it flow that doesn't feel forced. 

A dream sequence/love montage featuring Kumar romancing and going on to marry a gigantic bag of weed set to Heart's “Crazy On You” comes close to hitting that hilarious-line on the comic circus bell pole and there are at least 3 or 4 other crazy bits that Judd Apatow would be proud to call his own. 

Comparisons to Cheech & Chong, Wayne & Garth, Bill & Ted, and even Beavis & Butthead (oh wait, also the dudes in DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR?) are inevitable meaning the stoner duo mis-adventure can now be fully recognized as a legit genre. 

Like I said, HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO WHITE CASTLE in the end may not really be my bag (get it?) but as throw-away profoundly stupid commercial, not kind-bud, comedies go - you can get a decent buzz off of it. So, since the first in the Bong Crosby and Bob Dope road pictures breezed by me somewhat entertainingly I thought ‘sure, why not?’ I walked up to the theater putting the NetFlix envelope containing the frist one in the mail on the way. So let's take another toke: 

HAROLD & KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY (Dirs. Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Sclossberg, 2008)

                                           

The tagline for this sequel which takes place right after the events of WHITE CASTLE is: “this time they're running from the joint!” Sure it's obvious pot-minded spoof pandering, but we're not exactly talking David Mamet territory here! 

Well, except in that Mamet's screenplays are filled with an equal amount of profanity, but anyway such a slogan is pretty expected. 

What's expected is pretty much the game for Harold & Kumar's second time out. I mean this builds predictably on what was a sketch-piece patchwork by having even more flagrant racist-panic sex-centric pro-recreational drug antic-mania! 

Taking it up another notch is the mistaking of our slacker stoner heroes for terrorists because of a self-invented smoke-less bong that Kumar (Kal Penn) smuggles onto a flight to Amsterdam - “It's a bong - not a bomb!” Kumar exclaims. 

The Daily Show's Rod Corddry (funny here but not funny enough) as a obsessively prejudiced Homeland Security agent labels them as North Korea and Al Queda working in cahoots and that lands the flippant leads in for a stint in Guantanamo Bay. 

Through a disgusting passage of predictable scrapes they escape and withstain the usual lot of farcical flukes including more stereotypes (if a backwoods redneck archetype jokes that he has a inbreed son in the basement you can be sure that he really does have such if you get my drift), more nasty non sequiturs, and of course the reliably drugged-up Neil Patrick Harris again to make sure the formula is solidly in place. 

In the annals of unneccessary but still somewhat passable sequels this is equal to REVENGE OF THE NERDS II: NERDS IN PARADISE. Or maybe, as Beverly D'Angelo's cameo as a whorehouse madam here suggests, NATIONAL LAMPOON'S EUROPEAN VACATION is a better likeness. 

As for non-sequel quality status Kumar says early on “it's going to be exactly like EUROTRIP, except its not going to suck” - I'll give HAROLD & KUMAR GO TO GUANTANEMO BAY that - it is better than EUROTRIP but that is so far from saying much that it's not funny. 

Also not funny is the before mentioned inbred hillbilly humor or a wretched Ku Klux Klan sequence that is as slapdash an attack on racism as the likewise lameass swipes in FLETCH LIVES (1989) or even the morally misguided Richard Pryor vehicle BUSTIN' LOOSE (1981). 

James Adomian as a goofball version of (like there's any other comical prospect) President George W. Bush (Adomian has almost made a career out of impersonating the Commander-in-chief on low level shows like Mad TV) appears in the 3rd act to offer some sort of poli-parody statement - thats he's a stoner too with a slacker perspective to be admired. Of all the notions in this fitfully funny but still unneccessary sequel that's the most unfunniest. 

Okay! I think the amount of time I've spent with Harold & Kumar today has been a bit much. Still, though laughs - we've had a few... 

More later...