June 7, 2010

Weekend In Reviews


Iron Man 2 - It is no secret that I really loved the first Iron Man movie. I adore Robert Downey Jr. and Jeff Bridges and both were top-notch in that movie. Plus the combination of RDJ, Jon Favreau's directing and Justin Theroux's fun screenplay somehow even made Gwyneth Paltrow seem fun.

The sequel was also a fun time though not quite on the level of the first. There were a lot of things that were thrown into this movie without enough set up or payoff or explanation - one of them being the Avengers sub-plot which served much more as a set up for the eventual Avengers movie than for any real purpose in this one. And while Bridges devoured his role as the villain in the first film - there every bit as much to have fun with the material as RDJ was - and therefore became an enjoyable villain to watch, Mikey Rourke was taking himself and the part much too seriously and was therefore the very least enjoyable thing about the entire movie. It helped not at all that Favreau spent so much time zoomed in on his truly disgusting fingernails.


Sam Rockwell on the other hand was the shit in this movie. He knocked it out of the park as uber douche Justin Hammer. It was perhaps my favorite thing in the flick to see Hammer's palms stained with the unmistakably orange-brown color of self-tanning cream. His scenes with RDJ snap and sparkle as the two characters put every last ounce of their respective cockiness on display and still manage to seem likable in some twisted way.



I appreciate how Favreau's dialogue overlaps and races through the movie at break-neck speeds and I even like the ridiculously fake-y technology that Tony Stark possesses. If you haven't seen the first film yet, rent it quick and then catch this in the theater because they're worth seeing and even more fun on the big screen.

No comments: