Iron Man 3

But, this scene looks great in 3D!

Grade: B

Director: Shane Black

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce and Rebecca Hall

Rebecca Hall

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 10 min.

In every conceivable way, Tony Stark’s foe in Iron Man 3 is himself. It starts with an enemy born of Stark’s chronic dickishness, a spurned fan-turned-supervillain not unlike Buddy Pine-cum-Syndrome in The Incredibles. It continues with a superhero whose egotistical compulsion to unmask his true identity continues to put an ever present bullseye on him and his scant loved ones. But Stark’s biggest adversary is his own psyche, an id now fractured by insecurity—indeed, it’s wry genesis that the film is essentially a 130-minute psychiatrist’s couch confession.

Beneath his renowned wisecracks and cocksuredness, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) faces a new reality spawned from the Big Apple battle royale finale to The Avengers. It bears mentioning that Iron Man was the first installment of the now-interwoven Marvel Cinematic Universe. The years since have seen gods and genetic behemoths as heroes, and mutants and aliens from other dimensions as villains. Against this backdrop, Stark is a self-described “man in a can,” seized by fits of anxiety when a child fan merely asks about “what happened in New York.” (More 9/11 allegory? Nevermind, let’s just move on.) While the 42 iterations of armor Stark has fashioned in the basement his cliffside laboratory appear the embodiment of an obsessive mind, they are actually the ongoing realization of Stark’s fateful “I am Iron Man” declaration at the end of the first film. The man and the machine are becoming inseparable, an evolution propelled by equal parts ego and envy.

Comic book enthusiasts familiar with the Extremis plotline at the heart of Iron Man 3 know the physical road this journey will eventually take. But in the meantime, scour the DSM-IV to decipher a scene in which Stark, clad in his Iron Man armor, greets and gropes gal pal Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) at the outset of a romantic evening, only to further reveal that it’s actually an unmanned suit being remotely controlled by Stark from elsewhere in the house. Or moments later, what would Freud make of Stark protecting Potts during a chopper attack launched by a terrorist called The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) by neuropathically summoning the diffuse pieces of a modular armor to tessellate around her, encasing Pepper inside a protective phallus?

The theme of identity is central in Iron Man 3, including the complexities of celebrity, frontmen for terror, and the duality of actor and character. North Carolinians will further identify with shooting locales throughout the state, from Wilmington to Wrightsville Beach, from SAS campus in Cary to downtown Rose Hill (inexplicably set in Tennessee for the film).

In Downey, Shane Black finds the perfect vehicle for the keen action screenwriting once forged in his Lethal Weapon scripts. For example, take the terrific byplay between Stark and Harley (Ty Simpkins), a 10-year-old Tennessean who comes to Stark’s aid after he’s stranded in Rose Hill. Backed by Black’s staging, Simpkins more than holds his own opposite Downey, who in turn wisely refuses to pull any rhetorical punches.

But for all the intriguing (pop) psychological, where Iron Man 3 falters is, ironically, its mechanics. Directing only his second feature (after 2005’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which also starred Downey), Black’s pace and plotting fizzle as often as Stark’s constantly malfunctioning suits. While that affords Downey an inordinate amount of screentime sans armor, you eventually want to see Iron Man in an Iron Man movie. When Black tries to make up the deficient all at once during the final act, the result is garish, confusing and head-scratching—why didn’t Stark summon his Iron Legion the half-dozen times he could have used their help earlier in the movie? Indeed, there are repeated logistical lapses, and several supporting parts are not fully realized, including the underutilized red, white and blue Iron Patriot, nee War Machine (Don Cheadle), and Dr. Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), a botanist from Stark’s past whose work helped create Extremis along with scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce).

But filmmakers understand who the real hero is, thematically and financially. It’s no accident that the end of Iron Man 3’s closing credits declares that “Tony Stark Will Return.” Yes, it’s an indication of that melding of men and machine. But back in the theater, it’s also reassurance that no matter the storyline, Robert Downey Jr. will remain star of this show.

Country Strong

I wish I knew how to quit you.

Grade: F

Director: Shana Feste

Starring: Gwyneth Paltrow, Tim McGraw, Garrett Hedlund, and Leighton Meester

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 52 min.

One tortuous viewing of Country Strong emphatically solves its mysterious disappearing act during this movie awards season. Once aspiring to be a gender-switching rehash of Crazy Heart, last year’s belle of the Oscar ball, Country Strong is more like a long country song that, instead of warbling about a dog, gun, and pickup truck, manifests itself as a near-literal B-movie: booze, bars, a tour bus, incessant babbling, mascara-stained bawling, and a pet bird named Loretta Lynn.

Fresh out of a stint in alcohol rehab, fallen country star Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow) is thrust back into the limelight of a three-city comeback tour by her husband/manager, James (Tim McGraw). Her opening act is a rising, scruffy singer-songwriter named Beau (Garrett Hedlund), who previously split time playing local honkytonks and working as an orderly at Kelly’s rehab center, where the two also learned to make music between the sheets. Also along for the ride is Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester), an ex-beauty queen-turned-pop tart looking jumpstart her burgeoning country music career.

Country Strong crosses a southern-fried Valley of the Dolls with an unintentional parody as side-splittingly campy as Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. No sooner does James declare that Kelly’s meds shouldn’t be mixed with alcohol than contrivance puts a bottle of Smirnoff in her dressing room. Beau and Chiles’ initial animosity could only mean they’ll eventually end up in bed together. And, so brain-dead is writer-director Shana Feste’s script that it undercuts a poignant slow-dance between James and Kelly by ignoring the fact that it begins with him cutting in on her and a leukemia-stricken boy during a Make-A-Wish visit.

The original songs – performed by the actors themselves – are more forgettable country pop than evocative classic country. Indeed, when a local newspaper declares Chiles and Beau as the next Carrie Underwood and Townes Van Zandt, it is not only quasi-slanderous but hilariously belies everything we’re actually seeing and hearing on screen.

Although Paltrow can carry a tune, she is too old to play a Britney Spears doppelganger and too much the fresh-scrubbed California girl to carry off Kelly’s world-weariness. Hedlund (TRON: Legacy) seems to be channeling Heath Ledger’s drawl in Brokeback Mountain, and Beau’s motives remain as meandering the stitched-together plot. Ironically, McGraw is the only actor that comes close to replicating a realistic character, although even he succumbs to the inane dialogue that cripples this two-hour Hee Haw skit.

Neil Morris

Iron Man 2

Iron Man says 'Practice safe sex'

Grade: B –

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Sam Rockwell, Mickey Rourke, and Samuel L. Jackson

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hours, 5 minutes

If Iron Man was a phallic embodiment of the United States' single-minded crusade to impose a Pax Americana at the point of a spear, then the Tony Stark in Iron Man 2 is most aptly viewed as a metaphor of his own. The bajillionaire protector we meet in the sequel has fully assumed the qualities of the proverbial Ugly American, exuding the arrogance and entitlement of Uncle Sam as the world's unaccountable enforcer.

Here, Stark dons sunglasses and blows dismissive kisses at a Congressional committee bent on bullying him into relinquishing his ferrous-plated super suit. "I am Iron Man; Iron Man is me," he declares to the Senate subcommittee. It may as well be Robert Downey Jr. making that claim, for while multiple actors have capably portrayed Superman and Batman on the screen over the years, it is nearly impossible to imagine anyone other than Downey as Tony Stark.

Congress questions Stark out of concern for the country's increasing dependence on him to the exclusion of an increasingly irrelevant military industrial complex; not coincidentally, the politicos are also sniffing around for ways to exploit him before external enemies do. These are provocative issues, even if the notion of escalation in the face of an omnipotent superhero was explored to much greater effect in Christopher Nolan's Batman films. Problem is, they are all brought to bear inside the first 15 minutes of Iron Man 2. The remainder of its clunky, two-hour-plus running time is spent sidewinding through a series of bullets, bombs, babes and disjointed plot points.

Escalation begins before the opening credits in the form of tattooed, vodka-swilling Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke), a Russian stereotype who speaks in three-word sentences and whose unexplained rage against the Stark family leads him to construct a plasmatic lash he intends to lay to Iron Man. Rourke's two battle scenes bookend a performance that mostly features him furiously tapping on computer keyboards. More significantly, he is one of two barely realized baddies whose narrative impotence emphasizes Iron Man 2's violation of rule No. 1 for successful action films: the presence of a compelling, imposing villain.

Vanko's partner in evil is Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell), a rival weapons contractor with aims on developing and outfitting the military with its own high-tech wardrobe. Rockwell, normally a durable actor, misplays Hammer with an exaggerated cartoonish affect that wears out its welcome after two scenes. Add to that mix Stark's encroaching mortality, daddy issues and Stark's increasingly erratic behavior and heavy drinking that prompts his military buddy, Rhoadey (Dan Cheadle, replacing Terrence Howard without the audience batting an eye), to commandeer one of Iron Man's suits, a precursor to his eventual transformation into the sidekick War Machine. Oh, and don't forget Scarlett Johansson's role as shapely Natasha, Stark's newest personal assistant and acrobatic woman of mystery. Even still, the series' backbone remains Downey's wiseacre high wire act, particularly his banter with his Girl Friday, Pepper Potts (a fine Gwyneth Paltrow).

The worst moment in Iron Man 2 finds a drunken, costumed Stark rampaging through his own birthday party. It's a scene worthy of a bad comic book-movie parody, and it underscores the film's fundamental problem—its excessive jokiness. The first Iron Man's levity rested with Downey's bravura performance and director Jon Favreau's fanboy sensibilities. What's different this time out is the screenwriting is handled by seemingly kindred spirit Justin Theroux (Tropic Thunder) rather than Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby (best known for Children of Men), a decision that enabled the sequel's flaws. Iron Man was a popcorn movie that dared to succeed during an era of brooding movie heroism. Its sequel suffers not only by comparison but also due to its strained efforts to please an audience now hip to its hipness.

Neil Morris

*Originally published at http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/iron-man-ramps-up-the-camp-but-falls-flat/Content?oid=1411907

Iron Man

The latest in court-ordered GPS monitoring devices

Grade: B +
Director: Jon Favreau
Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Shaun Toub
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 6 minutes

Iron Man is the kettle corn counterpoint to the brooding psychoanalysis in Batman Begins, the Spider-Man trilogy, and even Superman Returns. It gamely balances character and plot development with the reasons most of us started going to movie houses in the first place: fun and funny. In so doing, slowly but surely improving director Jon Favreau flouts a string of insipid Marvel Comic-based films and a super-protagonist who is both unknown by the general public and venerated by a rabid core fan-base. He takes a Cold War relic, reconfigures it for current relevancy, and peppers it with a pitch-perfect cast, respect for the source material, and whiz-bang F/X. Iron Man is not a great movie, but frankly, it does not need to be.

For all those deserved hosannas, is real hero is Robert Downey, Jr., who in his world-weary forties seemed a dubious choice to play the role of an armored-plated, high-flying hulk. Favreau wisely recognized that today’s special effects could allow virtually anyone to don a CGI metal, rocket-propelled suit and save the world. Moreover, he realized that Downey was ideal to play wisecracking billionaire lothario Tony Stark, who parlays an M.I.T. education and a stake in his late daddy’s weapons manufacturing business into a worldwide conglomerate flooding the market with high-tech instruments of death and destruction.

While on a sales expedition in Afghanistan, Stark is injured, kidnapped, and tortured by a terrorist group called the Ten Rings. Seeing them flush with weaponry produced by his own company that was in turn being used against American soldiers, Stark experiences his own Road to Kabul epiphany. Under the guise of building a new missile for his captors, Stark and his fellow prisoner Dr. Yinsen (Shaun Toub) cobble together a crude suit-of-armor prototype that Stark uses to escape.

After returning home, Stark’s announcement that he is getting out of the weapons-building business sends his company’s stock price plummeting and puts him at odds with his mentor/partner, Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges). Meanwhile, Stark secretly proceeds with perfecting his original suit design and building, from the ground up, his titular superhero alter ego.

Downey’s past personal travails continue to camouflage the fact that he remains one of Hollywood most underrated actors. His quirks, ticks, and wiseacre persona create the perfect Tony Stark, a jet-setter who owns a private plane outfitted with pole-dancing stewardesses, is not yet bedeviled with the same split personality or mental anguish of a Bruce Wayne or Peter Parker. Stark is narcissist never really changes – only his priorities.

Nicely complimenting Downey is Terrence Howard Lt. Col. Jim Rhodes, Starks’ friend and military liaison, and Gwyneth Paltrow – in one of her breeziest performances in years – as the alliteratively perky Pepper Potts, Stark’s girl Friday. Against the backdrop of super-villains and terrorism, the three (particularly Downey and Paltrow) carry on a repartee that lends the characters depth without transforming this comic book adaptation into a cartoonish farce along the lines of the dreadful Fantastic Four series.

The final clash between Stark and Stane emits a perfunctory air, a la the father-son brawl that concluded Ang Lee’s The Incredible Hulk. However, the rest of Iron Man is smartly written, from Stark’s meticulous backstory to narrative markers scattered throughout that point to Favreau and Co.’s planned trilogy – e.g., the continued involvement of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Rhodes’ eventual stint as an alternate Iron Man and, later, the superhero War Machine. Emulating its comic book inspiration, Iron Man is a heady page-turner that, like the magnetized gadget surgically implanted in Stark’s chest, will get your summer movie-season heart palpitating.

Neil Morris