Cynical Cinema

Iron Man is amazing. Not only is it one of the biggest, best summer blockbusters, it’s actually one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. Robert Downey Jr., although a seemingly strange choice, is perfectly cast as the titular superhero. Tony Stark is a billionaire weapons manufacturer who sleeps with hundreds of hot women, lives the life of Hugh Hefner, and uses his genius brain to create some of the most devastating weapons in the world. He is kidnaped by terrorists, who attempt to force him to build a replica of his powerful Jericho missile. While appearing to build that missile for them, Stark is in fact building a robotic suit of armor that will allow him to make his escape and, eventually, turn him into Iron Man. With shrapnel near his heart, he must build a device to keep his heart running while he fights the forces of evil. This device ends up, of course, being Iron Man’s Achilles heel. Or, his kryptonite, if you will.

And of course Iron Man is a lot like a lot of the super hero movies out there. One thing I have always thought is that the first movies in these series is always the best. The movie where we learn about the origins of the super hero, and he undergoes a character transformation that leads him to become Batman, or Spiderman, or the Incredible Hulk, or what have you. In subsequent installments of these series, the hero is already fully formulated, so there is no more room for character growth. It all comes down to action, explosions and whether or not the bad guys are any good. Iron Man is true to that form, in that Stark undergoes a character transformation as well as a physical one. He decides that his company will no longer build weapons to kill other people, but rather will begin focusing on doing good in the world. The one problem I have here is that just like every other movie like this one, his transformation changes his outlook on everything. Here is a guy who used to get every woman he wanted. Now that he has become “good”, he begins to think about settling down with just one woman. Is that what “good” people do? Couldn’t he still live the life of George Clooney, and still be a good guy? Or are all good people monogamous?

Well, it is Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Stark’s long-time assistant, the cheesily-named Pepper Potts. I am not normally a fan of Paltrow’s, but she is very well cast in this role, as the meek yet competent and smart assistant to a lascivious playboy billionaire genius…or who knows? Maybe anyone could play that role. Not anyone, however, could have played Obadiah Stane, Stark’s partner in the weapons company. Jeff Bridges is magnificent, with a shaved head and a certain amount of comforting sensibility that masks his darker intentions. I hate to call a role in a comic book movie a “tour de force”, but Bridges and Downey both come close. Terence Howard is in here as well, but he is badly underused as a military advisor and sometime babysitter of Stark’s, but it appears as though he is being saved for something much bigger in the second Iron Man movie.

Jon Favreau directed this adaptation of the comic book, and he shows an absolute command of the entire movie, as well as a love for comic books. The scenes where Downey is trying out his suit for the first time are quite funny, and seem to be taken (I can only assume) straight from the silly middle pages of the comic book upon which this is based. And the actual fighting done between Iron Man and the terrorists, or Iron Man and the bad super hero at the end of the film, are exceptionally well done. This movie is absolutely pulse-pounding, beginning to end, and for me it ranks with Batman, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Blade and Superman as the finest comic book movie adaptations of all time. Watch it! Iron Man comes out September 30th on DVD and Blu-Ray (get the Blu-Ray if you have it!) From Paramount Home Entertainment.

Iron Man is amazing. Not only is it one of the best summer blockbusters, it’s actually one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. Robert Downey Jr., although a seemingly strange choice, is perfectly cast as the titular superhero. Tony Stark is a billionaire weapons manufacturer who sleeps with hundreds of hot women, lives the life of Hugh Hefner, and uses his genius brain to create some of the most devastating weapons in the world. He is kidnaped by terrorists, who attempt to force him to build a replica of his powerful Jericho missile. While appearing to build that missile for them, Stark is in fact building a robotic suit of armor that will allow him to make his escape and, eventually, turn him into Iron Man. With shrapnel near his heart, he must build a device to keep his heart running while he fights the forces of evil. This device ends up, of course, being Iron Man’s Achilles heel. Or, his kryptonite, if you will.

And of course Iron Man is a lot like a lot of the super hero movies out there. One thing I have always thought is that the first movies in these series is always the best. The movie where we learn about the origins of the super hero, and he undergoes a character transformation that leads him to become Batman, or Spiderman, or the Incredible Hulk, or what have you. In subsequent installments of these series, the hero is already fully formulated, so there is no more room for character growth. It all comes down to action, explosions and whether or not the bad guys are any good. Iron Man is true to that form, in that Stark undergoes a character transformation as well as a physical one. He decides that his company will no longer build weapons to kill other people, but rather will begin focusing on doing good in the world. The one problem I have here is that just like every other movie like this one, his transformation changes his outlook on everything. Here is a guy who used to get every woman he wanted. Now that he has become “good”, he begins to think about settling down with just one woman. Is that what “good” people do? Couldn’t he still live the life of George Clooney, and still be a good guy? Or are all good people monogamous?

Well, it is Gwyneth Paltrow, who plays Stark’s long-time assistant, the cheesily-named Pepper Potts. I am not normally a fan of Paltrow’s, but she is very well cast in this role, as the meek yet competent and smart assistant to a lascivious playboy billionaire genius…or who knows? Maybe anyone could play that role. Not anyone, however, could have played Obadiah Stane, Stark’s partner in the weapons company. Jeff Bridges is magnificent, with a shaved head and a certain amount of comforting sensibility that masks his darker intentions. I hate to call a role in a comic book movie a “tour de force”, but Bridges and Downey both come close. Terence Howard is in here as well, but he is badly underused as a military advisor and sometime babysitter of Stark’s, but it appears as though he is being saved for something much bigger in the second Iron Man movie.

Jon Favreau directed this adaptation of the comic book, and he shows an absolute command of the entire movie, as well as a love for comic books. The scenes where Downey is trying out his suit for the first time are quite funny, and seem to be taken (I can only assume) straight from the silly middle pages of the comic book upon which this is based. And the actual fighting done between Iron Man and the terrorists, or Iron Man and the bad super hero at the end of the film, are exceptionally well done. This movie is absolutely pulse-pounding, beginning to end, and for me it ranks with Batman, Batman Begins, Blade and Superman as the finest comic book movie adaptations of all time. Watch it!

          Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show comes out June 3rd from Alliance Films, and is a must-watch for any aspiring stand-up comedian.  Not only that, it’s a should-watch for the rest of us.  Although Vince Vaughn has never been known as a stand-up comedian, he clearly loves the art, and decided to take four stand-up guys (no pun intended) on a 30-day, 30-city tour of
America.  Comedians Ahmed Ahmed, John Caparulo, Brett Ernst and Sebastian Maniscalco form the bulk of the nightly show, and Vaughn hosts with the help of some surprise guests each night.  And although some of the guests are not exactly surprises (like Jon Favreau), others truly are (like Dwight Yoakam).  Each of the guest stars does a little skit with Vaughn on stage, and some are terrific.  

          One of the best bits in the movie involves Favreau and Vaughn and Justin Long (Live Free or Die Hard, and the Apple-vs-Mac commercials).  Favreau of course famously wrote Swingers, which launched him (and to a lesser extent Ron Livingston) to stardom, and Vaughn to superstardom.  In Swingers, just in case you’re a guy and somehow, amazingly, have not seen Swingers, Vaughn was the man.  The ultimate cool guy, the one character in a movie that every dude wanted to be.  Every guy wants to be one of two characters.  Either John Wayne in
Rio Bravo, or Vince Vaughn in Swingers.  Sometimes both.  Anyway, Favreau decides to prove how easy it would have been for anyone else in the world to play that same character, and he gets Long to read the lines, right there on stage.  Long’s impersonation of Vaughn in Swingers is, to quote a phrase, “money”.  It ranks up there with either Kevin Pollack or Jay Mohr doing Christopher Walken.  Considering it was off-the-cuff and spontaneous, it’s fantastic. 

          But for the most part, this film is about comedy, and the four main guys who do the tour.  It’s not just joke after joke, although their on-stage acts are filmed and we get to see an awful lot of that.  But we also get to see behind the scenes, on the tour bus with five guys living in close quarters for a month.  And we get to see comedians and their real reactions when they bomb, when they get heckled, how sensitive and paranoid and insecure some of them really are.  We also get to see them with their parents, and we understand how accepting parents must be of a career choice like “comedian”.  (Especially Ahmed Ahmed’s Muslim mother and father, who were initially the least supportive of his career choice, but now are the funniest parents on the tour.) 

          The tour was taking place in the middle of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath, and had to be bumped and rescheduled and moved around to accommodate the victims of that disaster.  The guys tour a trailer park that is housing displaced families, and brings the hurricane evacuees out to see the show.  There is a lot more going on in this film than just a bunch of jokes and inane behaviour on a tour bus, and that’s a good thing.  It’s far better and more interesting to see these guys for who they are, to hear their real thoughts, than it would be to just see an hour and a half of standup from a tour.  That being said, however, I was hoping for more of the standup comedy itself on the special features.  I wanted to see the full show of these guys, especially John Caparulo, who I found very funny.  And although there are a few extra skits and a little more comedy buried in the special features, the entire shows aren’t there. 

          A minor complaint, however, since the film itself was not designed to be simply comedic, and works extremely well.  This is a very entertaining, informative, interesting and of course funny show, a funny and captivating group of guys, and a fascinating film experience.  Whether you’re a stand-up fan or not, a Vince Vaughn fan or not, or a documentary buff or not, pick this up.  It’s worth it on a lot of levels.