Iron Man Rides Again!

Last week, I decided to skip the cinema. This was the first weekend since the year began that I chose not to see a movie in theatres. Why? Because the movie I wanted to see was pulled from my local multiplex.

That movie was "Greenberg". It's been slowly rolling out in limited release for a while, now. I was really looking forward to seeing "Greenberg" when it finally opened in my neck of the woods.

On April 23rd, it started playing at my theatre of choice. I had already committed to a screening of "The Losers" with my brother and Ky, so I figured I'd just watch "Greenberg" the following week. I mean, I had no desire to see the "A Nightmare On Elm St." remake, despite the perfect casting of Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Kruger. I just didn't want to see that pointless fucking remake.

But "Greenberg" only played for one week at my local movie house. One week. Apparently, the managers needed that space to squeeze in more screenings of the "A Nightmare On Elm St." remake.

For as long as I can remember, I do not recall any film, and I mean any film, playing at any of the movie theatres in my hometown playing for less than two weeks, no matter how fucking terrible these films may be. Even fucking "Showgirls" played at Cinemas East for three weeks back in 1995.

When "Greenberg" was removed from its screen last weekend, I took it personally. Stop showing an intelligent movie from a talented director with something to say, in favor of more pointless garbage. Fuck you.

I was just really excited to see "Greenberg", and now I'll have to wait for DVD. Shit.

Anyway, I eventually got over the pain and decided to see "Iron Man 2" on Sunday, with my mother. I don't know why she wanted to see "Iron Man 2", considering she never saw the first "Iron Man" film, and never expressed any prior interest in seeing either of Jon Favreau's superhero epics.

She just told me that it was Mother's Day, and she wanted to go see a movie.

It took me a while to realize that she wanted to see "Iron Man 2" because she has become a fan of Mr. Robert Downey, Jr. She was very excited to see his previous film, "Sherlock Holmes", and really enjoyed it, due in no small part to Robert Downey, Jr's performance. Apparently, she was so taken with the man's charisma and comedic timing, that she just fell in love with the guy.

Where the fuck has she been for the last twenty years? The guy's been doing great work forever. And I count his time as a cast member of SNL during that nightmare season that featured Randy Quaid and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

I remember a sketch where Downey played a delinquent who was arrested by host James Coburn for stealing his father's bowling ball. It wasn't exactly funny, but it was amusing. Unlike so much material from that hallucinatory fever dream of a season.

Downey was great in "Back To School", playing hipster weirdo Derek Lutz. Come to think of it, everything about "Back To School" is great. I mean this. That movie is fucking aces. It's the best movie Rodney Dangerfield ever starred in, including "Caddyshack".

You've got William Zabka playing the jock douchebag, which was the man's bread and butter. You've got Paxton Whitehead playing Paxton Whitehead (the part he was born for!). Sally Kellerman's a sexy English Lit teacher, who is dating Paxton Whitehead seemingly because they're the only two British teachers on campus.

Burt Young gets to play a bruiser-meathead without a massive chip on his shoulder for once, which is nice. He's just there to beat the shit out of yuppies and massage Rodney Dangerfield's tired muscles. And he does a fine job on both counts.

Keith Gordon, whom I last saw in Stephen King's John Carpenter's "Christine", was good as Rodney's loser son, a jaded youth who was simply tired of swimming in his father's massive shadow.

I remember being intially confused the first time I saw this movie, wondering when Gordon was going to show up in his evil car and start acting crazy. I kept expecting him to pick up Terry Ferrell in his '58 Plymouth Fury and start telling her about the strong bond between him and his sweet ride.

Sam Kinson's cameo as Professor Terguson always makes me laugh. The man simply looks unhinged during his scene, all bloodshot eyes and bared teeth. As a child, I thought Kinison was going to start killing his students during his tirade. He seemed perfectly capable of doing this to me. And that's funny.

The Triple Lindy is great. the Kurt Vonegut cameo is great. The "Dean Martin" joke gets me every time. I owe this film for my first exposure to "Oingo Boingo", a band which I unabashedly adore.

I love "Back To School".

Wait, I'm supposed to be talking about "Iron Man 2".

Um... I liked it. I undertand that it doesn't have the strongest plot, and it tends to meander at times, but I had a very good time watching it.

Problems? Sure. There are plenty of problems. One thing that bothers me: Sam Jackson's Nick Fury is never identified as Nick Fury in the film. Sure, some fanboys might not think this is such a big deal, but it really is.

The last time (first time) Fury showed up was during the post-credits sequence to the first "Iron Man", and not everybody who saw that film stuck around during the ten minutes of credits to see that. A lot of people didn't even know there was something after the credits, to begin with.

So for Nick Fury to show up in "Iron Man 2" with no introduction is a tad problematic. How hard would it have been for Tony Stark to sarcastically call the guy "General Fury" during their meeting at the donut shop?

Another thing: No code names. Nobody calls Natasha Romanoff "Black Widow" in the film. Nobody ever calls Ivan Vanko "Whiplash". Once again, it can't be that difficult to throw this stuff into the film.

Admittedly, it's a nitpick. This is not as big a deal as the "unidentified black guy with an eye patch" played by Mace Windu, but it still bothers me.

Tony Stark has Palladium poisoning, and we're told that this is killing him. We see a weird, circuit-board rash spreading from Stark's glowing chest-thing, and we're periodically reminded that his blood toxicity levels are rising. But he never acts sick. Not once. He's supposed to be dying, but aside from a little skin irritation, he seems perfectly okay.

In the first film, when Obadiah Stane stole Tony's uber-pacemaker, pulling it from his chest, there was a sense of danger. Tony was dying, and there was a serious tension to the whole scene. In the sequel, Tony is slowly dying throughout most of the film, and there's no tension, at all.

The whole subplot fails.

Of course, this all leads to the reveal that Tony's late father has hidden the formula for a brand-new element in the blueprint for his old Stark Expo fairground, or whatever. This new element can replace the deadly Palladium in his current arc reactor design, but Virtual Butler Jarvis laments that there is no way to produce this unnamed element...

Fuck that, Tony Stark's SuperScience can't be stopped! He builds a particle accelerator in his mansion, uses a prism to focus the excited particles on a glowing triangle, and BAM! He creates a new entry in the Periodic Table of Elements. No big deal.

And Jon Favreau says that he's averse to introducing magic in his ultra-realistic Iron Man movies.

The suitcase armor is cool, and all. But it takes over 30 seconds for Stark to don the armor. This takes place in the middle of a fight with "the vengeful Russian with electric whips". What the fuck was Vanko doing while Stark was putting on his convenient suitcase armor? Just standing there, thinking "Holy shit, that's awesome. I wish I had something like that."?

Mickey Rourke spends half of the film just hanging out in Justin Hammer's warehouse, supposedly "working on some stuff", and missing his cockatoo. Why? Fucking do something!

Rourke is good in the film, despite his lack of screen presence during the second act. It just would have been nice if the man had something to do between his first act fight with Iron Man, and his third act fight with Iron Man and War Machine.

Don Cheadle is good as Jim Rhodes, but he's no Terence Howard. He doesn't even seem like Stark's old friend until the end of the movie. Until that point, there's no real chemistry between them. It's a jarring change in the dynamic between the characters established in the first film.

Sam Rockwell's great as Justin Hammer. His character is the perpetual runner-up, and he just hates Tony Stark. Not only because he's more successful, but because he knows that he's just not as good as Tony.

Rockwell plays Hammer as a bit of a poseur with a shoddy spray-on tan. He's trying to be a player, but he's just not cut out for it. Once again, I just wish that he had more screen time.

Downey's awesome. He owns this character, and manages to sell a lot of the dumb plot twists that this movie throws at him, because he's just that cool. Nothing else to say, really.

I love Gwyneth Paltrow. I think she's a fantastic actress, and she's easy on the eyes. I thought she was great in the first film, and I think she's great in this one.

My mother, however, hates Gwyneth Paltrow. I'm not exaggerating. She fucking hates Gwyneth Paltrow. After the film ended, my mother spent ten minutes trashing her, complaining about her ugly face, and her squeaky voice, and her ugly teeth, and her lack of talent.

I just sat there, astounded. Where was all of this venom coming from? It caught me completely off guard. I don't know what Gwyneth Paltrow did to earn the wrath of my mother, and if they ever meet, I fear for Gwyneth's life. I doubt her pansy husband has the strength to remove my mother's hands from his wife's throat.

Despite my problems, I honestly enjoyed "Iron Man 2". The performances managed to elevate the material, which was a problem the first film didn't have.

My favorite moment in "Iron Man 2" involves strawberries.

Tony Stark visits Pepper Potts at her office late in the film, to apologize to her for being such a dick. He brings an open container of strawberries that he bought from some dude on the side of the road. Pepper is allergic to strawberries, and leaves Tony alone in her office, to contemplate his thoughtlessness.

As Tony wanders out of the office, he absent-mindedly throws the strawberries away, managing to miss the trash can completely. spilling the strawberries all over the floor. He doesn't even notice this, and the camera doesn't linger on the discarded fruit.

It's just a bizarre, throwaway gag, and I couldn't supress my laughter. Nobody else in the theatre seemed to find this funny, and that just made me laugh harder. The single best moment in the film, as far as I'm concerned. And I'm the only one that cared.

After the credits rolled, the ex-husband from "The New Adventures Of Old Christine" drove out into the New Mexico desert and found Mjolnir in a smoking crater. That was cool. Of course, the other folks who stuck around for the credits looked confused.

They were probably wondering why they should give a shit about some big hammer in the desert.

Next Summer, it will all make sense.