Serious Actors Seriously Acting.

Disgusting Inappropriate Filthy Hilarious Hellspawn Godsend.

Specifically designed to make you call your Congressman and complain, MOVIE 43 will offend, distress, embarrass, infuriate, ejaculate, and give you anal warts.

Not your average ensemble cast movie where everyone is trying to be more serious than their peers in order to win that Golden Globe, MOVIE 43 takes its A-Listers, jams them into gross-out vignettes so funny that you will miss half the raunchy dialogue from laughing so hard… and gives them anal warts.

A bedraggled Dennis Quaid pitches a movie idea at studio exec Greg Kinnear. We launch into a series of vignettes that are supposed to be this movie – returning intermittently to this throughline where Quaid becomes so desperate with the obsequious Kinnear that it turns into a hostage situation, Quaid trying to extort funding out of Kinnear at gunpoint. Seth McFarlane, Will Sasso and Common also squeeze into this storyline.

Meanwhile, the R-rated vignettes bludgeon us with dialogue as sharp as the boxcutters used to hijack the 9-11 planes (too soon?), over insane little plots so deformed they will make Republicans rethink their views on abortion (too mongoon?).

1) Kate Winslet on a blind date with Hugh Jackman the Chinballian (well, that’s actually the species name for the alien from MEN IN BLACK 2 – but you immediately get the picture, right?). And everyone in normal society is quite nonchalant about Hugh’s hairy naked scrotum and testicles hanging where his Adam’s apple should be. Everyone except Winslet, who makes the ooweh! vomit sound, so she’s aces in my book.

2) Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts home-school their son, giving him all the alienation, bullying and loneliness required from school life; mum Naomi schooling him in his first awkward high school kiss. It would be awesomely hot if it weren’t awesomely wrong. And awesomely hot anyway.

3) Anna Faris, after a year of dating boyfriend Chris Pratt thinks it’s time to move to the next phase – being pooped on. Not “shitting” – you shit on a whore, as J.B. Smoove points out – but you “poop” on someone you love.

4) Emma Stone and Kieran Culkin (so much more street cred than Macauley!): vital, urgent teens at a checkout counter, who need to be inside each other if only they could curb their vital, urgent hate for each other.

5) The iBabe – a naked hottie robot that plays music, with the fan to keep her circuitry cool located in her “vagi-port.” Aasif Mandvi and Kate Bosworth try to explain to clueless CEO Richard Gere why the iBabe company is fending off so many lawsuits from young boys getting their fingers chopped off.

6) Robin the Boy Wonder in full costume (Justin Long) tries to speed-date, with the specter of Batman (Jason Sudeikis, also in full cosplay) lurking around every corner. “He makes me wear this outfit!” whines Robin, as Batman cockblocks him with Lois Lane (a smoking hot Uma Thurman) and Supergirl (Kristen Bell), who apparently has mungabush.

7) Chloe Grace Moretz (oh my God! Truly the most beautiful woman in the world right now!), has her first period on a date with young Jimmy Bennett (growing up in front of us on film; remember him as Young Kirk in STAR TREK 2009?), while older brother Christopher Mintz-Plasse goes bananas trying to find something to suffice as a tampon. Then insouciant father Patrick Warburton walks in and proves why all men are pigs.

8) Gerard Butler as a Leprechaun captured by Johnny Knoxville and Sean William Scott, who want his pot of gold. What a potty mouth on that tiny fucker!

10) Stephen Merchant (THE OFFICE) and Halle Berry on a first date, playing Truth Or Dare. By the time Merchant surgically turns into an Asian man on a dare, it’s probably gone too far…

11) Coach Terrence Howard in a 1959 film about the First Negro High School Basketball Team, assuring the desperately scared black team, “You’re black, that’s why you’re going to win.” “You mean we gotta give 110%, coach?” “Not 110% – 50%, 3%! And you’re still gonna win!” “You mean if we follow in the footsteps of the lord?–” “No, not the lord! They’re white, you’re black – this is basketball!” As an example of why they are destined to win, Howard asks one of the boys to take out his foot long dick and wave it around. If only that scary white team wouldn’t come into their locker room and taunt the poor Negroes with their pasty skin and small dicks…

12) In the grandest Looney Tunes tradition of combining mischievous cartoon mascots with live action, Beezel the cartoon cat despises Elizabeth Banks getting between him and his master Josh Duhamel. Beezel will do anything to crush kill destroy Banks while he wanks to pictures of Josh in a bathing suit. But then, don’t we all wank to pictures of Josh in a bathing suit?

There’s nothing deep in MOVIE 43 (except maybe one of those foot long dicks); written, and directed by various teams, each working on their own vignette, it’s constructed purely to destroy liberty and sobriety. An overwhelming undertaking, my question is, Who oversees the whole shebang? Each vignette even had its own editor and producer, so who was at the top of the dirty pile cutting this all together? Oh, and my other question is, Will there be a sequel – and will MOVIE 44 be blasphemous enough to burn off these anal warts?…

END

For To Make Democratize in America.

In the grand tradition of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visiting Columbia University in 2007 and denying the Holocaust, claiming Iran has no gays and lets women roam free with equal rights, so too is Wadiya’s dictator Hafez Aladeen, granted all courtesies when visiting the United Nations to extol the virtues of his oppressive Middle Eastern government, where the people think they’re free. Because if there’s one thing Middle Easterners know about Americans, it’s that they looove oppressive government where the people think they’re free.

Sacha Baron Cohen’s actual “films” (ALI G INDAHOUSE, TALLADEGA NIGHTS) have never been as biting as his recent “mockumentaries” (BORAT, BRUNO), and the trailers for THE DICTATOR portrayed it like a half-hearted stab at bottling his mockumentary lightning in a feature film. But writer-star Cohen smashes it out of the comedy park, smoothly sidestepping our expectations in this satire on the American perception of democracy. He really has a handle on how far to poke into the redneck chest.

Directed by longtime collaborator Larry Charles, THE DICTATOR finds General Aladeen (Cohen) of the fictional Republic of Wadiya, “invited” to the United States to testify before the United Nations on his secret nuclear weapons program. The American government affords him every courtesy, while biting their tongues at his dictatorship – though not biting them as hard as they should, as the U.S. liaison (John C. Reilly) advises Aladeen bluntly, “While you’re here, you should visit the Empire State Building before one of your sand-monkeys knocks it down.”

Meanwhile, Aladeen’s right-hand man Tamir (Ben Kingsley), bought off by U.S. billionaires, is plotting to assassinate Aladeen and install an Aladeen body-double who will bow to his agenda of making Wadiya a democracy. Tamir gets his chance to install the double when Aladeen is kidnapped by John C. Reilly, who shaves off Aladeen’s distinctive beard, leaving him stranded in America…

Earlier, we met Aladeen in his gold-plated bedchambers (after screwing Megan Fox for jewelry); a lonely man desperate to cuddle, his pathos manifested in his extensive wall of Polaroids, featuring shots of him with superstars he slept with: Halle Berry, Oprah, Ahnuld!… So even though he’s reprehensible, we actually sympathize with this misogynistic, murderous anti-American anti-hero – kidnapped in a strange land, a fish out of water (like CROCODILE DUNDEE, only oilier).

In an attempt to assimilate, Aladeen calls himself “Alison Burgers” and finds work in a New Age shop run by Zoey (an earthy, ‘pit-hairy Anna Faris with a boyish haircut), while he tries to find passage back to his beloved country. He runs across Nadal (Jason Mantzoukas, in a great understated performance), one of his many minions whom he had “executed” in Wadiya – discovering they all came to work in a restaurant in New York called The Death To Aladeen Restaurant. Ever faithful Nadal still wants Aladeen’s name placed alongside the great dictators, like Kim Jong-Il and Dick Cheney, so begins hatching a terrorist plot on New York.

Unfortunately, Aladeen is falling for Zoey (“When the thought of someone’s decapitated head upsets you – that is love”), and recants on his terrorist ways, to Nadal’s utmost disappointment. Aladeen nonetheless retains his dictatorial arrogance – every time Zoey starts talking New Age, he cuts her off with “Who cares?” He starts regimenting her pothead shop, skyrocketing profits and slapping the employees into shape – literally. A hippie employee (Kevin Corrigan) asks Aladeen “Who are you, Osama Bin Laden’s best friend?” to which Aladeen retorts, “He’s not my best friend, although he’s been staying in my guest house since they killed his double. You visit the bathroom after him, you’ll know the true meaning of the word terrorism.” Aladeen also secures for the shop an A-rating from the FDA by holding the inspector’s wife and child hostage (cameo by Garry Shandling as the inspector).

Other cameos: Edward Norton, Aasif Mandvi, Kathryn Hahn, Bobby Lee in a hilarious turn as a lecherous Chinese leader: “Tommy Lee Jones let me roll it in my fingers for $200,000.” Very funny to suddenly recognize all the source music in a foreign language: R.E.M.’s Everybody Hurts, Gaye’s Let’s Get It On, et al.

With all the 9-11 references and the lauding of dictatorship, we wonder how THE DICTATOR passed muster with the Gutless MPAA. We can feel the inevitable arc of redemption coming – and it’s going to dilute the comedy, we know it! But wait, Movie Maniacs! This movie is another reason why I constantly call the Gutless MPAA numb-brained. Aladeen doesn’t arc to redemption at all – it only seems that way.

Cohen artfully, insidiously, twists our sympathies to root for the wrong man. Consider: Tamir (Kingsley) wants to assassinate Aladeen, so that he can set up a constitution and democracy for Wadiya, and create trade agreements with America (which all Americans agree is a Good Thing – ousting a dictator, creating democracy and jobs). Aladeen’s double is being groomed by Tamir to deliver a speech declaring his country a democracy, so America should rightfully be rooting for him, no? But we find ourselves rooting for Aladeen to stop his double giving that speech! We invest our sympathies with the reprehensible dictator, who declares tyranny as divine and wants to return to his life of mistreating women, murdering people for small slights and screwing movie stars.

How they work that magic on our simple minds. The true meaning of artful.

And Aladeen’s ending speech? A twisted poke in the eye at American ideals, highlighting how Americans embrace the very poke that blinds them:

Why are you guys so anti-dictators? Imagine if America was a dictatorship. You could let 1-percent of the people have all the nation’s wealth, you could help your rich friends get richer by cutting their taxes, and bailing them out when they gamble and lose. You can ignore the needs of the poor for health care and education. Your media would appear free but would secretly be controlled by one person and his family. You could wiretap phones, you could torture foreign prisoners, you could have rigged elections, you could lie about why you go to war, you could fill your prisons with one particular racial group and no one would complain. You could use the media to scare the people into supporting policies that are against their interests. I know all this is hard for you Americans to imagine, but please try. I will tell you what democracy is: democracy is the worst. Endless talking and listening to every stupid opinion. And everybody’s vote counts, no matter how crippled or black or female they are.
— General Hafez Aladeen.

Aladeen sees Zoey and refers to her as he continues: “Democracy has hairy armpits…democracy kisses you because she wants to, not because her father is in the next room chained to a radiator with electrodes attached to his nipples. Democracy is flawed; it is not perfect, but democracy… I love you!” Now before you jump up and shout, ‘That’s the redemption!’ keep in mind his “recant” is simply done for Panty.

We know his calls for “real democracy and a real constitution” are not real because the closing scenes find him being his usual dictator self. Nothing has changed in Wadiya. Ironically – this is what he told us democracy IS: you can say one thing and do another; blatantly lie to the people. Which is what America’s government does. Therefore, General Hafez Aladeen is more “American” than any Democrat, Independent or Republican!

ALADEEN 2016!

END

Hi. We’re the Ku Bush Klan. And we’re gonna FUCK EVERYONE!

Putting the W in WMD.

First came RAIN MAN. Then FORREST GUMP. Now, in a long line of congenital idiots, comes W.

But wait, Bushies! Do not dismiss this movie as leftie revisionist conspiracy. Director Oliver Stone‘s W. is a fair and balanced representation of America’s 43rd president, George Walker Bush. Insert joke: “which means it shows him as the imbecile he is.”

No, W. is too fair. Not because the movie portrays George W Bush (affectionately known as “W,” redneckingly pronounced, “Dubya”) as intelligent, lucid or principled – on the contrary, he’s portrayed as the enabled, amoral, irreconcilably ignorant rich brat he’s always been; it is “too fair” because it clobbers us with one small aspect of W’s psyche – his relationship with “Poppy” (father, George Herbert Walker Bush), the 41st president – instead of examining the adverse affects that W’s obsessing over his father’s approbation brought down on planet Earth.

Oliver Stone (writer/director of 1991’s JFK and 1995’s NIXON) seems to miss all potential target audiences: Bushies will hate W. for the irrational reason that anything remotely disparaging toward their sheltered idiot-child “should” be hated, and the other 75% of America will find no red meat to indict the doofus C-student they so stupidly elected twice.

Movie opens after 9/11, in the Oval Egg, with the Bush cabinet creating a vivid catchphrase for the group of countries ideologically opposed to America, settling on Axis of Evil, the president flippantly throwing Iran, Iraq and North Korea into the pot – even though none of those countries acted in concert against the U.S., unlike the WWII Axis countries.

This should reveal something to America: there IS no Axis of Evil; merely a concoction of a few dappled minds (including, but not limited to, the fear-swillers: David Frum, Michael Gerson, Dick Cheney, W) who portrayed merely religious contingents as whole countries.

Hate those dangerous Arab WMD’s…

The primary players in this Greek tragedy are introduced, with varying success: Josh Brolin is the eponymous W, channeling the spirit of doofus admirably (with the light at the right angle, the resemblance is scary); Bruce McGill makes a reasonable George Tenet (CIA); Toby Jones is a slimmer version of walking rectum, Karl Rove; Jeffrey Wright leans hard on his General Colin Powell; Richard Dreyfuss cannot possibly plumb the depths of the slime-pit Dick Cheney crawled from, but tries hard (it is common knowledge Cheney runs the Ku Bush Klan, but movie marginalizes his involvement); Dennis Boutsikaris is not frog-faced enough to play Wolfowitz; I always thought Barbara Bush was a 1920 storeroom mannequin in disrepair – apparently not, as Ellen Burstyn gives her voice here; Scott Glenn is way too noble to be the ludicrous Donald Rumsfeld; Ioan Gruffudd brings the British accent (and a sensible sweater) for his Prime Minister Tony Blair; and Thandie Newton does Condoleeza Rice like a caricature audition for Saturday Night Live.

Movie follows three segments of W.’s life (a pre-pol in college in 1966, pre-pres, and post-9/11), skipping back and forth as often as W skipped out of day jobs; at one point, W simply walks off an oil-rig mid-shift – a directionless, privileged quitter, with not a shred of responsibility. Bush Snr (James Cromwell as Poppy) pulls strings to get W out of jail, land him summer jobs, slide him into Harvard, yet W keeps disappointing with his vacuous and impulsive irresponsibility. It would be the same traits he would bring to the stolen presidency in the dark winter of 2000, along with his “gut” decision-making (rather than informed leadership), to earn him the lowest favorability rating of any president in America’s history. Imagine how disappointed his father is NOW…

The performances are uneven – Brolin, Wright, Cromwell, Dreyfuss pulling the weight of all the others who seem miscast – but Stone’s direction is stellar. Written by Stanley Weiser, these characters exist in a vacuum; a disconnect between backstage and the world stage.

Richard Dreyfuss remarked on THE VIEW: “It leaves out how terrified people were of their own president.”

The film won’t have historical legs because the issues that defined the W presidency are given short shrift or glaringly omitted. Authorizing torture is mentioned once, over breakfast – there is no Abu Ghraib, no Guantanamo, no John Yoo; that scene (like other allusions and brief intimations), is more an inside wink to audiences well-versed in that travesty of justice, who will nod their heads and say to themselves: “Ah! Look at the mess he got into with that one!” There is no contention over the 2000 or 2004 elections, no dirty Swift Boating campaign, no massage gaffes at the G8 Summit – we just don’t see these events.

As for the lie of WMD in Iraq (this is not contention any more – it’s in all the literature), Frank Rich, Vincent Bugliosi, Bob Woodward and countless others have researched and concluded that W knew he was lying when selling the “mushroom cloud” to America as justification to invade. Whereas this lie should be a defining moment in any George W. Bush character study (What kind of a man would do this?), we get the barest rationalization that W is going after Saddam to finish what his father started. “My dream is to see peace break out in the Middle East! …UN resolution or not – we’re going to war!” Again, the real reasons are not slammed up against the real outcomes of this ignoble, ignorant, unlawful decision.

W’s life seems free of consequences, when we all know that isn’t true, and – worse – the consequences affecting planet Earth are ignored.

Bush had asked the two men [Rumsfeld and Bremer] point-blank who was in charge of finding the WMD… Bremer indicated it was Rumsfeld’s responsibility. Rumsfeld said Bremer was in charge. [Bush] wanted someone in charge… Since the CIA had insisted Iraq had WMD, the agency could go find the weapons. So finally, two and a half months into the war, the administration was going to give some focus to the hunt.
— “State Of Denial,” Bob Woodward.

Powell protests over America’s ideology going astray over a few terrorists, “We blew it before 9/11, because people weren’t doing their jobs right,” attacking Iraq is “not New World Order – that’s World Gone Mad.” (Powell’s character is prescient screenwriting from Weiser, as this movie was completed before the actual Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama in 2008). Cheney clarifies the admin’s position: It’s about energy resources. And – “there is NO exit strategy.”

As sinister as Cheney’s “no exit strategy” sounds, there is no mention of the chilling callousness of having no “infrastructure” strategy. Forget “empire-building” – what these meatheads called their grandiose intrusive blunder – even running water and electricity in war zones was out of the Bushies’ purview. Further, no mention is made of W running on the ticket of “no empire-building” then immediately using the excuse of 9/11 to go empire-building (which was in reality a euphemism for “energy-controlling”).

A movie about the world’s biggest meathead – with so little meat.

Not even an accurate biopic, W. is an insular, one-dimensional fairytale of a cowboy moron’s rise to power, from an alcoholic tail-chaser to the bumbling, born-again dumbest president of the United States. Like W, the movie talks a lot but says nothing.

Key events in W’s life are condensed, making the movie one big montage: W’s alcoholism, subsequent conversion to born again soberness, early political life; his wife (Elizabeth Banks – way too sexy to play W’s man-boy Laura); his decision not to be out-christianed or out-Texaned on the campaign trail; coached by Karl Rove…

And here we shake our heads in outrage again: when Rove coaches W, a picture is presented of a Rain Man cramming for an exam, not someone educating himself, studying documents and assessing intelligent solutions to national issues; we never see W reading – a salient point. Rove would coach W to counter attacks from the hostile press or public, not through knowledge, but memorization. Exactly like the 2008 Repub VP nominee, Sarah Palin. Sure, Dems and Repubs all work this way, but with this particular pol, his duplicity and ignorance became so transparently obvious through his public actions and responses. Still, Brolin never quite grasps W’s condescension. (The real W explains political strategy to the press as if speaking to five-year-olds because that’s how political processes are explained to HIM.)

Rove coins the public catchcry of W “being someone they’d like to have a beer with” – but didn’t W stop drinking long before he ran? Which made even that phrase just another lie…

W’s embarrassing and laughable malapropisms and dysfunctional grammar are slotted in offhandedly – not disparagingly – almost as comic relief. Movie shies away from WHY he is such an abysmal communicator – his low intelligence, hence, zero credentials to run a “nookuler” superpower. Grandest irony is that he married a librarian! (Holding stark, opposing political views to W, we can only presume Laura is a weak, unprincipled gold-digger for marrying him.)

Stone emulates Marty Scorcese in juxtaposing disturbing visuals over jovial soundtrack (Adventures of Robin Hood under W’s cavalier decision to run for politics, Yellow Rose of Texas under war scenes, The Battle Hymn of the Republic scoring the Mission Accomplished moment), yet this ain’t no laughing matter. When Rumsfeld says of Afghanistan “It’s not a war – it’s an exercise”; when W quotes St. Augustine to rationalize “Just” War; when W as Texas governor never pardoned anyone on Death Row, presiding over 152 executions (the highest number in modern history); when the Real World consequences of the Middle East conflict have displaced/ destroyed/ debilitated over 2 million people, it becomes too serious to satire, only proving what a soulless, murderous hypocrite this supposed “christian” is.

In the movie, W gives up pie as “sacrifice for the war” (we don’t see the 2004 public dinner where he tastelessly jokes about his inability to find WMD – bet the dead soldiers’ families were laffing their asses off); film doesn’t show him “giving up golf” because he “shouldn’t be enjoying himself while young men and women are dying” (then filmed on a golf course after making this statement); film doesn’t show W’s statement about bin Laden “dead or alive” (six months later: “I don’t know where he is… I just don’t spend that much time on him”)…

W is half a movie, like PASSION OF THE CHRIST or STAR WARS EPISODE III, where the film-makers took it for granted the world knew the story, so did not bother to develop it cogently. The movie poses questions and pretends no answers – when even a precocious cucumber like me, only mildly interested in politics, KNOWS the real-world answers. Mention is made of Carter installing solar panels on the Shite House roof (before “green” was an admirable fad), yet no talk of Reagan immediately ripping down the panels when he took office (That’s Our Republican Hypocrite!); W’s cabinet issues a media blackout on soldier caskets returning from war – but we don’t see press secretary Tony Snow lying “There is no media blackout”; W is told Saddam didn’t have WMD but pretended to – but the movie posits wrong reasons for Saddam’s pretense. (The real reason is simple: with a dangerous neighbor like Iran, Iraq didn’t want to publicly announce it was defenseless, so Saddam had to cooperate with the U.S., letting inspectors swarm his military facilities, while snickering over his shoulder to Iran as if he was duping the U.S. The U.S., as usual, too blunt-headed to discern this subtlety.)

The last question posed to W at a press conference, “What were your mistakes?” culls the Obligatory Hollywood Introspective Moment from Brolin, rather than the weak-chested, blank-eyed, weasel-sniveling backpedaling and stuttering that the real life W met that question with. Maybe Stone is trying to be ironic or subtle, because his film is LOADED with W’s mistakes, but because they are mentioned so fleetingly with no follow-through, the audience can’t see them as mistakes.

But that “mistake” scene highlights the film’s overall “mistake”: casting Josh Brolin. Y’see, Brolin is cool. Always will be. And he’s playing a guy who is just an intrinsic fuckin’ douchebag. And Brolin just can’t quite make it to that deep a level of douchebaggery… No one is that good an actor.

Movie ends abruptly during a dream sequence where W is waiting for a fly ball that is not coming down, and we see in Brolin’s eyes the most prominent unanswered question of the W era: “Where do we go from here?” Either that, or “What the hell am I doing here?” Or “How the hell did I get here?” Most likely, “I wonder if I’ll have time for a bike ride before breakfast tomorrow?”

With W’s lame duckidency limping to a shameful, disgraced end, we can only be thankful that the real Axis of Evil – George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove – will soon be disbanded.

END

Man of Steel, Ethics of Plastic.

Iron Veg

IRON MAN is a steel-belted planet-crusher of a film; alloy feet on the ground, red-and-gold armor streaking for sub-orbital skies. Based in a reality close to current, like the shrapnel lodged in Tony Stark’s chest, we feel it close to our heart… technology, physics, corporate backbiting, intimate asides… and a self-made hero that speaks in tongues to our wild fantasies of power.

Not just for 14-year-old boys.

Robert Downey Jr. is Tony Stark (the finest counter-intuitive casting since Michael Keaton as Batman), an all-American, arrogant, insouciant, egomaniacal billionaire playboy weaponry wizard, who sustains a shrapnel wound in Afghanistan (comicbook lore tells us a land mine in Viet Nam; movie places Stark in a current non-essential conflict), imprisoned by generic Arabs and forced to make a WMD for them, instead designing an armor suit, first for escape from his oily-complected captors, and then as avenger (wink wink) against his own weapon creations and the corporate backdoor deals that cede those American weapons into oily-complected hands.

Departing considerably from comicbook canon (as all this genre must do to compress decades of legacy into two hours), all the familiar characters are here, but tweaked: Jim Rhodes (the excellent Terrence Howard) is not just Stark’s pilot, but a high-ranking air force officer; Pepper Potts (bland yet moderately cute Gwyneth Paltrow) is Stark’s yearning Girl Friday, who sees the parade of fluff through Tony’s bedroom as a prelude to her ultimate spanking; Obadiah Stane (an uncharacteristically sinister Jeff Bridges) is not a corporate competitor but in Stark’s trusted inner circle, making his betrayal all the more treacherous…

Directed by Jon Favreau (Vince Vaughn’s wife and generally staid actor/director), and screenplayed surprisingly well by its four writers (Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum, Matt Holloway – four-writer films often suffer spoiled broth), IRON MAN takes its time focusing on the man inside the metal, rather than the mayhem the metal man musters. (Can I have a prize for that one?)

Yes, Movie Maniacs, the costume ROCKS!

In captivity, a fellow prisoner, Yinsen (the beautifully tragic Shaun Toub) creates an electromagnet to keep the shrapnel from entering Stark’s heart, which Stark refines into a glowing “reactor” or something, forever to remain his albatross – and simultaneously a cool superhero chestpiece.

Yinsen turns Stark from unrepentant wardog to humanitarian avenger by telling him of his “life’s work in the hands of these murderers” (an enemy missile landing near him in battle, clearly marked with his company logo, his weapons stockpiled in Arab caves).

Firstly, let’s get the “murderer” definition straight: when Stark shows off his death-dealing toys in callous arrogance (“Respected or feared? I say, Why not both?”), he merely echoes the stance of the Amerikan Military War Machine (another wink wink to you fanboys), who also believe the “best weapon is the one you only need to fire once.” Who are the murderers again?

Secondly, Stark may be angered that his weapons are in the hands of these Movie Arabs, but when you’re in business, who else do you sell to, but those who demand and buy your product? A business genius like Stark should know better than anyone how the supposed “enemy” market is the house of sand the Amerikan military economy is built upon. When it comes to killing for profit, Amerikan ethics are quite, quite plastic. Who are the “murderers” again?

Onward with shallow summer movie blockbuster wearing transparent philanthropy mini-skirt…

The first taste of the crude, silver armor (affectionately, the Mk-1) is magnificent. First appearing in Tales of Suspense #39, March 1963, this armor is forged by Stark while ostensibly creating a WMD for his Arab captors. Though the ’63 comicbook version now looks like a clown suit next to his red-and-gold juggernauts, the movie gussies up the suit with mechanical ganglion to lend it cave-cred. And in this roughshod mechanical man, Stark escapes the Arabs like a runaway tank.

Back in “civilization” Stark turns his focus from corporate warfare and weapons design to one project – his new armor. Meanwhile, Jeff Bridges scares us with his shaved head and overbushy beard.

Stan Lee’s cameos are getting better and better – this time, he’s Hef.

Seeing Stark create and test the powers of his technological marvel is half the fun of this origin tale – and when the full armor suit is eventually revealed, it is the sexiest beast this side of Optimus Prime! Though it is obvious this production has enough budget to overdo effects, CGI is used as sensibly as Ridley Scott used it in GLADIATOR – to enhance the story rather than to blow our minds with cheap shots. Seeing Iron Man outfly combat jets and take on tanks is action enough – it was a joy to simply see this icon from our comicbook past in real life action. AND – the worst part about Doctor Doom in FANTASTIC FOUR was his voice remaining the fruity scientist’s drawl even when he donned the mask – but when Stark slams on his iron man – yeeees! – he has a Vader thoom!

We have CGI to thank that Favreau didn’t put Downey in a rubber suit and dub in clanking foley. And with the armor’s complexity, it is only logical a machine should suit him up – and only CGI could render that machine, rather than having to see him pull on his gleaming jeans one pants-leg at a time.

The CGI only falls overboard once, when Stane dons the giant Mk-1 armor (aka Iron Monger) to battle Iron Man in the final scenes, the movie suddenly turning into TRANSFORMERS 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO for a bad second. A small hiccup, along with other small hiccups, like Stark revealing he is Iron Man at film’s end. Originally, Iron Man was played off as Stark’s bodyguard for years, yet there is only a passing allusion to this strategy in the final few minutes.

In one comicbook thread in the mid-80s, Stark fell into alcoholism and Jim Rhodes took over the armor and tooled about for way too many episodes, spawning the War Machine spinoff. The movie cheekily intimates Rhodes in the armor when he spies a secondary suit, hesitates, then says, “Next time, baby!” Unlike this jovial take, that comics thread was a depressing time and I didn’t like it one bit, but then, I suppose alcoholism always is depressing. To everyone involved – even innocent boyish readers. The movie doesn’t explore this thread, but Favreau has hinted at a sequel falling down the stairs inebriated without its iron shirt on.

In the final cut, no one will notice the ethics paradox – it’s not for this movie’s target demo to tangle with. IRON MAN is still one of the great superhero movies. Just remember to stay until after the credits – Samuel L. Jackson (in characteristic super-cred long black overcoat) is Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D., not looking one bit like his comics counterpart except for the eye-patch, talking crazy to Stark about “the Avenger Initiative”…

The movie opens with AC/DC’s Back in Black. And we’re played out by Sabbath’s Iron Man!

Not just for 14-year-old boys. But it’ll sure make you feel like one.

END