Monster not want to sound sexist, but Iron Man be waaaaay more fun and exciting den sekwel Iron Lady.
Movie open on rich industrialist playboy Tony Stark, a guy who be seeing more girly action den Kermit during his Muppet Show days! But during grand tour of Afghanistan, his military convoy attacked (see, dis why Monster prefer all expenses paid cruises). Tony taken prisoner by terrorists. Injured in attack, his cave-prison bunkmate build him mini arc reaktor to keep shrapnel from entering his heart (So DAT what arc reaktor does! Me got one two Christmas’s ago and be using it to power my gecko aquarium). Tony also forced to build terrorists a weapon like one designed by his company, Stark Industries. And, after dat, who knows? Mebbe a sous vide machine?
But tricky Tony fool terrorists. Instead, he make pimped out suit of armor. He kick ass and fly away, crash, but end up getting reskued by army buddy.
Back home, Tony be conflikted. After finding out terrorists be using his weapons, he shut down weapons division of Stark Industries. Dis not sit well wit his partner, Obladi (Oblada Life Goes On Brah La La La How Life Goes On) Stane. But Tony not seem to mind. He too busy working on new and improved Iron Man armor like one he designed and built in Afghanistan. He test it, take it for a joyride, kick more terrorist ass, and, in one thrillling sekwence, outfly a couple of spiteful fighter jets. He also find time to flirt wit his cute assistant, Pepper Pots, in a relationship reminiscent of classik screwball comedies of de 40’s.
It turn out he not de only one working on a suit as terrorists be trying to reverse-engineer his first prototype. But terrorists de least of Tony’s problems. It turn out Obladi (Oblada Life Goes On…, etc.) in league wit terrorists all along. He steal plans for prototype from dem, den steal mini arc reaktor from Tony’s chest.
It all lead to terrifik, extended VFX showdown dat also reminiscent of classik screwball comedies of de 40’s. Sort of like Adam’s Rib except, instead of lawyers arguing a case, Tracy and Hepburn be business partners fistfighting in high-tech suits of armor.
Verdikt: A perfekt blend of aktion, humor and great dialogue. A skript dat aktually fun and make sense! No doubt screenwriters will be rewarded by not getting to write sekwel!
Rating: 9.5 chocolate chippee cookies!
Nice review, Cookie! We loved Iron Man here for all the same reasons.
Have a great night!
Exactly!!! This is one of my favorite movies second only to The Avengers and Shawshank Redemption. All the little one liners and good stories and CG take this movie over the top. But my favorite suit is still the Mk4 briefcase suit in IM2… Oh that scene was awesome. I play it 4 or 5 times in a row it’s so cool!
I remember enjoying this movie and this time out was no different. The writing was sharp and witty and the acting top notch. A complete change from last week. The “down” side to these good movies is there’s not that much to comment on! I got so involved in the movie that I almost forgot to make some comments. Almost.
I realize that such things are a superhero movie conceit, but I always did wonder about Stark’s ability to withstand impacts that should normally kill a human. It doesn’t really matter what you’re wearing, it’s the deceleration forces that are a killer. He took some pretty hard hits and impacts!
Argh. Jarvis used the expression “terabytes of calculations” which doesn’t make sense. Terabytes are storage, not processing. Teraflops, maybe.
Stark leaving the version 1.0 super suit for the terrorists to find seemed like a pretty grievous oversight. I can’t imagine that he wouldn’t have thought of that. Unless… it was so the bad guy could find it and result in a dramatic final fight.
Enough picking of nits, it was a great movie and I was very entertained – for a change!
Great review for a very enjoyable movie, Cookie! It hadn’t struck me before but your comparison of the movie with 40’s screwball comedies was spot on.
One of the things I love about the movie is the detail of the suits and the extremely entertaining (and comic) early test flights. One of my favorites is Stark powering down and landing gently on the roof only to have the roof, and floor below collapse under the weight of the prototype suit – followed by his redesign of a somewhat lighter weight model.
Oh, yeah. And listening to Jarvis the computer/AI butler voiced by Paul Bettany getting snarky with Stark!
Great movie and a good review (albeit not quite as funny as the 1 chocolate chippie movies). I’m tired and my brain isn’t working, so that’s all I got. 😛
das
I must have loved the movie because I remember most of that. Lemme’ splain. At the time I would have got hold of it on DVD, any time I spent watching something like that, my son would have been making huge messes. That must have been one great movie to have been worth it.
Joe, today is the very last day for the penny. This is EPIC! Why didn’t you devote an entire blog to it? Whatever shall we do without the penny? I don’t know if I can cope. Poor, poor pitiful us!!
Thanks for the review Cookie, I liked this movie also, some day I may watch Iron Man 2, and hey I hear there is another one coming out. I would love to fly in the suit, with out the heart magnet thingy though. Have a cookie on me. Glad you got a decent one to watch after all the “others” you had to sit through.
@Cookie:
Thanks for the review, Cookie! I really enjoyed this movie! My son, David, and I saw this at a drive-in in Ohio. We were visiting the Air Force Museum in Dayton and we thought this would be a great way to end the day and it fit in pretty well with our aviation themed day.
@gforce:
I thought that too, but then I thought that maybe Jarvis was storing all the calculations, measurements and intermediate data, so maybe terabytes is not too far off 😉
Honda Update for Das and Tam Dixon:
We’re done! 😀
We finished it up tonight and took it out for a test drive. All running smoothly! My son-in-law is very happy (especially with the cost savings over having a shop do the work). Now maybe Jackie and I can get back to working on the Corvette…
When we started on this journey to watch superhero movies in chronological order I consoled myself that it wouldn’t be too long before we would get to the “modern era” of superhero movies.
As soon as we got to modern superhero movies it would mean quality entertainment right up to the present day.
My benchmark for a “modern” superhero movie was 1989’s Batman. It was quite different from anything that had come before. It was dark yet humorous. A bit tongue-in-cheek but not overly camp. And generally entertaining. Apart from a few dodgy sequels I couldn’t remember any other superhero movies between Batman and the excellent X-Men in 2000.
Oh how wrong I was.
It turns out the ’90s were some of the worst years for superhero movies. We had thee Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies! Thankfully Cookie Monster refused to watch the sequels. Three Darkman movies, again, Cookie ignored the sequels for which I am eternally grateful. And the dreadful The Fantastic Four that was never officially released and I wished it was never unofficially released either.
I found myself eagerly awaiting X-Men so we could start my newly re-defined “modern era” of superhero films. Surely Hollywood would have learned it’s lesson from the ’90s and now it would only release quality movies.
Alas, it wasn’t to be. While X-Men, Spiderman and Batman Begins raised the bar we also had Daredevil, Catwoman, Elektra, the two rebooted Fantastic Four movies and the terrible Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D well and truly dragging the bar back down to new depths.
I was full of despair. The only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that if the movie stunk then I could get some enjoyment from Cookie Monster ripping into it.
But I needed more than that. I needed a new goal to look forward to. I needed to re-re-define the “modern era” of superhero movies. This era, I decided, would begin with Iron Man. A movie so awesome, so perfect, that Cookie would be at a loss to find anything bad to say about it. A movie that, this time, I was sure, would show everyone in Hollywood that this was how you made a superhero movie.
And now we’re here. Iron Man is just as great now as when I first saw it. I pull out the BluRay a couple of times a year to watch it.
My hopes for the modern era are firmly grounded. It’s smooooooooooth sailing from now on!
What’s that? We’ve got Hancock and The Green Hornet coming up? Oh God! Ok, I’m re-re-re-defining the “modern era” of superhero movies. The Avengers will finally show Hollywood how it’s done.
What? They’re rebooting The Fantastic Four in 2015? AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just wanted to give a quick step-mom update: She is out of the hospital! She was doing much better the last couple of days and the delirium was basically gone, so that made life much easier. She is much happier to be home of course, and hopefully this will last for a little while.
I just wanted to express my gratitude to Joe and all you fellow blog commenters for your thoughts and support. I does indeed mean a great deal to me.
@Line Noise: There will ALWAYS be bad movies made, and we will do our duty to always be here to skewer them! 🙂
It’s weird, I enjoyed Iron Man, but it didn’t knock my socks off. I think I was expecting more because of all the hype and previews. It was a good film, but nothing about it inspired me to see the sequel and I just kind of gave up on the rest of them, Avengers included. Maybe it’s because I’m more of a DC guy than a Marvel guy, I don’t know. I did see Captain America(I had a free ticket) and that was a fun ride, but again, it just felt…..cookie cutter. I guess it’s taking more and more to really get me into the theaters nowadays.
I saw Argo because I heard it was largely accurate and well acted by a bunch of relative nobodys(which I truly do enjoy, it allows for a fresh look at a movie with no preconceptions). There were only two scenes I noticed that were “Hollywood-ed up”, and were quite laughable because of it, but still a well done movie.
I just recently saw Warm Bodies because it looked like a fresh, new twist on the zombie mythos, and it was. I felt it was actually too short, too. They could have delved into R’s character a bit more as well as John Malkovich’s character’s back story. They only needed like ten or fifteen minutes more to accomplish this and it would’ve felt like such a fuller, more complete movie. But it was still fun and well enjoyable.
Finally, because I know Joe reads these comments even on days that Cookie leaves his reviews, I have to ask a favor. While it’s obvious what’s going on in this clip, can you and Akemi translate and tell me WHY it’s happening? Or do I just chalk this up to “Hey, it’s Japanese TV….”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZTKOczjm8w
-Mike A.
Apparently all the girls are part of the Japanese pop group AKB48. The head-butter (whose head, incidentally, is smaller than a volleyball) is showing off her unique head-butting talent. One of the other girls in the group suggests that it’s all for show, that the first victim of the head-butt is just pretending to be hurt. She volunteers to be on the receiving end of a head-butt – and concludes that first girl wasn’t faking after all.
Das: I love the way your mind works! 😆
Loved the review Cookie!
JeffW: Yay!!!!
until now the ratings have been so bad, I didn’t even know Cookie Monster was using a 1-10 scale.
@gforce: So glad to hear the good news!
That’s kid of what I suspected. But it’s nice to be sure. It’s still funny either way! I imagine the last girl said something like “It’s real!”, when asked whether or not the headbutt was real or fake.
You’ve featured AKB48 on here before, right? It sounds really familiar….
-Mike A.
G’day
Great movie, always get a kick out of watching this one. Love the one liners.
@ Jeff W – congrats on the getting the car fixed. Hubby and I have worked on a few motors and whole cars over the years. Can be heart breaking, but can be fun and when cruising around when all done, a victorious feeling.
@ gforce: great news on your stepmum.
@ Mike A. – What the hell!!!! That is barbaric!! And stop laughing, you’ll only encourage them more…
@ gforce – That is good to hear! Praying she stays out of the hospital.
@ Line Noise – 👿 (it was a children’s move!)
movie not move
@gforce:
Great news! Glad to hear it. Hopefully things will keep improving from here.
@Tam Dixon:
Yay indeed! 😀
@Janet:
It is a great feeling; I’ve worked on a number of American makes over the years and a Rover 216 (really a 1988 Honda Civic) when we lived in the UK, but the tight spaces on this engine compartment just made everything more complex and time consuming. If my son-in-law had had the space in his garage I probably would have just pulled his engine and worked on it on an engine stand.
I loved this movie, Cookie. And I agree, I thought the scale was 1-5, not 1-10. There have been some really bad movies out there. Glad you finally got to see a good one. I liked this movie, too, because it had our favorite minion to the Ori, Tim Guinee.