Let Me In & Due Date reviews (Radio Scotland Movie Cafe)

I reviewed two new releases on this week's Movie Cafe on Radio Scotland with host Janice Forsyth. First up was Let Me In, the US remake of 2008 Swedish cult hit Let The Right One In, and in my opinion it's much better than any of us had reason to hope for.

A little later in the show I gave my verdict on Due Date, the new road-movie comedy from The Hangover director Todd Philips, starring Robert Downey Jr and The Hangover's Zach Galifianakis (try saying that with a mouthful of Jelly Babies). Is it going to be as big a hit as the aforementioned blockbuster? Have a listen at the link below to hear my take:

Click here to listen to the show or download on BBC iPlayer

Due Date and Let Me In are both released in cinemas tomorrow

Iron Man 2 (futuremovies.co.uk)

It seems unthinkable now, but back in 2008, Jon Favreau’s Iron Man was something of a gamble. It was a huge step up in scale for the filmmaker, and even more so for his star, the temperamental character actor Robert Downey Jr. They played to their strengths, and the result was something like movie magic: Downey’s excellent performance boosted him into the movie stratosphere, he followed it with a hilarious Oscar-nominated turn in Tropic Thunder and cemented his status as box office gold in the much-loved Sherlock Holmes. Favreau had succeeded in pleasing audiences and critics alike by putting some fun back into the superhero genre - a nice counterpoint to the sombre Dark Knight that same year - and he was quickly entrusted with the Iron Man sequel.

The question was, after the original’s unconventional ending in which the hero revealed his secret identity, where would Tony Stark’s story go next? The answer, as provided here by Favreau and writer Justin Theroux is “nowhere particularly interesting”. Despite - or perhaps because of - having an embarrassingly great cast in place, including all the original stars (except for Terrence Howard, cheekily replaced by Don Cheadle) and new and equally well-chosen additions Mickey Rourke, Sam Rockwell and Scarlett Johansson, Favreau has lost the emphasis on character that made the first film so compelling. Instead this film offers a series of carefully-planned, effects-heavy sequences strung together with slapdash storytelling, underdeveloped character ideas and the occasional funny line of dialogue.

It starts promisingly, noticeably darker than Iron Man left off, introducing Rourke’s embittered Russian scientist Ivan Venko, and presenting Stark as even more narcissistic than before. After some plodding courtroom banter over the legality of Stark holding onto “the Iron Man weapon”, Favreau zips location to the glitz of the Monaco grand prix and unleashes a killer set-piece. Cars fly across the screen and Rourke steps out from a huge explosion cloud like a laser-whip-wielding angel of death; it’s ridiculous, but enjoy it, because it’s as exciting as Iron Man 2 gets. After establishing Venko as a villain capable of doing some real damage, Favreau shifts the focus onto Stark’s business rival Justin Hammer (Rockwell), and Venko becomes a surprisingly controlled screen presence. The film never recovers from that shift, as Favreau fails to make it clear who the main bad guy is, what kind of threat they pose and to whom.

There is the suggestion in the film’s first half that the greatest threat to Tony Stark may be himself, both in terms of his super-powered technology and his self-destructive temperament. This is the direction that Favreau had hinted that he might take the Stark character, but it remains just a hint in this film, with Stark comfortably overcoming such pressures without much drama.

Curiously, Favreau sets all of the aerial action at night, meaning it’s often hard to make out what Iron Man is actually up to when he’s flying around. Much more satisfying is a late-in-the-game punch-up between Scarlett Johansson’s Natalie and a host of security guards, in which the slinky actress demonstrates a previously untapped skill for bone-breaking martial arts. The scene is tightly edited and has a neat and funny payoff. It’s a reminder of what  Favreau can do, and the rest of the film would have benefited from a similarly disciplined approach.

5/10

Iron Man 2 is in cinemas now. This review first published on futuremovies.co.uk.  

The Soloist

Joe Wright takes some large leaps out of the comfort zone with his third film. Following two very successful and very British period pieces - Pride and Prejudice and Atonement – he jumps across the water and into the present day to tell a story based on real events, and in the process reveals a side of Los Angeles seldom seen on the big screen.

The Soloist has taken a while to arrive in British cinemas, after failing to make much of an impact at the American box office in April this year. It’s not hard to see why the film struggled, as while it appears from the marketing to be a predictable drama about friendship overcoming great odds, with all the usual emotional button-pressing you would expect, Wright’s film is anything but that. In telling how LA Times columnist Steve Lopez first encountered homeless musician Nathaniel Ayres, and investigating the unique relationship that developed between the two men, Wright presents a complicated, subtle and realistically open-ended story. Under Wright's direction, these characters take the story on several unexpected detours, and a lot of issues surface that Wright isn’t satisfied in giving simple 'movie solutions' to.

Robert Downey Jr is always very watchable, and here he is restrained and believable as Lopez, convincingly showing the character's delight at discovering Ayres and his simultaneous reticence to take responsibility for him. Jamie Foxx is close to unrecognisable as the mentally unstable Ayres, inhabiting the character in a performance that goes much deeper than outward tics and traits. Good as they are though, it’s the fact that Wright never showcases their performances, and instead brings his themes – homelessness, selflessness, friendship, faith (to name a few) - to the fore, that makes The Soloist great.

The Soloist is released on 25th September.

Tropic Thunder

Screen Fever Score: 8/10

Ben Stiller gets back behind the camera with hilarious results, guiding himself, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr as three egocentric actors who stumble into a real-life conflict while filming Tropic Thunder, the 'greatest war film ever'. It's thrilling to see big budget production values on what is essentially a very silly film, and Stiller takes every opportunity going to poke fun at the movie industry, most effectively with Downey Jr's character, the jaw-droppingly self-involved Kirk Lazarus. It's not a perfect film, but it is a very funny one.

Read my full review on Future Movies

Info:
UK Release: 19 September
Cert: 15

Iron Man

Screen Fever Score: 6/10

Verdict:
Solid comic-book entertainment, led by a great performance from Robert Downey Jr, but with no stand-out action sequences or memorable moments that haven’t already been played to death in the trailers. Iron Man is not going to be remembered as one of the summer’s best.

Full Review:
Iron Man is the first of 2008’s big summer blockbusters out of the gate, putting it in something of an unenviable position. If it’s great, it sets the benchmark for the rest of the summer’s movies to live up to, a la Spider-Man in 2002, but if it’s no good, or even just okay, it will soon be superseded by next week’s multi-million dollar spectacle. Taking into account the fact that Indiana Jones 4 is just around the corner, my money is on the latter outcome being Iron Man’s fate.

Plot-wise, it’s an origins movie, tracing Tony Stark (Downey Jr)’s transformation from weapons-manufacturing playboy to renegade metal-coated defender of war refugees by way of a swift lesson in the evils of war. A war that, he realises, he has provided much of the firepower for.

Kidnapped by Afghani terrorists, trapped in a cave and commanded to create a super-missile for his captors’ evil ends, Stark instead uses the materials provided to build himself a bullet-resistant iron suit and makes good his escape. This scenario unfolds – along with a bit of flashbacking character introduction – during Iron Man’s first half hour, and it’s very enjoyable stuff. Downey Jr is a quirky, atypical headliner for this type of film, and he delivers the witty lines with panache but also brings the right amount of gravitas when required. There’s also a fair amount of genuine tension and threat in this first part of the film, but this soon evaporates once Stark is back in his Malibu home and sets about building an all-new Mk. II Iron Man suit.

What follows is standard comic book hero-origins stuff: Stark slowly perfects his new power-suit, while in the background his shady business partner Obadiah Stane (a lip-smacking Jeff Bridges) does shady things, his best buddy Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard) turns up every now and then to have a “what the hell’s wrong with you” conversation and his beautiful and long-suffering assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) continues an on-off flirtation/disapproval with him. It’s slick, professional and entirely by the book.

That isn’t to say that it’s not enjoyable, but it’s a crowded field out there for superhero movies these days, and Iron Man isn’t stylish or unique enough to stand out from the rest. This is partly due to director Jon Favreau’s lack of visual flair; none of the images he constructs linger in the memory, and I found myself longing for more movement from the camera. The script can also be blamed, not in terms of dialogue, but more because in focusing so completely on the transformation of Tony Stark none of the other characters - except perhaps Potts, a restrained and very likeable Paltrow performance - get any kind of development. The recent spate of quality comic adaptations (Spider-Man, X-Men and Batman Begins) have demonstrated that you can do origins stories while also fleshing out fully-formed villains, providing a real sense of conflict. Iron Man’s writers aren’t as skilful, so when the villain of the piece is unveiled, it’s a foregone conclusion, a non-event, and there’s never any question as to whether he will be defeated or not.

Iron Man is not a bad film; it's full of very funny dialogue, has excellent and seamlessly incorporated visual effects and serves as a fine introduction to a character who will soon return to movie screens (Iron Man 2 is already slated for a 2010 release). But the fact that its sequel will undoubtedly be better doesn't let it off the hook; this is just good, it should have been great.

Info:
Director: Jon Favreau
Writers: Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Art Marcum & Matt Holloway
Stars: Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard
Cert: 12A
UK release: 2 May 2008
Watch the trailer here