Irony Man

I watched "Iron Man 2" -- which hadn't been as favorably received as the original, but I liked it well enough. Maybe some pacing issues, and Scarlett Johannson was as inertly buxom as ever, but overall, it was reasonably enjoyable. I'd watch it again. Gratuitous shot of SJ's cleavage, here...

Mickey Rourke did very well in the scenes he had, and Sam Rockwell was his usual great stuff -- I sometimes think he's masterfully filling in the space left by Luke Wilson. He has a number of great lines, and attacked his scenes well. Don Cheadle replaced Terence Howard as Rhodey, which was maybe unfortunate -- I thought Howard did a great job as Rhodey, but he was supposedly such a diva that he got cut out of the sequel, which is a little distracting -- I don't like those substitutions in movies.

I also caught "Let Me In" -- the American version of the Swedish "Let The Right One In" -- I hesitate to call it a remake, just because the original was only out the other year, so it feels like the American one trying to ride the vampiric coattails while the getting's good. But anybody looking for a little vampire romanticism would be disappointed with the dark "Let Me In." I'm not saying I was disappointed in it -- it did everything it was supposed to do, but didn't exceed the original, either. There were some differences in emphasis in the American version -- 80s religiosity, some token nods to various cultural touchpoints ("Ooh, Reagan! Ooh, arcade games! Ooh, Satanic cults! Ooh, Culture Club!") Something for Gen Y kids to feel nostalgic for (never mind that they weren't actually around properly for the 80s). And a slightly different kind of vibe with the story -- the bully kid looked like a real American-style bully shithead (versus the babyfaced bully in the Swedish original). Also, the protagonist boy in the American version wasn't quite the puppydog the Swedish boy was -- they cast a worm-lipped waif boy (oddly paralleled in the worm-lipped vampire girl, Abby -- they oddly kind resembled each other in their worm-lippedness). There were more special effects, obviously more of a budget in the American one, but I thought that undermined it a little bit -- like showing a CGI vampire girl speedily shinnying up a tree or bouncing up and down around one of her victims, I dunno -- more is sometimes less, where horror is concerned. You'll see what I mean if you see it.

If you catch the American version first, I think you'll enjoy it well enough; if you catch the Swedish original before seeing this one, I don't think it'll have quite the impact. The director of this movie did "Cloverfield," and he has a kind of point-of-view documentarian kind of eye with his shooting that is unconventional in fictional movies. He definitely pays attention to the setup of his scenes, and the violence in this movie is shocking and the overall bleak tone comes through clearly.

One thing that bothered me was I saw a Latina mom had her little daughter there in the movie with her! What the hell?? The little girl didn't seem terribly bothered by it, but holy crap! The girl looked younger than B1, and there were any number of scenes in that movie that weren't appropriate for little kids. I'm hardly a prude about stuff like that, but NFW would any responsible parent take their kid to see this movie.