Saturday Matinee #6

Audiobook Reviews from Audiobook-Heaven
Presents Saturday Matinee

-----Movie Review #1-----

Title: Iron Man
Starring: Robert Downy Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges
Narrator: Uncredited
Running time: 126 minutes
Released in: 2008
Genre: comic heroes
Filed in: Movie reviews

Brilliant, multi-millionaire weapons developer, Tony Stark, is captured by some terrorists. They want him to build them a weapon, but instead Tony builds himself a suit of powered armor and busts out of there. When Tony discovers that the terrorists have been using weapons built by his own company to attack American troops, it sends his life in a whole new direction.
When Tony gets back home, he promptly announces that Stark Industries will no longer be building weapons. Tony’s partner, Obadiah Stane, who is much more interested in maintaining his exorbitant bank account than being upstanding and responsible, is not happy. Going behind Tony’s back, Obadiah wrestles control of the board of directors, and goes right on making weapons and selling them to foreign countries. What Obadiah doesn’t know, is that he just ticked off Iron Man. What Tony Stark doesn’t know, is that in addition to stealing his company, Obadiah also stole the Iron Man technology, and has some powered armor of his own. This is going to be a heavy-metal showdown the world will not soon forget.
This movie was awesome! That came as a big surprise, and a great relief, to me because most of Marvel’s comic adaptations have been pretty bad, with the exception of the Spider-man movies.
Iron Man presents the origin story of the super hero, and I’m happy to say that they stuck reasonably close to the true origin of the character. Usually a movie will try to re-write a super heroe’s history which is why the movies are never any good. This film was well written, and well cast.
As to the musical score, I was never a fan of heavy metal, but hey, it’s Iron Man, and it fits. Anyway, this is the good kind of heavy metal; lots of power chords with some heavy duty orchestral maneuvers to round it off. I enjoyed it.

-----Movie Review #2-----

Title: Iron Man 2
Starring: Robert Downy Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson
Narrator: Uncredited
Running time: 125 minutes
Released in: 2010
Genre: comic heroes
Filed in: Movie reviews

Now that Tony Stark has shown the world what his Iron Man technology is capable of, the government is very anxious to get their hands on it. At a special session of Congress, which Tony is subpoena’d to attend, they try to force him to turn over the armor to the military so they can begin mass producing it. But Tony stands firm, not wanting it to fall into the wrong hands.
Unfortunately for Tony, he shared some of his secrets with his frend, James Rhodes, who happens to be a colonol in the US Air Force. Rhodes steals one of the spare Iron Man suits and turns it over to his superiors, who promptly turn it over to Justin Hammer, private contractor and Stark Enterprises competitor. Once Rhodey comes to his senses, he and Tony will have to team up to fight an entire army of Iron Man drones.
Iron Man 2 wasn’t quite as good as the first movie, but I still enjoyed it. Robert Downy Jr and Gwyneth Paltrow seem to have a good chemistry with each other. My only real complaint for the IronMan movies, is the character of Jim Rhodes. The guy who played Rhodey in the first movie was absolutely ridiculous. Don Cheadle was a little better, but still not very true to the character.
The narrator was, once again, uncredited and there were no end credits.

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Movie reviews by Steven Brandt.
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