Avengers: Endgame (2019)

The Low-Down: Statistically, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has achieved a great deal: over 11 years and 21 films, it has introduced dozens of relatively obscure characters into mainstream pop culture. More importantly, however, the franchise has proven that long-form storytelling can work in a cinematic context – as long as you balance plot with heart and humour, prizing character development over spectacle. That’s no small feat, and it’s even more remarkable that a movie with the gargantuan scale and ambition of Avengers: Endgame doesn’t fall apart beneath the weight of an unwieldy script or great expectations. In fact, this is the MCU’s crowning achievement: a heartfelt love letter to the Avengers, their stories, the actors who play them, and to the fans.

The Story: That damn Snap, eh? At the end of Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos wiped out half of the galaxy’s population with a snap of his Infinity-Stone-enhanced fingers. After bearing witness to teammates and loved ones vanishing in swirls of dust and ash, the remaining Avengers struggle to live with the crippling grief and guilt of surviving the Snap… and of failing to prevent it. Some characters spiral into darkness; others are frozen in place – a few even manage to move on. But hope is rekindled when Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) returns from the mysterious Quantum Realm, where the usual laws of physics, space and time do not apply…

The Great: Endgame is a storytelling triumph – not only does it bring together and pay off plots and ideas that were seeded over a decade ago, it builds solid, powerful, heartrendingly emotional narrative arcs for almost all of the original Avengers. Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) and Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) must grapple with their pasts to figure out their futures, while Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) find themselves literally fighting to save their families. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) might provide much of the film’s comic relief, but both characters are also gifted with grace notes, growth and moments of true peace.

The Super-Great: The ability to juggle and create space for multiple perspectives and storylines in one film has been honed to a fine art by directors Anthony and Joe Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. But their narrative strategy feels virtuosic in Endgame, paired as it is with an ingenious plot device that allows the film to truly acknowledge the staggering depth and breadth of its own history. Suddenly, the emotional and narrative stakes are raised, as beloved characters are forced to re-examine their lives, stories and priorities. You might find yourself in tears and in stitches, frequently in the same scene, and this happens throughout the film – a testament to the Russo Brothers’ genius and their skills at anchoring even the most outlandish of storylines in humour and humanity.

The Not-So-Great: This is emphatically not a film for casual viewers – there is no entry point, no easing in, no exposition, to help you understand what the heck is going on if you haven’t watched most of the preceding films in the MCU. There are also a few logical fallacies and plotholes scattered throughout Endgame that will puzzle you the more you think about them – from the wobbly rules governing time travel to the fractured way in which the too-conveniently hyper-powered Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) pops in and out of the story.

Stan Service: This film, above all others in the MCU, feels like a heartfelt tribute to the very concept of Marvel itself, finding numerous ways to reward and delight true-blue fans. Naturally, it includes Stan Lee’s final appearance in the MCU, while folding in a host of other cameos and callbacks that reinforce the interconnectedness of the entire franchise – of all the stories that have been told before, especially the movie that started it all (Iron Man in 2008). There are even a couple of brilliant nods to comics lore, largely centred around the character of Captain America, that feel like the Russo Brothers are deliberately righting a few wrongs where some of Marvel Comics’ more controversial plot twists are concerned. (See: Nick Spencer’s run on Captain America: Steve Rogers.)

Cast-Iron MVP: Casting outside of the box has always been one of the MCU’s core strengths, with Oscar winners/nominees and character actors regularly popping up to play heroes and villains alike. That canny casting strategy pays off in spades in Endgame – especially when certain characters have relatively limited screen time but manage to make it count anyway. The undisputed stars of the movie, however, are the Avengers who started it all. Hemsworth continues to brilliantly dance along the knife-edge between comedy and pathos, while Ruffalo radiates charm and intelligence through ever-improving CGI as Banner and his not-so-mean, green alter ego: The Hulk. Johansson and Renner are given more to do in this film than ever before, and their combined efforts will shred your soul to pieces. Evans brings great warmth and strength to his stoic role, making it perfectly legitimate for you to weep and whoop for a man who’s – somewhat ridiculously – wrapped in an American flag. Above all, this double-whammy of Avengers films belongs, most fittingly, to Downey Jr. He still effortlessly injects Tony with snark and swagger, but also beautifully conveys every shade and layer of his character’s hard-won growth and maturity – giving us all the proof that we have never needed that Tony Stark has a heart.

Recommended? In every imaginable way. Endgame sets the bar as high as it can possibly go for superhero epics that balance enormous scale and jaw-dropping ambition with actual substance and genuine emotion. It’s the blockbuster movie event of our lifetimes, for very good reason – and it’s worth every minute you’ve invested in the MCU since 2008.

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Over the past decade, Marvel has earned itself the benefit of the doubt. The studio has consistently delivered smart, funny, brave films that both embrace and transcend their comic-book origins. The 18 blockbuster movies produced since Iron Man first blasted off into the stratosphere in 2008 have not only reinvented superhero films as a genre – they’ve helped to legitimise it. Indeed, Marvel’s two most recent films – Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther – have received the kind of accolades usually reserved for edgy arthouse flicks.

And yet, it’s perfectly reasonable to be apprehensive about Avengers: Infinity War. This is a blockbuster film that’s been ten years in the making, its plot hinted at and scattered throughout 18 other movies. It features 30 or so characters, each with their own complex backstories and motivations. And all of them are coming together in a bid to stop a giant purple alien dude from destroying the universe. It sounds ridiculous, and feels impossible.

But that’s precisely what makes the final product such a monumental achievement. Masterfully directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, Infinity War is bold, brainy filmmaking at its very best: the kind that will lift your spirits, blow your mind and shatter your soul – occasionally in the same scene. It demonstrates on an epic scale what Marvel has known all along: that special effects and tightly choreographed action are there to serve the story. For all its blockbuster spectacle (and there’s almost too much of that), the film is anchored by the heart, humour and humanity of its characters.

The film’s basic plot is simple: Thanos (played via motion-capture by Josh Brolin), intergalactic purveyor of death and destruction, has long been on the hunt for the six Infinity Stones that will give him complete control over the elemental building blocks of the universe. He dispatches his acolytes to Earth to retrieve the Time Stone, currently in the possession of Dr. Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), and carve the Mind Stone out of the forehead of Vision (Paul Bettany). It’s a literal existential threat so terrifying that all the heroes we’ve come to know and love – from the Avengers to the Guardians of the Galaxy – must put aside their differences and unite against a common foe.

From the outset, it’s immediately clear that neither the film’s directors nor screenwriters (Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely) are interested in playing it safe. Most other superhero films are bled of high stakes – the hero in the title might suffer untold trauma, but it’s a super-safe bet that he or she will make it to the end alive. There’s no such guarantee here. Within the first ten minutes, we are confronted with the dark, twisted depths to which Thanos and his acolytes in the Black Order will sink in order to achieve their goals. Death, as well as genuine loss and sacrifice, is intrinsic to the narrative drumbeat that drives Infinity War ever forward, and the film is all the better for it.

That’s not to say the movie is a morbid and depressing experience. What’s so impressive about Infinity War is how it expertly juggles its constantly shifting tones and moods. When it’s funny (and it very often is), it’s deeply, truly funny. The film finds maximum joy in flinging characters together with merry abandon, mixing and matching ones you’d never have expected to share scenes or trade banter. Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) is floored by Thor’s (Chris Hemsworth) godly muscles. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) is charmed by the wit and intelligence of Shuri (Letitia Wright). And it’d be impossible to not be utterly delighted by Peter Dinklage’s inspired cameo. It’s a blithely tongue-in-cheek sensibility shared by Marvel’s best comic books, which understand that humour can make you care when it really counts.

And, boy, does Infinity War make it count. There are many heartbreakingly human moments threaded throughout the film: from the charming surrogate father-son dynamic shared by Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) and Peter Parker (Tom Holland), to the undeniable love that ties Vision and Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) together. In many ways, the film stands as a testament to the human capacity not just to love, but to love fiercely and beyond all logic. It’s right there when the unfailingly noble Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) declares, “We don’t trade lives”, even when giving up one could save billions.

There’s even a chilling echo of it in Thanos himself. A lesser film would have turned Thanos into a one-dimensional villain, much the way he’s all monster and maniac in the comic books. In Infinity War, however, Thanos’ end goal is surprisingly relevant when it comes to thinking and talking about the staggeringly overpopulated world in which we live today. There is, as it turns out, method to Thanos’ madness. It makes the tragic twists and turns in his relationships with his estranged adopted daughters, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) and Nebula (Karen Gillan), all the more unsettling.

For the most part, Infinity War does justice, too, to the many heroes who have been assembled for the film. The Russo brothers displayed great skill at interweaving multiple perspectives and character trajectories in Captain America: Civil War, and they do so again here, with twice as many characters. Even the most minor of supporting players, like Don Cheadle’s James Rhodes/War Machine, are given story beats that land. It helps that Marvel has always taken care to cast genuinely good actors in roles that might otherwise come off as silly and slight.

Even so, there are a few standouts amongst this enormous and enormously talented cast. Emotionally speaking, this is Downey’s film. He plays every note of Tony’s reluctant courage and bone-deep trauma, as he embarks on what he’s convinced is a suicide mission. He’s ably matched by Cumberbatch, who finds vulnerability even in his character’s most cunning and calculative move. Hemsworth, meanwhile, is given free rein to import the big-hearted comedic swagger of Thor: Ragnarok into this film – while also layering it with a deeply-felt, jagged grief for the losses he has suffered at the hands of Thanos and the universe.

In a film with so many moving parts, some elements don’t work quite as well. A couple of characters that you might have expected to be right at the forefront – including an original Avenger or two – fade into the background. The film tumbles from dizzying fight scene to dizzying fight scene, and while most of them are fantastically choreographed, there are some purely dumb moments that literally revolve around attempts to prevent Thanos from clenching his fist. In effect, this is a superhero mêlée that’s part over-the-top and part overkill, and might prove too much for those who don’t already care for this franchise and the characters in it.

Minor quibbles aside, though, Infinity War is yet another step in the right direction for Marvel. It continues the studio’s tradition of placing a premium on rich, complex storytelling that respects both its characters and its audiences. But it also refuses to make things easy for itself. The film ends even more bravely than it began, with a final ten minutes that will haunt and horrify you in equal measure. It’s a stroke of bold, brilliant genius – a narrative risk so audacious that you’ll want to follow Marvel wherever it goes next.

Basically: This movie will blow your mind and break your heart – and make you desperate to go back for more. Brave, brilliant and better than it has any right to be.

 

Chef (2014)

Anyone familiar with Jon Favreau’s work prior to Iron Man would know just how odd and brave it was for Marvel to entrust him with the film that would, ultimately, launch an entire Cinematic Universe. Pre-Tony Stark, Favreau largely lived in the realm of the quirky indie: dwelling on character rather than spectacle, finding humour within the everyday. So it’s nice to see Favreau returning to his quirky indie roots with Chef, a sweet, intimate, if rather familiar film about a small band of people struggling to figure out just what they want to do with their lives.

Favreau plays Carl Casper, a perfectionist chef whose career is effectively derailed when he throws a fit at celebrity food critic Ramsey Michel (Oliver Platt) for daring to give him a bad review. After his tantrum goes viral, Carl is forced to figure out what he wants to do next: keep cooking to order in someone else’s restaurant, or start over, completely from scratch – whipping up the kind of food that will touch people’s hearts.

The real crux of the film, of course, is not so much Carl’s professional choices as his personal ones. Along the way, Carl must re-connect with Percy (Emjay Anthony), the precocious son he’s neglected as a result of his job, just as he must learn to accept the help of the people who still care about him – including his ex-wife Inez (Sofia Vergara) and his former kitchen helper Martin (John Leguizamo).

What results is a pleasing, if somewhat formulaic, stew of character, comedy and cuisine. (The numerous montages of food being painstakingly prepared and served will have you hungry within the first half-hour.) Carl serves as an effective anchor for the film, though some of the emotional weight of his transition from respected chef to underground food truck guy doesn’t quite come through. Nevertheless, his evident anger issues and personal doubts feed into the script’s funnier and more dramatic moments, while his tender rapprochement with his son is so lovingly developed that it’s easy to forgive its occasional dips into predictability and mawkishness.

The top-notch cast adds greatly to the film’s appeal. Favreau is a winning screen presence, keeping his character’s irritability and rage just this side of sympathetic. Anthony is wonderful as Percy, a role that might grate in the hands of a more annoying young actor. Vergara (slightly miscast) and Leguizamo (cheeky and charming) lend able support, as do a host of A-list stars plucked out of Favreau’s phonebook. Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr and Dustin Hoffman all pop up in small parts, helping or hindering Carl in his metaphorical and literal journey towards self-actualisation.

There’s a whiff of the self-indulgent to Favreau’s passion project – one gets the sense at times that he couldn’t bear to tighten or edit his final cut, which winds up clocking in at just under two hours long. But it proves easy to forgive Favreau his indulgences when the resulting film is, for the most part, so sunny and full of good will. Ultimately, Chef serves up its plot –  simultaneously sweet and tart – with a generous helping of memorable characters and gentle comedy. It’s a great reminder of what Favreau can do with perfectly ordinary people, trying to figure out how to get by in their perfectly ordinary world.

Basically: Healthy, happy and hearty fare – if a little on the heavy-handed side.

 

Iron Man 3 (2013)

How does anyone follow up on the absolutely stupendous Avengers, which took critics and the global box office by storm? The answer, according to Marvel Studios, is to continue entrusting its movies to relatively untested directors. To be fair, they’ve had excellent luck so far, with Jon Favreau and Joss Whedon respectively knocking Iron Man 1 & 2 and Avengers out of the park.

For this first major release after Avengers smashed box office records all over the world, Marvel has handed the reins over to Shane Black, an action movie scribe with only one directorial credit to his name: the super-slick, sassy action crime caper Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The good news? Other studios should seriously consider copying Marvel’s tactic of gambling on comparative unknowns, because Black has delivered what’s very close to a perfect superhero movie. Iron Man 3 is packed to the brim with smarts, sass, action, and romance – and proves, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there’s life and much potential yet for all the individual members of that superhero alliance.

The spotlight in Iron Man 3, of course, shifts firmly back onto genius billionaire Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr), the man inside the iconic red and gold suit. Tony is, quite frankly, a mess: he’s still struggling to decompress after helping to save New York from an alien invasion, and he’s freaking out in particular over whether he can keep his beloved girlfriend Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) safe. Before he can get his act even halfway together, the sinister Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) – an international terrorist with considerable resources – launches his campaign to take the entire world hostage.

The plot, actually, thickens quite a bit beyond that. Tony’s past comes back to haunt him in the form of spurned scientist Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) and his mysteriously powerful Extremis virus, a storyline loosely based on events that transpired in the comic books some seven years ago. Suffice it to say that Tony has his hands full dealing with the Mandarin on the one hand, and fending off Killian on the other.

Black, as it turns out, is an absolutely masterful ironmonger. He juggles the occasionally unwieldy plot against character development, and never allows the former to overwhelm the latter. As with its predecessors, this film explores Tony’s frailty and humanity, but does so in a fresh and interesting way. It’s fascinating here to see a Tony Stark who’s completely off his game but trying desperately not to show it – a man so used to maintaining a confident demeanour that he automatically throws off quips and sassy one-liners to cover up the doubts and anxiety that are eating him up inside.

This gives Downey Jr plenty of opportunity to strut his stuff, and he rises admirably to the challenge. Full of soul and swagger, his Tony Stark manages to be a million things at once: heartbreaking, mercurial, funny, charming, exasperating and – let’s be honest – completely perfect. In recent superhero casting history, there really hasn’t been a more ideal marriage of actor and character. It’s a particular treat in Iron Man 3 to watch him cycle almost effortlessly through his entire range, delivering a snappy comeback even while his heart is breaking in two.

That, by the way, is one of the other great thrills of this film. Black, with his co-writer Drew Pearce, has cooked up a delightfully sharp script, one that’s laced through with snarky dialogue, lovely repartee, and cheeky references to the likes of Downton Abbey. Downey Jr bickers and banters with just about everyone, it seems, sassing Killian, Pepper, his best buddy Jim Rhodes (Don Cheadle), the Mandarin and his faithful robotic companion JARVIS (voiced by Paul Bettany) in equal measure. He even engages in a few rounds of verbal fisticuffs with a little boy who becomes, for a fleeting moment, the Robin to his Batman – a relationship that, fortunately, is endearing rather than annoying.

For the most part, Black does justice by his supporting characters too. Paltrow gets to shine especially brightly as Pepper, who has always served as Tony’s reminder that he is, after all, human. The tables are turned here, in more ways than one, and they both get to live for a little while in each other’s shoes. As a result, their relationship – whether they’re arguing over  a giant fluffy bunny or protecting each other from harm – emerges as one of the best, sweetest elements of the whole film. The less said about the Mandarin and Killian the better, but suffice it to say that there’s more than meets the eye where the two characters are concerned – and both Kingsley and Pearce are absolutely magnificent in handling the nuances of their roles.

In case you’re concerned that this means Iron Man 3 is all emotion and no action, never fear. Black demonstrates a fine, fine eye for flinging all manner of mayhem at Tony Stark – and yes, that’s Tony and not Iron Man. For a large portion of the film, Tony fights for his life sans armour, and it’s thrilling to watch him invent ways to shake off his opponents without kicking the proverbial bucket in the process. When he does get back into his suit, however, he has forty-two of them to choose from – which makes for one of the most exhilarating cinematic showdowns in ages. That’s not even to mention the staggering aerial rescue Iron Man stages when the passengers on board Air Force One are forced unceremoniously to deplane in mid-air.

If there’s anything really wrong with Iron Man 3, it’s that the story tends to feel a little muddy and confusing in retrospect. The movie trundles along at a perfectly sensible clip, but thinking about it after the fact shows up its shaky internal logic.

That’s a small enough problem in an otherwise sublime blockbuster movie, however. Iron Man 3 isn’t just a great entry in the canon of Marvel’s string of super-successful superhero movies – it’s one of the very greatest, and in fact, possibly the best one starring Tony Stark yet. Fingers crossed Downey Jr – and on the strength of this outing, Mr Shane Black – can be convinced to return for a fourth installment.

Basically: Third time’s the charm – this is Iron Man’s best solo outing yet.

Tropic Thunder (2008)

How promising does this sound: uniting the truly epic comic talents of Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr, Tropic Thunder is about a troop of actors – each one’s ego pumped to the max with their own neuroses – making a Vietnam-era war film together… not realising as they blunder further and further into the forest while on location that they are genuinely in a war zone, and that their enemies are not scripted and imaginary but very, very real indeed. I definitely had high hopes for this movie on the basis of its equally zany predecessor, the Stiller-scripted and directed comedy milestone Zoolander. Throwing Black and Downey Jr into the mix, giving Stiller the opportunity to satirise Hollywood while sending up the traditionally deadly serious war movie genre? Gold. Well, that’s what I thought, anyway…

Stiller plays the ridiculously-named Tugg Speedman, a blockheaded action movie star best known for his testosterone-packed, Jean Claude van Damme type films. As part of his ongoing quest to be taken seriously as an actor, he signs up for a war movie also starring wildly talented Australian method actor Kirk Lazarus (Downey Jr) and franchise comedy star and drug addict Jeff Portnoy (Black). When ordered by terrifying movie mogul Les Grossman (Tom Cruise, in an absolutely cracking cameo) to inject some authenticity (and cash) into proceedings, hapless director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) uproots his cast from in front of a green screen and dumps them in the middle of some Asian forest… and sets them loose to prowl the jungle with cameras tracking their every move. As the actors get deeper into the forest and ever more lost, they encounter ego clashes, pint-sized menace and guerilla army commander Tran (Brandon Soo Hoo), and some truths about themselves…

TT, unfortunately, is not one of the best films in Stiller’s comedy stable. The humour is patchy and feels inspired only on occasion. Whereas Zoolander coasted by on a steady stream of pure insanity and whacked-out charm, TT feels like a series of sketches and random ideas strung together, with some clearly funnier than others, and some just falling flat to the point that the tone of the film is desperately uneven. For instance, TT opens with an absolutely genius film reel promoting the best of Tugg and Kirk’s movies – as Tugg struts against a backdrop of flame in outer space, or Kirk’s eerily blue eyes light up his latest film about gay priests engaging in forbidden love, you feel that TT could very well match Zoolander in its craziness. Well, kind of.

The movie spirals out of control after a while. Much as Damien Cockburn had a problem corralling the resources at his demand to produce a coherent film, Stiller – on both writing and directing duties – throws a weird mish-mash of characters together: not just the leads, each of which is, as earlier mentioned, already bursting with weirdness, but also a snappy, hip black actor named Alpa Chino (ha ha, GEDDIT); the rather barmy Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), on whose book and life Cockburn’s film is supposedly based; and Tran, who turns out to be so obsessed with Tugg’s one bid for Oscar glory – as retard Simple Jack – that he worships Tugg and plans to keep an eye on him… forever. The scenes and characters are spliced and jumbled together in what seems to be a mostly haphazard fashion, never quite telling a story but instead shambling along as a collection of related but pretty random stories. It’s hard to shake the feeling that many of the scenes and jokes were filmed because Stiller had one funny moment in mind that he just wanted to put onscreen – which results in a haphazard, hit-and-miss kind of humour that never really gels into a satisfying whole.

What saves TT from obscurity and further derision is the fact that, when it’s good, it really is unbelievably funny – and most of this is down to the fact that Stiller’s cast is fantastic. Stiller himself plays arrogant, boneheaded blowhard better than anyone in the business. Tugg is Zoolander redux, a goodhearted numbskull who just wants to do what he does best – it’s hilarious when Tugg sinks into depression on the level of Brando’s in Apocalypse Now, and there aren’t many actors now who could pull off retard comedy without offending pretty much the entire audience. Black engages in his usual schtick as a junkie ever on the hunt for his next fix, but radiates enough of his trademark charm for the character to work.

The real coups, however, and the reason TT will be sought out by generations of movie-goers to come, are the performances turned in by Cruise and Downey Jr. Shedding any sense of vanity whatsoever, Cruise turns up in fat suit, bald wig and fake hands (no kidding) and creates a caricature of a fatcat producer at once painfully stereotypical and ridiculously funny. As he barks orders at his subordinates, especially the hapless, adoring Rob (Bill Hader), Cruise’s Les explodes the screen as a blast of manic comic energy every time he shows up in a scene. And even more impressive than Cruise’s memorable turn is Downey Jr as the most ‘method’ of method actors to have ever lived. For his role as moody black sergeant in the movie within the movie, the blonde, blue-eyed and very Australian Kirk actually undergoes skin pigmentation… and spends the better part of the movie verbally jousting with the understandably offended Alpa over how genuinely black Kirk can be. A character like this could have gone wrong in every possible way: offensive and over-the-top in equal measure, a fine line to tread even by the finest of actors… which Downey Jr unquestionably proves himself to be. His performance is a marvel: committed, believable, crazy, and just sublime in terms of timing and sheer wit.

For all its lack of unifying logic and loopy disjointedness, TT is a fun, silly movie to watch… it certainly passes the time well enough. The biggest shame, however, is that you can’t help getting a sense of just how good this movie could have been whenever the hugely talented actors involved get truly great lines, or at any point when Cruise or Downey Jr are on screen.

Iron Man (2008)

Much as I am a comic book fandork, specifically of the Marvel superhero variety, I’ve never been able to warm up to the Iron Man series. The main character, Tony Stark, was compelling enough, I suppose – a billionaire playboy helming the world’s largest and most successful weapons company, but who is actually a properly suited-up superhero on the side, kitted up as he is the iconic red and gold iron costume he designed and which allows him to fly and beat up bad guys and stuff. Yeah… if it isn’t obvious enough, I’d pretty much always preferred the X-Men to Iron Man.

That being said, however, I was more than willing to give Iron Man a chance: partly because it scored a real casting coup by allowing maverick character actor and erstwhile drug addict Robert Downey Jr to take the lead role of a blockbuster summer movie intended to spawn a franchise of epic proportions. Now that took guts. Moreover, director Jon Favreau, sometimes actor, always passionate advocate of retaining the wonder and magic amidst the spectacle and awe of fantasy films, seemed like a great and similarly out-of-left-field choice for director. Fortunately, on both these gambles, the producers scored big. But more on that later.

Tony Stark (Downey Jr), as already mentioned, is a playboy billionaire and genius inventor who has inherited his dad’s business and business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), whom he is happy to allow to run the show while all he does is… well, invent, enjoy his piles of money, and act as Stark Industries’ very handsome public face. On a sales tour through war-torn Afghanistan, however, Tony is abducted, imprisoned and forced to create a nuclear warhead for rebel terrorists… even as he has to create a new heart to power his own failing one, destroyed by the impact of the rebel attack. Soon, with the help of fellow prisoner and scientist Yinsen (Shaun Toub), Tony cobbles together in place of one nuclear warhead the first prototype of what will become his Iron Man suit… and busts out to freedom. His sojourn in captivity inspires him to become a better man and to change the face and workings of his company – little does he realise just how difficult a task he will have in changing Stane’s mind on this count…

It has always been particularly tricky for superheroes to be moved from the pages of comic books to the silver screen – genesis movies, when powers are acquired or develop and characters are established in the hope of creating a lucrative franchise that’ll play for years to come, are difficult beasts to wrestle into a form that would please both fangeek and critic alike. Fantastic Four was a misfire with both audiences, and I personally thought Superman Returns was awful. The problem is really having to draw up and flesh out a character for people who’ve never read the source comics, while also packing the film with enough action, heart and in-jokes to reward the diehard fans. In this particular instance, I feel that IM comes as close to Bryan Singer’s epic X-Men adaptations in producing a great movie that covers both bases and has plenty of room and style left to crack jokes and not take itself too seriously.

The film, of course, hits all the right notes that it’s supposed to hit as a superhero flick: there are breathtaking action scenes, whether it’s Iron Man first taking to the sky in a burst of jet-fuelled power, slicing through the clouds as you’d imagine he does in the comics, or his final bone-crunchingly painful encounter with his final nemesis (no spoilers here!). But aside from these epic clashes and moments of sheer jawdropping visual inventiveness, what makes IM a good film that isn’t defined merely by its genre and the inbuilt fangeek culture it already has going for it, is that you get an idea of Tony as both man and hero. From the brash, devil-may-care playboy to the man on a mission, his back story is filled in very adeptly, something which doesn’t always happen when action and spectacle is substituted for character and plot development. (See Fantastic Four… or don’t, actually.) It’s not perfect, of course. Some exposition is clunky, and if you really examine it, Tony’s change for the better is a redemption story told a thousand times before, one you probably didn’t need red-and-gold armour to tell again.

Which is where the casting coup comes in: Downey Jr is absolutely fantastic as Tony – he lends both his dark leading-man looks and acting chops to the role, and is clearly more than happy to get bashed up or play the role for laughs. (One of the film’s running jokes is Tony’s interaction with one of the little mechanical helpers in his underground workshop, who is always eager to douse Tony with liberal lashings of foam since the latter keeps setting himself on fire when testing out his Iron Man suit.)

Of course, IM is far from a perfect film – Tony’s interactions with his best buddy Jim Rhodes (Terence Howard) and devoted assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) occasionally feel forced, while Bridges comes awfully close to stinking up the entire production with the whiff of age-old ham. But these are small nitpicks – for the most part, IM sparkles with a kind of old-school energy and passion for its subject that hasn’t graced a summer blockbuster in what feels like a very long time. More importantly, and I’m not sure how Favreau did it, but somehow, he has – in IM – created as indie a superhero movie as possible i.e., one that has lashings of style, humour and also street cred among dorks and critics alike. Now that doesn’t come along every day, now does it?

Zodiac (2007)

It’s been an even dozen years since Se7en, in which director David Fincher first tackled the story of a serial killer hell-bent on screwing over and messing with pretty much everyone on his tail. The difference with Fincher’s latest, Zodiac, is that this film is about a real-life serial killer, a seriously mixed-up dude who gained notoriety throughout the US when he went on a killing spree in the San Francisco area in the 1970s. Not only did he stab or gun down innocent couples, Zodiac – as he called himself – sent all the gory details, together with blood-soaked remnants of a murder victim’s clothing and jumbled-up ciphers hiding secret, sinister messages, to newspapers and police stations. Very much a case of a completely cold-blooded nutter seeking attention, then. But another point where the movies differ is that Zodiac, as a movie, is almost unconcerned with the true identity of its featured mass murderer – oh, sure, it’s integral to the plot in that detectives and journalists alike spend their lives, years after years of obsessive research and frustrating dead-ends, hunting this one man (or is it two?). But, ultimately, Fincher’s latest is less of a straight-up thriller than a tension-filled psychological study, as we watch lives and priorities and relationships dissolve in the wake of the Zodiac murders… and we’re not even talking here about the murder victims and their families.

Instead, we’re talking about the men for whom hunting down Zodiac became almost a personal mission. Meet Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), a cartoonist at the SF Chronicle who finds himself increasingly absorbed in a case which he technically has absolutely nothing to do with. But his clear fascination with the case sees him draw closer to eccentric, jaunty crime reporter Paul Avery (Robert Downey Jr), who amiably shares details of the case even as he finds himself getting involved – or, as is also the case, wilfully involves himself – in the publicity circus generated as much by Zodiac’s actions as the media’s initial willingness to pander to his demands to be published. Then there are determined cops David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo) and William Armstrong (Anthony Edwards), who immerse themselves in the minutiae of the case but are equally frustrated by bureaucracy (Zodiac’s killings take place over several police districts, each under separate jurisdictions) and their need to finally give up and live their own lives. Finally, when almost everyone else has fallen by the wayside in an alcohol-fuelled haze or sheer frustration, Graysmith alone soldiers on, hunting down all the suspects in the case from the distinctively creepy and frequently incarcerated Arthur Leigh Allen (John Carroll Lynch) to equally creepy amateur film projectionist Bob Vaughn (Charles Fleischer).

Although the Zodiac murders remain officially unresolved in real life, Fincher’s Zodiac, based as it is on the real-life Graysmith’s same-titled novel and (reportedly) the director’s own sordid fascination with the case, eventually draws a conclusion about the identity of the murderer. Of course, all the evidence is circumstantial but damning when taken in its totality, and Fincher makes that point clearly with a final scene that sees Graysmith – the lone warrior still on his quest of righteousness – seek the murderer out and stare him in the eyes, just for the satisfaction of knowing that he did track Zodiac down. But again it must be made clear that this film, when it comes down to it, isn’t really about the identity of Zodiac, but about just how much some men are willing to give up to finally find out the truth, even if only for themselves. The crumbling of Graysmith’s marriage to Melanie (Chloe Sevigny) is perhaps the best example of this: he first meets her for a blind date but can barely think about anything else but Paul Avery’s possibly disastrous meeting with (maybe?) Zodiac himself. Melanie leaving him is only a question of time, but it’s still chilling and almost immeasurably sad when she returns on one occasion to find him crouched in the dark, still hellbent on tracking down Zodiac despite the danger to himself and his family, and he admits that he can’t go back to her because he can’t let his kids see what’s become of him. Toschi, too, struggles through William’s decision to quit the case to have a normal life, and damning accusations that Toschi himself might have faked letters to keep interest in Zodiac and his own career going.

There is much to admire about Fincher’s film, although I suspect it will be a bit difficult to find something about it to love. He remains a master at creating nail-biting tension out of practically nothing – as the years pass in Zodiac‘s world, with nary a peep from the mysterious murderer himself, Fincher somehow manages to keep Graysmith’s quest almost morbidly fascinating, whether Graysmith is given the go-ahead to rummage through boxes of weathered records or has just discovered that Vaughn has a basement (gasp!) as Zodiac does, in the practically basement-less SF area. He laces the few murder scenes scattered through the first half of the movie with genuine terror, keeping Zodiac perpetually shrouded in shadow even as he shoots or stabs the life out of his cowering victims. His cast is also uniformly excellent – particularly Downey Jr as the loopy Avery and Ruffalo (the only actor who’s squashed uncomfortably into tight, checkered 70-style pants) as the dogged Toschi. In a few brief minutes, Lynch also manages to make his character – who’s better known as Leigh than Allen – just a little bit off-kilter during his interrogation by Toschi and Armstrong, enough for both detectives to feel that they might have finally landed Zodiac himself.

It’s a shame that Fincher doesn’t get quite as impressive performance out of his leading man. Gyllenhaal retains his easy charm, and clearly gives the role his all – but his part is frustratingly one-note, his obsession with Zodiac being about the only apparent distinguishing feature about his character. There’s some cute comedy stuff early on in the film, when Fincher is still laying out his story and characters, and he establishes Graysmith as the geeky outsider who only gets in with Avery and the ‘in’ crowd at the Chronicle when he starts trotting out all the books he borrowed at the library on code-cracking. (“Doesn’t it bother you that people call you retard?”) But these light moments of humour quickly dissipate in favour of story, and thereafter Gyllenhaal just can’t seem to avoid looking a little out of place in the film: almost too modern for the 1970s, and too consistently the same (young) age to completely convince as Graysmith. Sevigny, unfortunately, has much the same problem. Both of them are good enough actors for this not to completely detract from the film, but it does mean that the movie feels a little more hollow than it should – how can you convince yourself that these characters are worth caring about when they feel just a little bit out of place in the movie they’re in?

Whether you really warm to Zodiac also depends on how you take to Fincher’s approach in meticulously laying out the entire story – from beginning, to middle, to end – with real commitment to communicating every unvarnished detail to his audience. He wants to present as full a picture of the case as he can, so he moves through every aspect of it: the police investigation, Avery’s building up of his own role in the case, and finally Graysmith’s desperate hunt for clues even as Toschi unofficially feeds him information to continue the quest that the latter can no longer work on in his official capacity. Small wonder that Fincher was so keen to portray the entire Zodiac case in such painstaking detail – apparently he got so into the whole mystery that he insisted on shooting Zodiac’s murder scenes with exact geographical precision. Well, that’s all well and good if you can appreciate the very procedural nature of this film, and want to just soak in every aspect of the story and characters. But if you’re looking for a punchier film, you’ll be quite upset – Fincher could have sliced a much slimmer, tighter movie out of this one’s very long, 160-minute running time, and that’s an editorial decision you’ll have to live with even if you disagree with it.

Whereas Se7en was a fast, furious romp through Kevin Spacey’s decidely fucked-up, nefarious plots, with a final sequence so mindblowing you couldn’t shake it for days, Zodiac is far more expansive and almost elegiac in its impact, delving as it does into the lives that Zodiac has touched and some might say destroyed… except he managed to get these men to do this to themselves over years and years, rather than through mere moments of excruciating pain. It’s a movie that might well test your patience (and bladder), but it’s also a worthy, never less than fascinating examination of men driven not so much by ambition but by curiosity. And didn’t that kill a cat or two, in its day?