WARNING: Major “Iron Man” spoiler follows (though how much longer this can remain a surprise is very much in doubt) so be warned.

So, “Iron Man” sold in the area of $100 Million dollars in tickets, exceeding it’s boxoffice expectations by about 30-40 mil and basically putting a big “Take Us Seriously” sign on the new Marvel Studios. That’s the business news. For fans, the biggest POSSIBLE news came after the credits, when those prescient enough to sit through the credits saw an extra scene in which Samuel L. Jackson – playing the “Ultimate Marvel” version of Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., shows up at Tony Stark’s house to talk to him about something called “THE AVENGERS INITIATIVE.”

Yeah.

For those for whom that doesn’t have much meaning, “The Avengers” are Marvel’s premier superhero team; boasting a rotating roster of members that usually starts out including Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Ant-Man/Giant-Man and The Incredible Hulk. You may notice that that list ALSO neatly comprises the roster of Marvel characters who have films either in release or production under the singular “Marvel Studios” banner. So the question is, is this just MASSIVE optimism on Marvel’s part, or are this summer’s “Iron Man” and “Hulk” movies part of a long-term plan.

As of today, Marvel has an answer:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/080505/20080505005656.html?.v=1

Short version: “Iron Man 2” and “Thor” in 2010, followed by “The First Avenger: Captain America” and 2011 and “The Avengers” after that. Regarding the titling of those last two: In general Marvel continuity, Captain America is a WWII-era superhero who finds himself trapped in suspended animation just before the end of the war and is later revived in modern times, where he joins and becomes de-facto field leader of The Avengers; so the titling there could concievably indicate that Cap would debut in a WWII-set film of his own and then turn up time-displaced in the “Avengers” movie… which is almost too cool to contemplate.

Awesome.

WARNING: Mild spoilers contained herein.

First things first: Comic-fans, hardcore nerds, geeks and fans and devotees of all stripes, listen carefully: Jarvis. Ten Rings. S.H.I.E.L.D. You talked. Somebody listened. Get your asses to the theatre, NOW. And for fuck’s sake, STAY THROUGH THE CREDITS. Just trust me.

Now, then…

The recent spate of superhero movies have found much of their success by mining concept of the hero as downtrodden-outsider, i.e. “Spider-Man” or “X-Men.” Fine franchises all, but a little of that goes a long way in movie after movie. A big part of what makes “Iron Man” feel so fresh (and it does, make no mistake about it) is that, despite his obligatory “costume” and semi-secret identity, leading man Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) belongs to a different era of heroes: The much older tradition of jack-of-all-trades genius/adventurers like Doc Savage. And while I’ve certainly no problem with the “protecting those who fear them” set, variety IS the spice of life.

Whereas most superheroes, by design, are average-or-lower fellows who spring to colorful life as their alter-egos, Stark enters the movie as just about the most interesting guy alive: A billionaire engineering-genius/weapons-magnate who collects/builds classic cars, invents world-changing inventions for kicks and tears through women, parties and booze like a one-man Rat Pack: The interior of his private jet morphs into a private strip-club at his command, complete with flight-attendants who double as dancers. And yet, while smug and self-satisfied to a fault, he has a certain sincerity: He genuinely believes in his weapons as forces to END wars and PROTECT the American soldiers who use them.

It’s a balancing act with precious little time to set-up, but what you’ve heard about Downey knocking it out of the park are BEYOND true: His Tony Stark is the coolest man on the planet before he even THINKS about becoming Iron Man – in an origin story that hews fairly close to the originals comics save for swapping-out then-topical Vietnam for now-topical Afghanistan, where Stark goes to show off a new super-missile for a grateful U.S. Army. A Terrorist ambush – using Stark Brand explosives – leaves him with a heart full of lethal shrapnel, but a quick-fix battery-powered life support device saves him: The Terrorists (obviously meant to suggest Al Qaeda but who’s name and who’s Ghengis Khan-obsessed leader are there to get attentive fans giggling with anticipation of “Iron Man 2,”) want him alive to turn all the Stark Industries weaponry they’ve managed to aquire (and, he learns, USE on innocent victims) into something more substantial. Instead, he builds himself a suit of weaponry-loaded mechanical armor and blasts his way to freedom.

In the comics, Stark then dedicated himself to fighting the Red Menace in his newly-upgraded armor as Iron Man. Since thats obviously not going to work here, and since the film handily demonstrates (in a pair of action sequences that’ll be running on Blu-Ray Player demo-loops at Best Buy into the next CENTURY) that Al Qaeda cave-dwellers aren’t much of a match for a walking/flying human tank, the modern Iron Man has a spiffy new goal to go along with the new special effects: Infuriated that the weapons he intended to be used for good are in the hands of warmongers and terrorists, he shuts down the munitions plants and aims to take the stray arms out of evil’s grasp by force; a new life-direction that confounds his Pentagon liason buddy Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard) and Moneypenny-esque assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) and infuriates his scheming corporate “ally” Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges.) It also garners the attention of Agent Colson (Clarke Gregg) a representative of a government agency with a rather unwieldy name who’s initials will be partly responsible for the uncontrollable cheering you’ll be hearing from the fan-clusters. Hm…

Yeah. It’s innevitable that most reviews you’ll be reading for this on the web are going to be pretty deeply drowned-out by the fan-ecstasy over what appears to be the very real setup for several HUGE down-the-pike dream projects; but non-fans should NOT let that scare them away. These are details for the in-the-know, not the meat of the subject. The film itself is a smart and complex animal, a “grownup” superhero movie in every sense of the word. In a way, it plays out as less of an action film (truth be told, there are really only THREE major “battle” scenes) and closer to the sort of deliberately-paced scifi-augmented techno-thriller one expects from, say, Michael Crichton: Comforted by the awesomeness of it’s action bookends, the crucial middle act concentrates on universe-building and character-fleshing; dwelling in welcome detail on the methods with which Stark assembles and tests the Iron Man technology and on he and Pepper’s gradual realization of something resembling mutual-affection.

This is a movie that’s built of self-assuredness. Downey plays Stark as a guy who’s every virtue AND flaw can be attributed to a confidence in his abilities, and it bleeds over into the rest of the film: It never seems to be straining to fit in extra action scenes, it knows the ones it has are dynamite. Even most of it’s fanboy references are handled the same way: Winking, offhand nods to followups that the film seems QUITE sure are going to happen.

It’s this confidence of vision that seemingly enables the film to overcome an impossible hurdle: Making a fun summer action blockbuster grounded heavily in War on Terror happenings. The film wears what political bent it has (Terrorism: bad, America: good, War: depends on the wager) on it’s sleeve but pitches for a wider audience: A truly spectacular sequence where Iron Man descends from the sky and rescues an Afghan village from terrorist pillagers could be read equally-well as a neocon fantasy of “peace through superior firepower” or a liberal “proper-use of influence abroad” parable. Bottom line, I don’t care WHAT your politics are – seeing hordes of Al Qaeda types getting smacked around like ragdolls by a power-armored supehero ought to be something we can all get behind.

If this is the movie that “opens” the Summer Season, it’s setting a REALLY high bar in terms of overall satisfaction. Fans are getting a movie that’s eager to please, and non-fans can look forward to a genre effort that stands comfortably next to “Batman Begins” and “Spider-Man” in the best-of-the-best.

FINAL RATING: 9/10

Oh, and once again: Seriously, STAY THROUGH THE CREDITS. You won’t be sorry.

Probably the most “shocking” element of the purported “war on terror satire” in “H&K2” is how unconcerned the actual movie is about making it shocking. Yes, the film features (among other elements) an Indian man morphing into a turban-headed terrorist in the eyes of a panicky airline passenger, sexual-abuse of inmates at the titular prison and an ignorant, racist Homeland Security agent (Rob Cordry) who “tortures” a black suspect by threatening to pour out a can of grape soda and – literally – wipes his ass with the 5th Ammendment; but it regards them as being essentially no more or less perilous to the heroes as the myriad non-political roadblocks also thrown in their way. The film takes some of the most divisive “hot button” issues of our time and tosses them off with the same slacker-ly ease it does reliable road-movie/stoner gags about rednecks, hookers, KKK members, bad drugs and misbehaving animals. Call it the height of bad taste or the subtlest form of subversion, but I call it pretty funny.

The original “Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle” got on by taking things easy: Road comedy is easy, because you can just go from location to location and joke to joke. Stoner comedy is easy because it allows for random lunacy. And it cast as it’s dual leads Kal Penn (Kumar) and John Cho (Harold,) both of whom had made their bones as sidekicks and were well-equipped for a film that relied on neither shoving their way to the forefront. Even the central hook of doing a mainstream comedy with TWO “ethnic” leads went down easy, as casual-racism turns out to be just something the pair ‘deal with’ no different than random cougars or bad trips. #2 offers up more of the same.

It’s (literally) mere hours after the climax the first film, and the duo are heading off to Amsterdam in pursuit of Harold’s recently near-consumated crush. En-route, they encounter Kumar’s former girlfriend – on her way to marrying a rich, politically-connected douchebag in Texas. A misunderstanding on the plane involving Kumar’s attempt to field-test his newly-invented “smokeless bong” gets them branded as terror-suspects, and the assignment of Cordry’s overzealous agent to their case means a one-way ticket to Gitmo. Fortunately for the boys, the prison’s security systems leaves a little something to be desired and – one satisfyingly-electrocuted Al Qaeda fellow later – they’re hoofing it to Texas, hoping that the aforementioned Douchebag can use his White House connections to fix the misunderstanding… and Kumar giving more than a little thought to busting up the wedding and getting The Girl back.

The model at play here is much more Hope & Crosby than Cheech & Chong, as the stoner humor is basically an excuse to play fast and loose with the rules of logic and pacing. The REAL star-attraction is the natural, beat-for-beat chemistry between the two leads as they bounce from one outlandish situation to another. Despite some of the topical subject matter, it’s not really out to take anyone down or score any points, which winds up being helpful because you can’t precisely predict which direction the jokes are going to go in: For example, the trailers have already spoiled the fact that the boys eventually encounter President Bush (an impersonator in heavy makeup) himself, few would’ve guessed the way the film opts to portray him and what role he ultimately plays.

It’s funny, basically.

FINAL RATING: 7/10

FYI, I’ve added the latest episode(s) over at the “Game OverThinker” blog and the YouTubes. Happily, this little side-project has really started to “blow up” over the last few weeks. Take a peek if you’re so inclined…

Episode Five:
http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2008/04/episode-five-patriot-games.html

Episode Six:
http://gameoverthinker.blogspot.com/2008/04/episode-six-pr0n.html

Hardcore horror fans are reflexively distrustful of theatrically-released films at this point. So goes the logic, anything that doesn’t arrive with angry protesters on it’s heels or circulating-legends of how much ‘good stuff’ got cut out to get an R just won’t be worth the time. While not without basis, this mistrust means that on occassion worthwhile entries that might HELP the genre’s theatrical-reputation like “Pathology” wind up having to wait for DVD to get deserved attention. Too bad.

This is a slicked-up new spin on the “mad doctor” theme, wherein the godlike power/perspective afforded to Men of Medicine drives some practitioners to amorality and unspeakable acts – the sort of films Vincent Price turned out by the dozens once upon a time. Here, the medicine in question is Forensic Pathology (thanks again, “CSI!”) via our hero (Milo Ventimiglia) a rising-star Pathology prodigy doing his residency at a prestigious hospital while awaiting marriage to his super-rich super-hot fiance (Alyssa Milano.) Upon arriving, he discovers that the residents all live/work in fear of an elite clique of brilliant, hard-partying young super-docs led by Gallo (Michael Weston.)

Not only do Gallo’s crew torment the other residents with all the cruel subtlety of the villians from “Mean Girls” along with flaunting drug-fueled hedonism after hours (both the male and female members toss Lauren Lee Smith’s seemingly-nymphomaniacal redhead temptress back and forth like a softball)… their REAL kick is an elaborate murder game by which one member of the team creatively-murders a deserving (or maybe not..) victim and challenges the others to figure out how they pulled it off. Soon enough, our hero is drawn into their world for the intellectual challenge, the goading of the very Tyler Durden-like Dr. Gallo and a quickly-out-of-hand infatuation with the Smith’s insatiable seductress.

Now thats a nice, nasty premise for a thriller if I ever heard one. The script comes courtesy of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who between this and their debut collaboration “Crank” are setting themselves up as masters of creative excuses to wallow in movie-mayhem. “Pathology” is good-looking bad people doing horrid things for their (and our) amusement; and as far as that goes it’s a damn fine exercise in that particular subgenre. You get nasty murders, nastier autopsies and then the infrequent elaborate kinky sex scene – often all staged around the same medical equipment. Ew. But it’s all engaging enough that it’s hard to stop looking.

That said, yeah… it’s not QUITE as nuts as it needs to be, though I’ve got to say there’s a moment of blunt, hammer-force visual poetry involving a certain character’s autopsy near the end that’s damn near the kind of diseased-genius that you used to only be find in Luis Bunuel movies (you’ll know it when you see it.) This is no classic, but it’s not for lack of trying – and I bet it finds more than a few fans among ACTUAL Pathology residents.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

To Hong Kong action fans, the concept of seeing Jackie Chan and Jet Li appear in a one-on-one fight sequence – to say nothing of an entire FILM – together has always come with a set of hypothetical questions, first and foremost being “what sort of film?” The high-concept comedy stunt-spectaculars that Chan is the king of? The harder-edged action-thrillers where Li more often finds himself? The old-school throwbacks where both have staked solid ground? The martial-arts genre is surprisingly diverse. One thing that can be certain, “American-Produced Family Film Where They Co-Star Opposite a Time-Displaced Teenaged Kid” was never at the top of the list. But, here we are, and THIS is the film that bring’s us Kung-Fu cinema’s most anticipated matchup since Bruce Lee met Chuck Norris in “Return of The Dragon.”

Now, it’s not so much that either man oughtn’t be making movies for children. Chan’s ouvre tends to play family-friendly as a rule, and Li has done films acting opposite kids before (though few Westerners would call “New Legend of Shaolin” a family flick, trust me.) No, the concern – at least among those serious enough about such things to be concerned – was that two living legends of Chinese action cinema would have their historic clash in yet another weak, watered-down Western imitation (or worse, PARODY) of their native genre.

It brings me no small measure of satisfaction to be able to report that THIS concern, at least, is essentially unfounded: If anything, “The Forbidden Kingdom” may be TOO Chinese for it’s own good. While the story itself isn’t the most original ever concieved in the broad strokes, in the details it’s so tightly-packed with Eastern mysticism and mythology and it starts to resemble “Legend of Zu.” Genre fans, let me put it this way: When The Monkey King enters the plot, the film doesn’t stop to explain to the American audiences who, exactly, he is.

The technical star of the piece is Michael Angarano, the rising star younger fans may recall from the criminally-overlooked “Sky High.” Here he’s Jason, a bullied Boston teenager who worships the vintage Kung-Fu movies he buys from an elderly Chinatown shopkeep (Jackie Chan in startling old-age makeup.) During a robbery of the shop by local bullies, he ends up in the middle of the fray trying to protect a valuable antique fighting-staff… and finds himself (and said staff) yanked back into a mythical version of Ancient China and in the company of a wandering kung-fu master (Chan again, here inhabiting a version of his famous “Drunken Master” characterization as folk hero Taoist saint Lu Yan) who believes the boy is here to (you guessed it) Fulfill The Prophecy.

Short version: The Magic Staff is the weapon of The Monkey King (Jet Li plus some more surprising makeup work) a legendary hero who was turned into stone by the Jade Warlord, who has since ruled the land as a tyrant for hundreds of years. The Staff must be returned to Monkey King in order to free him, a task to which beautiful assassin Golden Sparrow (Yifei Liu, which I’m thoroughly convinced means “holy SHIT!” in Mandarin) and the mysterious fighter Silent Monk (Li again, looking like himself) offer their services. You may also have guessed that returning the staff means walking right into the Jade Warlord’s stronghold on Five Elements Mountain – their paths blocked by master-assassin White-Haired Demoness (Li Bing Bing, who is approximately as hot as her name is fun to say) – and that reviving Monkey King is also Jason’s only hope of returning home.

Okay, okay. YES, it’s “The Wizard of Oz” crossed with “Journey Into The West.” And if you think you already know whether or not Jason will get home AND exactly what will occur when he does… yeah, you’re probably right. I’m not of the mind that this counts as any kind of serious flaw – children’s films and kung-fu movies are both, if nothing else, case-studies in the proper usage of formula-plotting. The answers to the two important questions are as follows: It’s a terrific, fun little movie and (most importantly) Chan and Li’s centerpiece one-on-one dustup is one for the books.

Going back, I’m still struck as to just HOW hard the film works to NOT cheapen the cultural-iconography it’s mining. Li’s turn as the Monkey King is absent from the American marketing entirely, likely because the iconic character (one of the most important figures in Chinese mythology and martial-arts fantasy films) A.) isn’t well known here and B.) the interpretation of him seen here is as traditional as one can get… and some American fans of Li’s harder-edged work likely aren’t prepared to see him wearing simian facial hair and performing “playful chimpanzee” pantomime. His native fans, though, are probably going to go (literally) ape for this, as it’s the kind of work he doesn’t do nearly enough and throws himself into it with gusto.

Meanwhile, the supporting cast (of characters) start to look like a Chinese version of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Not only is Chan’s Lu Yan a historical folk hero, Golden Sparrow and the Demoness are re-interpretations of characters that both appeared in golden-age kung-fu film and literature. Only the hardest of hardcore fans are going to catch this stateside, and it doesn’t detract from the movie-proper, but this kind of genuine respect for the genre and it’s origins from the Weinsteins of all producers is damn impressive – to the point that you almost forget that the Chinese characters living IN CHINA are primarily speaking English (or trying to, and it’s probably a mistake handing most of the exposition to Chan, but no matter.)

Hardcore kung-fu fans? Don’t let the rating and the kids-fantasy aspect turn you off – it’s a damn good bit of work. Family-filmgoers? Believe the hype: It’s the kung-fu movie you can take the kids to without worry AND enjoy yourself.

FINAL RATING: 8/10

“Forgetting Sarah Marshall” arrives under the banner of the Judd Apatow Takeover of Hollywood, and runs in roughly the standard Apatow “house style” (short version: Male-centric romantic-comedy with scatology increased to the proportionate dimensions of the emotional angst) but owes more credit to it’s writer/star Jason Stegel, who hear quite literally redefines the concept of an actor “baring his soul” to the camera. Not only does he now-famously appear onscreen fully nude, he turns in an achingly real and affecting performance – throwing himself before the audience unguarded and unafraid. He’s a star.

He casts himself in the evidently semi-autobiographical role of Peter Bretter, a 30-something slacker musician earning a tidy-enough living composing the cheezy music for a CSI-style TV show who’s beautiful rising-star lead actress Sarah Marshall (Kristin Bell) he’s dating as the film opens… with their breakup. Or, rather, her unceremonious dumping of him. Encouraged by his best bud (Bill Hader) to soothe himself with one night stands but finding them insufficient, he tries for Plan B: A Hawaiin vacation to a cozy resort… which he quickly discovers is ALSO where Sarah has shacked-up with her new squeeze, swarthy British pop singer Aldous Snow (Russel Brand.) On the bright side, he develops an instant rapport with sexy resort employee Rachel (Mila Kunis.)

You can probably plot the movie out on your own from there – there’s nothing terribly surprising in the broad strokes, as the whole point of this new strain of y-chromosome rom-coms is to go through the standard motions from the guy’s perspective. The surprises are in the details, mainly in Stegel’s refusal to cast anyone as a straight-on villain: Even the seemingly built-to-hate Snow winds up perversely endearing in his oblivious self-satisfaction. And while Sarah is eventually a decidedly unlikable figure, she’s also essentially human.

Getting into any more of it would only be possible by giving away the jokes, including a climax that comes about as far out of left field as one can get in a romantic comedy and still be on tera-firmer. But you should absolutely check it out especially if you liked “Knocked Up” or “Forty Year-Old Virgin.”

FINAL RATING: 8/10

Nobody gives a damn about the original “Prom Night,” other than it being one of the two non-“Halloween” slasher flicks Jamie Lee Curtis was in, cementing her status as “The Scream Queen.” It was a formula “Friday the 13th” riff, nothing special about it. The new film (it shares NOTHING but the title, so it’s not really a “remake”) is more of the same, save that the style-set being lifted is from the Argento playbook (pretty victims, opulent location, no-nonsense knife-wielding stalker) this time around.

Depressingly, the setup – when regarded in the form of a plot-outline, at least – has the makings of a totally workable thriller: Three years ago, a High School teacher developed a psychotic crush on a young female student and wound up murdering her family – while she was hiding, paralyzed with fear. Cut to present, she’s about to graduate and on her way to Prom, and he’s broken out of jail and hunting her down. At the hotel where the bash is going down, he steals into the room rented by her and her companions and hunkers down to wait for them.

That’s it. There’s your setup for the movie: Bad man with a knife waiting somewhere the good guys are innevitably heading toward. Five-word plot synopsis: “Don’t Go Into The Room!” What’s more, it serves as a blunt but functional bit of teen-slasher symbolism: The Hotel Room exists for the purposes of sex, drugs and/or drinking – aka DEATH in slasher-movie lingo – and, naturally, thats exactly where death is LITERALLY waiting. The “good kids” just want to stay down at the dance (read: the innocence of youth) while the “bad kids” are eagerly anticipating heading up to The Room.

So… solid setup, working premise, tidy symbolism. Most horror films would be emboldened by having that much to work from… but “Prom Night” is content to stay on autopilot and deliver the most forgettable, uninteresting product possible. It’s not scary, the acting is completely dull, and the PG-13 rating negates the only real purpose for such a time-waster to exist.

There is no reason to see this movie, period.

FINAL RATING: 3/10

Navy vet turned writer/director David Ayer has been flying steadily under the radar for awhile now as a go-to guy for rough-edged L.A.-set crime thrillers, doing screenplay duties for “Training Day,” “The Fast & The Furious,” “SWAT,” “Dark Blue” and his directorial debut “Harsh Times.” That last film showed a keen eye for the sun-bleached haze of the urban West Coast, and the others have displayed a great ear for the sharp, violent language of the same – both serve him well (though he’s now working from a script by James Ellroy and Kurt Wimmer from Ellroy’s novel) in “Street Kings,” a pitch-black police thriller that ranks as one of the most solid offerings in the genre since “Narc.”

It should be said early that, while he gamely trudges onto screen looking impressively disshevled and doesn’t pull out any of his familiar tics or signature inflections, Keanu Reeves still looks and sounds a bit too much like Keanu Reeves to seem immediately plausible as Detective Tom Ludlow – an amoral, rule-breaking, damn-near-sociopathic L.A. uber-cop – but after awhile it stops mattering. He wouldn’t be anyone’s first choice to play what amounts to “Dirty Harry with an innebriated moral-compass,” but he ultimately makes it work.

Ludlow is the risk-taking pointman for an elite LAPD Vice unit tasked by Captain Wander (Forrest Whitaker) to use any means necessary to wipe out the city’s most violent offenders. The unit employs Ludlow, notorious as “the last of the Ghetto Gunfighters,” as a kind of one-man SEAL team: Able to shoot it out with entire housefuls of gangsters, plant evidence, arrange bodies and liberate hostages before anyone else – especially the dogged Internal Affairs chief (Hugh Laurie) – even gets there.

Things turn ugly(er) when IA and some of the city’s less morally-flexible officers start making things difficult for Wander’s rights-violating crew. When one “trouble making” cop is cut down in a suspicious gangland hit and Ludlow happens to be on the scene, favors get called-in to avoid the appearance of shady-doings by all and wagons get circled. All save for Ludlow himself, who may finally be snapping under the weight of his own guilt and sets out to solve the murder himself… putting him in deep with the city’s deadliest criminals and potentially on the wrong-side of the corrupt, violent squad he helped create.

So, it’s “Training Day” meets “L.A. Confidential,” yeah. But I can think of WORSE movies to combine. You don’t finally get a modern classic, but it’s entertaining as all hell and packed with good actors cutting loose on frequently over-the-top roles – Whittaker, in particular, seems to be about to turn back into Idi Amin at any moment. Couple this with a twisty plot and visceral action, and I’m calling this one a reccomendation.

FINAL RATING: 7/10