No spoilers, honest!

A sequel to one of my favourite movies of the past 5 years was always going to be pretty high on my "Must See" list - the first movie was great fun and just plain entertaining from start to finish.  It was both a terrific movie and a great origin story from which to build up the myth and begin the road towards the Avengers in 2012.  This second one is also very entertaining but doesn't quite hit all the high notes of the original IMHO.

Sequels always seem to have to "one-up" the original, which usually for comic-book movies means cramming in as many bad-guys as possible.  Thankfully that isn't really the case here.  You have Mickey Rourke's Ivan Vanko, aka Whiplash, a man out on a revenge trip following the death of his father who helped Howard Stark (Tony's father) design the reactor which Tony subsequently miniaturised.  Ivan's father dies a drunken failure, and Ivan is out for revenge, leading to a spectacular sequence at Monaco during a motor race.

Also we have a couple of more realistically human antagonists - Justin Hammer (the brilliant Sam Rockwell) who just really wants to be Tony Stark in every way but cannot pull off the playboy act anywhere near as convincingly.  Garry Shandling also turns up as Senator Stern... boy he's really put some weight on!  Cannot say the same for Scarlett Johannsen though... wow, just... wow!  As Tony says, "Can I have one?".

Robert Downey Jr once again steals the show, and I suspect a good portion of the film is improvised dialogue as with the first.  This does mean that it can be a little hard to follow and pick out the wheat from the chaff as RDJ is babbling on to himself a good portion of the time.  It's very funny to watch however, you just have to pay attention and hopefully not have a twat sitting behind you who insists on narrating the film as well...

Finally a word about the special effects - absolutely top-drawer.  The single complaint I had about the second Hulk movie (with Ed Norton) was that I lost interest when the two monsters started throwing cars at each other, it lost me and lost all I had invested in the plot and characters.  No such problem here - the final act is terrific and I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.  Nothing looked stupid or fake, and the action was well directed enough to not cause my eyes to bleed, unlike say the first Transformers movie whose action I just found it impossible to follow.

All in all a great fun action film.  As I said, I didn't quite think it was as good as the first, but that is a high bar to reach again.  It keeps me interested in the upcoming Thor, Captain America and Avengers movies too - particularly now Joss Whedon is getting involved.  Oh, speaking of the upcoming films, you should stay until the end of the credits if you have any interest at all in where this series is going.

8.5 / 10

Tags: awesome, comics, geek, movies, reviews, robots, suoerheroes
Categories: Comics | Geek | Movies | Reviews

About time I got this finished - apologies for the delay but I'm here now so here goes:

Centurion
I'm including this one as I've just recently seen the new trailer and it looks pretty good.  Another movie about the real-life disappearance of the 9th Legion in the Scottish Highlands.

The Losers
Another comic book adaptation but not a superhero in sight.  Instead this could be a "grittier A-Team" as Dark Horizons put it.  Trailer looks at least promising and Peter Berg has a couple of solid movies behind him

Paul
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost - enough said.  Admittedly without Edgar Wright, but still count me in for this tale of UFO buffs finding an actual escaped alien just outside Area 51.  No release dates or trailer yet.

Predators
Sequel from Robert Rodriguez, who has a lot of credibility riding on this one.  Please let it be good!

Scott Pilgrim vs The World
What Edgar Wright did while Pegg and Frost were making "Paul".  This is likely to be the major geel hit of the summer, and as I know nothing of the plot or the original comic book I'll leave it there.  Trailer imminent.

Shutter Island
Scorcese does psychological horror.  Saw the trailer for this in front of "The Wolfman" this weekend and liked the look of it - an on-form Decaprio and an adaptation from the writer of "Mystic River" and "Gone Baby Gone" make this a must see I think. Hoping for good brooding fear rather than constant jump-shocks (yes "...Wolfman", I'm looking at you...)

Toy Story 3
Pixar.  Enough said.  Check out the trailer

Tron:Legacy
The original is legendary for properly introducing the world to computer generated effects.  The teaser from ComicCon shows the updated light-cycles.  This will be something to see in 3D Imax no doubt.

So that's that.  I highly recommend you check out the full list on Dark Horizons, as I've only scratched the surface here with a few that appealed to me.  The original list is very detailed and a terrific bit of work.

 

 

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Categories: Comics | Geek | Movies | Sci-Fi | spoilers | trailers | Web

As Watchmen hits DVD over the next week or so, I found a link this morning to some YouTube videos of an episode of Canadian TV show "Prisoners of Gravity" dedicated to the graphic novel  Featuring Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, it makes fascinating watching for people who love the original work, and really an essential for anyone who has only seen the more-than-a-little-confusing film:

Enjoy

 

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Tags: watchmen, youtube, alan moore, dave gibbons, comics, graphic novels, suoerheroes, geek, awesome
Categories: Comics | Geek | Movies | Sci-Fi | Watchmen