THE JUNGLE BOOK Mixes Spectacular Visuals With Serviceable Story

THE JUNGLE BOOK Review:

- Initially, I was skeptical of this latest live-action version of THE JUNGLE BOOK. Disney seems intent on turning all of its animated classics into live-action spectacles. But to what purpose? How many times must the same stories be re-told over and over again? Still, my skepticism was lessened when I saw the first trailers for this one. Perhaps a live-action Jungle Book was justified if it would look this amazing. Now that I've seen the movie, my verdict is that the movie is a mixed bag. From a purely visual perspective, this one is undeniably a stunner. The animals and the environs look amazing. But story-wise, to me this was pretty shrug-worthy - it's an at-times awkward mix of the animated original's whimsy and the darker Kipling source material. This is a movie that has full singing/dancing musical numbers, but also sure-to-terrorize-and-traumatize-kids moments of violence and brutality - often veering wildly from one extreme to the other in a matter of minutes. Ultimately, there is a numbing effect. The movie doesn't really seem to know what it is - other than a showcase for insanely realistic CGI.

There are, certainly, some interesting thematic ideas amid the spectacle. Director Jon Favreau and writer Justin Marks push heavily on the idea that young Mowgli has reached a crossroads, and must decide if he'll remain a creature of the jungle, or embrace his human-ness. Having been raised by wolves - along with the kindly panther Bagheera - after his father was killed, Mowgli has become an integrated part of the animal melting pot that is the jungle. He has, mostly, been indoctrinated into the ways of the wolves. But whenever he does display human traits - like making/utilizing tools - he is chided, his makeshift tools denounced as "tricks." Now, however, the sinister tiger Shere Khan has decided that Mowgli must be killed for the good of the jungle. Having been scarred by a man wielding fire, Khan is convinced it's only a matter of time before Mowgli becomes a danger to the jungle. And so, at Bagheera's urging, Mowgli flees his wolf pack in search of a nearby human village. The movie builds towards a pretty interesting climax, where Mowgli must decide once and for all if he'll stay in the jungle, or embrace his humanity - with all that that entails.

The problem is that the movie, mostly, feels like a series of self-contained tangents that distract and diverge from the main plot rather than add to it. Mowgli meets a mysterious snake Kaa (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) and learns his origin story! Mowgli meets happy-go-lucky bear Baloo (who is voiced by Bill Murray) and helps him get some honey, and they sing a song (one of two in the movie)! Mowgli runs afoul of King Louie of the apes, who is voiced by Christopher Walken and sings a song (two of two in the movie)! Mowgli saves a baby elephant! In many ways, the film has the same sort of light and airless rhythm of a typical Disney animated movie - with the difference being that this movie seems to want to go darker and deeper, even as it keeps getting distracted with all sorts of seemingly-obligatory Disney-ness. But more than that, the movie rarely feels like it has much plot momentum. The structure is loose and freewheeling, which can make the movie - for all its stunning visuals and action - feel aimless and draggy at times.

The movie really does get creepy at certain moments - the Kaa sequence, for one is pretty intense. And some of the animal-on-animal fights are downright vicious - especially given how photo-realistic most of the movie's creatures are. But like I said, some of the movie's more extreme and intense tendencies create some real tonal dissonance with its lighter moments. Kid actor Neel Sethi, who plays Mowgli, seems more comfortable with the goofy and funny stuff. His wide-eyed, go-big performance feels less attuned to the movie's more serious sequences.

The other performances - namely, the voice-acted parts - are all quite good. If nothing else, the main animal characters in the movie have a ton of personality. In particular, Bill Murray makes Baloo an instant favorite (he basically is a real-life Baloo, after all), and Idris Elba makes Shere Khan into a fearsome and formidable antagonist. Christopher Walken also provides a comedic spark as the larger-than-life (personality-wise and size-wise) King Louie. But what really impresses is how the voice-acting combines with the amazingly-rendered CG to create a surprisingly immersive heightened reality. Going into the film, I was worried that seeing photo-realistic animals speaking English would be awkward to the point of taking me out of the film. But in practice, the movie's animators do a brilliant job of making the animals just heightened and just anthropomorphic enough to convey real, believable personalities - and to make us buy them as fully fleshed-out characters.

Favreau, for his part, really goes for broke. The movie's jungle world is amazingly-realized, and Favreau shows a cinematic sense of artistry here that I didn't know he had in him. Interestingly, where the movie shines most is in the quieter, more painterly scenes. The action, too, is often breathtaking - although more so for the eye-popping CG work on the animals and environments than for anything particularly awesome going on with the staging of the big set-pieces. Nothing really reaches Spielbergian levels of inventiveness. Still, give Favreau credit for crafting what is, overall, one of the most visually-impressive blockbusters in quite some time.

Ultimately though, THE JUNGLE BOOK just doesn't nail its big emotional beats like it should. There's too much here that feels like fluff and/or filler, and that means that the should-have-been-powerful ending instead feels sort of "meh." THE JUNGLE BOOK works well enough, but only its visuals are more than serviceable.

My Grade: B

EXODUS Is Dazzling But Ultimately Hollow Biblical Epic

EXODUS: GODS AND KINGS Review:

- Let me start with this: Ridley Scott is one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. His list of stone-cold classics is long - he's directed not only some of the best, but most influential movies ever made: Alien, Blade Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator. The guy is a legend (and he also directed Legend), and yet, in my opinion, he rarely gets a fair shake these days. People seem eager to take him down a peg, and critics seemed all-too-eager to bash his latest, EXODUS, before they'd seen it. There was a lot of early talk about the film's seemingly whitewashed cast, a controversy that continued up to and through the film's release. And Scott did himself and his movie no favors with his gruff, ill-advised response to the criticisms. Here's my thought: the casting in this film feels decidedly "off," and it is an issue that filmmakers need to seriously look at as they go into production on a movie. In 2014, we are more than ready for more diverse casts - in general, and notably in situations where the setting and characters are *supposed* to be non-white. It's strange and slightly troubling that all of the key Egyptian characters in EXODUS are played by white actors. That said, I also don't think that this is an issue that needs to completely dominate discussion of the film. Sadly, diversity (or lack thereof) is an issue that plagues many, many movies. I could start any number of reviews with a dissection of the film's casting from a diversity-perspective, but going down that road can often lead to an exercise in absurdity. Clearly, there are cases where casting crosses a line of inappropriateness. But where, exactly, is that line? EXODUS arguably toes it - but I also am not sure that it crosses it in egregious enough fashion to warrant true outrage, calls for boycotts, etc. I won't go into my exact reasons here. I'll simply say this: Scott and the rest of his team could have done better - they could have created this movie with more of an eye towards diverse and appropriate casting. But I also don't think that that these concerns need to negate all other discussion of the film. There's plenty more to talk about, and from here on out ... that's what I'll attempt to do. I'll just end with this: I suppose my original thought here was - as a huge fan of Scott, I'm not yet ready to burn him at the stake for some ill-advised decisions and comments. The man has done great films with diverse casts in the past. He helped bring to life one of the greatest female action heroes in cinematic history in Ellen Ripley. I think he can and will do better.

So ... EXODUS. In a year in which we've already seen one epic retelling of an apocalyptic bible story in Noah, Exodus arrives clearly ready to awe us with big, blockbuster visuals and a fantasy-epic take on the story of Moses. As compared to the trippy, surreal Noah, EXODUS is by far the more straightforward of the two films. The problem is it may be *too* straightforward. The film goes to some very dark thematic places, and poses a lot of tough questions about the nature of the old-testament God and the justness of the devastation he wreaks upon the Egyptians. But the film barrels forward at such a determined clip - trying to cover as much ground as possible in its 2 1/2 hour running time - that it rarely pauses to fully address the complicated questions of morality and faith it puts out there to us (Noah, in contrast, is almost fully *about* grappling with these questions).

In EXODUS, God takes the form of a wide-eyed ten-year-old British boy, who speaks to Moses in visions with an ominous, anger-laced, almost eerie sense of righteousness. This is a God who doesn't mince words, who shows no mercy, no quarter, and no pity, and who seems to spite the Egyptians for the fact that they worship other, false gods. In other versions of the Exodus story (i.e. The 10 Commandments), the Egyptians' faith in their gods seems affirmed by magical abilities (see: the famous scene, drawn from the bible, in which the Pharoah's magicians turn their staffs into serpents). But in EXODUS, the Egyptian gods are shown to be false: there are no magic powers, prayers to them prove ineffectual, and even the Egyptians seem less-than-confident in their potency. In fact, the Egyptians prefer science over faith - as the ten plagues devastate their people, Ramses II listens intently as a scientist provides logic-based explanations for the various afflictions befalling their people. Only when the plagues escalate - culminating with the killing of the Egyptians' first born - is there no denying that the plagues are in fact the works of a vengeful, all-powerful god.

In Noah, the devastation of the flood took on a new horror thanks to the visual force of modern f/x. The same is true here, as the plagues truly feel horrific and bloody and nightmarish. It's one thing to read vague bible verses listing out the plagues in sequential order. But to see rivers run red with blood, locusts devouring crops, total darkness, and firstborn children dying suddenly in the night ... well, it's a lot. Scott assaults us with the plagues, and does so without interjections in which Moses is shown asking Ramses to "let my people go." And so, the plagues come off as a merciless, genocidal punishment. Sporadically, Moses does question their ferocity.

But only sporadically, and soon enough, the questioning stops - Moses becomes God's loyal messenger, and the film seems to stop grappling with the concepts it had previously put out there. Ultimately, EXODUS comes across as thematically thin - we don't get a great sense of what drives Moses, what drives Ramses II, and what drives this version of God who is the film's most intriguing, yet elusive, character.

Christian Bale is excellent as Moses. Bale was born to do epic, and so he's a natural to be this most epic of characters. Bale gives a great sense of gravitas to numerous scenes - whether it's stopping an accusatory Ramses from lobbing off his sister's hand, to training the Hebrews to fight as an army, to commanding his people to have faith and cross the seemingly-uncrossable Red Sea. Moses is most intriguing though in the film's early going, when the script takes its time and effectively establishes the strong but slowly fraying relationship between Ramses and his adopted brother Moses. This entire early portion of the film is perhaps its strongest - early on, the movie takes its time and builds up the relationship and rivalry between Moses and Ramses, and this unique look at their relationship is compelling stuff. Later, however, the film leapfrogs through large portions of Moses' story. His relationship with his eventual wife, Tziporah, for example - Moses meets her while in exile, she gives him some furtive glances, and moments later they're exchanging vows and declaring their undying love for each other. Also rushed through is Moses' reaction to meeting his long-lost brother, Aaron - there is none, really. It's indicative of the movie's tendency to present something tantalizing but then brush over it without a real narrative or emotional payoff.

Joel Edgerton is getting the most flack from industry-watchers for being cast as Ramses II. He's a pale Australian playing an Egyptian pharaoh. However, that issue aside, he's great in the film. He plays Ramses II as a preening narcissist, a dude who broods whilst wrapped in a giant python. Edgerton has quickly become a favorite actor - I'd yet to see him play a villain, but he excels at it here, and is a co-MVP of the film along with Bale. Whitewashing aside though, the movie does have some oddball casting going on. Notable actors like the great Sigourney Weaver pop up (in her case, as Ramses' stone-faced mother), but barely make an impact. Same goes for Aaron Paul as Moses' right-hand-man Joshua, whose role is more extended cameo than anything of substance. Ben Mendelsohn is good as a corrupt Egyptian viceroy - a source of some rare humor in the film. But even Ben Kingsley seems adrift as an elder Hebrew, whose main role is to reveal to Moses his true origins.

This is, ultimately, the story of Bale's Moses vs. Edgerton's Ramses. And the movie does a nice job of setting both up for a battle of wills, culminating in a truly epic confrontation in the midst of the parting Red Sea. And Bale and Edgerton make for great adversaries - both act the hell out of their parts. The problem is that the bigger story around them gets glossed over -, and the larger themes raised by the story largely ignored - so that the film can focus primarily on its central brother vs. brother confrontation. It's a fine angle to take on the story. But this story, I think, demands something more. It's one of the defining stories about a vengeful God in the old testament. And Moses' role as God's messenger feels like it isn't explored to its fullest potential here. The fact is, the biblical story is in many ways a head-scratcher. And so part of the purpose, to me, of re-imagining this sort of story is to attempt to make sense of the narrative's lessons. How are these ancient stories relevant to us today? To reduce this story - with all of its complex questions of morality, faith, etc. - to a more standard war epic makes this movie feel less-than-necessary. The bible is allegory, and the allegory seems mostly lost here. And so, those looking for insight or meaning in this movie may not find much of it.

What they will find is a film that is truly eye-popping from a visual perspective. Scott is a master of creating rich, evocative visuals - and this movie looks amazing. In 3D, in particularly, the Egyptian landscapes come to life with towering structures, sweeping deserts, massive crowds filled with all manner of lavish costuming, and ornately-decorated palaces and halls that make Game of Thrones look like Days of Our Lives. This is old-school epicness, and the grandeur is often awe-inspiring. Scott also delivers big-time on the big f/x. The plagues are visceral and haunting. The precursor to the plague of Blood involves packs of rabid crocodiles chomping down on people and animals and leaving the water red with their remains - all conveyed in a fantastically-realized sequence. The parting of the Red Sea here feels truly, awesomely epic. Everything in EXODUS looks like a million bucks, and every penny of the film's budget is seemingly there on screen.

Scott is still the absolute best in the biz at epic visuals - even when burdened with problematic scripts, a Ridley Scott epic is always worth seeing on as big a screen as possible. Strangely, that's why a comparison between EXODUS and Prometheus may be warranted. Like Prometheus, EXODUS is mesmerizing to look at. But also like Prometheus, the film introduces *big* questions that it sort of shies away from as the movie progresses - leaving the film feeling oddly hollow.

Like I said, I am not about to count out Ridley Scott - either as a filmmaker or as a person worthy of admiration. EXODUS nails the visuals, but, like a few of other Scott's recent films, a combination of script and overall storytelling issues keeps the movie from achieving the iconic thematic resonance of classics like Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator. Still, Scott's visual imagination makes his movies must-sees for film fans - even when not firing on all cylinders, there is enough here to remind us why he's one of the best.

My Grade: B

ENDER'S GAME Is Entertaining But Bland Sci-Fi

ENDER'S GAME Review:

- Somehow, Ender's Game (the book) was something of a cultural blind spot for me. I'm not sure how or why, but I knew of it only by reputation before going into the movie adaptation. I'm always a little weary of movies like this suffering from compression problems that seem to so often go hand-in-hand with the adaptation process. And I think ENDER'S GAME does indeed suffer from the sort of jumpiness and rushed-feeling narrative that can plague this sort of endeavor. Overall, I found this to be a decently enjoyable film - and in some ways, it's an interesting departure from the kind of story that is typical of a big Hollywood franchise-starter type movie. But at the end of the day, the movie never 100% sold me on its basic premise, never fully made me buy into its world. And for sci-fi, that is an issue.

ENDER'S GAME tells the story of Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield), an outwardly meek but inwardly strong young boy who - in a world that is picking itself up and putting itself back together after a devastating alien invasion - is part of a corps of child-soldiers being trained to decimate earth's enemies. It's believed that only children possess the mental dexterity and intuition to properly wage the space battles of the future. However, not just anyone makes the final cut to actually become an active soldier. Children in the program are put through a rigorous series of tests and challenges (including being separated into teams that compete in various competitions), and only a select few make it past the various stages of training. From the start, the Big Brother-like leaders of the International Army have their eye on Ender. One, Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) believes Ender to be a messianic figure who will lead the army's fight against the bug-like alien Formecs. And so, the seemingly unassuming Ender moves up from rank to rank - leading his own team, gaining respect, and displaying an increasing amount of cold calculation, tough-but-fair leadership, and knack for military-style strategy on the simulated battlefield. Intrigue also begins to build around the true nature of the war between humans and Formecs, and the real agenda of Graff and his cohorts.

Before I get to Asa Butterfield, I'll say that one of the clear and geek-out worthy highlights of ENDER'S GAME is the fact that it's got a very game, very engaged-seeming Harrison Ford in one of the lead roles. It's a lot of fun to see Ford in this sort of sci-fi story again, and this is easily one of his more memorable performances in years. We're not talking Oscar-caliber or anything - this is sort of Ford doing the classic Ford gruff-but-lovable thing, at times in semi-cartoonish fashion. But it's a fun performance, and a lot of the movie's best moments arrive when Ford brings the gravitas. One other guy who I'll sort of lump in with Ford in the awesome category is Nonso Anozie, who you will probably recognize from Game of Thrones. Anozie plays one of Graff's top lieutenants, sort of the drill sergeant for Ender and the other kids. And he pretty much rules it, stealing many scenes as a badass hiding a heart of gold.

As for Butterfield, he's pretty good as Ender, but not mind-blowingly good. Some of that can probably be blamed on the script - Butterfield, as Ender, is forced to make a lot of character leaps that feel like a stretch. The jumpiness of the script demands that Ender evolve from quiet loner to charismatic leader of men in what feels like a very abbreviated timeframe. What Butterfield does bring to Ender is a slightly American Psycho-esque feeling of possible evil intent lurking beneath. I don't know if that's in the book at all, but Butterfield does a nice job of making you wonder if Ender is one of those "could save us all, could destroy us all" types. I suspect Butterfield has got the chops to make a great Ender, but it may be that the script is asking too much of him and sort of undermining his performance with its leaps.

Moises Arias is an actor who got on my radar this past summer with his scene-stealing comedic turn in The Kings of Summer. Here, he's the Biff to Ender's Marty McFly, the somewhat cartoonishly vile rival kid-soldier named Bonzo. I have mixed feelings about Bonzo in the movie. I like Arias a lot, but his presence sort of reinforces the movie's slightly silly nature. Arias makes Bonzo a memorable villain, but the performance is perhaps a little broad, especially as compared to Butterfield's more serious version of Ender.

Other excellent actors seem to do the most with what they can, but they're stuck with underwritten parts. This is true of Hailee Steinfeld's Petra. I wanted some more exploration of her character, but she is mostly there to be a friend / crush for Ender. I'm pretty confident that Steinfeld is going to really wow us with her acting in the year's ahead, but this, alas, is not a showpiece role for her. A similar go-nowhere role belongs to Viola Davis, who seems to be slumming it as an army therapist, who is mostly around to challenge Ford's views on Ender and the other kids. One more sort-of-pointless part for a big-name actor goes to Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham, a legendary soldier with a mysterious past. Rackham seems randomly thrown into the movie to be yet another Obi-Wan like figure for Ender, but he sadly adds next to nothing to the film.

I've been talking about the jumpiness of the film, and I'll elaborate a bit. Everything just feels very rushed and hyper-compressed, but in a frustrating, head-scratching sort of way. I don't know if writer/director Gavin Hood was forced to make last-minute cuts or something, but too often it feels like we're watching the Cliff's Notes of the book, and not a story that works on its own. Ender seems to leap from rank to rank, from station to station, from unit to unit. It almost becomes comical as the movie goes on. He goes from army scrub to supreme leader in what feels like half an hour. What this means is that the film sets up certain key plot elements - like the team competition among the kids (a sort of capture-the-flag in zero-gravity game) - as major events, but then seems to rush through them, making us wonder what all the build-up was for in the first place. It's funny, you'd think the movie would do more to denote the passage of time, but things play out in a very linear manner. So again, it feels like the entire movie plays out over a few days' time, when the implication is that we're seeing something that should feel longer, more drawn-out, more epic.

On the premise itself: again, I'm just not sure that the movie does a great job of selling it. It feels like only brief lip-service is paid to why, exactly, the world has decided that only kids can fight this war. And it's never really shown or reinforced why the experienced adults shouldn't be involved. As the movie presents things, it starts to feel a little absurd. Ender knows next to nothing about real war, and yet the grizzled vet Graff just stands by and lets him fight, without even giving advice or input on tactics? Visually, the movie doesn't do a great job of selling this at all. Okay, sure, I could see why the older Ford might have a tough time competing in the zero-gravity games. But when subsequent battles simply involve kids sitting at manned battlestations and pulling triggers when called upon - why not have experienced sharpshooters in those positions? Finally, without spoiling anything, the end of the movie feels to me like a major cheat. Perhaps it's explained better in the book, but here, the tactic used in the end-game (hmmm ...) of the final battle ... it feels like the sort of thing that *someone* would have thought of before Ender spontaneously decides to go in that direction. And it feels like the kind of thing that wouldn't exactly require a messianic kid to think of / carry out. Am I missing something? Either way, the big finale, to me, feels decidedly undercooked.

Overall, I still enjoyed ENDER'S GAME in that it's a relatively breezy, sci-fi-lite film with some cool visuals and fun performances. Certain scenes, taken individually, are a lot of fun as eye-candy set-pieces (all the zero-g stuff looks great, and these scenes are shot with immersive fluidity by Gavin Hood). And there are some interesting socio-political elements to the plot that I found intriguing. Still, I was left with a feeling that this could have been something more - a truly thought-provoking and disturbing sci-fi story - if only the adaptation was done with a bit more elegance and with a better eye towards making this work as a standalone story (and less as a calculated, all-things-to-all-people franchise-starter). As it stands, Ender's Game is worth checking out, but not the must-see it might have been.

My Grade: B

IRON MAN 3 Has Its Moments, But Not Quite Indestructible

IRON MAN 3 Review:

- How important is it that a movie subvert expectations and deliver a major twist? As I tried to process some of the curve balls that Iron Man 3 throws at its audience, I noted that some major movie critics were singing the film's praises in large part due to its element of surprise. On some level, I see their point. The big-budget superhero movie has become so paint-by-numbers, in so many ways, that it's undeniably refreshing when a major franchise film like this one dares to be different. But what is the twist without a purpose? Is a twist really that great if it's more of a "gotcha" and less of a true, jaw-on-the-floor "holy $%&#" moment? It's hard to talk more about this without walking into major spoiler territory. But I will say this: while I appreciate a film that isn't beholden to cannon and that takes pains to be original, I ultimately put more value - especially in a superhero epic - on high drama. The novelty alone of the big "WTF" moment isn't enough in and of itself.

That's not to say that IRON MAN 3 doesn't have its moments. In a way, I really admire that this is an auteur-style Marvel movie. Think about it: in the world of comics, Marvel began on the backs of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, and then eventually had a very defined in-house style for years to come. But then you think about the creative dynamos who came into the House of Ideas and created the most exciting stories and artwork, re-imagining classic characters under a unique lense. In general, some of the best modern superhero stories have come when a classic character is paired with a visionary creator or creators. In comics, we've been living in an auteur era for a few decades now, and we're still feeling the reverberations from the likes of guys like Frank Miller, Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Ed Brubaker, Warren Ellis (whose Extremis story forms some of the basis for this flm) and many others putting their own unique spin on the big superhero universes. So why not let the same thing happen in movies? Marvel's whole Phase 2 plan seems to be opening that door. Shane Black on Iron Man, James Gunn on Guardians of the Galaxy, Edgar Wright on Ant Man (and before that, of course, Joss Whedon on The Avengers). And so what we have here is most definitely "Shane Black's IRON MAN." And that's cool - sort of awesome, really. In some ways, Black and Iron Man are a natural fit. Black specializes in the kind of snappy dialogue and sardonic humor that was already a big part of the first two Iron Man films. Robert Downey Jr. is also, of course, a near-perfect vehicle for Black's style (see Kiss Kiss Bang Bang for further evidence). I like it. I like that we are now in a place where we can get not just the uber-generic superhero movie, but the film noir superhero movie, the urban crime superhero movie, the cosmic space epic superhero movie, the fantasy/magical superhero movie. Bring it on.

But maybe the problem here is that there's too much push and pull between a pure Shane Black Iron Man, and the big, franchise, post-Avengers event-movie Iron Man that fans expected and the corporate overlords at Disney likely felt comfortable with. What I mean is, Shane Black seems to want to do a stripped-down movie about Tony Stark. He finds an interesting angle - a Tony Stark who is now a hero, who has settled down with Pepper Potts, who is at a good place, on paper ... but in practice, he is still haunted by the sins of his past. This Tony Stark spends long hours alone tinkering in his workshop, suffers from anxiety attacks brought on by his battles with evil aliens in The Avengers, and who can't quite give his relationship with Pepper the attention it deserves.

I'm all for the stripped-down, Tony Stark-in-a-crime-caper version of Iron Man - especially in a third movie where the usual formula's gotten a bit tired. But this movie can't fully commit. The moments that lend themselves to Shane Black's trademark style tend to shine. When Tony Stark finds himself invading a hostile compound sans his armor - having to assemble makeshift weapons from common household items - it's an awesome moment. That sort of clever, slightly-subversive stuff ... Black nails. Same goes for the scenes between Tony and a young boy named Harley who helps him out in a bind, and becomes a sort of defacto kid sidekick. Scenes that could have been positively painful in the wrong hands are funny, smart, and surprisingly touching under Black's guidance. Even little moments - like Tony and Rhodey (formerly known as War Machine, now known as Iron Patriot) - bickering back and forth in the heat of combat ... this is the stuff that Shane Black knows and loves and 100% gets.

And I will give Black and the movie some major credit - Iron Man 3 has some of the best, big-time, major-league "superhero" moments we've yet seen in a Marvel film. When Stark has to fight a battle with only pieces of his Iron Man armor in place - one leg and one arm - the result is thrilling and badass. An aerial raid on the Stark compound is similarly breathtaking - a violent, explosive assault that makes you wonder how the hell Stark and co. will make it out alive. And the big finale - a notable weakness of the first two Iron Man films - is suitably lengthy and action-packed. So I don't want to imply that Iron Man 3 simply coasts on clever bits of dialogue ... it delivers the goods when it comes to epic action as well.

So what keeps this from being the classic that it could have been? There are several elements - some new, some inherited - that derail the film a bit. One is the Tony Stark / Pepper Potts relationship. Stark and Potts rarely seem like star-crossed lovers - and their bickering seems more like genuine mutual annoyance and less like playful sparring. What this means is that when Pepper inevitably becomes the damsel in distress, we as an audience don't feel much sense of real danger or urgency. In fact, in a climactic moment when Pepper seems potentially dead and gone, Tony barely seems to bat an eye, and continues wise-cracking with barely a moment's pause. I do also slightly blame Paltrow. When she has her big moment in which she gets to turn the tables and kick some ass, there's barely a hint of excitement in her eyes. When Pepper kicks ass, it should have been the big money shot of the whole film - and it's filmed in a way that practically invites us to stop and applaud. But there was no applause in the theater I was in. Paltrow's line-reading of "wow, that was violent" (or something to that effect) came off less like the clever musings of an empowered woman of action, and more like the resigned observation of a disapproving mother. Meanwhile, there's an attempt at some forced tension between Pepper and Tony with the introduction of a scientist played by Rebecca Hall, who Tony once had a one-night-stand with years earlier. Not only is Pepper's instant "I hate you" reaction pretty contrived, but Hall's character is pretty problematic from the start. Keeping track of which side she's on (let alone her motivations for switching sides) is a chore. I don't blame Hall - it's just an element of the script that is given short shrift. It's probably no coincidence that this element - the one that feels the most pulled from the superhero cliche-book - is also the one that Black seems least interested in really developing.

Paltrow has rarely been a standout in these films, and perhaps she was a bit miscast from the get-go. I feel similarly about Don Cheadle as Rhodey. He just doesn't have the right stuff for the role - I don't buy him as a badass soldier. He seems like he'd rather be in a boardroom than out kicking ass for his country. Cheadle is featured in some great set-piece action scenes, but they're more notable for the choreography than for anything he really brings to the table. He's a great actor in general, no question. But an action hero? Iron Patriot? Not so much.

The second problematic element of the movie is, well, the plot. Earlier I mentioned all of the cool individual scenes in the film - the stuff with Tony and young Harley, the cool banter, the big action. But it all feels tied together on the loosest of threads. I mean that from a pure narrative standpoint, and also from a thematic standpoint. Guy Pierce plays Aldrich Killian, a scientist with a screw-loose and a mad-on for Tony Stark. Pierce is one of my favorite actors, and he makes the most of what he's given. But the fact is, Killian as presented here is a pretty weak villain. And as his role in the movie becomes more prominent, I kept waiting for him to take on a grandiosity worthy of Iron Man. But everything about his character feels half-baked, from his stalker-crush on Pepper Potts to his been-there, done-that evil plan to profit from a manufactured war on terror (heck, his plan is practically identical to Jared Harris' scheme in RDJ's last Sherlock Holmes movie). It's even more frustrating in that Killian's status as Big Bad comes at the expense of the initially-promising Mandarin, played with theatrical verve and presence by the great Ben Kingsley. I won't say what happens to the Mandarin that sort of takes him off the board, but I don't really get the point. To me, it comes back to: what is the movie saying? What is the theme? Iron Man vs. an Osama Bin Laden-esque terrorist (The Mandarin) - I would have liked to have seen that. Iron Man tends to have a political slant as a character, so there's rich thematic territory to explore there. And indeed, in the movie's first half, there is some interesting mini-satire as we see The Iron Patriot's futile quest to track the Mandarin. But once Killian usurps the Mandarin, the movie becomes about something else entirely - it becomes something that Black probably wanted all along - a movie about Tony Stark fighting his past. But if that's what the movie is about, then why the bait and switch? Why include the Mandarin at all? To me, the net result was a movie that initially feels big and high stakes, but that ends up feeling sort of small and inconsequential. The subversion of expectations works against the movie's narrative momentum, in my opinion. And Guy Pierce's Killian - while potentially perfect as a sleazy, unhinged henchman - feels way too lightweight to be the movie's main antagonist.

And maybe that's why Iron Man 3 entertained me throughout, yet left me with a slightly sour aftertaste. Deep in this movie's DNA, there is a huge action epic waiting to come out. And perhaps a straight crime caper Iron Man - the kind that Shane Black would have made if left completely on his own -would have been awesome and badass in its own right. But this movie is never confident enough to go all-out and just *be* that version of Iron Man. The fact that it had to go to all the trouble of messing with expectations and playing a bait-and-switch with the audience is, I think, proof of that.

It's a small thing, I guess, but even the post-credits scene annoyed me. I won't spoil it, but it's ultimately just a cutesy, jokey little epilogue, and doesn't really leave you with anything too meaty to chew on. I was dying for something awesome to get me pumped for Marvel Phase 2, and what I got was a comedy bit. It added to the feeling that this movie was clever and funny, yes, but ultimately perhaps too much so for its own good. And there's no denying that this perception was colored by The Avengers. Joss Whedon was clever and funny, but he also took un-ironic joy in playing in Lee and Kirby's sandbox. There's not much of that joy that shines through here. I'm not saying that this had to be a "Marvel" movie in the traditional sense. But there has to be a love of the world and characters as a starting point for any genre-subversion or deconstruction to really work. There's a temptation to say "suck it fanboys, this is Shane Black's Iron Man and it's different and awesome." But remember what I was saying before about how comics evolved when auteur creators put their stamp on classic characters? Well, for every Frank Miller Daredevil or Grant Morrison Superman, there are examples where the blend of creator sensibility and character just doesn't 100% mix. Auterism alone does not a great story make.

I'll remember many of the coolest scenes and moments in Iron Man 3 as some of my favorites in the Marvel movie canon to date. The movie gets the little moments right in a way that so many superhero flicks do not. But the broad strokes and big-picture narrative don't fare as well. So I think my lasting impression of the film is one that tried to be many things to many people, and ended up as sort of "meh" because of it. The first two Iron Man movies had their flaws, but they coasted by on RDJ's charisma and the general feeling that we were watching something very exciting happen - the birth of the Marvel movie universe. Now, the universe is here, the Avengers have assembled, and this return to the less-exciting cast of characters in the Iron Man-verse marks a drop in momentum from last summer's epic high.

My Grade: B