Friday 20 November 2015

The Andromeda Strain (1971)


Following a group of scientists as they discover and then try to understand a terrible disease may not sound terribly exciting; but in taking its lead from Bullitt (1968), The Andromeda Strain is far more concerned with the process the researchers go through, and as such is very compelling.

Wednesday 18 November 2015

Iron Man 2 (2010)


These were my thoughts when I first saw Iron Man 2:

While watching the beginning of the second film, actually I might say up to about 45 min or something, I thought it was a bit flat. I thought that this could be because for a lot of these hero-style films, the first film is usually more interesting as the main character discovers their super-powers. Mmmm. I was about to back up that statement with examples, but could only come up with Spider-man really. X-2 better than X-men, Superman 2, Hellboy II!
Anyway, I thought the first 45 min were a bit aimless, until Sam L Jackson showed up and told Tony to stop arse-ing about. At that point the film developed some plot and became a whole lot more enjoyable, though I was confused with why they replaced Terrence Howard with Don Cheadle as Rhodey. Jon Favreau has done a great job with these two films, including a massive cameo for himself (actually I think it goes beyond a cameo).
Though it is undoubtedly the weakest Iron Man film, seeing it again over four years later with far more MCU movie experience under my utility belt, I found more to interest me. Perhaps, initially I had been a little bit dismissive of it.

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