Iron Man

New movie review from The Movie Snob

Iron Man (B+). I'll have to defer to Comic Book Guy as to how faithful this flick is to the comics from which it sprang, but it stands on its own merits as a solid superhero movie. Robert Downey, Jr. (Less Than Zero) stars as Tony Stark, a zillionaire inventor who made his pile in the weapons biz. After some unpleasantness in Afghanistan, he comes home with a bad ticker and a worse conscience. (How he built a pacemaker-sized nuclear reactor in a cave in Afghanistan is a great mystery to me.) To expiate his sins as a munitions maker, he creates a fabulous metallic suit that gives him, basically, super powers. Good action, good performance by Downey. Gwyneth Paltrow (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) is wasted as Stark's girl Friday, the improbably named Pepper Potts. Jeff Bridges (Starman) plays an oily (and bald) executive in Stark's weapons company, but I just kept thinking, "Hey, that's Jeff Bridges in a superhero movie!" every time I saw him. There's a tiny little extra scene after all the credits, but it meant nothing to me. Comic book fans would probably get more out of it. A very good summertime flick.

Oh, and it just happens to be the 1000th movie I've ever seen. I'm sure it sounds obsessive for me to know that, but my sister and I have had a contest for years to see who could see more movies, so we both keep track. Okay, she just tells me when she sees a movie; I do all the keeping track. Anyway, I'm totally kicking her butt, since she's seen only about 950 movies in her life. But I'm about 9 years older than she is, so I guess she's doing all right.