The Velvet Café

Well, that wasn’t your best pick of a movie, was it?”

“What do you mean? I thought Iron Man 3 was quite alright. Not something I’ll brood on for the rest of my life, but you know… A couple of hours of entertainment. Stuff that blows up. Flying metal suits all over the place. How often do you see that? Loosen up a bit!”

“But you don’t even like superhero movies! Too much cheese and clichés, too little brains. Just the same old exercise, flying around in the air showing off different powers.  Boooring. And there’s never any real danger. You always know that in the end you’ll be back at where you started.”

“I loved The Avengers. I loved The Dark Knight Rises. You’re fooling yourself with that talk about not liking superhero movies.”

“Ok, let’s not argue more about that. But admit it: this one is far from any of those movies you mention. Robert Downey JR is doing his thing with snark and attitude, but without Whedon’s wittiness, it’s nowhere near as sparkling fun as The Avengers. And it’s not dark, gripping or scary either. The suit that Iron Man wears is probably heavier, but as a drama, it’s very lightweight compared to The Dark Knight Rises. It’s somewhere in between, and I don’t think that’s a good place to be in.”

“You are in a whiny mood, aren’t you? There were things you liked about it! Remember Ben Kingsley? Wasn’t that a great little twist? I never saw him like that kind of actor.”

“He was the best. Totally stole the show.”

“And the boy that helped Iron Man out when he was weak? You can never resist those cute little side stories”.

“Yeah, but why is it that it always have to be boys?”

“You know the answer to that already. At least that girl had the suit for a while and seemed to be doing well in it. That’s a bit of progression, isn’t it?”

“Anyway, I think there are a lot of movies in the theatres right now that are a great deal better.”

“And many that are much worse.”

“Yeah. I guess I picked it partly because I wanted to go to the movies and at was late in the night and I figured I stood a better chance to last through this one than I would have watching The Turin Horse.”

“Well you succeeded, didn’t you?”

“Just barely, to be honest. It dragged on for a bit, didn’t it? I had to pinch my arms a lot. You’d expect more from this type of film”.

“Pfft. If you go to a screening that starts at 9.30 PM, you’ve got yourself to blame. Don’t put that on the movie”.

“Is there anything more you’d like to say before we finish this discussion?”

“One more thing. It’s annoying that the theatre does everything in their power to make the audience miss out the extra scene after the text credits. They lightened up the entire room so almost everyone left. I’m not completely opposed to those extra scenes, but if you have them I think you owe it to the audience to try to keep them seated. Even if you know about the scene, it takes away a bit of the experience to see it with the lights on and people on their way to leave standing in your way”.

“On that we agree. Let’s see if we can agree about the rating as well”.

“I have an idea.”

Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, US 2013) My rating: 3/5