Man on Film: Iron Man 3

Perhaps it was a blessing that the resounding opinions I had heard about Iron Man 3 were negative ones because I was not nearly as disappointed in the third film in the series as I had anticipated being. Hearing from everyone you know who saw a film that it sucked will do that. Of course, when I first found out that Shane Black had been brought in to write (credited with Drew Pearce) and direct this one, I was excited, so there was only so much tempering of expectations possible by way of negative chatter.

While Iron Man 3 was far from a perfect event flick, it actually achieved a better narrative balance than the previous two installments. It's easy to gloss over these points, but the first two Iron Man flicks sputtered toward their respective conclusions, and the villains were far from well-drawn. Their pacing was sorely lacking, and each narrative lacked a cohesion and direction that inhibited the ultimate success of each film. Iron Man 3 may have been somewhat lacking a bit in the huge action set pieces, but what was lacking in the area of genre-prescribed bombast was compensated for in pathos, snappy dialogue, and a more personally affective narrative. Tony Stark's struggles were at least as much internal and psychological as they were conflict put upon him by antagonists, and Black's entrant into the franchise deftly shifted back and forth between the two, maintaining strong pacing that walked the fine line between being deliberate enough to still tell a nuanced, personal story and moving along just quickly enough to not give cause to look at your watch.

Of the films in the series, this one gave Robert Downey, Jr. the most room to stretch out and exercise his deft acting chops. Tony Stark is run through an emotional gamut in this film, and we get to see Downey knock it all the fuck out of the park. The audience is also treated to a film in which Tony Stark is rarely actually in the suit as Iron Man, a problem for some but frankly those scenes are less compelling to me than if we are treated to Stark himself having to work through problems, at least in part because the Iron Man action scenes are so inorganic. Gwyneth Paltrow, Rebecca Hall, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, and especially Ben Kingsley are all serviceable at the very least, but Iron Man 3 is the Robert Downey, Jr. show, make no mistake of that. Thanks to Black's flair for writing magnetic but struggling action heroes, we get to see Tony Stark and Robert Downey, Jr. at their best in the series.

Man on Film: Everything Must Go

From the mounting queue of entries that need to be tended to, it probably makes the most sense to get this one out there, as it keeps with the theme of alcoholism ever-present in the subject of yesterday's entry on Charles Bukowski's Post Office.

Not to be confused with the superb Manic Street Preachers album of the same name (featuring this song),

Everything Must Go is an adaptation of a Raymond Carver short story ("Why Don't You Dance?") from the same collection that the Robert Altman masterpiece Short Cuts was culled from. Adapted and directed by first-timer Dan Rush, Everything Must Go stars Will Ferrell as Nick Halsey, a relapsed alcoholic whose drunken transgression set off a bender that led to being fired from his job and left by his wife. After getting fired, he heads home to find his belongings in the yard and locks having been changed. With his company car then repossessed, Nick finds himself essentially left with nowhere to go but his yard with the remnants of his old life sit displaced.

As the days pass, Nick finds friendship with a new neighbor from across the street and a boy whose mother is a home-care nurse down the block. The neighbor, Samantha, is played by the outstanding Rebecca Hall, who imbues her pregnant character with a pitch-perfect dose of vulnerability, compassion, and loneliness. Hall is riding an impressive streak of standout performances in The Town, Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974, and Frost/Nixon, and this one joins those ranks.


Christopher Jordan Wallace (son of The Notorious B.I.G. and Faith Evans) stands tall here as well. Ferrell plays well off of him, and their relationship definitely provides the film with its best humor.


As for Ferrell, he may not have the most dramatic range in the world, but for the most part he handles the role well. There are a few points in the film where his performance sticks out as being slightly off key, but there are no more than a handful.


As a whole, the film reminds me much of Steve Buscemi's feature-length directorial debut, 1996's Trees Lounge, a film I rather liked at the time. It definitely has the feel of a mid-90s indie dramedy, which one can take for whatever it is worth. There was a time when it seemed like I only watched films like Trees Lounge or The Low Life, so this may have struck a note with me that it would have missed with others.

If the movie does have a failing, it is that it woefully underutilizes Michael Pena's skills. While his role is more significant than Glenn Howerton's, there isn't much that he gets to do with it. Where Howerton's role sees him playing the prick former boss with aplomb, Pena is left to play what could be loosely termed a wet blanket. It is no fault of Pena's that the character is relatively uninteresting, but the conventional nature of his character's presence is disappointing given who's in it.

Without having read the short story that has been adapted here, I cannot speak to its comparison to the source material, but Everything Must Go is an enjoyable if slightly forgettable way to spend 97 minutes.

The Queue Continuum: The Red Riding Trilogy

There is a lot of great stuff that is relatively new out there on the Netflix Instant Queue, but I don't know that much of it is as good as the Red Riding Trilogy.

Based on British author David Peace's Red Riding Quartet (1977 was skipped for the purpose of the adaptations), the trilogy was produced by Channel 4 but released theatrically stateside last spring. The three parts are somewhat different, as each is directed by a different director and features a different protagonist.  


Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1974 is directed by Julian Jarrold, who has recently helmed Kinky Boots, Becoming Jane, and Brideshead Revisited and stars Andrew Garfield, Rebecca Hall, and Sean Bean. Soon-to-be superstar Andrew Garfield plays Eddie Dunford, a Yorkshire Post crime beat reporter who begins to look into a series of murders of young girls. As one of the girls turns up on the construction site of John Dawson's (Bean) future shopping mall, Eddie begins to look into Dawson as well. The deeper the investigation goes, the more dangerous things get for Eddie, and it soon becomes clear that there is a level of corruption within the local government and law enforcement communities of which he is just scratching the surface. Eddie continues down the rabbit hole, and it is a stark voyage that gets bleaker at every turn. 

Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980 is a James Marsh joint (director of Wisconsin Death Trip and Man on Wire) and features Paddy Considine as the lead investigator looking into the Yorkshire Ripper case. He is met with resistance by the corrupt West Yorkshire police department that he had previously externally investigated. Well, 'met with resistance' is putting it far too lightly. If you thought the first part was disturbing, wait until you dive into this one. As the level of corruption is shown to be more and more pervasive, hope diminishes to minuscule portions.

By the time Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1983 opens, the only safe bet is that it will be harrowing. With the auteur of Shopgirl and Hilary and Jackie having taken the reigns, the transition is seamless. Returning to the case covered in the first part, we follow a remorseful detective Maurice Jobson (David Morrissey) and a beleaguered lawyer (Mark Addy of The Full Monty and CBS' Still Standing) who is implored to field an appeal by the mother of the simpleton pegged for the murders of the young girls from the first film.

All three parts work exceptionally well by themselves, but as a whole they are fantastic. There is corruption at every turn with those entrusted to protect being the most dangerous. Perhaps swallowing such a grotesque level of pervasive depravity is unreasonable, but it is probably naive to believe that those in power aren't simply looking out for their best interests. The Red Riding Quartet was a dramatized and fictionalized account of actual events. Obviously, liberties were taken. In the end though, the verity of the story being told isn't the issue. Are the films good? Oh, hell yes.

Weird Post-Script: I somehow neglected to mention this despite the fact that I had intended to, but holy shit is the Yorkshire accent hard to muddle through. I know for a fact that one of my friends got about two minutes into the first one before re-starting with subtitles. Apparently that did not help all that much, as the vernacular used in 1973 West Yorkshire may as well be Greek. Do not be deterred. The fact that you may not understand everything that is happening will not negate the power of the films at all.