Iron Man 3

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) — Given that his first appearance in print dates back to 1963, the comics-based superhero of “Iron Man 3” (Disney) may be said to be turning 50 this year. Perhaps a mid-life crisis is to blame for the lack of freshness and charm that mark the latest addition to this blockbuster screen franchise — or perhaps other factors are at fault.

Certainly, the personal advancement that could previously be traced in Iron Man’s alter ego and inventor — billionaire Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) — has in some respects stalled.

As opening flashbacks to 1999 remind us, Stark was once a booze-swilling, commitment-free playboy. Then his assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) won his heart. Yet, while their relationship, cemented in the first sequel, continues to be exclusive, the two are now shown to be living together without benefit of City Hall or clergy.

The latest strain on their yet-to-be-hallowed union arises when Stark’s reckless battle with a mysterious, bin Laden-like terrorist known as the Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) endangers Pepper’s life and sends Stark himself into temporary exile.The anxiety attacks Stark begins to experience while on the lam — partly inspired by events recounted in “Marvels’ The Avengers” (2012) — leave him questioning his gadgetry-dependent persona as Iron Man. This introduces one of the few substantive themes that director Shane Black’s film — which he co-wrote with Drew Pearce — tarries to explore. Namely, the range of moral and immoral uses to which advanced technology can be turned.

Similar ethical ambiguities can be seen at work in the lives of two promising scientists gone bad: Stark’s long-ago girlfriend of one night’s standing, biochemist Maya Hansen (Rebecca Hall), and lab-nerd-turned-ladies’-man Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce). These two, it turns out, are somehow in cahoots with the Mandarin, though just what they’re up to is not initially made clear.

Like the touching friendship Stark strikes up with a bullied schoolboy (Ty Simpkins) while on the run, the brief examination of serious issues his newly developed sense of panic initiates gets muscled out of view by serial gun-play and explosions.

So where does it all lead? Why, to the highly flammable deck of an oil tanker, of course.

The film contains much action violence with some gore, cohabitation, an off-screen non-marital sexual encounter, at least one use of profanity and occasional crude and crass language.

 

Promised Land

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) — “Promised Land” (Focus) is a reasonably entertaining message movie about the environmental dangers of drilling for natural gas using a method called hydraulic fracturing — or fracking for short.

To some, fracking represents an easy path to energy independence for the United States — and to vast wealth for those landowners lucky enough to have the proper deposits lurking below their soil. To others, it threatens the ruin of whole swaths of previously healthy countryside through the inevitable contamination of water sources.

On screen, the cards are indisputably stacked in favour of the latter view.

Steve Butler (Matt Damon) and Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand) are a duo of energy company executives out to convince down-on-their-luck farmers in a rural Midwestern town to sell their land to the corporation. Their offer includes a percentage of future profits they glibly promise will transform the townsfolk’s lives.

When the pair encounters opposition from Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook), a retired science professor, and from personable environmentalist Dustin Noble (John Krasinski), who launches a fervent campaign to thwart them, Steve begins to have second thoughts. His change of heart is also driven by his attraction to Alice (Rosemarie DeWitt), a local teacher whose regard Steve comes to value.

A gifted cast and smooth direction by Gus Van Sant help to disguise some obvious flaws. These include the homespun, all-too-pat wisdom spouted by Frank — though consummate pro Holbrook, to give him credit, almost pulls these moments off — as well as a late-reel plot twist that’s nothing short of paranoid.

Fundamentally, though, there’s no escaping the simplistic perspective and unmistakable anti-business bias underlying Damon and Krasinski’s script. Movie-goers committed to scriptural values will, of course, appreciate the prioritising of stewardship over greed. But the proper balance between the two may appear quite different when viewed from a failing Iowa homestead rather than a Malibu beach house.

The film contains about a dozen uses of profanity and much rough and crude language.

 

This Is 40

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

NEW YORK (CNS) — The supposed miseries of middle age — and of marriage — are showcased in the shrill comedy “This Is 40” (Universal). In updating the lives of secondary characters from his 2007 film “Knocked Up,” writer and director Judd Apatow shows them struggling to be true to their mutual commitment.

But the rewards of such fidelity seem purely theoretical compared to their very real — and constant — irritation with each other as well as their shared sense of entrapment.

As their landmark 40th birthdays loom, small record label owner Pete (Paul Rudd) and his wife, Debbie (Leslie Mann — Apatow’s real-life spouse), share a large suburban house in Los Angeles and an abundance of problems. For starters, he’s concealing the woeful state of their finances from her while she’s trying to discover who has been stealing from the till at the dress shop she runs.

Each also has parental difficulties: Pete’s father, Larry (Albert Brooks), is a lazy moocher who uses Jewish guilt to compel Pete to lend him large sums of cash. Debbie’s prosperous, WASP-y dad Oliver (John Lithgow) is emotionally distant, and the two are semi-estranged.

Pete spends hours in the bathroom trying to get away not only from Debbie but from their two girls, Sadie and Charlotte (they’re played, respectively, by Apatow’s daughters Maude and Iris). Debbie’s floundering attempts to foster family togetherness by restricting Sadie’s obsessive use of electronic gadgets are met with howls of protest from the teen.

Not surprisingly, Pete and Debbie’s troubles extend to the bedroom. Their conflicts in that quarter are treated with excessive explicitness, beginning with the opening scene.

A more unusual moral concern arises from Pete and Debbie’s interaction with the mother of one of Sadie’s schoolmates. They behave abusively toward her and her son, and then lie about it when called to a conference in the principal’s office. Though this is all played for laughs, their successful deceit leaves them with a common sense of victory that temporarily repairs their frayed ties.

In keeping with the pro-life sentiment underlying “Knocked Up,” a sub-plot involving an unexpected pregnancy laudably excises the option of abortion. It’s at least implicitly made clear that such a choice is not even considered by the characters involved.

But, as in the earlier movie, this positive, if unspoken, message is a brief glint of gold amid a mire of degraded views, obscene language and crass humour.

The film contains strong sexual content, including graphic scenes of marital lovemaking and of aberrant sexual activity, upper female and obscured rear nudity, drug use, about a dozen instances of profanity, relentless rough and crude language, some scatological humour and a couple of obscene gestures.