A whole bunch of stuff

I saw a fair amount of stuff around/during a recent international trip. I'm sure at one point I had a coherent narrative about all of them, but I'm too lazy to write more than a few disjointed notes.

Iron Man 3

At this point I just enjoy hanging out with the Tony Stark character so much that the action is actually something I just sort of put up with while waiting to get back to the smack talk. The film dealt with the problem of why the other Avengers/S.H.I.E.L.D. never show up to help out by just ignoring their existence, which I guess is the best possible approach. As a result this ended up being the most standalone Marvel Film since the first Iron Man. In fact writer/director Shane Black kind of turned it into a superhero equivalent of an 80's cop film, with one of the few non-annoying kid characters in film history, and Jarvis the computer, playing the role of Downey's partners.  The film also has some nice moments of humor (particularly how it treats the Mandarin character and a great cameo by Max from Happy Endings (RIP)) and manages to keep the tone relatively light until the obligatory massive final fight. I don't know if this is the best Marvel film, but it was generally entertaining.

Star Trek Into Darkness

I actually saw this twice. While Into Darkness is a nice continuation of its predecessor, it spends a little to much time referencing the earlier incarnations of the series. The last half an hour or so in particular gets really goofy as they pretty much take the ending of Star trek 2: Wrath of Khan and just flip the roles of the two main characters, culminating in a moment that had me laughing out loud in the theater (both times).  I think the comedy in this case was completely intentional (I hope), but I think the makers of these films have played out just re-imagining the original films and need to start taking the characters in a new direction.  Otherwise the series runs the risk of becoming a series of in jokes and fan-service, as opposed to something bigger.

Also, the ending is essentially the same as Iron Man 3 which was interesting (or not).

6 fast 6 furious

I found the whole Fast and Furious franchise (which in my case consisted of just watching the first film) to be completely completely tedious until Fast 5. In that film the filmmakers decided to embrace the inherent cheesiness of the premise and turned out the closest thing to an over the top 80’s action comedy (in a good way) that I’d seen in a while.  6 fast continues in this tradition, but with less narrative coherence (something I never thought I’d attribute to Fast 5).  Other than The Rock, the acting is really bad and the two leads (Vin Diesal and Paul Walker) actually seem to think they’re participating in a real bad-ass action film.  The fact that they take it so seriously of course adds to my enjoyment (and also explains my love for One Tree Hill).

Like any great unintentionally comedic movie,  the intentionally comedic elements of the film (meant to be embodied by the Minstrel Show that is Tyrese and Ludacris) are laugh free, and in this case borderline racist. All the fun comes from the over the top action (At one point Vin knocks out three bad guys with a flying head butt), groan inducing dialogue (too many to mention) and the constant effort to make it look like Vin Diesel is as tall as The Rock.  The film is definitely too long, but I still laughed out loud a lot, which is more than I can say for a lot of mainstream comedies.

This is the End

I don't have a lot to say about this other than its actually pretty funny, if a bit long and maybe a little too insular. The actors have a nice chemistry, and it made me really want a sequel to the criminally underrated Your Highness. I'm not sure how broad the appeal of something like this is, but its certainly worth seeing if you enjoy the idea of James Fanco, Seth Rogen, Danny McBride and company basically just spending $20 million to sit around and talk trash to each other for a couple of hours.