So...Ben Affleck is Batman (and other interesting casting choices)

In an interesting casting move, the much anticipated followup to this year's Man of Steel movie, tentatively titled "Batman vs. Superman" will feature Ben Affleck playing Bruce Wayne/Batman along side Henry Cavill's Clark Kent/Superman.

Yes, that Ben Affleck.

And the Internet was torn asunder....

Coming as no surprise, the blogosphere in particular and most of the Internet in general has come out against Affleck donning the cape and cowl. I haven't seen many decent reasons why. Most of them just say "he sucks" or "did you even see Daredevil?". The trouble with that is, "he sucks" isn't anything I can work with and the whole Daredevil fiasco was a decade ago, a different studio and a different property altogether.

I'm not going to lie; my initial reaction was shock. I mean, Ben Affleck? He wasn't even on the radar as far as I knew. I had read that Warner Brothers was looking for a 40+ actor to play the role as a grizzled veteran of crime fighting. Affleck is 41, so he fits that bill. And while he hasn't won any accolades for his acting, he is coming off a best director Oscar win for Argo (2012), after directing the much applauded and critically acclaimed The Town (2010) two years earlier. 

But Batman? Really??? How can this be a good thing? Clearly, this is the worst casting mistake since....

Well, hang on a second.

Movie casting is a tricky business. Even in the world of comic book movies, casting an actor to play what is essentially a cultural icon can be a daunting task. This isn't the first time someone's been cast to put on a costume and fight crime and have the general public go into a frenzy over the choice. 

Let's do a list, shall we? Here's my Top 4 comic book casting choices that were initially met with scorn but turned out to be pretty great. 

4. Hugh Jackman - Wolverine
It's hard to imagine, but when the first X-Men (2000) movie came out, unofficially ushering in the modern era of great comic book films, Hugh Jackman was a relatively unknown Aussie stage actor known for his singing and dancing. Folks who had seen him didn't think he could bring the intensity and grittiness to the anti-hero Logan that was needed to really define the character. They couldn't have been more wrong. He's now appeared as the Wolverine a record 6 times and is about to put in his 7th appearance in X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014). 

3. Christopher Reeve - Clark Kent/Superman
Similar to Jackman, Christopher Reeve was a virtual unknown, having only appeared in a few tv soaps leading up to being cast as the most iconic superhero of all time. The short list of actors that the studio wanted for the role reads like a who's who of Hollywood at the time. Names like Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Nick Nolte and Burt Reynolds were being bandied about. When Reeve was cast, he was such an unknown that he only received 3rd billing for the film (Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman getting spots one and two, respectively)! Now, find anyone born in the late 60s or through the 70s and ask them who they most associate with the role of Superman. Every single person will tell you it's Reeve. He's my generation's Superman.

2. Michael Keaton - Bruce Wayne/Batman
Ah, Mr. Mom as Batman. To say fans were outraged by this choice is putting it mildly. The backlash from this news was absolutely staggering, especially considering it predates the Internet. "Michael Keaton? Isn't he just, like, funny and stuff? He'll make a terrible Batman!". No, dear genre fans. No he won't. Keaton's turn as the Caped Crusader is still, to this day, the favourite of a lot of fan boys and gals. His quirkiness as Wayne and his dead seriousness as the Dark Knight lent weight to the role that could have come across as campy and cartoony as Batman had so often been portrayed prior to this. You never got the sense Keaton was winking at the camera or not taking it seriously.

1. Heath Ledger - The Joker
If there's one thing I remember most clearly about the time that Ledger was announced as playing the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008), it's all the comments that were made about how some Aussie pretty boy was never going to be able to fill Jack Nicholson's shoes. The single greatest comic book villain turn (one of the single best villain portrayals period, really) and a posthumous best supporting acting Oscar later and nobody can imagine anyone nailing the role of the Clown Prince of Crime the way Ledger did. It truly is a shame that we won't be able to see more of him in the future.

To sum this all up, let me just say this to the shocked and outraged fans out there wailing about Affleck being Batman. I, like you, was shocked as well. I've gotten over it and you should too. At the very least, give the man a chance to get in there and show you what he's got. If he's terrible in the role, I'll jump on the bandwagon with everyone else and write Warner Brothers a sternly worded letter. If he's great, like the actors I've listed here turned out to be great...well then I expect there will be a lot of crow served on the Internet that day.

The Wolverine (2013) Review

This week, I refused to trim my sideburns, donned my favourite yellow spandex unitard and went across to the local cinema to check out The Wolverine (2013) starring Hugh Jackman and directed by James Mangold.

The story takes place some time after the events of X-Men: Last Stand (2006). Logan (Jackman) is a bearded, bedraggled man haunted by memories of his past love Jean Grey (Famke Janssen), living off of booze and little else up in the mountains somewhere. He's approached by a young Japanese woman who's job it is to bring him back to Japan where a soldier from WWII that Logan saved can pay his last respects and say goodbye. When Logan gets to Japan, hijinks promptly ensue as everything is not as it seems....

Wait. Actually, everything pretty much ends up being exactly as it seems. Well, the parts that make any kind of sense, anyway.

Jackman embodies the role of Logan/Wolverine seamlessly. He's one of those rare Hollywood actors who've become so synonymous with a single role, yet has managed to branch out and put together a fairly impressive body of work. Instead of turning his nose up and outgrowing the role that made him famous, Jackman returns again and again, paying homage to the character that made him a household name.

Unfortunately, he's saddled with one of the worst films I've seen this year. And that's saying a lot.

The plot, if you could call it that, has two major points. The first focuses on the granddaughter of the tech industry giant that Logan saved back in WWII. She stands to inherit the company once her grandfather dies, much to her father's chagrin. Thugs are hired by her evil dad to take her out. Logan decides it's his job to protect her. They spend two days together and fall in love with each other. His love for this Japanese girl whom he met two days ago is enough for him to let go of the years long love he's had for Jean.

Yep. You read that right. TWO DAYS.

I have to mention something about this love story. It's awful. The reason? The complete and utter lack of chemistry between Jackman's Logan character and "Mariko" played by Tao Okamoto. The last time there was a couple on screen that had this poor of chemistry, those movies had "Clones" and "Sith" in their titles. I never, not for one single second, bought these two as a legitimate couple. I certainly didn't understand Logan letting go of Jean for a woman he's just met and only shared a single night in bed with.

The other half of the plot is so convoluted I don't even know where to begin. The aging tech giant Yashida (Haruhiko Yamanouchi) was once stationed in Nagasaki during WWII. Logan was being held as a POW there. When the A-bomb starts to drop, Logan saves Yashida for no discernible reason. Years later, Yashida is dying of cancer and wants Logan to give him his power of healing in exchange for a normal life and a proper, ordinary death. Logan refuses and the old man "dies".

The old man's oncologist, a horrible, misused villain called The Viper played by Svetlana Khodchenkova, somehow robs Logan of his healing ability but doesn't pass it along to the old man. Meanwhile, the ex-boyfriend of the granddaughter Logan is protecting/loving is a ninja (totally not making this up) and has a huge gang of ninjas (still not making this up) that start out helping Logan, then wind up hunting and hurting Logan, then end up helping Logan again.

How do you bring that all together, you ask? Spoiler alert (which you will not need if you see the film), grandfather is still alive and behind the whole thing.

Sigh.

The action beats can't even save this movie. From the physics defying, ridiculous train top scene to the horribly choreographed hand-to-hand fight scenes that include the often misused and completely unnecessary extreme close-up, shaky handheld camera shots to the final, climactic fight between all the protagonists and all the antagonists, the action is just dreadful. Maybe I missed a memo somewhere, but I thought this guy was supposed to be a comic book super hero.

I can't fathom why this movie is reviewing so well, but I can understand why domestic moviegoers are staying away. While Jackman is great, everybody else is just appalling. Some of the dialogue is downright laughable in it's clunkiness and corniness. There isn't a single "reveal" in this movie that will surprise you in the least. It's just bad all the way through and easily the most boring movie I've watched this year.

1 out of 5 stars.

The Wolverine (2013)

Reviewed by The Bitter Critic on Aug 07 2013
Rating: 1

Pacific Rim (2013) Review

This week, I went to the cinema to check out Pacific Rim (2013) starring Charlie Hunnam and directed by Guillermo del Toro.

The story is straight forward and covered fairly well in the trailers. Giant monsters known as Kaiju (Japanese for "strange beast") have been attacking humankind from the depths of the Pacific Ocean where they've opened a portal from another dimension. Humankind's response is to build giant robot warriors called Jaegers (German for "hunters") to battle the Kaiju. Each Jaegar must be piloted by two people who enter something called "the drift", which allows them to share memories and operate the giant robot in a left brain/right brain type fashion. When the Kaiju start to evolve and the Jaegers start falling one by one, the governments of the world turn to a new plan to stop the Kaiju and cancel the Jaeger program. The few remaining Jaegers hole up in Hong Kong and start a last ditch effort to stop the Kaiju invasions once and for all.

Every now and then a movie will come along that will redefine a genre, changing everyone's perceptions about what it is to make a great movie. 

Unfortunately, this ain't it.

I was actually worried going in to this film that maybe I wasn't being as objective as I needed to be when it came to writing movie reviews. Was I putting so much hope into films that looked really cool going in that I'd turned a blind eye to anything that might make said movie look bad once I'd viewed it?

Nope.

First off, not everything about this movie is bad. If you're looking for mind-blowing, jaw-dropping effects, this is your popcorn summer blockbuster. The fights between the Kaiju and the Jaegers are not flashbang affairs. These fights last and last and there's more than one epic battle on display. The action sequences truly are breaking new ground and really showcase what a movie like Transformers (2007) could have been. No up close, shaky camera bullshit where you can't tell who's doing what. Each of the battle sequences is shot near perfectly and the choreography (if you can call it that when it's all done on computers) is spot on. During those battle scenes you can suspend your disbelief for a bit and enjoy some truly awesome carnage.

The story itself isn't terrible either. The concept, while borrowing heavily from other sci-fi sources, is still a neat one to explore. Giant monsters hitting us on a global scale? The world finally putting aside it's own petty differences and banding together to fight these things in the coolest manner possible? How can you go wrong with that?

By hiring terrible actors and throwing in every damned clichè you can possibly come up with, that's how.

Not all of the actors are terrible. Charlie Day (It's Always Sunny in Philadephia, Horrible Bosses (2011)) has a great turn as quirky scientist and Kaiju fanatic Dr. Geiszler. He's exactly as goofy as you expect him to be. Ron Perlman (Hellboy (2004), Sons of Anarchy) has a wonderful cameo as Hannibal Chow, a black market dealer in Kaiju organs. Burn Gorman's (The Dark Knight Rises (2012)) Dr. Gottleib makes a perfect, fastidious foil for Day's goofiness.

Unfortunately, none of the above mentioned actors are the stars of this film. What we end up with is Charlie Hunnam (Sons of Anarchy), Idris Elba (Luthor) and Rinko Kikuchi (The Brothers Bloom (2008)) in a competition to see who can be the most bland piece of driftwood on screen.

Hunnam plays Raleigh Beckett. His particular clichèd role is the reluctant hero with the tortured past convinced to climb back into the saddle one more time to save the freakin day. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but save it he does, my friends. Save it he does. Mind you, he does so with a deplorable lack of personality. I didn't find myself rooting for Raleigh at any point in this movie and he's supposed to be the main protagonist.

Idris Elba plays President Whitmore, who, after a moving speech to rally the troops, comes out of retirement to lead the final battle against the alien invaders intent on our natural resources and...and...ah crap. Wait a second. That's the wrong movie. That was Bill Pullman in Independence Day (1996). Let me try that again.

Idris Elba plays Marshall Stacker Pentecost who, after a moving speech to rally the troops, comes out of retirement to lead the final battle against the Kaiju. Elba is pretty bad in this. His English accent seems to come and go throughout the film which is really weird since he's actually English in real life. His scenes carry little weight and he brings absolutely nothing new to the table.

If Elba and Hunnam and bad in this, Rinko Kikuchi is absolutely dreadful. She plays Mako Mori, assistant to Elba's Marshall character and someone desperate to get into a Jaegar and fight some Kaiju. She's bent on revenge against the Kaiju for an attack on her home city when she was a child. She makes moony eyes at Hunnam throughout that are so overdone as to be downright comical. In fact, the only thing I found sadly funnier than that was her looks of determination, pleading and dejectedness whenever the subject of her piloting a Jaeger came up. I'm not sure who all tested for this role, but I'm willing to bet almost anyone would've done a better job. 

Having brought up the Kaiju attack when Mako was a child, I have to talk about the child actor that ends up playing Young Mako in a flashback sequence. The young girl's name is Mana Ashida and she's easily the best actor in this movie. I'm not kidding, I only wish I were. The scene in question is the only 10 minutes of the movie that has a truly human, emotional element to it and it's largely due to this little girl's performance. The scene and the girl will move you. I guarantee it.

Then there are the clichè's. I've already mentioned Hunnam's and Elba's characters. There's also the cocky Australian pilot who doesn't like Hunnam for absolutely no apparent reason other than to give Hunnam's character someone to spar with. Oh, and he has daddy issues. There are the Russian pilots who are stoic throughout and get almost no dialogue. The Chinese pilots get even less dialogue than that. 

More to the point, though, is how American-centric this movie ends up being. There are only four Jaegers that survive the initial purge: The Russians, the Chinese, the Australians and the Americans. Keep in mind, every major world government built one and the rest have all been trashed by the Kaiju. Only these four were badass enough to survive. And in the very first fight involving these four, the Chinese and the Russian Jaegers get destroyed and their pilots get killed and they accomplish absolutely nothing before they die. Even the Australian Jaeger gets disabled. Who comes in to pull everyone's fat out of the fire? The Americans, that's who! Just like doubleya doublya two! 

Even the climax of the film finds the American Jaegar, the American scientist and the American pilot the only ones to ultimately figure out what to do and save the day. 

This movie had the potential to step out of the mold and really showcase the global aspect of the film and story. Alas, it gets caught up in it's own clichès and takes the path of least resistance.

I wanted to like this film. I really did. I was hoping it would be the start of something really cool. What I got was a movie that had mind-blowing special effects but lacked brains and heart.

2.5 out of 5 stars

Pacific Rim (2013)
Reviewed by The Bitter Criticon Jul 20 2013
Rating: 2.5

Man Of Steel (2013) Review

This week, I put on my cape and boots and flew down to my local IMAX cinema to check out Man Of Steel (2013) starring Henry Cavill as our brawny-chested hero. The film also stars Amy Adams as intrepid reporter Lois Lane and Michael Shannon as the villainous General Zod. It's directed by Zack Snyder.

Yes, that Zack Snyder. The guy who directed 300 (2006) and Watchmen (2009) and (ugh) Sucker Punch (2011). He of the quick-then-slow-then-quick action shots. Often accused of all glam and no substance.

Take a deep breath, now. It'll be ok. Trust me.

This movie is actually quite good. A lot of this credit will likely go to Christopher Nolan, the director of the Dark Knight Trilogy. While I'm sure, as one of 7 or 8 producers on this film, he had his share of input and feedback, the bulk of the credit should go to Snyder.

The movie is laid out a little differently then you might expect. In fact, I've heard some complaints about the narrative style chosen. It was made clear very early on in the production that this would be a reboot with a full origin story intact. The style they chose for the telling of said origin story is a non-linear series of flashbacks from an already grown up Clark Kent. Personally, I think this was a brilliant way to shoot this.

Trying to tell the story of how little Kal-El is shot to Earth in a spaceship from the dying planet of Krypton and found by the Kents in a linear, chronological fashion would be too reminiscent of the original Superman (1978) film. More than that, though, we're talking about the single most well known and celebrated superhero of all time. You'd have to go 10,000 miles to find someone in a deep, dark jungle who didn't know who Superman was or what his story entails. With the story told this way, we get to catch a glimpse of his past struggles, helping us identify with his character, while getting to see him facing the challenges of being the most powerful person on the planet and trying desperately to hide that fact. It also helps with the pacing early on as we get to see different aspects of Clark's personality as they develop.

The opening scenes of the movie take place on Krypton with Jor-El (Russell Crowe) helping to give birth to his son while, at the same time, trying to prevent a military coup by General Zod (Michael Shannon). Krypton is rendered beautifully in these opening sequences. It's a different take on the planet and the technology used from what's been previously shown. Everything is more fluid, rather than crystaline as has been portrayed in other properties. The action on Krypton is fast and furious as Jor-El tries to save his infant son while battling Zod and his followers with the whole planet blowing up around them. It does a great job of setting the tone early for the action to come later in the film.

The middle of the film does a good job introducing us to the supporting cast as well as establishing the major plot points. It's a little clunky, but that's usually due to periods of exposition by characters helping to explain what's going on. While this gets overdone at times, there wasn't a single point in the movie where I had difficulty following the narrative or didn't know what was going on. More importantly, it does something the films, tv series' and even the source material comic books have shied away from; it makes Superman relateable. The second act really focuses on humanizing the Last Son of Krypton in a way that's refreshing and totally unexpected. You don't end up cheering for him just because he's Superman. You end up cheering from him because you kinda fall in love with him a little. You get to a point where you appreciate his struggles and understand what he must go through trying to make his way through life as an outsider.

The third and final act of the movie is all action. And when I say action, I mean action. For those of you who've always wanted to see an all-out slugfest between superheroes and supervillains, you cannot miss this film. The action is incredibly fast pace and utterly relentless, never letting up. When I heard this movie cost the studio $225 million to make, I had to wonder where all that money went. After watching the last 45 minutes of Man of Steel, I wonder no longer. From heat-vision scorching to flying, burning locomotive trains, to mid-air battles between flying Kryptonians, the action is crazy start to finish.

The casting for this movie is pretty spot on. Michael Shannon has a good turn as Zod. Amy Adams is great as Lois Lane. The real star, though, is Henry Cavill as Clark Kent/Superman. Not since Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Ironman has there been a more inspired casting choice for a role. Cavill IS Superman. His Clark Kent is great as well. He brought weight and gravitas to a role that is one of the most difficult in Hollywood to portray. How do you make a god-like boy scout believable, approachable and relateable? By playing it straight and to the point, earnestly and honestly. Cavill does this and does it so well it's hard to imagine anyone else donning the cape. He's the first actor I've seen in the role that made me think someone other than Christopher Reeves has a spot in the pantheon as the Man of Steel.

Ok, I think I've gushed over Henry enough. Man-crush is getting a little out of hand there.

Are there issues with this film? Of course. As I mentioned, the second act has some long-winded and clunky moments. The third act, while sporting some of the best superhero action ever put on film, does so by sacrificing story and character development. 

Still, this film delivers and it delivers big time. Rumour has it that the success of this film would determine whether or not we'd see movement on a Justice League film in the future. I think we can safely assume we'll be seeing bigger things to come.

4 out of 5 stars.

Man Of Steel (2013)
Reviewed by The Bitter Critic on Jun 17 2013
Rating: 4

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) Review

This week, I put on my pointy ears, set my phaser to stun and warped into the nearest cinema to check out Star Trek Into Darkness (2013). The film stars Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin, Karl Urban and Benedict Cumberbatch. It's directed by J.J. Abrams.

Into Darkness picks up a few years after the end of the previous film Star Trek (2009). Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) is in command of the Enterprise on a mission involving a volcano and a primitive culture. Needless to say, Kirk abandons all the rules and completes the mission while saving Spock's (Zachary Quinto) life, very much against the Vulcan's wishes as this would break the big rule known as The Prime Directive.

This idea of them working together despite wildly different views on how to handle sticky situations is a common theme throughout the film. It actually works quite well as the dynamic between these two is fantastic. Pine is clearly sinking his teeth into the Kirk role and Quinto is simply awesome with his deadpan delivery. It's interesting to point out that, in the original series TV show, you had Kirk, Spock and McCoy as the central three cast members with the other four sort of floating around them. In this film, it's really just Kirk and Spock that have the main focus and anyone they place in the scene with them gets immediately elevated by their seamless bickering.

That's not to say Karl Urban as Dr. McCoy isn't great in the role. Out of all the cast members, he's the one doing his best to emulate the original cast member's performance (in this case, the late DeForest Kelley) and he does so quite well. His role is a little different in this sequel, though. In the first film, he was Kirk's best friend and closest confidant. That spot is being filled by Spock in this film, so the good doctor plays a more supporting role and adds some laughs.

Zoe Saldana gets some serious screen time as Uhura, largely due to her relationship with Spock. In fact, it's this relationship that provides the majority of the truly funny moments in the movie, of which there are several. Saldana is able to bring some much needed emotion to the film to help break up some of the action pieces.

John Cho has a great turn as Sulu. Again, another cast member who's clearly getting comfortable in the role and starting to have fun with it. Cho even gets to sit in the big chair and deliver some kick ass lines, which he does superbly.

Simon Pegg, who plays Scotty, is used rather shabbily, in my oh so humble opinion. It's like someone on set said "Hey, this guy is hilarious, let's make every scene he's in have him cracking wise and acting like a goofball". Pegg gets very few truly human moments in the film and, even when he does, it's hard to take him seriously since he's been goofing off for the other 2 hours. I get that he's a funny guy and I even get that he's expected to provide some comic relief. I just don't think it needs to happen in every single scene he's in.

I'm not sure if Anton Yelchin pissed someone off or if he had another project on the go and just couldn't spare much time for the production, but his Chekov character is relegated to the bowels of the ship early in the film and is barely heard from again.

The supporting cast of this film is pretty great. Bruce Greenwood returns as Admiral Pike and turns in a great, emotional performance. He continues to act as Kirk's mentor much like he did in the first film but, this time, he's clearly acting as a father figure as well.

Peter Weller as Admiral Marcus just chews up the screen when he's on it. He makes the best of a shaky plot line and runs with it. It was late in the production before I'd even heard he was in the movie. I'm very glad they added him in.

The real scene-stealer in this one, though, is Benedict Cumberbatch. Right after I watched this movie, my friend turned to me and said "Cumberbatch just commands the screen in every scene he's in" and I couldn't agree more. His John Harrison character is one for the books. One of the best turns as a villain I've seen recently. Not all campy and over the top, in spite of some rather corny dialogue. He kept his villain reserved and calculating throughout. He was the Hannibal Lecter of this film.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the visuals. They are stunning. Truly stunning. Easily the single most gorgeous film I've seen this year. The space scenes in particular are rendered so beautifully it may take you a moment or two to realize these folks aren't actually in space.

And I can't talk about the visuals without mentioning the Klingons. Yes, our boney-foreheaded friends make an appearance in this one, if only briefly. Their look gets updated (I won't go into details) and there's clearly a promise of more to come with these guys. Expect big things from them in future installments.

The movie has some plot issues that I can't really go into without giving away some major spoilers, which I've tried to stay away from this time around. The story itself is the weakest part of the film, but it's still far better than the last film's shaky plot.

I think it's fairly important to know what you're going to get from a movie based on the trailers and the source material to come before. In this case, based on the trailers I saw and the 2009 reboot, I was expecting a romping good action/fantasy film with some character moments, some decent humour and a villain that was going to steal the show. I have to say, I got exactly what I expected.

4 out of 5 stars.

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Reviewed by The Bitter Critic on May 21 2013
Rating: 4

The Colony (2013) Review

This week, I threw on my snowsuit and took the dog sled down to the local cinema to check out The Colony (2013) starring Laurence Fishburne and directed by Jeff Renfroe.

The Colony (2013) takes place in a future where the world has entered another global ice age. The struggling remains of humanity have sought shelter in underground colonies. These colonies are slowly dying off due to lack of medical treatments and proper medicine.

When Colony 5 stops responding by radio, Colony 7, led by Laurence Fishburne's character "Briggs", sends out a rescue party across the frozen wasteland to determine what became of them. Hijinks promptly ensue.

I wanted to like this movie. I really did. It's a low budget Canadian production starring two of my favourite actors (Fishburne and Paxton) in a limited release. It's sci-fi in nature, which I love, and the trailer didn't look half bad. Alas, it was just not meant to be.

As with my previous review, Iron Man 3 (2013), I can't really do a proper review without giving away some spoilers. If you plan on seeing this turd of a movie, skip the rest of this!

The story is the real issue here. There are enough plot holes to drive a convoy of trucks through. What's worse is the almost total lack of explanation as to what really happened and why.

I'm usually okay with leaving some plot points to the viewers' imagination. Take The Matrix (1999), for example. Fishburne's character of Morpheus begins trying to explain to Neo what happened to the world and how the machines took over. He admits that it's been a couple of hundred years and record keeping is really dodgy, so they only have scattered facts and a few theories. It's left to us, the viewers, to fill in some of the blanks.

Now take this movie. Nobody stops to explain to the viewer how the world ended up a frozen ice ball. Only that, one day, it started snowing and it never stopped. The problem is, this event occurred within their lifetimes! Both Briggs and Paxton's character "Mason" were serving in the military when the snows began. They helped with the evacuation of civilians, according to Briggs. They were around when this started. Yet they seem fantastically uninterested in how it happened or even how to go about trying to fix it.

There's a hint fairly early in the film as to what might have happened. When our intrepid heroes set out to check up on Colony 5, they pass a huge structure that they identify as a weather controlling machine. When the youngest member of the group says something about checking to see if it still works, Briggs says "It's already done it's damage". This would seem to indicate it was the weather machines themselves that caused the global ice age. This gets taken away later in the film, however, when a message is received from another colony who happened to repair the weather machine near them, creating a thaw and allowing the planting of crops in soil.

So in all the time Colony 7 has been within walking distance of a machine that controls the weather, barely hanging on to life due to the extreme cold and constant snows, not a single person has ever ventured out to see if they could get it working and, I don't know, control the freaking weather. If we're unsure if they could fix it, we only have to look to the satellite in orbit that Briggs managed to fix from the ground and communicate with. Clearly, our man Briggs has some skills to pay the bills.

Then we get to the reason Colony 5 went silent:

Bad guys. Grunting, teeth filed to points, lots of chains and leather wearing bad guys.

In a not so subtle nod to Serenity (2005) and Ghosts of Mars (2001), the main antagonists are deranged dudes bent on killing everything and everyone they come into contact with. They don't speak or plot or plan, they just kill. Somehow, these 20 or 30 mentally unhinged, rabid killers band together and organize themselves into a colony-invading wrecking machine. Again, we rely on the Briggs character for an attempted explanation. He says they've gone "feral" due to the hunger. Oddly enough, we never see any of the baddies stopping to actually eat anything or even anyone. Just lots and lots of stabby stabby.

Oh, did I mention the baddies bring knives and axes to a gun fight? And WIN???

I was hoping for another decent, low budget sci-fi movie with great performances like Moon (2009). What I got was my patience tested and a sense of regret at having paid $9 to watch this.

1.5 out of 5 stars

The Colony (2013)
Reviewed by The Bitter Critic on May 12 2013
Rating: 1.5

Iron Man 3 (2013) Review

Greetings, true believers! This week, I cut in a nasty chin-strap beard and clomped down to the local cinema to check out Iron Man 3 (2013) starring Robert Downey Jr. and directed by Shane Black.

The story of Iron Man 3 is rather complex. Needlessly so, in point of fact. The film is meant to be viewed as a follow up to The Avengers (2012) more so than to Iron Man 2 (2010). It follows Tony on his latest quest to save the world, this time from the evil Mandarin, played by Ben Kingsley. Along the way he meets up with Maya (Rebecca Hall), a genetic botonist and former one night stand, Aldritch Killian (Guy Pearce), a former dweeb that Tony wasn't very nice to once upon a time, and a host of minor characters that include the President (William Sadler) and Vice President (Miguel Ferrer) of the United States. James "Rhodey" Rhodes, played by Don Cheadle, also appears, returning as the newly rebranded Iron Patriot with a nifty new paintjob. And, of course, there's Pepper Pots played by Gwyneth Paltrow.

Just a warning before you read any further. There are a few twists in this film that I can't help but talk about, so if you don't want any spoilers, now might be a good time to read one of my other bitter reviews!

Watching the trailers and knowing the lore and history of Iron Man, I was extremely pumped to see Sir Ben Kingsley debuting as the villainous Mandarin. A terrorist hell bent on giving Tony Stark a major ass kicking from which Tony would struggle to rise from and eventually overcome seemed like a match made in heaven. Well, it wasn't. As it turns out, nearly everyone in this movie is the bad guy except for the actual bad guy. The rather douchey Aldritch Killian character? Bad guy, but kind of obvious for all that. Former flame and cute sciency Maya? Oh yeah, she's a bad guy (or girl, as it were) as well. The Vice President of the United States? Hey, why not? Who couldn't use one more bad guy? But but...what about The Mandarin, you say? The best of the bad guys, maybe? The one the rest of the bad guys are working for and plotting with? Yeah...no. In what had to be the biggest slap in the face to geeks and fanboys since Bane in Batman and Robin (1997), The Mandarin turns out to be just a drug addicted stage actor being paid to front the whole operation. Don't get me wrong; Kingsley is absolutely magnificient in the role. His acting is stellar. It's the role itself that winds up leaving you with a bad taste in your mouth. It's a twist that you keep expecting to twist back. It just never does. Instead we get an entire cadre of baddies, none of which I care a fig about. 

Still, with all these nefarious nogoodniks lounging about, you'd think it would give our intrepid heroes all kinds of opportunities to strap on the old armour and kick a bunch of tail, right? Wrong. If you're going to this movie to see Cheadle and Downey blasting away as Iron Patriot and Iron Man respectively, you're going to be sorely disappointed. There's a small scene at the beginning as Tony is tinkering with a modular suit (which turns out to be so flimsy that he can make it fall to pieces with a single bare-handed blow) and another scene early on made popular in the trailers of Tony's mansion being attacked by helicopters. Even this scene doesn't have Tony as Iron Man through half of it (it's actually Pepper in the suit). Then we get a long second act where Tony is without any armour of any kind. He ends up playing sleuthy detective and trading witty, if somewhat inappropriate, banter with an 11 year old kid throughout most of the second act. Oh, and also having anxiety attacks after the events of The Avengers. Yes, Tony Stark, billionaire playboy, genius, philanthropist spends a good chunk of the movie curled up in a ball trying not to cry.

Even in the third act and the climactic end battle scene, Tony spends so little time in the suit you start to wonder why they keep calling him Iron Man. In fact, Tony doesn't kill the bad guy. Neither does Rhodey, for that matter, who spends even less time in his suit than Tony does (and doesn't fire a single shot in it, if I'm not mistaken). Nope, it's Pepper that kills the bad guy. Yeah, that Pepper. In fact, Pepper ends up kicking all kinds of ass in this one. Maybe they should call it Iron Woman...

So, in the end, what we're left with is a bunch of bad guys with little to no motivation for being bad in a story that I cared nothing about with an absentee super-hero who's name is right in the goddamn title of the movie. This film should have been called "RDJ Cracks Wise For Two Hours in a Movie That Makes No Sense. Thanks For All Your Money". Ok, that's a little wordy for a movie title. How about "You Love RDJ, So You're Gonna Pay"? Hey, at least it rhymes.

Avoid this one if you can. Wait for Avengers 2.

1.5 out of 5 Stars

Iron Man 3 (2013)
Reviewed by The Bitter Critic on May 06 2013
Rating: 1.5