Iron Man / Seven Samurai
May 12, 2008
by Nate
Iron Man, 3/5 monads:
Iron Man is probably the best and most accurate transfer of comic to film of any comic-book movie to-date. Its script follows worn, familiar cadences and the plot arc of its hero--in which a successful inventor and weapons dealer discovers that maybe weapons development isn't the purely humanitarian endeavor he thought it was--is just about the right level of profundity for me-at-thirteen. This is, in my opinion, a completely authentic reproduction of the level of quality of the majority of Marvel comics, and certainly Iron Man, who was never one of my favorites. But the extra time and attention that a feature-length film gets made this formula unusually well-crafted. Its familiar tropes just work a little bit better here than they do in most comic-book movies. In fact, the whole thing felt like a genre getting really comfortable with itself: no, this isn't their bid for Oscar glory. (They tried that with Hulk, a substantial movie by Ang Lee that alienated everyone but me and the Onion AV Club.) But this is the first movie I've seen that is almost devoid of any personal, artistic directorial flair (unlike Spider-Man) that's also... pretty good.
If Marvel can duplicate that in expanding Iron Man's world (his character begs to be in collaboration... there's just not that much room to explore with him) as they clearly intend to do (stay through the credits... ALWAYS stay through the credits), I think they will richly deserve the success they get.
Seven Samurai, 5/5 monads:
Oh, hey, someone else watched Seven Samurai for the first time and thought it kicked ass. ALERT THE PRESSES. Yes, I'm late to the party. Very, very late. But, still: it's a delight to watch such a wonderful film for the first time. I didn't realize, of course, that it was over three hours long when I picked it for Koine: this was the first time we didn't have time for a discussion. But it was wonderful to sit in a room full of people, all of us enthralled by the flickering grey light that recreated for us that fascinating, beautiful village with its seven guests.
Comments
On May 12 at 2'53 PM
, Michael Sullivan wrote:
Hey, I really liked Hulk too! In fact I know a number of people who did.
I though Iron Man was extremely enjoyable. It wasn’t much more than that: it aimed relatively low, but it hit its target dead-on. That’s more than most movies manage, and I was 100% satisfied.
On May 12 at 4'16 PM
, Nate wrote:
Well-stated re: Iron Man.
I’m glad to find other Hulk supporters. Sometimes I feel like sending Ang Lee a sympathy card, the way everyone talks about Hulk. “Look, look, we all agree the last movie sucked, so we’re just doing it over!” I’d cry myself to sleep if I were him, laster-success-of-Brokeback Mountain or no.
On May 13 at 11'12 PM
, Isaac wrote:
Iron Man succeeds mainly because the inspired casting of Robert Downey Jr., who navigates Tony Stark’s change of heart very well. The rest of the movie is also very good, but it’s actually very modest in its ambition, as Michael said.
Another reason, though, may be that Marvel took the radical step of setting up their own studio to make it, as well as Hulk. Having that high a level of creative control probably helps a lot. (Though it could backfire — witness what happened when George Lucas got complete control over his projects…)
On May 15 at 1'57 AM
, KDD wrote:
I’m delighted you gave Seven Samurai 5 monads. It’s a rare film in that it actually lives up to the hype.
Once you’ve seen number of Kurosawa films it becomes evident that he was very uneven as a filmmaker. Red Beard, The Lower Depths and The Idiot(based on the Dostoevsky novel) are all marvellous but Hidden Fortress, Ran and some other of his more revered works are rather patchy to say the least. Even so there is much pleasure to be gleaned from his better films.
Personally I prefer Yasujiro Ozu and Mikio Naruse who both produced scores of wonderful films. Sadly a lot of their earlier work is lost but the ones that remain (that I have seen) are all excellent.
If your interest in classic Japanese cinema is piqued then David Bordwell, who we spoke of before, has written a fine book on Ozu called Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, which is available here in PDF format.
http://www.umich.edu/~iinet/cjs/publications/cjsfaculty/Bordwell.html