One Day of Autumn

500 Days of Summer is a good movie. Marc Webb's movie is a little self-indulgent at times, but not to the point of making you annoyed with its borderline hipsterness. The cast I thought was great, and the story was more or less believable.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays our would be Romeo, Tom, and Zooey Deschanel is his somewhat distant, unwilling Juliet. The movie claims to not be a love story, but it clearly is. on this point, I actually found Zooey Deschanel convincing as a cold uncaring lover. The reason why? She always seems so flighty in her movies. Not necessarily in a bad way, but more so in a detached "Heeeeeey" kind of way. You remember what she was like in Elf? She was engaged, to a point.

Gordon-Levitt has quite the support system in this movie. There is his sage little sister Rachel played by Chloe Grace Moretz. His two buddies are played by Geoffrey Arend, and Matthew Gubler. As far as these supporting characters go his little sister takes the cake. When it comes to dealing with Tom's neurotic behavior she offers up pearls of wisdom beyond her years. I was a little disappointed that when Rachel asked Tom to look back on his relationship with Summer that he did not see the actions of Summer more negatively. I mean, it was a negative portrayal, but not as much as I thought they could do by repackaging his memories.

I don't really have much else to say about this movie. It was a good comedy, and really worthwhile, but I don't have much to add. Quirky movie. I did really like that Tom keeps his optimism in the end, and dares to dream again when he goes to his job interview. The world needs idealists.

7/10, would watch again

Downey Jr. Continues his Jaunt as Snarky Billionaire

I watched Iron Man 2 recently. I would say it was as enjoyable as the first Iron Man. Much like my critique of the first Iron Man (which I saw about a month prior to viewing Iron Man 2) I bought into a lot of the characters. The movie was entertaining, and a good sequel to the first.

Often times sequels fail to live up to the standard that the first movie established. I'm thinking of things like: Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, The Matrix Reloaded, Die Hard 2, etc. It's not that these movies are bad per se, it's that they weren't confident enough in being their own movie, so they just did the first movie over. Now, it probably seems like the difference between the approach of those three movies to being a sequel and Iron Man 2's approach is not that different. I would agree with you in part, but disagree overall.

Iron Man 2 operates under a separate paradigm from the first movie. Here Tony Stark is known the world over as Iron Man, and things are pretty hunky-dory. But, of course things are not what they seem. There is trouble brewing in Russia. Iron Man has a dangerous secret. He wants to give up, but he finds redemption, and together with the help of his friends saves the world! Isn't that the same story arc as the first movie? Yeah, more or less, but so what? This movie was just as entertaining as I was hoping it would be.

Robert Downey, Jr. was his typical solid self. Mickey Rourke did a more than sufficient job as Ivan Vanko, ie the bad guy. Although, to be honest, it was a little hard to think of Rourke as some sort of tech genius. I'm not sure who should have been cast in the alternative. Maybe Peter Stormare? Peter Stormare can be pretty menacing. I mean if you told me that guy would be getting behind a computer, and then breaking someone's neck I would say "Sure, seems believable". Seriously, why didn't they call Peter Stormare? Other than that minor issue, I thought the returning actors did a good job, and the new additions (Don Cheadle, and Scarlett Johansson) were believable in their respective roles.

Oh yeah, Sam Rockwell is in this movie. Has there ever been a more outmatched villain than Rockwell in this movie? Yes. Vernon Wells as Bennett in Commando. Rockwell was very Rockwelly, and kind of annoying, which makes me question my assessment of other Rockwell movies.

All told, the movie was just as entertaining as the first one, and advanced the overall Iron Man story nicely. I look forward to the third installment coming out in less than a month.

7/10 would watch again, probably multiples