Movie Driveby: Iron Man 2, Contact, Adaptation

This is just the quick reaction to our weekend viewing ...

• Iron Man 2
  Two things redeemed this movie from being a complete waste of time (and, truth be told, it was those things which made Hannah push us to watch it): performances by Sam Rockwell as the nerd super-villain and Mickey Rourke as the Russian spit-in-your-eye-and-laugh-while-I'm-dying villain. Dang those actors are good! The rest was self-indulgent twaddle and a waste of money and talent.
  
  
• Contact
  Searching for life in outer space and getting a call back; starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey. I'll discuss this on A Good Story is Hard to Find so don't want to say much here ... except I am trying to think of kind ways in which the Texas Chainsaw (as my friend Scott Nehring has nicknamed me), can discuss it. Although it did bring to mind some great conversation points about faith, creation, science, and so forth, so that works out all right.
  
  
• Adaptation
  Charlie Kaufman wrote a script about his experience adapting The Orchid Thief into a screenplay. This is Kaufman's meta-film, highly praised and recommended to me many times. We were reminded that Nicholas Cage is a great actor when he wants to be. The end scene almost blew my head open as the culimation of the perfection that was this movie ... I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry at how great it was. Though it seems to drag as you approach the halfway point, that is where it suddenly picks up and turns into an entirely different beast and you realize how the setup in the first half was necessary to the inspired insanity of the second half. Not for everyone, but if you like an intellectual look at movies, then this is brilliant.