AMBER Alert

Hard Candy (2005)

Dir: David Slade

Rated: R

So sometimes we get these sleeper films that become cult and thus the focus of independent accolades. We also get real stories that don't fall into the category of "summer blockbuster" or "fall/winter/we're-hedging-for-an-Academy-Award drama." Hard Candy is one of those films that makes you think. Makes you wonder if there's a girl like Hayley Stark out there avenging those who can no longer speak for themselves. The abused, the murdered, the abducted...

To start, we have Hayley herself:

Ellen Page as Hayley. Playing a bright honor student who is only 14.

Hayley Stark has been Internet chatting with this guy named Jeff Kholver (Patrick Wilson). He's 32. He photographs models. At the beginning of the movie, you immediately feel uncomfortable for Hayley—automatically thinking that she's going to be taken advantage of in the worst way by this guy, and wanting her to be rescued by anyone. They chat online and then meet in person at a coffee shop where he buys her a T-shirt, has her model it for him, and then offers to email her a bootleg copy of a Goldfrapp concert. She "convinces" him to let her listen to it at his house with three reasons: One, she's been seen in public with him. Two, It's Goldfrapp. Three, four out of five doctors agree that she is insane. She gets in his car and they take a long and winding road up to his home.

He brings her a drink, but Hayley suggests she make her drink herself. She pours two screwdrivers and Jeff has no qualms in letting this 14 year-old drink vodka. He's none the wiser. By the time she suggests he take her portrait, Jeff has already given off enough skeevy vibes that when he passes out mid-photo session we feel grateful. As he falls to the floor the expression on Hayley's face reveals that she isn't as naïve as we think... Jeff wakes up tied to a computer chair and Hayley has dropped the "innocent" act.

"You remember what I said about never drinking anything you didn't mix yourself? That's good advice for everyone."

He screams for help, but she sprays chloraseptic in his mouth and tells him "next time, it'll be the bleach" and that she knows no one is around to help him. She explains that she has had multiple chat accounts to find him—that as soon as he found out she was older than 14, he'd stop chatting. He feebly denies it and claims the others "weren't interesting," but Hayley knows better. She knows he copied phrases from Amazon.com about certain obscure bands that she pretended to like ("I fucking hate Goldfrapp."). She knows something we, the audience, don't know. Something that passed us as a blip in the coffee shop in the poster for the missing Donna Mauer. When confronted with his behavior by Hayley—tied to a chair and unable to escape her relentless questioning—Jeff resorts to the blame game.

Jeff: You were coming on to me!

Hayley: Oh, come on. That's what they always say, Jeff.

Jeff: Who?

Hayley: Who? The pedophiles! 'Oh, she was so sexy. She was asking for it.' 'She was only technically a girl, she acted like a woman.' It's just so easy to blame a kid, isn't it! Just because a girl knows how to imitate a woman, does NOT mean she's ready to do what a woman does.

I mean, you're the grown up here. If a kid is experimenting and says something flirtatious, you ignore it, you don't encourage it! If a kid says 'Hey, let's make screwdrivers!' You take the alcohol away, and you don't race them to the next drink!

It's something you want blared from a loudspeaker for everyone to understand.

Hayley is methodical. While he was out, she searched Jeff's apartment for any porn—anything at all. But there's nothing. Not even a copy of Playboy. Which, to her (and me), is really "off." According to Hayley, single men don't hang up photos they've taken of barely clothed young girls throughout their home. She needs proof of Jeff's depravity and searches his computer after reading some private letters sent from Janelle, Jeff's previous obsession. His downloads indicate a pattern, but none of the files are on the computer—leading Hayley to believe he has it hidden somewhere. After an unsuccessful attempt to get her to stop, Jeff begins to finally realize he is not dealing with any normal girl (as Hayley says: "There's that word again; 'girl.'"). She grills him and, without a word, discovers he does, indeed, have things hidden away.

"Nothing's yours when you invite a teenager into your home."

As Hayley searches his place again and finds a gun under his bed. She tosses it on the mattress and continues her search. Jeff vainly tries to escape the tight knots she's used to tie him to the chair. But he stops when he hears rattling. There is a safe tucked into the coffee table and covered carefully in a bed of river rocks. She scoots him back out into the living room and asks him for the password. Underestimating her intelligence yet again, Jeff refuses to tell her. But she can read his face. After trying only five combinations, she finds out it's the date that Jeff first photographed (or had sex with) Janelle (the girl in the framed photo he keeps in his bedroom) and only has to guess on the year.

"This is what they make those Federal laws for, Jeff. This is officially sick."

She finds, amongst the photos and CDs labeled "Stuff" a photograph of Donna Mauer outside the same coffee house she met Jeff at. After asking him what was so special about that girl—why she got to "keep her clothes on," Hayley whispers that she recognizes the girl. Jeff promptly kicks her in the ribs and knocks her against a table, having freed his feet, and tries to get to the gun on the bed. Hayley recovers from the blow. By the time Jeff has the gun in hand and has wheeled back to the living room, Hayley seems to have vanished.

She ambushes him from behind, gets slammed repeatedly into the wall, narrowly escapes being shot, and successfully knocks Jeff out with the help of an entire roll of Saran Wrap. Hayley doesn't kill him. Time passes and Jeff wakes up practically hog-tied to that table he kicked Hayley into. And she's since removed his pants and dropped a Ziploc bag full of ice on his crotch. He threatens, feebly, that he'll call the cops and say he's never touched her. Hayley brings out the damning photograph of Donna. He admits to meeting Donna for coffee and claims he took the photo to make her "happy."

Jeff is still trying to maintain that "I did nothing wrong" front.

We then see that, instead of the layers of tank tops, Hayley has the top half of some medical scrubs on. She threatens to send an email to Janelle (whom Jeff is obviously still very attached to) and there is a lot of "Jeff tries to talk Hayley out of this" stuff—then begging once he realizes she's perfectly willing and capable of making good on her threat of castrating him.

"Turns out castration is one of the easiest surgical procedures around. There's thousands of farmboys across the country gelding their livestock. If they can do it, I think I can pull it off. If you know what I mean."

I won't spoil the rest of the movie (seeing as I've spoiled so much of it already), but it goes without saying that it is a tough subject to sit through. There is the implication of image, but we see nothing. By the end of it all I realized there was no "score" to be exact. The emphasis is all on the dialogue and these two characters. We find out just how messed up Jeff really is through Hayley's consistent pushing. It takes a while—long enough that we've been introduced to Jeff's truer nature.

Jeff: Who the hell are you?

Hayley: I am every little girl you ever watched, touched, hurt, screwed, killed.

It's another pertinent quote. Hayley is an enigma. But she really is every little girl out there who is seen as a potential victim or target. She embodies those kids we want to save from the pedophiles and despicable people out there. She also embodies that person we wish that we could have around to look out for those traumatized and abused children. But to my knowledge, there is no Hayley Stark.

"Honors student, remember? Nothing I can't do when I put my mind to it."

In the end she escapes easily and walks down the road—red hoodie flipped up and looking like an avenging angel for all the abused and damaged girls. We don't know who she is and if she's even finished with her mission to find the abductors of Donna Mauer. We don't even know if Donna is the only one Hayley has "investigated." She claims to not have never done some of the things she does to Jeff. She searches his home thoroughly and precisely. She handles herself with a professional air and, for a fourteen year old, is angry in a way that normal teenagers aren't. Hayley claims her "four out of five doctors agree that I am actually insane" quote is true. To be honest, she does seem like a functioning sociopath.

I wish there was a real Hayley Stark around to work as a vigilante for the "watched, touched, hurt, screwed, and killed." So, despite the delicate subject matter I honestly recommend Hard Candy as a serious film to watch. It's dramatic and heart-pounding—carefully constructed to engage us and suck us into the story to leave us with that "what brilliance did I just watch?" feeling.

And like that, poof. She's gone.

Hunting For the Real Antagonist

The Hunted (2003)

Dir: William Friedkin

Rated: R

Yes, that William Friedkin. The one who directed William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. The man who created one of the scariest films of all time. Users on IMDb rate this particular movie a 5.8 out of 10 stars—considering the harsh grading curve of the site, that's actually on just this side of "It's okay." And while I'll admit I was engrossed in it because of my affection for Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, there was something... "Lacking."

An antagonist.

Before I get too far into anything, I'd like to mention that Johnny Cash's "The Man Comes Around" is used as a voice-over in the beginning. It's fairly fitting.

"God said to Abraham, 'Kill me a son.'

Abe says, 'Man, you must be puttin' me on.'

God says, 'No'; Abe says, 'What?'

God says, 'You can do what you want, Abe, but the next time you see me comin', you better run.'

Abe says, 'Where do you want this killin' done?'

God says, 'Out on Highway 61.'"

We're given Aaron Hallam (Del Toro) as our supposed antagonist, but I just feel too horrible for him to think of him as anything other than a victim. Remember First Blood and how John Rambo couldn't "turn off" his instinct to kill after the war? That's what Aaron is dealing with. He's Special Forces. At the beginning of the movie he's given an operation in Kosovo to carry out. He saves a lot of American soldiers, but looses part of himself during the brutal fight. The ultimate kick in the face is when he is awarded the Silver Star for his actions.

He goes AWOL after that.

He snapped.

I think this is the reason why I don't feel Aaron can be considered an outright antagonist. Not when my heart is breaking for him as he tries in vain to reconnect with humanity through a woman and her daughter that he's gotten to know since his time in Special Forces. The little girl brings out the curious, human side of him that got lost somewhere between training with Tommy Lee Jones' character, L.T., and being turned loose on groups of militants in a war zone with just a knife. He's been writing L.T. for ages talking about how he's terrified and how the nightmares are worse and he doesn't want to be this killing thing anymore. How L.T. has been like a father to him...

Symbolically, L.T. (who is living in Canada) releases a wolf from an illegal snare and dresses the animal's wound in one of the stranger moments in cinema—one of those things where you swear you know a guy like this and he's a wise man with the patience of the most strong-willed man. Despite his former job of training Special Forces (he isn't military) how to survive in the wilderness and kill with maximum efficiency, L.T. has never killed a man. Halfway through the movie, my brain inevitably linked him with Ben Kenobi.

Aaron hides in the woods in Portland and in his dementia brutally murders two elk hunters (they say "deer" in the movie but show an elk). Though the creepifying conversation they have as Aaron tracks them trough the woods is so cryptic I'm still not sure if the hunters were confused or actually sent out there to kill him. They don't succeed. This gains the FBI's attention and they bring L.T. in to see if he can find their "perps." No one thinks one man could have slaughtered the two hunters on his own.

It's when the two finally meet in the woods that the conflict loses it's credibility. Aaron is obviously conflicted and hurting—paranoid and wary of anyone. He is so damaged that we know within the first few minutes of him talking to L.T. that he will most likely die by the end of the movie.

I did warn you about spoilers...

The FBI manages to arrest Aaron. They don't get to talk to him for very long.

What follows is a chain of events that could have really made the movie much more interesting plot-wise had they not dismissed it ten minutes later with a massive wreck that has Aaron escaping military custody to visit the women he met who seem to ground him back in reality; Irene and her daughter Loretta.

Random fact: The home used in The Hunted where Irene and Loretta live is the same one used in Untraceable. It's a gorgeous home.

He wants so badly to tell her what he's been made to do, but he's terrified of scaring her. She's pretty much the only thing that is real to him in the world. In fact, he tells her he thinks it would be safer for her to leave Portland than stay anywhere near him for her and her daughter's safety. We don't hear what he tells her, but it's apparently convincing enough that she packs her bags and plans on leaving after picking Loretta up from school the next day.

I still haven't seen a flesh-and-blood antagonist. If we really have to pick, I'd say Aaron's mental disturbances. But that's a stretch. In a film like this one, it helps to have an antagonist that wants nothing more than to destroy the main character—and those guys were killed off in the wreck that allows Aaron to escape.

After another brush with L.T. and the FBI, Aaron goes on the run once more and we never hear of Irene or Loretta again. Both could be safe. Or, they could have been killed on their way out of Portland. I hate plotholes.

L.T. is finally given a chance to read one of the unmailed (or returned—it's never explicitly stated) letters addressed to him from Aaron and they all discover just how severe Aaron's lost grip on reality is. He thinks he's being hunted by robots.

Time out.

This? It felt like it was thrown in at the last second like: "Well, why is he all paranoid?" "Robots, dude. Terminators or something." "Sounds good."

No.

I understand leaving the air of ambiguousness in someone's motives leaves more to be discussed later on, but that was way out of left field. Aaron mentions those two elk hunters (still called deer hunters despite showing an elk at least three more times) were "sweepers" sent out after him. No more explanation is given. Though the creepy military guys that explain Aaron can't be held in FBI custody and belongs in military custody really did give off that X-Files vibe. And they were planning on killing him in the back of the transport van with a nasal poison in one of those tiny misting devices.

But we're taken back out into the wilderness after a really epic chase scene after Aaron runs out of Irene's house and takes off for the bridge (honestly, Tommy Lee Jones spends a lot of his career running after people) Aaron dives into the river to escape and L.T. takes it on as his "responsibility" to stop him.

He tracks Aaron down, and after a really painful looking knife fight (the fights, by the way, are amazingly real—the hits actually connect as proven by Del Toro's broken wrist during production) and I can't choose a side. Normally you pick one man to root for in a movie, but I've been hurting for both of them. L.T. never wanted to kill anyone—he just knows how and how to train people. Aaron never wanted to be stuck in that state of perpetual alert—he just wanted to serve his country.

So I guess the real antagonist could be the human conscience, but that feels lame. Even though the outcome was expected, it didn't hurt any less knowing that this man spent most of his life in a state of agony. Not physical, but mental. I think Tommy Lee Jones' action of placing his palm on Aaron's head once it's all over is gut-wrenching. The young man considered him to be like a father and L.T. could not have been that for him.

Aaron was lost.

It's a sad movie. Yeah, there are some amazing fight scenes and the like but my brain keeps cycling back to Fist Blood and that scene that actually makes me cry every time I see it:

Col. Trautman: You did everything to make this private war happen. You've done enough damage. This mission is over, Rambo. Do you understand me? This mission is over! Look at them out there! Look at them! If you won't end this now, they will kill you. Is that what you want? It's over Johnny. It's over!

John: Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off! It wasn't my war! You asked me, I didn't ask you! And I did what I had to do to win! But somebody wouldn't let us win! And I come back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport, protesting me, spitting. Calling me baby killer and all kinds of vile crap! Who are they to protest me? Who are they? Unless they've been me and been there and know what the hell they're yelling about!

Col. Trautman: It was a bad time for everyone, Rambo. It's all in the past now.

John: FOR YOU! For me civilian life is nothing! In the field we had a code of honor, you watch my back, I watch yours. Back here there's nothing!

Col. Trautman: You're the last of an elite group, don't end it like this.

John: Back there I could fly a gunship, I could drive a tank, I was in charge of million dollar equipment, back here I can't even hold a job PARKING CARS!

Really, what do you do with your life if all you know how to do is kill? There is a sweet moment between Aaron and Loretta as he teaches her what the animal tracks in the backyard are, but that looming shadow of "you will never fit in" is still drearily above him

I liked The Hunted. I would have liked it more if the "super-secret-military-'Aaron-Hallam-doesn't-exist'" arc had been left open to explore.

Instead, it feels like Friedkin intended for us to despise Aaron for his brutal actions. Despite how wrong they are, I can't. Either it's because I've seen First Blood too much and my love for Benicio Del Toro's acting is getting in the way, or I'm missing something. Because I feel terrible for him.

The ending tag of the movie is of L.T. back up in his Canadian cabin burning Aaron's undelivered letters that mention his fears and desperation for L.T.'s advice or any sort of response at all. There was some small fleck of hope in those letters. Hope that Loretta and Irene could save him from himself. Hope that he could turn off that killing instinct. Hope that his father figure would hear him and offer up help.

It's bleak. We see the wolf from the beginning return in the distance and the movie ends with the Johnny Cash song again.

So what have I learned from this other than you can give me anything with Benicio Del Toro in it and I'll watch it?

Sometimes, life realistically emulated in film can be too dark. I turned it off feeling drained of happiness.

Near Dark Vs. Twilight

Near Dark (1987) Dir: Kathryn Bigelow Rated: R

Twilight (2008) Dir: Catherine Hardwicke Rated: PG13

Here's a short summary of Near Dark from memory: Set in a small Oklahoma town, Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) meets Mae (Jenny Wright) one night. They like each other and Mae pretty much falls in love with Caleb once they get to talking. He offers her a ride home. They kiss, Mae gets a little carried away, and Caleb is suddenly on his own and feeling like he's got the worst flu known to man.

Because Mae is a vampire. Which means he is turning into a vampire.

The "v" word is never mentioned in Near Dark. Not once.

Wanting to keep him, and the secret of her and her traveling companions (and her undead family), Mae brings Caleb in to the fold to meet Jesse (Lance Henriksen), Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein), Severen (Bill Paxton), and Homer (Joshua Miller). We soon find out that Mae is nothing like her companions. Jesse is the father-figure, Diamondback is his mate, Homer pines for Mae but can't do anything about it because he's too "young" (even though he's really the oldest out of all of them), and Severen...

Severen is just plan batshit crazy.

I'm not even kidding. He wears sharpened spurs on his boots. And uses them. Not against a horse or anything—on a dude's neck when Jesse and the rest of the family initiate Caleb. They only even consider counting him as part of the group on Mae's insistence and Caleb's kickass moment of heroics when he saves them all from pretty much the entire Oklahoma police force in the middle of the day. And this is after he's turned completely (but he still never killed anyone—instead feeding from Mae when he got too hungry). Which makes him just as flammable in sunlight as the rest.

Put to the test, Caleb can't stand the thought of killing someone else. Mae doesn't have the taste for it either and she's really fallen in love with Caleb. She gives him the chance to run off and save himself and his family (Homer wanted to turn Caleb's sister for himself—he's old and alone in his child's body and wants a companion just like him) is kidnapped while she watches over Caleb.

In an interesting twist of mythos, Caleb could be cured by a blood transfusion (which, strangely, makes sense). I won't go into why Bill Paxton looks like someone used his face as a bullet-ridden Brillo Pad in the original poster, but let's leave it at: "Most awesome death of a vampire in a movie ever." Mae saves Caleb's sister, makes it back to him a little worse for the wear (sun burnt just a wee bit), and they use the same blood transfusion trick on her. The ending says that you don't have to change to fit in or impress a girl. Be yourself. We like you guys best when you aren't posturing or killing bartenders with spurs.

Now let's take a look at Twilight. Bella meets Edward. Bella finds out Edward is a vampire (Stephenie Meyer's version of a vampire, at least). Bella meets Edward's family. More vampires (the ebil kind) come after Bella. Edward saves Bella from the other vampires. Thus: she loves him. Despite a lack of chemistry and the fact that Bella is all up for being dying to be with him (literally), this is somehow a good role model for teen girls because of the symbolism of saving yourself before marriage. Except it's not.

Twilight tells girls that they should change to keep the love of their life. Near Dark tells us all that you can still be yourself to meet your perfect match and that person—the one willing to learn more about you rather than wait for you to change so they can commit—is the one for you.

Near Dark is rated R and has no sex—just a couple of really hot kisses between two adults (and a lot of violence). Twilight is PG13 and has an underaged teenaged girl making out with a 130 year old vampire in her bed. In her underwear. *raises her hands in confusion*

My real question is, WHY DID THEY FEEL IT NECESSARY TO CHANGE THE ARTWORK FOR Near Dark?! I apologize for yelling, but tell me which looks better and/or cooler.

This one that I wanna frame and put up on my wall:

Damn, Bill! What the hell happened to your face?!

Or this garbage that misrepresents the movie completely and looks like the Photoshop Disaster to end all Photoshop Disasters (I mean, look at how awful this is)?

Damn, Adrian! What the hell happened to your face?!

I understand that they might feel like someone would look at a copy of this thinking: "huh, this looks like Twilight" and pick it up out of curiosity. Honestly? That first cover up there had me way more interested in it when I first picked it up. I wanted to know just what the hell happened to get Bill looking like roadkill.

Bottom line? Buy Near Dark or add it to your Netflix queue. Just watch it. It's far more romantic and exciting than Twilight. And the acting is miles better. In this fight, Severen kicks Edward's ass.

Robert Downey Jr. is STILL Iron Man

Iron Man 2 (2010)

Dir: Jon Favreau

Rated: PG13

This is probably going to be the only "new" review on this blog. Mostly because I started it to promote the lesser known/less watched films that snuck past our radars. And I wanted to do a few book reviews while I was at it. Come to think of it, I could actually review Matt Fraction's "Five Nightmares" storyline for the current Iron Man comics...

Okay enough. I saw the first Iron Man ten times in theaters. I have the ticket stubs as proof. It was the first movie in a long time that kept me interested the whole time and got me invested in the characters—even the bad guys. The fact that I love the character of Tony Stark because he's like a cross between the absent-minded professor and Batman (actually, Tony's richer than Bruce Wayne). He's a genius billionaire grease monkey playboy with a heart of poly alloys and an arc reactor and deep emotional stress regarding trust and the people closest to him.

So the first Iron Man was a total success in my book—and I couldn't think of anyone else to play Tony Stark than Robert Downey Jr. He is Tony Stark. 'Nuff said.

Onto the sequel... And I'm going to try and go easy on the spoilers. I know I have that warning up on the top of the page but if the movie is still in theaters when I post I feel like I'm being rude to the film makers.

I had tickets for the midnight showing of the IMAX Experience.

I bought my ticket last Thursday through MovieTickets.com

The theater was sold out—in the IMAX and the regular screenings. We were all amped up to see Iron Man 2 (one guy even came in with the mask on and got cheers) and buzzing in our seats. I couldn't sit still.

I even wore my Stark Industries shirt.

As everyone came in and filled all of the seats we had Mr. Usher Who Hates Disturbances give us that "shut off your cell phones and don't, for the love of God, text during the movie because it's annoying" speech. I turned my phone off. But not before using it to take a shot of the iPod app countdown that I had.

You can't read it, but that says "00:30:25"

Then the light's dimmed, we all got quiet and sat back for the trailers. The first ones, I honestly forgot what they were for. But TRON Legacy and Inception (a Christopher Nolan film) really got us going. The trailer for Twilight: Eclipse, however, was booed by all of us. And when I say that, think of over a hundred people hissing and making racket all at the same time. We were one organism. That was the power of this. I mean, it was even more charged than the first screening of Star Trek and that, coming from a Trekker, is powerful.

The movie started.

We all shut up and watched.

And by God, it was a good movie.

Hollywood is plagued by "bad sequel syndrome" but Iron Man 2 took what the first movie gave us and built upon it. We comic nerds got Justin Hammer (smarmy jerk extraordinaire—played by Mr. Affable Sam Rockwell) as a villain, Ivan Vanko AKA Whiplash (portrayed by Mickey Rourke in one of his best character roles) as another villain, and Tony Stark's own body as a third hurdle to surpass. Rhodes (I'm sorry, Terrence Howard, but I loved Don Cheadle more as Rhodey) felt more fleshed out as his character—Airman first, Tony's friend second, and in the end just extraordinary. He actually felt more like Tony's friend. I don't really know how to explain it...

As for Natalie (Natasha—it's Natasha Romanoff) as The Black Widow?

Holy hell. Scarlett Johansson knocked it out of the park. Literally. Okay, not literally, but she really—really—kicked some ass. Happy, our dear and beloved director Jon Favreau, FINALLY got to kick some ass on his own, too. Watch out for a Mike Tyson move from him and you'll know exactly what I mean.

I have no coherent words for how much I loved Sam Jackson as Nick Fury. He's just... WOW.

I will admit I am a big fan of the relationship (friendly and romantic) between Tony and Pepper. Not just from the movies, but in the comics as well. This film does not disappoint.

Character note: I don't agree with some of Pepper's taste in art. I can't stand Barnett Newman.

That pretty much rounds out my entire experience watching Iron Man 2. It does not disappoint. It surpassed my expectations almost entirely and even though the run time was long at two hours and four minutes it felt worth the length. Once again, I left the theater elated and feeling like every ounce of my energy spent waiting for the sequel was worth it—I never once felt bored. That is tough. I get bored fairly easily when it comes to superhero movies (don't get me started on Superman Returns). Not here.

I left the theater in high spirits, rolled down all of the windows in my CR-V, and blasted Black Sabbath's "Iron Man" and AC/DC's "Shoot to Thrill" as I drove out of the parking lot and home.

This was my stowaway during the film. The little repulsors in his hands somehow got turned on in the middle of the movie and I didn't notice until the end credits that my bag was glowing ever so much...

Now don't forget to stay during the credits. Sing along with the music, read ALL of those names that represent the people who poured their energy and hard work into making the film, and stay for that extra scene at the end. It sets up another member of the Avengers—one I've often considered the craziest. Let's just say when I was a kid I watched the "Asterix of Gaul" cartoon and read the comics... And they're kind of related. In a miniscule way. But you catch my drift.

Bottom line?

Go see Iron Man 2. It's excellent.