Life for a superhero is, apparently, very hard indeed. Not only are you required to save the world, deal with the inner issues that makes you the go-to guy or gal (shapeshifting, inhuman strength, etc.), and live with the aftermath of defeating an entire alien race… or arch villain… or a madman bent of global domination, but there is that nasty little leftover known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Typically evidencing itself in panic attacks, insomnia, and uncontrollable worry, it seems insane that someone as arrogantly over the top and full of himself as the egotistical Tony Stark would laugh in the face of such a malady. But in Shane Black’s satisfying end to the main Marvel triptych, Iron Man 3, our hero is indeed lost in the throngs of his after-Avengers anxiety. He remembers how close he came to dying, and how quickly he could lose everything he now cherishes.

Alternative titles: Plan 10 From Outer Space; Attack of the Badly-Suited Zombies
 
POSITIVES:

Good performances from solid B-list cast, though John Carradine is underutilized.

Cool “invisible cross-country skiing” effects.

Clever use of newsreel footage suggests worldwide catastrophe.

Nifty anti-nukes subtext.

Inventive way of capturing and studying aliens.

I know, I know… it makes me sound so fair weather. After all, she’s been in the biz for what seems like an eternity. I remember all the Orlando brouhaha, the talk about her “androgynous” looks and “gender bending” aura. I even recall her minor moments in Adaptation. and Vanilla Sky (sadly, I have yet to experience The Beach all the way through). No, the first time I can recall being really impressed with Tilda Swinton was when she played the archangel Gabriel in the oddball comic book movie Constantine. She was so luminous, so ambiguously a-human and completely heaven sent that I was compelled to know more about her. Sadly, what I came across (a bunch of self-serving arthouse malarkey with names like Conceiving Ada) did little to impress me.

A few weeks back, we found ourselves lamenting the apparent fact that 2013 was starting out with a whimper, not a box office/blockbuster bang. We even speculated that, unless something came along to salvage said season, the annual cinematic dumping ground of January through April would be one of the worst ever. Let’s just say that we were wrong. Wrong. 100% WRONG. In that piece, we speculated on the titles we thought had the potential to come along and possibly, maybe save the Spring, and again, we were off base. Sure, we mentioned some of the movies below, but for the most part, we talked about things—Oz the Great and Powerful, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, Olympus Has Fallen, The Host—that either ended up being good (the first film listed) or glorified crap. Even more interestingly, we hit a few of April’s offerings right on the head.

You’re going to hear it a lot this week, both in defense of, and as a slam, against, it’s based on a true story strategies, and with a mere $20 million dollars in pre-summer movie season receipts, many will cite it as a commercial cautionary example. Still, as a kind of sloppy shorthand, critics and complainers have decided to label Michael Bay’s crime caper comedy Pain & Gain “the non-thinking man’s Fargo” or, even worse, “the Coen brothers on steroids.” Neither comparison is wholly accurate, since the artistic triumph of the siblings’ Oscar winning 1996 film is light years away from Bay’s chaotic, cobbled together movie mess. Aside from the narrative basics, there’s barely any real link at all, and even comparing plotlines is a massive stretch.