Inside le foot

The following is a guest-post by friend of IWA and soccer fanatic Isaiah Cambron.

Just to earn my movie review merit badge before I head off to the K&S Film Festival and blog about that for a week, I thought I would review a documentary that I recently watched. It’s called FC Barcelona Confidential as well as FC Barcelona: The Inside Story, depending on where you’re looking.

Drunken Playboy in the Military-Industrial Complex: Iron Man 2

Mickey Rouke in full method mode

I liked the first Iron Man for its offhandedness.  I guess it is too much to expect a sequel (by design a safe bet on the part of the studio) to rely on improvised dialogue.  Iron Man 2 tries mightily to deliver the goods, with action to spare and Robert Downey Jr. and co firing off jokes at a mile a minute.

Universal Soldier: Regeneration-Hybridizing Van Damme and Modern Warfare

As a general rule, I will like any film that has the word “regeneration” as a subtitle.  Be it a zombie movie, a political thriller, or, as is the case with Universal Soldier: Regeneration, an action film as heavily influenced by Modern Warfare 2 as it is by Eastern Europe paranoia, I’ll probably get my jollies.  Add an over-the-hill Jean-Claude Van Damme and an over-the-hill-and-into-the-chasm Dolph Lundgren, revisiting an action “franchise” they roundhouse-kick started back in the early nineties, and the appeal only grows.  Throw in a dash of some of the most visually-striking cinematography ever included in a straight-to-video action film, courtesy of the accomplished Peter Hyams, and superior fight choreography, and I’ll start exaggerating the movie’s importance to my friends.

Down and out in L.A.

In Greenberg, the new drama by writer/director Noah Baumbach, Ben Stiller plays a guy spending a couple of weeks doing nothing in his brother’s house after a stint in a mental hospital.  He fills his time alternately wooing and scolding his brother’s personal assistant (Greta Gerwig) and they both tend to his brother’s sick dog.  While not heavy on the plot, emotionally Greenberg doesn’t hit many false notes.

I was hesitant to see this film, partly due to it’s marketing campaign, which tries too hard to make it look funny.