Made Of Honor

An inoffensive but bland romantic comedy, Made Of Honor is a safe bet for a Friday night if you consider My Best Friend's Wedding the best film ever made. More demanding viewers are likely to be bored by the join-the-dots story of a womanising New Yorker (Patrick Dempsey) who falls for his best friend (Michelle Monahan) just as she gets engaged - and then has to win her back, while acting as her - you guessed it - maid of honour.

Dempsey is currently housewives' choice for his turn as Dr Derek Shepherd in TV's Grey's Anatomy, and it's easy to see why his safe, designer-stubble charm holds an appeal. But as a devil-may-care commitment-phobe, he doesn't really convince - you never believe he has the selfish streak necessary to be a serial date-'n'-dumper. Michelle Monahan, so spiky and sexy in the little-seen but superb Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, has little more to do than bounce around looking cute, while the usually reliable Kevin McKidd (check out his turns in the tender Afterlife or raucous Dog Soldiers) has a desperately dull time as her Scottish fiance.
The Caledonian connection leads to an excruciating third act, when everyone hops over the Atlantic for - och, aye - a good old Celtic wedding, replete with kilts and caber-tossing. There are a couple of amusing but forgettable gags (such us... oh, um, can't remember), but for all but the most dedicated fans of soppy, sloppy romance, Made Of Honor deserves to be jilted

fool's god

Where did all that lovely chemistry between Kate Hudson & Matthew McConnaughey go in 'How to Lose a Man in 10 Days', along with good script, great pacing, some laughs & designer clothing not made of Teflon to compensate for the lack of all of the above?! What a mess! Poor Malcolm-Jamal Warner as the villain-rapper probably wishes he was still little Theo Huxtable waiting for Papa Bill Cosby to bail him out of this one. And Ray Winstone's Southern fried accent was about as fake as his abs in 'Beowulf'. What was he doing in this turkey? I know! Recruiting Matthew McConnaughey's abs for 'Beowulf 2'! And he comes with his own set of bongos! This film will set romantic comedy back 100 years.

Iron Man

So it’s easy to see what Hollywood sees in the character, but, somewhat surprisingly, it’s hard to resist the film that director Jon Favreau and his four-man screen-writing team have built around it. Iron Man stands atop the increasingly large heap of superhero movies; in fact, it may be the current king of that particular hill.

Credit goes largely to Robert Downey Jr., who plays Tony Stark, the ingenious sake-swilling, womanizing weapons-manufacturer playboy billionaire (picture young Howard Hughes as a modern celebrity CEO running Lockheed Martin). Downey is not only perfect for the role of bad boy trying to atone on a meta-level, but he has the wit, charm and hyperactive delivery to play a guy a few times smarter than everyone around him.

Favreau, who’s probably still best known as the “the guy who made Swingers,” seems to have learned from his last few family films (Elf, Zathura) how to properly balance character and story with set pieces and special effects, and the results are a crowd-pleasing movie in which the latter always serve the former. It’s a blockbuster with brains.

Part of what makes Iron Man work so well, however, is a matter mostly beyond the control of its makers—timing. Not only did film-making technology have to be where it is now to make the complex Iron Man suit and its million moving parts look cool and convincing instead of like, say, Robocop or one of the Terminator robots, but the whole concept of the film seems apropos of right now, and would have lacked impact had it come much earlier.

The comic book Iron Man debuted in the early ‘60s during the Cold War, when Tony Stark was captured in the jungles of Vietnam. This Iron Man is the product of the War on Terror, and while it’s too bad for the world at large that the first decade of this century has so much in common with the ‘60s, (geopolitically speaking), it sure helps Favreau’s film to encapsulate a certain aspect of the zeitgeist, making it feel like it’s a lot more than a charming actor wearing a toy that makes things blow up