Norway1

I picked this up as a "blind buy" because I love all the actors involved and enjoy a good period picture. This seemed right up my alley. Hell no. The story petered along at molasses pace with the final hour being the most painful to watch. The story really went nowhere. Thinking this is about Mildred Pierce is only half true - and the last two parts are mainly about her oldest daughter, payed by Even Rachel Wood.

Guy Pearce is terrific. Winslet uses the same accent she mastered in Revolutionary Road but this character is much more boring. If we are supposed to be rooting for Mildred, I can't figure out why. All I wanted was for something interesting to happen at some point in the film. The most exciting event takes place in the last 10 minutes and then it stops just short of making it interesting. I would recommend watching The Reader or Revolutionary Road instead of this. Or for Guy Pearce, watch the Proposition or Memento. Evan Rachel Wood was great in Thirteen, and okay in the Wrestler. Not so impressive in anything else.

Sorry. I really wanted to like this but have to be honest. It really sucked.

Although an avid Marvel comics reader I never once read Thor comic book. I was hooked on X-Men, Avengers, Spider-Man, Alpha Flight and others, but for some reason Thor never interested me much. So when this movie was announced I wasn't all too interested. The trailers weren't much help, though they perked my interest. A few good television spots and the final trailer convinced me to give it a try. So yesterday I took my 3 teenage kids to see it on opening night here in Oslo, Norway at (allegedly) the biggest screen in Europe.

I was effing blown away! Maybe because I wasn't expecting much. Or maybe because it was a great film. I like to think it was great.

Remove your biases and (even if you didn't like the trailers) if you loved the first Iron Man movie you will LOVE this!

Personally, I didn't much like Iron Man 2, didn't like either of the Fantastic Four movies but loved Iron Man 1 and all the X-Men, Spider-Man and (Nolan) Batman movies. (Just for your comparison with taste.)

Only word of caution/advice is to see it in 2D if possible. We watched it in 3D and though the 3D was pretty good (comparable with Green Hornet if you've seen that) it made several of the scenes blurry. Our projectionist said it was because the theater is so big and the screen is too far from the projector for this particular movie to work in 3D, but that others (Avatar, any animated movie, etc) work just fine in that theater. So either watch it in 2D or on a medium or small screen in 3D.

I'm really torn between a rating of 7 and 8 and should probably see it again before a final verdict. But my initial feeling is this one had too much talk and too little heart.

While there certainly was more action, the action scenes - especially the last - did not feel threatening at all. The one possible exception to this is the first battle between Iron Man and Whiplash - the one on the race track from the trailer.

The main problem is probably too much dialog, possibly too much happening, and too little heart. Too few quiet moments. I'm not sure.

My guess is the film makers heard that people loved the humor from the first (which was mostly ad-libbed from the actors) but missed more action. So they apparently gave the whole cast (of GREAT actors all around!) free reign to talk up as much as they want in each and every scene. And they added action sequence after action sequence to make up for the mere two major sequences from Iron Man 1.

The end result was slightly underwhelming, yet almost satisfying.