ottersh

Pornstar Muffin Baker (Christine Nguyen) receives news that her rich uncle has passed away and has possibly left her with a large inheritance.  Her presence is requested at the estate of her late uncle for the reading of his will, and she happily makes the trip with her boyfriend in tow.  Unbeknownst to her but knownst to us, her attorney, Archibald Weisenheimer, plans on mischief as does the maid and butler, and the obvious question becomes: who do you most want to see naked and giving head?  At first I was on Muffin's side since
Christine Nguyen is prettier than the rest of the cast, but then something about Archibald's daugher, Evilyn (Rebecca Love), had me switching sides.  I can't quite put my finger on it but in the end I was rooting for a good solid blowjob performance from the forces of darkness.  Maybe it was her fetish getup, I dunno.  At any rate the movie features six sex scenes and since they're the only reason to watch this movie I'll provide a handy viewer's guide to them:

1. Muffin Baker (Christine Nguyen) vs. Bardo (Nick Manning).  Muffin has sex with Bardo because Bardo has rescued her from the clutches of giant ants.  You don't see the giant ants but there's always the chance that more will show up so while Muffin rides Bardo she keeps a wary eye on the exits with machine gun in hand.  It's clearly the funniest moment of the film.  At any rate, it soon becomes clear that you've been watching a film within a film.  Solid sex scene.

2. Muffin Baker vs. Ted Wood, Jr. (Voodoo).  Muffin has sex with Ted Wood (HAHAHAHAHA) because he's her boyfriend and that's what good pornstar girlfriends do.  Ted bangs her for awhile and although nothing funny happens you come away feeling happy because you've seen more naked Muffin.

3. Fuscia (Michelle Lay) vs. Marsh (Evan Stone).  Fuscia has sex with Marsh because they're servants and that's what servants do when they're alone.  They're both kind of creepy-looking and I suspect the director, Fred Olen Ray, was hoping for somebody's Rocky Horror Picture Show fantasy to come to life when he had the butler and maid fuck for no reason.

4. Madame Zola (Syren) vs. Marsh.  Madame Zola has sex with Marsh because she's been possessed by Tabitha (Nicole Sheridan), the titular Ghost In A Teeny Bikini, and Tabitha is horny.  Madame Zola came for the seance but stayed for the sex, and, really, also came for the sex and stayed for the seance, but whatever.  The point is that Syren has sex and that's good, although Evan Stone still looks creepy, which is not good.

5. Evilyn (Rebecca Love) vs. Ted Wood, Jr.  Evilyn has sex with Ted Wood (HAHAHAHAHA) because she is trying to destroy his relationship with Muffin.  Ted is receptive to the idea because Muffin isn't in the mood for sex and also because Evilyn has a certain air about her that suggests doing needs doing.  My favourite sex scene even though Ted's in it.

6. Muffin Baker vs. Tabitha.  Muffin has sex with Tabitha because she's asleep and Tabitha is horny.  This is hot lesbian sex with a point, though: it inspires Muffin to figure out how to get the fortune.  If ever you needed an additional argument in favour of lesbian sex, there you are.

There's also singing in the movie and I think Nguyen really did sing her own song because it sounds just terrible.  On the other hand, Evan Stone's song was kind of funny in an intential sort of way.  Breaking into song like that gives you a sort of WTF moment and helps pass the time between sex scenes.

You might as well watch hardcore pornography if you're already interested in this film but if you're a Fred Olen Ray fan or if you just need the tits and sex sounds, this movie'll do ya fine.

peazel

So I'm not having pregnancy dreams, mostly, and my mother is disappointed--keeps checking to make sure that I'm not dreaming about being cheated on [symbolic of my hidden insecurities!], being trapped in a huge, ugly house [=my pregnant body, apparently], or small, fuzzy animals who need me to protect or nourish them. 0.o I'm not having these dreams, although I've read about them--maybe because my insecurites aren't hidden, or because I've always felt as though my body were a strange, ugly house that I don't want to live in. But last night I finally did have a dream; I dreamed that I had the kid, and that he looked exactly the way his pop must have as a squishy-faced newborn [blue eyes, placenta-flavored blond hair, teeny roman nose]. Since I hope that the kid will look like his biodad, that's . . . probably what it means.

I assume that the timing is a result of my consultation with the midwifery practice yesterday. They seem like sweet and good and capable people--now I just have to wait for them to decide whether they'd like to work with liddle ole me. While we waited for the midwife, my mom and I watched this video of people having babies. Not a revelation, exactly, but it's hard to get out of my mind now that that shit fucking HURTS. Listening to sweet, exhausted aftermath ladies talking about how it hurt worse than anything ever but since there's no way to avoid it they just hung on is mildly intimidating. Nevertheless, I want to have the kid out of the hospital, with no drugs. Why?

My mom was a childbirth educator for several years, and as a result, I soaked up a load of information about childbirth as a young teen who knew that she'd never let anyone do that to her. I saw woman after woman [on video, usually] screaming and crying and finally push a fucking eight-pound creature out through her vagina. So it hurts, check, but the really awful videos to watch involved drugs. I saw side-by-side footage of undrugged babies and their drugged comrades--the drugged babies just flop around sadly and look dead, it's really awful. The undrugged kids, set on the mom's stomach, could pull themselves up to the nipple, latch on, and start breastfeeding--it's really fucking amazing. So I've got this idea that [at least for me! We all make our own choices!], painkillers during pregnancy = child abuse. Also, frankly, it sounds scarier to me to be fuzzy about what's happening than to be in really awful pain. At least I know what pain is like; I have no real idea what childbirth is like, and don't want to be impaired while I try it on. Shit,  you aren't supposed to use a car while on that stuff--why attempt anything even more important?

I'm halfway through now, so the twat-shredding pain is beginning to seem very real and inevitable. It's a pretty weird thing to have happen to a gal, yeah?

ottersh

Well, they pulled it off: a fun superhero movie. For some reason most superhero movies have been wallowing in exposition and unbelievable romance all these years, always being careful to make sure you hate nearly everyone involved with the production of the film before giving you the final payoff of explosions and things actually happening. Superhero movies tend to be as afraid of their b-movie roots as I am of crowded restaurants and they act about as snobbish. But the truth is that the best movies, those that are most fun to watch, are the "high brow" masterpieces and the pulp trash, and watching everything in between makes up your punishment for the sins you don't confess.

There isn't much plot to The Incredible Hulk, which means there's a chance you'll have some fun while watching it. Normally you're just setting yourself up for disappointment if you leave a big budget studio project to its own plot devices, but this time the filmmakers were so preoccupied with making sure the film didn't feel like Hulk (2003) that they left less time for thinkin'. Some people seem to think of this as a drawback, as though Spider-Man was a thoughtful take on orphan empowerment, but I for one am just asking for a bunch of action bridged by functional dialogue and plotting.

Taking up where Hulk ended, Dr. Bruce Banner  (Edward Norton) is on the run from the U.S. military, hiding out down in Brazil in a slum that you'll just have to see to believe. I'm glad somebody filmed it. He's been working to cure his condition that causes him to turn into a raging green giant when overly excited, and he's also been pining after his lost love. Unfortunately, the U.S. military finds out where he's hiding and the rest of the film involves one long chase scene punctuated with short fight scenes. The love story is rejoined, only this time it seems like they enjoy each other and the last time that showed up in a superhero movie was...never.

The villain (Tim Roth) is boring and predictable and perhaps it's supposed to be a little disturbing in that the climactic battle is a rage-off and perhaps we're supposed to give a fuck that we're cheering for the smarter angry monster and that ought to tell us something but it doesn't and maybe I'm misjudging the entire film. An interesting villain would be oh, say, The Leader, who we are certain to see in the sequel since his character (Tim Blake Nelson) is set up unconvincingly in the last half of this movie. Then we could watch the conflict between rage and intellect play out not only in the character of the Hulk, but also between the Hulk and the villain.

But I can't go on. I just can't do it. I've no real idea what other things to say about this movie. It's ok. It's not a terrible movie. It's a little boring but in that way that makes two hours seem like only one hour, which is to say it's still not much different from most superhero movies. Ultimately it feels like a waste of money to go to a movie like this if the movie itself is going to be the highlight of the trip. Make sure you watch this movie with someone whose company you really enjoy.

Recommended for: Jacques Renault

peazel

Here’s the thing; I love musicals. Most new musicals I think are absolute shit, but, believe it or not, because I’m some kind of reactionary—I just that, for example, a musical where you just take the hits of ABBA and set them to a crappy love story . . . blows. But Joss Whedon has an interest in and talent for creating genuinely new musicals—sure, both _Dr. Horrible_ and the _Buffy_ musical have been short, low-budget stuff, but they’re charming and original and nerdy. Real musicals are nerdly! The _Lion King_ or _Mama Mia_ is just cashing in on the massive popularity of some already mainstream money machine. Sure, you have to hire someone to choreograph your _Little Mermaid_ Heely ballet, but there’s nothing really new going to happen. Whedon’s musicals remind me of Sondheim [in my humble the patron saint of musical theater]. Did you ever see _Into the Woods_? There’s a quirky sense of humor there that cannot be allowed in the McDonald’s musicals, a sense of fun and offbeat, snarky fun that you won’t find in fucking _Mama Mia._ That’s why you need to watch _Dr. Horrible_; we need people to write new musicals that don’t suck rancid dolphin cock.

peazel

So let me say it right up front: I liked the new _Hulk_ movie quite a bit. I’ve listened to a few people talk about why the Ang Lee movie was just too good for comic book geeks—something about the Hulk being not a literal monster but the rampaging id, God save us—but it was a boundless sea of shittiness. Aha, peazel, I hear you cry, but you admit yourself that you are one of those geeks yourself—maybe the movie was just too artistic for you. Well, it’s hard to argue that it isn’t possible [I not only read Penny Arcade, I not only listen to Downloadable Content obsessively, I enjoy the podcast Gabe and Tycho did for WotC—that’s right, just Mike, Jerry, and Steve Kuntz playing D&D together. I am Lord Nerdlington], but—what’s that formulation again? Oh yeah—some of my favorite films are artistic. My three favorite movies, in fact, are all foreign, and my very favorite is not only not available on DVD in this country but was shot in black and white. So I can, in fact, appreciate artistic bullshit; but _Hulk_ one was just bullshit, full stop. I didn’t watch the deleted scenes, not feeling up to ten full minutes of watching the Hulk sit on his princess bed, eat chocolate candies by the handful, and cry about how boys never call, but I saw more than my fair share of bullshit just watching the theatrical release version. Shit, I watched _Ghost Rider,_ and even that turkey cannot compete with the sheer tonnage of bullshit crammed into Lee’s assterpiece. You like that? Yeah you do.

The fact that I hated the first movie so much made me willing to go see _Hulk 2: Hulkier!_ in theaters; it seemed impossible for this movie to disappoint me. And sure enough, it had many excellent features, some of which I will discuss here, and the rest of which you’ll have to buy me a drink to invent. My favorite thing was the relationship between Banner and Betty Ross; this is the first superheroic relationship in film to be believable. In one scene where Banner realizes that he can’t have sex without Hulking out [a nice touch, by the way—harks back to my beloved X-Men], the conversation between the two of them is both funny and genuinely touching. Is that just because Liv Tyler’s so appealing? Only time will tell, I guess.

The fighting in _Hulk Two: Hulk, Too?_ was deeply satisfying for me—it wasn’t until midway through the first major fight that I realized that I’d never really rooted for the Hulk of the previous installment to make some noise. Even when he was fighting the mutant cancer dogs, surely the most just of any possible conflict [note: hmmm.], I just wanted the Hulk to shut the fuck up and stop bothering me. Maybe he could run errands offscreen, and take his awful [note: not awe-inspiring, just annoying] father with him.  But watching Edward Norton chase cowardly South Americans through their own bottling factory was fantastic. The very best combat nugget, to my mind, takes place at the University of Toronto [yes, I watched this movie with a Torontonian who wouldn’t shut the fuck up about where things had been filmed, and as a result can’t even remember where much of the film was actually supposed to be set] when the Hulk has to destroy a couple of sound cannons and then protect his lady from her own father. Dun-dun-duuun!

The worst part of this movie was a cowardly scientist who looked something like the even geekier cousin of that chaos theorist from the first_ Jurassic Park_ movie. It seemed like the movie had suddenly taken a virulently anti-intellectual tone, which snapped me out of immersion for the first and only time; it was kind of horrifying. Imagine making out with a cute dude, and everything’s going fantastic, and then you glance down and see that he’s rubbing a rat against his penis. Oh, wait, I already reviewed that movie [see: _Phantom of the Opera_]. The runner-up in the worst film element contest, sadly, goes to the main villain—he’s a Russian who works for the British on loan to the U.S. who sports a mysterious Irish accent. As soon as he turned up, it was pretty clear that he was going to be the unstable, evil foreigner; I am in fact a fan of clichés in the appropriate context, but this was just goofy.

The movie has its flaws—there are others, but again, you’d have to buy me a drink and sit patiently to get at them—but it’s definitely worth seeing unless you are a complete punk who hates superhero movies [except perhaps for some imaginary superhero movie that has no dialogue] like my colleague here.

Eight out of ten stars.

Recommended for: Betty Briggs.

ottersh

I have no hope for you if you go to a superhero movie looking for rich dialogue and superior character development. Similarly, I have no hope for you if you think you're getting it when you see a movie like Iron Man. All that you can hope for is a few fun action sequences that aren't ruined by horrible dialogue. If you get something better than that, consider your time not wasted.

Iron Man is played by Robert Downey, jr., who manages to be both un-annoying and even mildly charming. This might seem like damning with faint praise, but consider the charmless acting in Fantastic Four (2005), any of the Batman movies, and in Hulk (2003), and you'll surely realize acting in a superhero movie is harder than it may at first seem. (the script writers will never do you a favour) Much has been made of Downey's real-life persona making him a natural fit for the role of the callow-but-talented playboy asshole Tony Stark, which seems wildly offensive to Downey, but I guess he makes enough money to brush it off. His personal assistant, Pepper Potts, is played by Gwyneth Paltrow, who seems to have way too much talent to be playing this role, but she's been on record saying she's afraid she'll have a difficult time ever finding good acting roles again after taking two years off. Points for being willing to work up from the bottom, but I rather wish she'd taken Nicole Kidman's route of doing interesting movies that nobody ever hears about while waiting for the occasional big role to pop up. Paltrow, instead, looks pretty and spends the movie doing nothing much. It's funny how it all adds up to increased box office potential in the long run. The identity of the bad guy is supposed to be a secret, I think, but if you've ever seen a superhero movie before you'll have very quickly figured out who it will be. (and this might be the problem of casting a big-name actor for the part: no one will ever assume he's not going to have a significant role in the end) Still, to avoid spoilers, I won't tell you who it is. Jeff Bridges, by the way, does a nice job as Obadiah Stane, Tony Stark's business partner. Oh, also, there's a token black man who will have an expanded role in a sequel, and also a reporter from Variety or Vanity Fair - it doesn't much matter - who for some reason attends arms industry press conferences. She has sex with Stark but I think we're supposed to take her seriously because she puts on a serious face later. I suppose it's no more sexist than the source material.

The quality of the main actors seems to be considered a strength for Iron Man, but I don't see it. Eric Bana and Jennifer Connelly are good actors and that didn't help Hulk much at the box office or in the affections of geeks. Gwyneth Paltrow's job in Iron Man is to look pretty, and she pulls that off, but it's not exactly due to the quality of her acting. (unless I've misjudged her off-screen life drastically) The acting in Iron Man is fine, but all that was needed, I suspect, was for Downey to be charismatic enough to hold our attention and he does that. Bana certainly didn't. Nobody in Fantastic Four could do it. (I'm tempted to say Jessica Alba's job was only to look pretty too, but sadly she had real speaking lines and plot developments to handle)

Oh, hey, the plot. For some reason Stark decides to fly to Afghanistan and then go way out into the wild to test his new missile system for generals. Why he would do this - why anyone would do this - isn't addressed in the movie but then it's a superhero film so this is the sort of plot hole one leaps over. Surprisingly, Stark's army convoy is ambushed by bad guys - Afghans? Taliban? Al-Qaeda? - and everyone other than him is killed. Actually, he's mostly killed, but in captivity his life is saved by a fellow prisoner who jams an electro-magnet into Stark's chest in order to save Stark's heart from embedded shrapnel. (it's never explained why Stark doesn't have the shrapnel removed when he returns to the U.S. but I think we're supposed to be satisfied with the explanation that the shrapnel is "too close to the heart") The bad guys want Stark's know-how employed to build them a bomb, and Stark decides to bust out of lock-down by building a nuclear-powered metal suit. Bust out he does because although the bad guys can plainly see their bullets bouncing off Stark's armour to no effect their only tactic, to the last man standing, is to stand clear of protection and shoot Stark point-blank. One bad guy creeps up to Stark and fires a bullet at the back of his head, the bullet bouncing back and killing the bad guy instantly. It's played for laughs, but it just made me feel uncomfortable, like scene in Union Pacific (1939), when the Indian waves his tomahawk at the cigar store Indian. Anyway, later Stark realizes some hard truths about the military-industrial complex and decides to right his wrongs by becoming a metal-clad superhero. He's betrayed and ultimately must confront his betrayer in the climactic battle.

The plot's weak, obviously, and pretty lame, but it doesn't really need to be more than serviceable. I just need my superhero movies to have lots of good action involving costumed superheroes battling it out with costumed bad dudes. There's not much of that in Iron Man, but still there's a fun CGI sequence involving Iron Man and two U.S. fighter jets dogfighting for awhile. Cut 30 minutes of plot and character development and keep all of the action sequences and we would have had a really fun superhero movie on our hands. Instead we have an ok film, fitting somewhere in between good superhero movies like the first two Spider-Man films, and the bad such as the Fantastic Four films, right around the Batman Begins (2005) level.

For the record, my favourite comic book adaptation is Akira (1988), likely followed by Sin City (2005). Unbreakable (2000) is probably my favourite superhero movie.

Recommended for: Bobby Briggs.

peazel

Iron Man! I was really excited about seeing this movie, mostly because I never really liked Iron Man. See, I really like comics, and I grew up a Marvel girl, but my love was reserved largely for the X-Men (almost all of the X-Men, embarrassingly—I even read the ill-fated Generation X), the Fantastic Four, and Captain America. I never much cared for the Avengers—surely even Marvel fans can admit that they’re just a cut rate JLA, right?—and only read of the Captain’s adventures in his solo rag (and briefly, wonderfully, in Joe Kelly’s Deadpool). I mean, the Avengers were more or less the Captain, Iron Man, Thor (not the worst of his kind, I admit it—that dubious honor probably goes to Hercules, or maybe Wonder Man—the party-fied powerhouses!—but still a dink by any reasonable measure), the Hulk (yawn. I mean, I don’t mind him existing particularly, and he can be a tragic guest star every so often, but he’s too mindless and too powerful and way too inarticulate. Not a team player), Quicksilver ( . . . fast), and Namor (and what fucking genius put him on a team? Namor’s a dick, a majestically unapologetic prince of tuna, and didn’t he start out fighting the damn’ Avengers?). And then, of course, we have the West Coast Avengers (or, I can hear the fanboys whining, the Avengers: West Coast): Hawkeye (a former hoodlum unworthy to lick the balls of Oliver Queen), Mockingbird (I’d make a similar comparison to Black Canary, but it’s just too sad), Hank Pym (I mean, I know that many heroes end up going through more than one pseudonym, but it’s a rare asshole who uses so many that he gets confused and has to resort to the name his momma gave him. Also, Hank Pym is a wife-beating asshole and I’m not sure why he gets credited to the forces of good), the Wasp (a reasonable choice, I guess—when you have the power to become tiny, you really need a team backing you up. Oh, and the power to leave the abusive asshole you fell in love with), Wonder Man (much as I hate the phrase “love to hate” . . . I mean, he was a stuntman-turned-movie star whose incredible powers were tempered by the fact that he didn’t much give a damn about anything but chasing pussy), the Scarlet Witch (who suffered from a not-uncommon problem—she was far too powerful to be allowed to actually use her powers. Whenever she got much play, it tended to revolve around her personal life and the fact that her children, e.g., didn’t exist), the Vision (why can we not as a people accept the fact that superpowerful robots are a bad idea and move on? They get possessed, they get reprogrammed, they come to feel solidarity with toasters and rise up against us), Tigra (a catgirl, whose cat aspect mostly involved being a huge whore. At least they aren’t letting the feminists ruin comics, am I right?), and the Moon Knight (genuinely cool, completely bats, and a very strange choice for a team player. He’s a split personality who worships an imaginary god and wears a cowl; he has never been nominated for the Mister Stable award. And fuck you, Batman is the exception who proves the rule on that team thing). Oh, and you can take your inactive reserve and fuck yourself—the Thing is not an Avenger, he just didn’t want to hurt your feelings.

So. Iron Man! I never liked Iron Man; he was a self-involved, alcoholic jerk who only did good when it seemed like it might be fun. He seemed like such a weenie without the suit, and he didn’t have any problems that he didn’t bring on himself—you have to remember that I was an X-Men fan. Tony Stark was a weenie of privilege, and he wore too much eyeliner. My absolute favorite part of the most excellent Civil War was the companion volume that took the form of Tony Stark’s files. What an asshole! So that’s why I was excited about the Iron Man movie; I’ve seen many a superhero flick, and they tend to fuck up the characters pretty badly. Sounds great! Sign me up! Watching what the man did to Nightcrawler made me want to cry, but they could make Tony Stark a tap-dancing panda and I wouldn’t be much bothered. Feel free to take my low expectations into account when I say that the movie was pretty great, but I really liked it (although in my humble the last twenty minutes aren’t really worth sticking around for). Marvel had creative control of this one, and it shows: the origin story gets updated in a logical and consistent way (and why is this so often a problem? I’m looking at you, Fantastic Four and The Hulk); Tony Stark drinks like a fish, but it isn’t commented on in this episode; and there are numerous friendly nods to the fans in the crowd, including the appearances of S.H.I.E.L.D. and hints toward Rhodey’s future career as Iron Man and War Machine.  The Iron Man suit is fantastic, and his flights made me all misty-eyed over what movies can do for geeks these days. I was especially impressed by the way that the movie compensated for the fact that we can’t in fact build awesome robots by giving Stark’s bots R2D2-style personality. Gwyneth Paltrow is a charming Pepper Potts, although I can’t help wondering what she’s doing in this movie—didn’t she do real movies once upon a time?

I decided to write up a review of Iron Man after reading David Denby’s review in the New Yorker; I feel fairly confident in asserting that he didn’t actually watch the film. You should look it up, it’s worth reading—I’ve never agreed with him about a movie, but this piece left me actually enraged. Watch the movie, read the review, and then try to convince me that he watched the whole movie. It seems more likely that he stopped some eight-year-old  coming out of the theater and asked a few bored questions.

So what’s wrong with this movie? The fact that Obie Stane wouldn’t stop talking (and that he started every sentence with “Tony”) really got on my nerves after awhile; the reporter from Vanity Fair is a weird, over-sexed chipmunk of a character, and I’m not sure why she keeps popping up to ask the tough questions in a stupid voice; and I was really disappointed by the climactic fight between Iron Man and War Monger. It took me awhile to figure out why, but I think I have it—in this movie, Iron Man is at his best when in the air, but he’s forced to fight War Monger by hopping around at ground level and getting tossed into things.

My greatest hope for the future of the franchise rests in the Avengers movie coming out in 2011. We’ll be getting a Thor movie and a Captain America movie before then, at least; Iron Man is at his jerkiest in a group, and he may well shine in the Avengers movie. In an assholey way, I mean.

Eight out of ten stars.

Recommended for: Comics fans and other kids.

peazel

I read this Michael Crichton book something like ten years ago—in it, he has the author insertion persona talk about Japanese veneration of the “art of artlessness,” about the difficulty of constructing something that looks perfectly unstudied and unselfconscious. This is a perfect description of what kids-in-mind.com has accomplished (whether or not it’s a goal of the Japanese . . . and I’d bet on not. The book was a paranoid rant against the yellow peril. But it was kind of fun). Kids in Mind is a website intended to help parents avoid inappropriate film content for their kids, but I suspect that it’s read mostly by grownups looking for giggles. Me, I find it less funny and more zen; each film review reads like a sort of extended koan, a poem about the human condition. I will here quote an example.

►A man and a woman kiss in bed (she is wearing a shirt and panties revealing bare legs to the hip), she straddles him and they kiss passionately, they roll over and fall on the floor (it is implied that they have sex) and we see her wake up nude the next morning (her bare legs, back and shoulder are visible).

► Two women wearing low-cut dresses (cleavage and bare shoulders are visible) stand on either side of a man and snuggle against him as he gambles and one blows on his dice suggestively. Two men watch as three female flight attendants dance while holding glasses of champagne on a plane (we see bare abdomens and cleavage).

► A man and a woman nearly kiss. A man and a woman appear to be attracted to each other.

► A woman wears a shirt unbuttoned to expose part of her bra and cleavage and bare legs to the hip. Women are shown wearing low-cut tops and dresses that reveal cleavage in many scenes.

► A man and a woman wearing a very low-cut dress in the back that reveals her bare back to the hip and cleavage dance together at a party. Men and women dance together at a party.

► A man asks another man if it's true that he has gone "12 for 12" with the Maxim cover models (implying that he had sex with all of them) and the man says yes. A man teases another man about the "lovely lady he woke up with" and asks, "What was his name?" A woman enters a room to see a man wearing a metal suit and being tugged at by machines and he says, "This is not the worst thing you've caught me doing." A man wearing a metal suit tells machines trying to take the suit off to "be gentle, this is my first time."

►Several military vehicles drive through the desert, one explodes (we see the vehicle thrown and flames burst), and soldiers get out of the other vehicles and are shot (we see blood spurts on a windshield and hear screaming); a man gets out of one vehicle and runs, a bomb lands on the ground next to him and explodes, and he is struck and thrown to the ground (we see blood seeping through his shirt and blood on his face).

► Men with guns attack a village, people run into a building, they are chased and shot (we hear the gunshots), others are forced into a truck and the men are lined up against a wall to be shot and one man is struck and kicked while on the ground (the attack is interrupted before they are shot). Men with guns hold other men on the ground on their knees, they receive orders to "take care of things" and we hear gunshots (suggesting that all of the men were killed). A wounded man with blood on his chest and face dies. Two men open a cell door, it explodes and they are thrown and killed (we see their bodies).

► A man in a metal suit picks up a car with a woman and children inside (they scream) and prepares to throw the car but does not, he grabs a motorcycle and flings it against a wall (throwing the driver off), and he is then thrown into a bus and the bus explodes (he is shot out and into the sky). Someone falls into a reactor and causes an enormous explosion. A man wearing a metal suit is shot out of the sky by a rocket, crashes to the ground (he's OK), he then fires on the tank that fired at him and blows it up (we don't see anyone inside the tank). A man wearing a metal suit shoots and destroys many weapons causing large explosions.

► A man in a metal suit flies through the air, is shadowed by two fighter jets, a rocket is fired at him, he blows up the rocket, clings to the belly of one plane, the plane spins trying to knock him off, he lets go, one plane crashes into him breaking its wing, the plane spins out of control, and the pilot ejects -- his parachute deploys just before it is too late.

► A man in a metal suit is shot at repeatedly, he shoots a rocket at a man and it explodes behind him (we see the man later with a badly scarred face), shoots a flame thrower that ignites many men (we see men running in flames), as well as stockpiles of weapons, causing explosions. A man in a metal suit shoots several men who hold people with guns to their heads (we see the men slump to the ground dead, there's no blood). A man in a metal suit punches through a wall, pulls a man out through the hole and slams him to the ground (people standing around him move closer to him suggesting that they are going to attack him). Two men in metal suits fight: one stomps on the chest of the other, one is thrown, one has cables yanked out of its mechanisms, one shoots at the other, and one threatens to kill the other.

► We see a man thrashing and screaming during a surgical procedure, and we see bloody tissue being removed and a device being implanted. A man regains consciousness and pulls a tube out of his nose (we hear squishing as it comes out) and he gags and coughs. A man is rendered paralyzed and another man removes a device from his chest (he gasps and goes gray suggesting that he is dying). After a surgery a man discovers that a device has been implanted in his chest and that it is attached to a car battery (we see him carrying the battery around in several scenes). A man has a metal cylinder in his chest (we see inside the metal; there's no blood or body matter), he tells a woman to reach inside it and pull out a wire, she does (we hear squishing and she complains that it is filled with pus and that it smells, we hear a zap and the man twitches), she puts another device in the cylinder and the man is jolted; she pulls her hand out and we see slime on her hand.

► Several men with guns enter a laboratory, they are each struck or thrown by a man in a metal suit, there is a large explosion, and the man in the metal suit breaks through the ground outside and holds a weapon on a woman. Several men with guns enter a cell, one man is kicked across the room by a man in a metal suit, other men shoot at him, he kicks and punches them out of the way, breaks through a door, a man shoots at him at close range (the bullet ricochets and strikes him in the head, there's no blood).

► A man is forced to his knees, his head is placed on a table and a red-hot coal is pushed near his face as a threat. A man's head is forced under water several times as a form of punishment and his head is placed in a burlap bag in a later scene. We see a man with a bloody face tied to a chair and men with guns stand around him. We see photos of dead human and animal bodies after an attack.

► A man wearing a metal suit flies high into the atmosphere, ice forms on the metal, the flying mechanism fails, he falls toward the ground and nearly crashes onto a busy street. A man wearing a metal suit flies into the air, the propulsion mechanism sputters, and he falls back to the ground and crashes into sand (we see the suit in pieces and he has some blood on his face and arm). A man testing jet propulsion boots is flipped through the air and slams into a wall (we see him with a few abrasions on his face later). A man tests out a flight stabilizer and is thrown back from the blast. When a man in a metal suit lands on his roof, he breaks through the roof, then the floor of the first floor and then onto a car parked on the bottom floor (sirens blare). A man tests a device that fires a blast into a wall and then three plate glass windows, shattering them.

► A man uses a device that makes a high-pitched whistle to incapacitate a man (we see the man's veins on his face protrude through the skin and he goes limp). Two men being held hostage stand and raise their hands in the air when their captors with guns enter and threaten them. A man yells at and threatens a man.

► During a weapon demonstration, a rocket is launched, it spurts smaller explosives and when they strike the ground there is an enormous explosion that blows a wave of dust and a gust of wind into people that are gathered to watch.

► A man speeds in his car. A man is strapped and screwed into a metal suit. Machines pull and tug at a metal suit trying to remove it from a man who struggles and complains.

► A man is referred to as the Merchant of Death. A man is told that he is locked out of his company by the Board.

There are also sections for substance ab/use, discussion topics, and my favorite: a count of every naughty word used in the film.

1 mostly muffled F-word, 2 scatological terms, 1 anatomical term, 7 mild obscenities, name-calling (sour patch), 7 religious exclamations.

This is of course Iron Man, a film that I’ve seen three times in the theater so far. I’m reasonably familiar with the movie, then, but the Kids in Mind review gave me an entirely different perspective on the film. I think part of what I find so interesting is the fact that no names are used—it doesn’t matter who is snuggling whom—that is totally irrelevant to the review. Weird, huh? It doesn’t seem like this could really be designed to protect little kids: take this entry. “A man wearing a metal suit tells machines trying to take the suit off to ‘be gentle, this is my first time.’” Okay, this is a mildly sexual joke—but no little kid is going to have any idea that there’s a sexual connotation to it, so what’s the harm?

As a child, I was under the supervision of adults who probably would really have appreciated this website. I wasn’t allowed to watch the Smurfs because there was magic used, for example—I wasn’t allowed to see the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks—I got in trouble for reading The Handmaid’s Tale because of the sexual content of the books. As with my parents’ methods of censorship, there are some suggestive lacks at the ‘site; they aren’t really concerned with racism, or sexism, or heterosexism, despite that fact that kids pick up on that kind of poison easily enough. I grew up watching hideous Christian claymation series Davey and Goliath, a series which hated women and had one particularly weird episode which smugly focuses on the racism of a black character (who existed only for the duration of the episode and the purpose of serving as a negative example).

I can’t star this one. Several stars for thoroughness?

Recommended for: the kind of parents who shouldn’t be allowed within five hundred yards of a minor child.