Iron Man (2008)

 ★ ★ ★ ★

Pretty much as good as an origin-story based Iron Man movie could be. The tone captures Marvel's hyper-reality better than most superhero movies of the last 15 years, and the action remains clear and uncluttered, side-stepping the blurry jump-cuts of most modern action-cinema. Great cast, great effects, nicely paced, funny... I suspect Favreau could have knocked the Transformers franchise into good shape.

Universal Soldier (1992)

★ ★ ★

Dumb but adequately made amalgam of 'Robocop', 'Aliens' and 'The Terminator'. The dialogue is goofy, the plot-holes are gratuitous, and the potentially interesting central premise is wasted in favour of standard 90's action fare.

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

★ ★ 

After half an hour of excruciating exposition, we finally arrive at some dino-action... and my goodness its boring. Action-wise 'The Lost World' is a humourless retread of the original, with cheaper looking CGI and animatronics. Plot-wise its a carelessly assembled jumble of cliches and charicatures. Pressured into writing a sequel-novel in the hopes of repeating 'Jurassic Park's success, Crichton relies on half-hearted 'King Kong'-isms, but never manages to throw any new ideas into the mix. Goldblum looks embarassed to be here,  desperately trying to wring some humour out of an uncharismatic script. By the time the T-Rex is stomping through San Diego, its too late: 100 minutes in is too late for a film to get interesting. This is pure money-centric cinema, which has more in common artistically with Jaws 3D than with Jaws. Spielberg's worst film.