"Iron Man 2" is a Little Clunkier

What do you get when you take a relatively inexperienced director, a recovering train wreck of an actor and an under-the-radar superhero?

$585 million at the box office, glowing reviews and a career renaissance, that's what.

So what do you do for an encore?

In 2008, when the first "Iron Man" film headed into theaters, few expected it to create the tidal wave of success which followed. Two years later, hottest commodity on the block, Robert Downey Jr. is back as Iron Man/Tony Stark with some familiar faces and a few new playmates in tow, including director Jon Favreau with an expanded role as Stark's chauffeur Happy Hogan, Gwyneth Paltrow as his long-suffering assistant and love interest Pepper Potts, Don Cheadle, Terrence Howard's well publicized replacement, in the role of James Rhodes, Mickey Rourke taking up the resident baddy role of Ivan Vanko/Whiplash, Sam Rockwell as Justin Hammer and Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow.

Phew. Overwhelmed? Apparently so were the filmmakers.

Whether the problem was a lack of focus or your typical sophomore slump, "Iron Man 2" is the tired, rusty, older sibling of its gleaming predecessor.

It could be argued that the first "Iron Man" was so spectacular and unexpected, it's an impossible act to follow. Or, it might be that the production crumbled under its own hype.

Whatever the reason, "Iron Man 2" fails to recreate the boisterous, combustible surge audiences were expecting.

Actor-turned-writer Justin Theroux, who co-wrote "Tropic Thunder," lost the fun this time around, filling the sequel with too many building montages and not enough of RDJ's riffing. Not that Downey Jr. can do any wrong, but you wonder if the best bits of his performance might have been left for the DVD special features. Meanwhile Rockwell, a chronically underrated actor, is the film's secret weapon, subtlety drawing humor from even his briefest moments on screen.

It's not that "Iron Man 2" is a bad movie, it's simply a "good enough" movie to kick off summer blockbuster season with a few cheap thrill but which fails to reach the stratosphere of the first film.

"Moon" is Stellar Filmmaking

Duncan Jones’ directorial debut, "Moon," is, like its namesake, mesmerizing, stunning, haunting, illuminating and mysterious. A throwback to 70s-style science fiction films like Outland with a dash of 2001, star Sam Rockwell turns in a virtuoso performance which moves from brash, aggressive space cowboy to a slowly disintegrating permutation of Dustin Hoffman’s Ratzo Rizzo in "Midnight Cowboy."

The film is set on the moon in the near future. The Earth’s primary energy source is Helium-3 harvested from the lunar surface by a soul operator on a three year tour of duty at the loneliest, most solitary outpost imaginable with just a perky Hal-like computer named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey, adding to the creepy Hal-ness) and his smiley face emoticons to communicate with.

Describing this film would be to rob an audience of the wonderful discovery the movie holds. Suffice it to say, "Moon" is about many things including the unavoidable finality of life, the tenuous nature between who we are and who we’d like to be, the consumptive nature of humans and the question: If you met yourself, would you like yourself?