Summertime movies
Rob Price

My wife left town last Friday for a weekend conference, and so I did the sensible thing any married man does when his wife is out of town and went to a movie.

I don't know about you, but when I have a couple of days of single life to myself and decide to fill the time with a movie, I generally pick a movie I know my wife wouldn't want to see. I call these films "Susan-out-of-Town Movies." The Susan-out-of-Town Movie I saw last Friday was "Iron Man," and I recommend everyone go see it right now - maybe before you finish reading this column, and regardless of whether your spouse or romantic companion is out of town.

Technically, "Iron Man" falls into the category of Super Hero Movie, a group that includes all the Batman movies, the Superman movies, the XMen stuff, Fabulous Four and Spiderman. These movies are based on comic book heroes, and they revel in state-of-the-art film technology to achieve a similarity between the fantastic color images you see in comic books and the so-called realistic action you watch on the screen. In a nutshell, it's important when you're watching a Super Hero Movie, to be able to imagine a man in a blue suit with a red cape can fly.

Here's the gist of "Iron Man": The hero, Tony Stark, is a brilliant engineering type who also is a wealthy international arms dealer and who gets captured in Afghanistan and who, while imprisoned, builds an iron suit with jet engines that allow him to escape his tormentors.

Back in the U.S.A., Stark goes to work fashioning a more high-tech impregnable suit, with more sophisticated jet engines, and he gets in a bunch of fights with bad guys and finally the various conflicts introduced throughout the movies are resolved in a really big fight at the end. Don't ask me for any more details. My attention, while I watched the movie, was distracted by the odd piece of popcorn hitting the back of my head.

That's because I was sitting in front of a rowdy bunch of Alfred University professors. Yes, that's what I said. These professors, all respectable members of the national and even international academic community, were in town the same night to watch the debut of "Iron Man." I would identify them by name and provide addresses, except they're friends of mine and we all ended up at my house after the show for nightcaps.

The point is, "Iron Man" is an excellent movie that spans the generations (One of the professors, I think, is several dozen years younger than I) as well as movie genres. Not only does it function as a Susan-outof Town Movie - a category that includes violent gangster and western movies - it functions also as a Great-Fun Movie that makes Alfred University professors climb into their cars and throw popcorn at other people.

The main credit for that accomplishment goes to the star, Robert Downey, an actor who has had his ups and downs with the law and controlled substances. In spite of his inner demons, however, Downy is a wonderful actor who, in the words of film critic Anthony Lane, makes "offhandedness mesmerizing." In short, he wears his iron lightly. He is fun to watch. And back at my temporary bachelor abode following "Iron Man," me and the professors agreed he is the main reason to watch the show.

I am looking forward to more Super-Hero Movies this summer. I understand a second Batman movie is due in a week or so, and this Batman movie will feature The Joker, the villain all Batman fans love to hate. In this most recent revision of the Dark Knight movies, The Joker will be played by Heath Ledger, who technically is dead. That may give the movie a slightly bizarre feel, although I'm sure it will be basically entertaining and worth ten bucks for admission and several hundreds dollars worth of popcorn.

The question is whether it qualifies as a Susan-out-of-Town Movie. The other night, my wife and I watched "Batman Returns" on TV, swearing to ourselves we would turn it off soon and not stick around for the climax, which we've already seen 25 times. Our resolve collapsed, and we hung on until the bitter end.

My wife, down deep, likes Batman movies. I bet she'll even throw popcorn in a movie theater when excited.