The live-action/CGI Speed Racer movie is out this Friday, which I thought would make for a good occasion to check out the Japanese sci-fi flick Casshern, another anime-inspired film that features real live actors interacting with surreal, hyper-detailed computer-generated sets.

Unfortunately, technology failed me as usual when I attempted to watch the film – after about 20 minutes of eye-popping coolness, the dvd did that awful, unfixable skip-‘n-stop thing that dvds sometimes do, leaving me wondering just what the hell a “Casshern” really was and, also, what I was going to write about for this week’s Movie Match.

And then it hit me. Technology may have crapped out on me this weekend, but there’s one guy who it worked out pretty damn well for: Robert Downey, Jr.’s fictional billionaire Tony Stark, whose superpowered Iron Man suit blasted him toward a $100 million-plus box-office payday last weekend that surpassed even the most generous predictions for the film’s success. I had high hopes for Iron Man, and was impressed by just how much the movie lived up to them – and so, in order to cover my ass this week, er, share my enthusiasm for this season’s first major blockbuster, I will devote the rest of this column to a few reasons why Iron Man is well worth catching in theaters a second time.

1. The first action sequence
Most fans will walk out of the theater raving about Tony Stark’s ass-kicking exploits in his trademark fire-engine red Iron Man suit (I could watch that scene with him and the tank about a hundred times in a row), but let’s not forget the first time we get to see him wreak some havoc in a mechanical suit of armor, as comparatively low-tech as his prototype Iron Man getup is. There’s a real sense of fun that underlines the carnage in the film’s initial action setpiece, which has Stark blasting his way out of a terrorist stronghold while still awkwardly learning the finer points of mechanized combat – thankfully, his inexperience doesn’t prevent him from chucking freedom-haters around like ragdolls or unleashing a pair of arm-mounted flamethrowers that may just be the must-have movie accessory of 2008. It’s the perfect lead-in to the sparing but spectacular superhero mayhem to follow.

2. The dialogue
Robert Downey, Jr. slings one-liners like nobody else in Hollywood, and the filmmakers behind Iron Man were smart to let him go full-throttle with them throughout the film – even if his sense of humor is a bit over the heads of the action-figure buying segment of the film’s audience. Whether cracking wise about MySpace pages or delivering awkward romantic come-ons a la Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (if I mention that movie enough in this column, will somebody please see it?), Downey’s Tony Stark is outfitted with a gift of gab that far surpasses any screen superhero we’ve seen so far. I’m not sure how much of the killer dialogue to credit to the film’s writers as opposed to Downey himself, but either way this is easily the wittiest movie this genre has produced to date.

3. Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts
Female characters tend to get sidelined in even the best comics-to-screen adaptations, but despite her limited screen time, Paltrow did a fine job carving out some space for herself as Tony Stark’s devoted assistant and schoolboy crush Pepper Potts in this one. Crafting a poised, down-to-earth character who’s the perfect foil for Downey’s wisecracking, big-kid persona, Paltrow was one of the big reasons that Iron Man seemed like a much classier, more grown-up superhero movie than we might have expected. Plus, if you’ll allow me to get my chauvinist on for a second, she also looked better in this flick than in anything she’s done since the late 90s.

4. The visuals
Matthew Libatique is one of my favorite cinematographers, having been responsible for the jaw-dropping camerawork in all three of director Darren Aronofsky’s films, so I expected great things from Iron Man in the visual department. For the most part, it was hard to be disappointed – from the dimly-lit caves where Tony Stark fashions his clunky original Iron Man suit to the futuristic Malibu mansion where he tinkers with servos and beds the occasional Vanity Fair reporter, the film’s settings and characters pop off the screen as vividly and stylishly as anything you’d see on the comics page.

5. The bit after the end credits
You probably need to be a bit more of a hardcore Marvel acolyte than I am to fully appreciate it, but the two-minute scene that ran after Iron Man’s end credits was pretty cool nevertheless -- it not only featured my favorite celebrity cameo of the year so far, but also dropped some really tantalizing clues as to where the next Iron Man movie, and the onscreen Marvel universe as a whole, will be headed in the near future. Based on this little teaser, we geeks have a lot to look forward to.