Movie Review: Kingsman: The Golden Circle

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Writers: Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn, Mark Millar, Dave Gibbons

Stars: Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Julianne Moore, Channing Tatum, Halle Berry, Elton John, Jeff Bridges, Pedro Pascal

Verdict: I will not remember anything about this film in a week

*deep, deep sigh*

So. This movie has gotten a lot of shit. I don’t hate the movie, but I do hate how forgettable it is, I saw it today and I’m already forgetting it. Let’s try and find out why. 

So Eggsy, played Taren Egerton, (Sing, Eddie the Eagle), has completed his only interesting arc, and become a fully fledged Kingsman, when a figure from his past comes and everything comes crashing down, including the walls of Kingsmen itself. The only ones left standing are Eggsy himself and the ever-charming Mark Strong, (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Miss Sloane), and they discover the only people that can help them are their previously unknown American counterparts, The Statesmen. 

I wasn’t hugely sold on the first Kingsman movie, Kingsman: The Secret Service, and if I’m honest a sequel always sounded like an inevitable but stupid idea to me. Why did you see it you may ask? I don’t know maybe I hate myself? Why did I think it was a stupid idea? Let’s go into it. The thing people loved most about the first movie, Colin Firth, (The King’s Speech, A Single Man, Love Actually), was categorically dead. Eggsy had already completed his journey from street rascal to princess-dating, fancy-cutlery-using, super-spy, so the interesting element of grounding a fantastical spy-action-comedy in reality that was present in the first one is no longer there. Third, and finally, Matthew Vaughn, (Kick-Ass), has always worked by starting the movie independently and getting the studio’s involved off the strength of earlier work so being involved with a studio from the start never seemed like a good fit for him. Do you know what? All of those elements are alive and present. There is one single scene of Eggsy interacting with his friends from home and it’s only there for some cheap jokes about how out of touch he’s become and to setup equally cheap emotional substance later, and it’s still one of the best scenes in the movie. Because it’s gone to America that means it’s bigger and stupider, which always irritated me. Loads of the best jokes are either done better in the trailer, or there are punchlines that are better in the trailer, or there are just jokes in the trailer that aren’t in the movie. It is dangerously infected with the male gaze and there’s one scene that thinks it’s being raunchy and cheeky but is really just dangerously misogynistic and unnecessary. The only female character in the whole movie who isn’t either useless or just a sex object is Julianne Moore, (The Big Lebowski, Children of Men, Maps to the Stars), who plays the villain and is pretty mediocre as a performance and utter shite as a character and before this, it has always been pretty unheard for Moore to be bad or uncommitted in a performance. This is a definite step down after such a spikey performance from Samuel L. Jackson, (Pulp Fiction), as the villain in the last movie. 

The film does feel hampered by being bigger and broader than the first. There are so many characters filled by famous people who do nothing and go nowhere and might as well not be there. The scope of the film in general just feels bigger than it’s really able to handle. There is a sense of weightlessness to it, both in the physicality of its acting and the sense of peril characters that wasn’t present in the first movie. There was this thing that Ben Wheatley, (Kill List, Sightseers, High-Rise), said about making Free Fire that that movie was inspired by watching the huge spectacle of things like huge robot dinosaurs and just kind of feeling, ‘meh’ because there was no emotional grounding or reality to it and I think that’s definitely true of Kingsman: The Golden Circle. During the opening chase scene that is really spectacular and drawn out, I was thinking about what I wanted to have for dinner. The movie really tries to throw everything at your face in every action scene as well, and it was kind of shouting me to sleep, a bit of restraint and variety to the scenes would have been welcome. 

It’s also structured appallingly, not that I’m a real structure nerd but it does have a place y’know and if you’re pacing’s fucked up so is your movie. 

There also a lot of really, really fucking painful throwbacks and callbacks to the first movie that just seem very shite in comparison. Not least a callback to the famous church scene that’s really three men fighting when redone here, and it, like the rest of the callbacks, all just feel hollow, empty, and underwhelming in comparison. 

That being said there are positives. I laughed about four times. There were about three moments where I thought ‘oh that’s cool’ because there was a clever setup and payoff in the film that I hadn’t anticipated, and I did feel engaged enough in the plot to not be bored. That’s about it. 

The real problem with this movie is, although I didn’t love or even really like the first one it did have interesting rough edges. They’re like Green Day, at the beginning they weren’t perfect but they were aggressive and edgy and in your face and had something to say and kind of punk rock, (incidentally their message in this one, which you really have to dig for, is kind of that the government are handling this drugs war like the AIDs epidemic, and even that is conflicted), with the current output, do you even fucking know what punk rock is anymore? If you want a better statement on how the government handles crises like this check out the documentary How to Survive a Plague. After which not only are you informed enough to notice the parallels with AIDs but also you’ll find the way that conflict is resolved, really contrived and cheap and really reinforces a status quo in a franchise resolved to upend it. 

I mean it is really not The Mummy levels of bad because there are scenes in it that actually worked but it’s pretty bad.

And Halle Berry, (X-Men 2), is shit in it. 

Movie Review: X-Men – Days of Future Past

Director: Bryan Singer

Writers: Simon Kinberg, Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn, John Byrne, Chris Claremont, Terry Austin

Stars: Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Evan Peters, Jennifer Lawrence, Ellen Page, Peter Dinklage

Verdict: Pretty damn sweet

X-Men: Days of Future Past is a fun, if not brilliant action/sci-fi movie that’s more intelligent than your average pop corn flick, but not by much. 

X-Men: Days of Future Past starts in this really properly dystopian future, reminiscent of the Nazi concentration camp stuff in X-Men: First Class. We then see this quite extraordinary fight sequence that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense but it’s not meant to, utilizing a good bit of dramatic irony, it will be explained later in the film. We then later find out that Ellen Page, (Inception, Juno, Hard Candy) has to sent Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, (The Prestige, Prisoners), back in time to essentially, save time, (not, save time, as in, spending less time on things, I mean saving time, as in, literaelly saving the future). It’s essentially The Terminator as directed by Bryan Singer, (House, The Usual Suspects, X-Men), which essentially means, kind of intelligent plotting, hokey science fiction, and actual darkness. 

They key to most Bryan Singer films is really the pacing, this man knows how to make his movies go by with a swing, and this film, just over two hours long, gets through an aweful lot of plot in not much time at all. His films are just clever enough to just seem intelligent; I think after the twist in The Usual Suspects he has a little bit of expectation resting on him in terms of outrageous plot devices which I’m really not sure he’s always lived up to. There’s a reason The Usual Suspects and House are the best things that he’s ever done, which is really because they don’t require a lot of special effects, of which he is ocasionally brilliant, and occasionally not so brilliant. This film actually had it’s only Oscar nomination for visual effects and frequently you can see why; there’s a great moment with Quicksilver, played by Evan Peters, (Kick-Ass, American Horror Story), in which the effects are great, and the sequence is really clever. There’s also some stuff with portals and Mystique, as played by Jennifer Lawrence, (The Hunger Games, Silver Linings Playbook), which are really good. There are also probably a whole lot more effects that no one thinks about, but there are distinct moments that do look a bit shit. Also, Singer is very indulgent on his designs; just because they’re metahumans doesn’t mean they need to be as designy as characters out of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. At the same time, the concept itself is really, really hokey. There have been a few time travel oriented properties lately, such as Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and Edge of Tomorrow, that use their time travel really well, and in them it hangs together and is used cleverly in a way that it really doesn’t and isn’t in this movie. 

Another thing I like about this film is that there are moments that are genuinely dark; there is a moment where Magneto uses his powers to drag Mystique by a bullet in her leg that wouldn’t make it into anything the MCU has to offer. 

The actors are all quite good. The characterisations are disctict and clearly drawn and beleivable which must help no end. Micheal Fassbender, (Inglourious Basterds, Prometheus, Hunger), is a bit 2 dimentional, but is fine. It’s a shame because he is a fantastic actor. James MacAvoy, (Filth), is really good, and a whole lot of fun. Hugh Jackman works perfectly as a passive catalyst. Peter Dinklage, (Game of Thrones) works fine, essentially as a human McGuffin, he does his job, he’s not evil per se despite appearing to be a nominal villain. Dinklage also happens to be one o my favourite actors along with MacAvoy and Fassbender, as well as Patrick Stewart who was so good recently in Green Room. Him and Ian Mckellan, (The Lord of the Rings) work fine as those-characters-from-the-first-three-movies, although I would have liked to have seen them utilised better. At the end of the day, the story isn’t about them so it’s somewhat fine? Ellen Page, poor Ellen Page, she is such a talented young actress and is given very little to do except giving exposition and looking kind of tired and teary, which is a real shame because she could add a whole lot to the film, maybe add some gravitas which without her sometimes comes off  as comic book postering towards vaccuous grandiosity. The real stand out though, is Evan Peters as Quicksilver. He was the best thing about the series of American Horror Story that he’s in, as we said in our review, one of our first, (here). Honest to god, not sure I should link one of our early reviews, we didn’t really know what we were doing in those days to be honest. It’s a shame but oh well. Even Peters though always knows what he’s doing in his roles. He knows exactly what to do in the cheeze that he stars in, and in this he’s the best part, having all sorts of fun. I’ve always said that American Horror Story is great if you’re in on the joke, and he is in on everything, and he’s great. A lot of the characters, especially in the post apocalyptic future, are wasted. There’s a lot of characters that are hardly used and come across as, essentially, hardly there. A lot of characters are defined by their costumes, and occasionally I’d go, ‘of that guy, who’s name I can’t remember, oh he’s also here’, which is a problem. Jennifer Lawrence is maybe the biggest female star going and I honestly have no idea why, because I’ve never seen her be anything other than kin of ok. So the acting is in general, pretty good, with exceptions at both ends of the scale. 

In conlusion, X-Men: Days of Future Past is a better than average comic book movie. It’s the third in a group of three we’ve done, and it seems to me that the best ones, unless they’re made by Christopher Nolan, (The Dark Knight),  are the ones that know how stupid they are and embrace that, elevating it to something a teeny weeny bit cleverer than that. Also, this film is a proper movie, so is Deadpool, so is The Dark Knight, and they’re all really good; Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, is not a proper movie, and is utter shite. In these three movies, the script comes before the franchise. Here’s to more that swing above their weight. 

 

Movie Review: Nocturnal Animals

Director: Tom Ford

Writers: Tom Ford, Austin Wright

Stars: Amy Adams, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Shannon

Verdict: Decent

I really like Nocturnal Animals, it’s weird, it’s a film that I don’t love but it’s very very hard to find any specific fault with. 

There’s a lot to love about Nocturnal Animals. It follows, nominally, Amy Adams’ character, (Man of Steel, American Hustle, Arrival, Big Eyes), who lives this very aesthetically orientated life in the Los Angeles art world. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that it’s set in the art world for two reasons. The first being that her art is all about aesthetics and the twisting of beauty into something sordid purely on a visual level and that does reflect the themes of the film, (that’s not explicitly stated, it’s just my interpretation of her art), and in fact her own opinion of her art becomes a major plot point. The second reason is that director Tom Ford, (A Single Man), used to be a fashion designer, and despite the fact that he has a rule never to place his own products in his films, setting a film in the high sheen art world I feel just gives him an excuse to have the film so meticulously designed, I mean the premise really allows Ford to indulge himself, but not in a Tarantino way in which The Hateful Eight becomes Reservoir Dogs but twice the length and half the quality. Although what it does mean, is that for most of the film I felt really detached, I wanted the film to cut deeper, I felt like I didn’t know these characters in a way I wanted to. That does change, but only really in the last act and all at once and it can be quite frustrating for the rest of the film, although it does mean the actual pay off itself is really significant and striking. Amy Adams gets a draft of a book from her ex-husband played by Jake Gylenhaal, (Donnie Darko, Zodiac, Source Code), and to quote Adams, “it’s violent, and sad, and he dedicated it to me”. 

The film has what one would definitely call a star studded cast. Not really big names but all very very talented character actors. Aside from Amy Adams and Jake Gylenhaal, the later of whom I really like because he just seems to be a really dedicated character actor who also happens to be a big star; we have Andrea Riseborough, (Birdman, Oblivion), and Micheal Sheen, (Kingdom of Heaven, Frost/Nixon), both quite unrecognisable in their roles, who exist to, in a way counterbalance Adams’ empty relationships with something that has a real emotional connection but also have all the materialistic decadence; we have Armie Hammer, (The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Social Network), as Adams’ husband, who seems to be very changeable in his roles and works best when he doesn’t play a particularly likable character but in a way that’s very self effacing, unlike this role where he seems to take himself far too seriously and I don’t think he really works; for the bulk of the story-in-a-story we have Micheal Shannon, (Boardwalk Empire, Midnight Special, Man of Steel), who I’m a rather large fan of, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson, (Kick-Ass, Godzilla, Avengers: Age of Ultron), both chewing a whole hunk of scenery and doing it very well; we have Jana Malone and Karl Glusman, who were both so good in The Neon Demon, making small but very good and very well acted and very relevant appearances; I could go on.

The real benefit of this film is two-fold though. The first is that this film is a real achievement in narrative story-telling. Normally a framed narrative acts as a sort of alienation device, if it divides the author from the story you can not only have more freedom to talk about political ideas because well, these things are being said by someone else not the author, being the defense. It also prevents you getting emotionally involved in the characters, sort of forcing you to engage with the story on an intellectual not emotional level. The genius of the framed narrative in Nocturnal Animals is kind of hard to describe though. Our main character is Amy Adams, however the story that forms the meat of the movie is in the book she reads during the story, the trailer cuts it all together to make it look like something completely different though. The book is so intricately linked into the story of our main character than the line between them becomes blurred, the direction shows this very obviously with some very well placed match cuts. The fact is that despite the book being the story you’re engaged with most, the fact is that the book is Gylenhaal saying to Adams ‘this is what you did to me, this is how you made me feel’, so very soon the relevance of the story becomes how much it reveals about Adams, not just to us but to herself about what she did to her ex husband. It’s quite brilliant. The second joy is Gylenhaal himself. He was robbed of even an Oscar nomination for Nightcrawler but he is more than deserving of the Oscar itself in this film because he is quite incredible. 

Nocturnal Animals is an engaging psycho-sexual/noir/western/thriller with an incredible cast who for the most part do very well and it has a really meaningful message, i.e. “when you love somebody you hold onto it, you might never get that again”, which is a really warm message to break though the darkness of the narrative, which is really bleak. The ending was slightly unsatisfying but appropriate, I feel it would have worked better in the original novel this is based on, I wanted more emotional involvement despite the fact it does come eventually, but Nocturnal Animals is definitely worth your time, and Tom Ford is a writer/director who deserves for you to vote for him with your dollars more than fucking Michael Bay, (Transformers, Armageddon). It’s one of three big Amy Adams movies this year, and whilst I haven’t seen Arrival this is head and shoulders better than her other entry, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Nocturnal Animals pulls no punches. 

Movie Review: Hugo

Director: Martin Scorsese

Writers: John Logan,  Brian Selznick

Stars: Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Christopher Lee, Ben Kingsley, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, Helen McCrory, Michael Stuhlbarg, Frances de la Tour, Richard Griffiths, Jude Law

Verdict: A beautiful family friendly treat

Hugo is an infamously family friendly (how often do you get to say that?) movie from the master of dark character studies Martin Scorsese, (Goodfellas, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street). It follows orphaned clock-making whizz kid Hugo Cabret with Asa Butterfield, (Ender’s Game, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas) bringing to life the titular role. He steals from the wrong, old, curmudgeonly, embittered toy maker with a damaged heart of gold, Georges, played by the always mercurial and inimitable Ben Kingsley, (Gandhi, Schindler’s List, Sexy Beast), more than making up for Iron Man 3. Hugo lives in a train station patrolled by the warden, bought to life by Sacha Baron Cohen, (Borat, Les Misérables) in fine knockabout form. 

In fact the cast is star studded, and generally fantastic. Helen McCrory is an absolute standout, maybe the best performance in the movie, and it’s a travesty it’s really hard to find many credits for her beyond Draco Malfoy’s anonymous mother because she is a real talent. The cast is rounded out by; Chloë Grace Moretz, (Kick-Ass) doing her best ‘Chamber of Secrets‘ era Hermione Granger impression, Ray Winstone Ray-Winstone-ing, Emily Mortimer being at her most fabulous since The Newsroom, (and she’s normally pretty fabulous), Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour off doing their own little thing, fabulously, Michael Stuhlbarg bringing the same sense of childishness he did to A Serious Man but this time instead of a childish sense of impotence and naivety, he gives a sense of wonder and awe that matches the tone of the film perfectly, Jude Law as Hugo’s father doing that thing Jude Law does of just being really warm and likeable, when he’s not playing Dom Hemingway or Dan from Closer, and last but not least, Christopher Lee, who’s just, well, Christopher fucking Lee. 

It’s not like anyone thinks Martin Scorcese is a one trick pony, he’s pulled off fare that deviates from his usual tropes with period drama The Age of Innocence and Kundun which was scripted by Melissa Mathison of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and The BFG fame. And Hugo is very, very well directed, it’s interesting how Martin Scorcese, who’s been making films for decades, makes a film about the origins of cinema whilst effectively mixing old and new techniques; such as tableaux vivants and long tracking shots, arranged by an oscar winning Robert Richardson, (Django Unchained, Natural Born Killers, The Aviator), mixed with colour correction and a sepia tinted, computer generated vision of Paris, which also won oscars for it’s visual effects team. These go together to create the mood of classical era cinema with a contemporary polish, including that sense of joy for and love of the medium from films like Casablanca, Citizen Kane, and The Big Sleep, this is a joy which also infects the plot of the film and the viewer themselves. 

In the end that’s the joy of the film, the very tone of joy which leaps of the screen, and a heart warming story that’ll melt the iced over cynicism in anyone. The performances, the side stories of the side characters who inhabit the train station like it was their only home and existence which take on the form of something Chaplinesque. I shed a tear, and if you don’t you’re either a robot or really must have something against this film. The master that is Martin Scorcese adds another string to his bow with aplomb, and despite the classical sense the film has, shows he’s as burningly contemporary as Chris Nolan.