Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017)

Though my original review was perhaps a little more even-tempered than I initially recalled, I look back on Kingsman: The Secret Service with great fondness, cringing at some of the bawdier moments but overall greatly sympathizing with director Matthew Vaughn’s appreciation for the 1960s era of spy films (particularly James Bond, though – as the characters are fond of reminding you – “dis ain’t dat kinda film, bruv”). While its sequel, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, is an enthusiastic action film with more than a few decent thrills, I was not transported in the way I was with the first film; that is, if the original were Skyfall, The Golden Circle is more Spectre, a sequel that doesn’t misstep but doesn’t transcend like its predecessor did.

After a coordinated attack on Kingsman, secret agent Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and gadget guy Merlin (Mark Strong) link up with their “American cousins” (Jeff Bridges, Channing Tatum, Halle Berry, and Pedro Pascal) at Statesman to avenge their fallen comrades. As the trailers have revealed, however, a comrade also rises – Harry Hart (Colin Firth) returns to the service for the fight against the cartel leader Poppy Adams (Julianne Moore), who controls the worldwide drug trade from her 1950s-infused lair.

As I was watching The Golden Circle, I couldn’t help but think of Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, a sequel to a similarly inventive and strong first outing. Though the two sequels do have a similar “more of the same” quality to them, never triumphing as their predecessors might have led one to expect, I can safely say that Golden Circle is unlike A Dame in that it’s not boring. Where A Dame felt almost sleepily safe and content merely to reproduce what had gone before, Golden Circle shakes up the script and goes to places one wouldn’t expect. Though slickly devised, Harry’s return is anything but smooth, and it leads to an interesting new dynamic with Eggsy. It’s a real treat also to see a British stereotype of Americans; if The Secret Service satirized Britain’s vision of itself, Golden Circle is a dashing wink of a cliché of the United States, with its cowboy whiskey peddlers and honky-tonk bars.

The Golden Circle is not, as the trailers might have led you to believe, a film about the Statesman agents (though apparently Vaughn wants to make that spinoff). Aside from Pascal, who participates in the film’s rousingly thrilling Spy Who Loved Me by way of OHMSS action setpiece, the Statesman cast amounts to an extended cameo. The focus is squarely – rightly, as fun watching Statesman can be – on the Kingsman agents and the high-octane action that follows them. The film opens with an extensive (and, in IMAX, quite loud) taxi chase through London; you’ve also got the ski chase sequence, a snowy shootout, and the raid on Poppy’s HQ, all of which feel substantively different than what we saw in the first Kingsman film.

This Kingsman is about twenty minutes longer than the first one, and I have to say it does feel it. There’s a recurring gag about Elton John that overstays its welcome, and this film does feel a bit bogged down by laddish humor, perhaps more so than before (but mercifully not as bad as in Kick-Ass 2, which actively suffered from this). The first Kingsman famously ends (no spoilers) with an unconventional send-up of Bond’s get-the-girl closer, and while it’s tonally off-putting it wasn’t as cringingly gross as Eggsy’s encounter at the Glastonbury Music Festival, which does leave a bad taste on the film for a while. Perhaps overall the film needs more of what Colin Firth brought to the first film and to Eggsy’s training – a Pygmalion for the surveillance crowd, polishing up the rough bits and reminding us to stand a little straighter. (Put another way, “Manners maketh man.”)

Back in 2015, Kingsman: The Secret Service was better than most of us were expecting it to be, especially since it was pitted (you’ll recall) against the guaranteed box-office winner 50 Shades of Gray. The Golden Circle, however, is not as good as it should have been, though neither is it as bad as it could have been. It’s not as impressive as the first, which is a tragedy, but it’s a fine second entry and a cheering diversion at its best.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is rated R for “sequences of strong violence, drug content, language throughout, and some sexual material.” Directed by Matthew Vaughn. Written by Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn. Based on the comic book by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. Starring Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Jeff Bridges, Channing Tatum, Halle Berry, Pedro Pascal, and Julianne Moore.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 (2015)

I’m going to start the review off by saying that I’m making a conscious and very deliberate decision here to review The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 as the second half of what really ought to have been one movie. I’m not going to review Part 1 on this blog, because the two films are irreconcilable to me (like both halves of Kill Bill); I watched both within 24 hours of each other, and I’m disinclined to think of them as two films for a number of reasons which will be elucidated below. Suffice it to say, Mockingjay is a strong and satisfying conclusion to the Hunger Games franchise, even against the misjudged split down the middle.

As the propaganda and military wars against the Capitol rage on, Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) stands as the Mockingjay, the symbol for the revolution after her survival in two successive gladiatorial Hunger Games. Katniss, resistant to the manipulations of rebel leader President Coin (Julianne Moore), finds that her friend Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson) has been brainwashed by the nefarious President Snow (Donald Sutherland), and she embarks on a mission to kill the man who has ruined their lives.

I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that Hunger Games has been the spiritual successor to Harry Potter in ways that I don’t think Twilight or Divergent ever were. All managed to grab more or less the same demographic by the ears, but only Hunger Games plumbed the same depth of ideas that JK Rowling’s wizarding saga did. (And I’m aware that all but one of them pulled the split-the-last-film-in-two move, as well.) There have been moments like these throughout the franchise, but it’s especially prevalent in Mockingjay that I sat back and realized, “Wow, this is really weighty stuff” – and it’s handled quite deftly and smartly. Questions of war, power, and the power of the image pervade Mockingjay to great effect, and the filmmakers wisely reject any simplification of the novels for a film that is purposefully unsettling.

I must continue to heap praise on Jennifer Lawrence, who adds great credibility to the character of Katniss. For an Oscar winner to continue through a young adult franchise without seeming like it’s beneath her is a creditable move that speaks highly of both her character and her performative abilities. None in the cast does any less of a strong job – Sutherland especially seems to be having a grand time in a veritable mustache-twirler of an antagonist – but Lawrence is particularly noteworthy, in large part because her performance sheds light on two key scenes of ambiguity, frustrating in the novel but abundantly more clear in the film (for the benefit of the spoiler-phobic, I’ll be cryptic – the crucial vote, and the novel’s epilogue). We know precisely what Katniss is feeling in those moments because of the way Lawrence takes her pauses, shoots her glances like an arrow.

The film is, I daresay, deliberately anticlimactic, opting for a more poignant commentary on the nature of violence than a reductive “good guys always win” ending, and for that I applaud both the filmmakers and novelist Suzanne Collins for keeping the text smart. But I can’t help but feel that the effect might have been sharper had Mockingjay not been divided – quite arbitrarily, mind you – in two. Part 1 ends a scene after a cliffhanger reminiscent of the old Batman television show – “Will Katniss Everdeen save her friend? Or will the nefarious President Snow win his war? Tune in next November...” – as if to ameliorate the shock of an abrupt ending; Part 1 tells us Katniss will survive into the next film, but it’s a move that distracts from the fact that the film is bait-and-switching us into returning for another installment.

It’d be fine if each film had its own identity, its own logical starting and stopping point. For a while it seems like that’ll happen – Part 1 seems largely focused on the propaganda filmmaking and the power of the Mockingjay as an image, where Part 2 is the more action-oriented – but the division is, as I’ve said, largely arbitrary, at roughly a midpoint in runtime. The truth of the matter is that Katniss’s move from symbol to soldier would have been more potent within the boundaries of a singular film. A number of elements would have been stronger – President Snow’s declining health, President Coin’s surrender to ambition, the advisory role of Plutarch Heavensbee (the late Philip Seymour Hoffman) – and it would have been frankly less off-putting than feeling the grab for cash.

I know I’ll likely be eating my words when Avengers: Infinity War arrives in its bifurcated form in 2018 and 2019, respectively, but it’s still possible that that pair will manage to feel like two distinct films rather than padded halves of a whole. As for Mockingjay, however, I strongly believe there’s enough substance to comprise a very powerful 150 minutes rather than two respective two-hour films. It very nearly compromises the integrity of the work, which is both potent and important, though Mockingjay is compelling enough viewing that you only begrudge the protraction a little bit.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence and action, and for some thematic material.” Part 2 is by far the grimmest of the already grim franchise, with several of your favorite characters meeting unpleasant demises by way of arrows, explosions, and weird sewer mutants. Though the film isn’t particularly bloody, it is almost unbearably despondent in a few scenes.

Non-Stop (2014)

Mark Kermode, a British film critic with whom I find myself agreeing more often than not, said of Taken, “It is the kind of movie that used to be the second-bill on a kind of junky double-bill at a drive-in and now somehow has managed to make it to the big screen with a big name.”  Indeed, that big name, Liam Neeson, has made a career of elevating otherwise B-movie action films.  Why Kermode doesn’t chalk up to Neeson the victories of Taken and its children is anyone’s guess, because it’s the clearest reason for Non-Stop to exist, let alone to succeed.

Neeson stars as federal air marshal Bill Marks (a name you won’t forget because of the way it’s growled throughout) on a red-eye transatlantic flight.  Midway over the ocean, Marks receives a series of texts from a terrorist who promises to kill a passenger every twenty minutes – and, we soon learn, frame Marks in the process.  But we know it’s not all as easy as that, and Neeson does not disappoint in his resilience, very nearly hijacking the flight in an attempt to clear his name.

Let’s establish one thing straightaway – Non-Stop is not Taken.  It’s a far cry from Pierre Morel’s masterful action film, which still manages to thrill after all these years.  In fact, I might be more generous toward Non-Stop precisely because its star makes some of the script’s sins forgivable, or at least bearable.  Neeson is as always a stalwart and reliable action star, gravelly and determined.  He communicates both desperation and dedication in equal parts, allowing us to feel the urgency without fully doubting his abilities.

Bill Marks may share a set of initials with Taken’s Bryan Mills, but he lacks that critical “set of skills” with which the latter might have quickly resolved the crisis.  Instead, the script saddles him with textbook substance abuse and past family trauma, but it’s to Neeson’s credit that he pulls off these rather generic gestures toward characterization and pulls in a convincing portrait of a troubled man pushed to his limits.

Where Non-Stop misses the bar set by Taken is largely everywhere else in its filmmaking.  At 110 minutes, the film feels longer than it needed to be, in part because Bill Marks is air-marshaling aboard a flight chock overfull of narrative detours.  One even suspects that Julianne Moore was cast because of her hair color as a literal personified red herring.  The problem is that the film’s reliance on the classic locked-room formula means that Bill’s initial hunches are necessarily wrong; this puts the audience in the position of being fully aware of the misdirections at work, and the film never really tries to counteract our sense of those sleights of hand.  Consequently, the film feels in a bit of a holding pattern while the intuitive audience members look for the real clues behind the foreground.  Neeson’s performance is compelling, very much enough to hold your attention, but on reflection it’s very much a B-movie superstructure.

The film is, however, at its best when it surrenders to what might be considered the “dumb fun” action of the third reel, when the story takes on a ticking plot twist and a spiraling set of revelations.  Non-Stop does suffer from exposition-heavy villain monologuing, but it counterbalances with flashy fistfights and even a bit of high-altitude/high-stakes gunplay.  Ultimately, then, Non-Stop succeeds or fails based on how highly you value the screen presence of Liam Neeson.  For this filmgoer, it’s a fun enough diversion though not a close contender for greatness.

Non-Stop is rated PG-13 “for intense sequences of action and violence, some language, sensuality and drug references.”  There are a few deaths on the plane as the terrorist makes good on the every-twenty-minutes threat.  A younger passenger is seen flirting with two older men, and IMDb reports two F-words (only one of which I recall).

While The Cinema King enjoys spring break, it’s the perfect opportunity for multiple reviews.  So come back on Thursday for my take on Mr. Peabody & Sherman!

Monday at the Movies - July 30, 2012

Welcome to Week Twenty-Eight of “Monday at the Movies.”  A few romantic comedies on tap this week, plus a film so disturbing I feel uncomfortable saying I enjoyed it.

A Clockwork Orange (1971) – A long, long time ago, I directed readers to an essay by David Bordwell in which he draws the distinction between an excellent film and a film that is to one’s liking.  I invoke Bordwell here because I think he might be the key to my take on Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange; it’s a great film, certainly, excellent by technical standards and one of Kubrick’s more accomplished films, but it’s entirely different to “like” on a purely evaluative level.  For one, its protagonist Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell in the epitome of a career-making performance) is a brutal sadist who spends his evenings raping and engaging in “ultra-violence.”  Perhaps worse, Kubrick’s filmmaking attempts to get us to sympathize with – and even like – Alex, a disconcerting premise once you realize what’s afoot.  I’m probably in the minority on this one, but I usually find Kubrick a bit... boring; Dr. Strangelove is, I admit, genius, but I’ve never been able to watch 2001 or The Shining in one sitting because they seem plodding and aimless – which may be the point, perhaps, but they’re just not “to my liking.”  (The first hour of Full Metal Jacket, though, is brilliant.)  But here Kubrick displays his ability to keep a scene moving even if the camera is stationary, and though much of the film is repulsive on a moral level, it’s transfixing on an aesthetic one, helped in no small part by the quirky yet unspeakably evil performance McDowell turns in.

Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) – I’m on record as not being the world’s biggest Steve Carell fan, and Crazy, Stupid, Love does very little to swing me in the other direction.  Which is not to say that the film isn’t enjoyable – halfway far from it.  I say halfway because there are really two movies going on in Crazy, Stupid, Love (one, it seems for each unnecessary comma in the title):  in one, divorcee Steve Carell tries life without his wife Julianne Moore, while in the other his womanizing wingman Ryan Gosling reforms his ways after meeting girl-of-his-dreams Emma Stone.  As is usually the case with these kinds of films, it’s the latter plot, the supporting one, that succeeds far more than the former.  The problem, perhaps, is that Carell is too real as a man who’s had his heart ripped out; just when the supposed comedy is getting to the funny bits, Carell mopes into frame with his sad-sack character to remind us just how miserable he is.  It’s a shame, because Gosling and Stone are so talented and so charismatic together that one wishes for a movie revolving solely around them.  As a consequence of being so schizophrenic, the film’s message is a mixed one – is love possible or not?  Or is it merely difficult but worthwhile?  If the latter, tell me something I don’t know.  Aside from the Gosling/Stone scenes, I will credit the film with a rather clever third act twist, something I didn’t know to see coming.

Friends with Benefits (2011) – Remember that time that the two leads from Black Swan starred in separate movies about casual sex?  I certainly do, but after seeing Natalie Portman in No Strings Attached (with an uninspiring Ashton Kutcher as her co-lead) I wasn’t exactly ready to join Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake in Friends with Benefits.  Turns out the joke was on me, because Friends with Benefits is by far the better of this odd couple.  Director Will Gluck, who made such a winner out of Easy A with Emma Stone, creates a solidly funny film here, which is by and large victorious thanks to the infectious chemistry between Kunis and Timberlake; their characters are likeable from the first, and – pivotally for a comedy film – they’re funny, too.  Also back from Easy A is Patricia Clarkson, who reprises her role as the kooky and sexually liberated mother, this time of Kunis’s character.  The only part of the equation that doesn’t fit is Richard Jenkins as Timberlake’s Alzheimer’s-afflicted father, whose outbursts lead not to comic relief but to unexpectedly heartfelt pathos.  While the film falls prey to the clichés of the romantic comedy genre, it does so more credibly than No Strings Attached, without asking us to cry for the protagonists when their bizarre experiment complicates itself.  Wisely, the film remembers that we have to like our characters in order to want to see them together, and Gluck and company – particularly his leads – achieve both by leaps and bounds.

That does it for this week’s edition of “Monday at the Movies.” We’ll see you here next week!

The Big Lebowski (1998)

To say that I'm a fan of the Coen Brothers is something of an understatement: they're among my favorite filmmakers, abundantly entertaining and deftly profuse. So to say that The Big Lebowski is my favorite Coen flick is probably also an understatement (though Barton Fink kind of muddles that statement).

There are two Jeffrey Lebowskis - The Dude (Jeff Bridges), amiable stoner hero extraordinaire prone to swilling White Russians, and The Big Lebowski (David Huddleston), a prime mover in the L.A. region. When the two are confused by a pair of nitwit goons - and one micturates on The Dude's rug - looking for The Big Lebowski's wife Bunny (Tara Reid) and the money she owes to one Jackie Treehorn, that's where the trouble begins. It only gets worse when The Dude tells bowling buddies Walter Sobchak (a perfectly over-the-top John Goodman), a Vietnam vet obsessed with his service and his religion ("Shomer Shabbos!"), and Donny (Steve Buscemi), who can't seem to get a word in edgewise, Walter convinces The Dude to petition The Big Lebowski for rug compensation. After all, "that rug really tied the room together."

That's all in the first ten or so minutes. The rest is a tangled web of mystery, blackmail, kidnapping, Creedence Clearwater Revival, pornography, deceit, and bowling. Eat your heart out, Raymond Chandler. Speaking of Chandler, this is the best adaptation of The Big Sleep since Bogart and Bacall bantered back in the Forties. It's also the most comprehensible, although I'll admit it took me a second viewing to fully understand just what had happened. This is a top-notch screenplay from the Coens, poetically profane and tantalizingly tangled.

Much as Sweeney Todd was for Tim Burton, this is the movie that the Coens have been aiming to make throughout their whole career. It's got all the Coen staples - both plot points and cast members - and it's their pinnacle film. Nothing before or since - not even No Country for Old Men, Oscar-winner though it may be - has matched The Big Lebowski.

The film takes place in a world populated by classic Coen characters, The Dude and Walter not least among them. There's John Turturro as pederast bowler Jesus Quintana, who talks a big game; Philip Seymour Hoffman as bootlicking sycophant butler Brandt; Julianne Moore as feminist artist Maude, who wants The Dude in more ways than one; Ben Gazzara as mysterious smut peddler Jackie Treehorn; Arthur Digby Sellers, a classic TV writer now confined to an iron lung; his son, a sloppy juvenile delinquent; and Sam Elliott as The Stranger, a narrator soothing enough to give Morgan Freeman a run for his money.

It's difficult to say much more about The Big Lebowski beyond "It must be seen." This is a wholly original movie that really escapes description. Relaxed and entertaining, The Big Lebowski is certainly my favorite Coen Bros. picture - and may even land a spot on my irregular-around-the-margins Best Movies of All Time list.

Next (2007)

It's almost blasphemous that this movie replaces The Dark Knight as the first article that my readers see when they log on, but here goes.

Next is the film that convinced me that Nicolas Cage has lost his edge. Granted, I had ample evidence - The Wicker Man and Ghost Rider among the most recent - but here I stand convinced that Cage is sadly incapable of making a good movie anymore.

On the surface, Next ought to be a reasonably intriguing movie. Cris "Frank Cadillac" Johnson (Cage) is a Vegas mentalist who actually possesses the ability to see two minutes into the future. Enter Liz Cooper (Jessica Biel), Cris's love interest and the woman who allows him to see farther (further, father?) into her future, and FBI Agent Ferris (the ever-intense - or is she just aggravated? - Julianne Moore), who's out to use Cris's ability to stop a terrorist cell from going nuclear.

If that plot thread seems out of left field, it is. Director Lee Tamahori (who brought us Die Another Day, arguably the least of the Pierce Brosnan Bond movies) tries to make Next two very disparate things; at times a Nolan-esque examination of the fantastic in the real world and at other times a Jack Bauer-style counterterrorist actionfest, Next doesn't really succeed as either by fault of the other. If Tamahori had picked one or the other, the film might not have suffered as it does. Instead, the film waffles between genres without wholly committing.

I've beaten up on Cage for losing his edge, yet it's not as though the other actors aren't pulling their weight. Moore is serviceable as the stereotypical federal agent, making me a little nostalgic for her turn as Clarice Starling in Hannibal. And Biel seems determined to prove to me that she's an actress in her own right, because she seems to be doing more "acting" and less "eye-candying" the more I see her. And an almost-cameo from Peter Falk makes me lament that he's not given a bigger role as the comic relief sidekick. Still, Cage's performance led me to wonder (several times aloud), "Was that supposed to be funny?"

The villains are less than one-dimensional (they're evil, okay? that's all you need to know), but my most significant gripe comes with the ending of the fim. So if you wish to remain unspoiled, best to stop reading here and take away the nugget that I can't in good conscience recommend Next. Essentially, the ending of the film is the largest cop-out since Superman reversed the rotation of the earth back in 1978. Just as the film builds to some really cool stuff and instills a sense of hope that maybe - just maybe - Next is about to redeem itself, SURPRISE! None of it really happened! The last time I felt this cheated by a movie, I chucked a bowl of quinoa at Inland Empire. Thanks, David Lynch - and thanks to Lee Tamahori for completely invalidating ninety minutes of my life.