Kingsman: The Secret Service

Going in, I had already read the comic by Mark Millar (Kick-Ass) and Dave Gibbons (Watchmen) and loved it so much I made a friend read it. It was filled with impeccable style, humor, blood, and thrills with a raggedy hero you could root for. The movie adaptation delivers on all counts and actually significantly improves on the source material.

It follows the Cinderella story of Eggsy Unwin (the dreamy Taron Egerton), a chav with a heart of gold, as he is recruited by Harry Hart (Colin Firth) to compete against fellow recruits and join the ranks of the Kingsmen, an elite group of classic Bond-esque spies. Eggsy manages to defy prejudices against his lower-class background and when he finally earns his bespoke suit and glasses (pictured), it's quite the magical moment. Meanwhile, a crazy evil plot to decimate the Earth's population cooked up by Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) and his right hand lady Gazelle threatens to tear the Kingsmen apart.

The movie adaptation manages to flesh out the short 6-issue comic in all the right places by adding more heart, character, and action. For instance, in the comic, Gazelle is a male US army veteran who just happens to have no legs. The movie takes Gazelle to a whole other level by making her a strong non-objectified female character who uses her prosthetic legs to slice through flesh and bone with glee. Every single one of her acrobatic fight scenes is a joy to watch and wholly original and her partnership with SLJ's villain rings true.

On the subject of action, Eggsy has his fair share of cool car chases, underwater levels, skydiving, pug training, and Gazelle fighting, but nothing topped Colin Firth's jaw-dropping church scene. In what may very well be this movie's version of "Let it Go", Firth fights his way through a mesmerizing and beautifully-choreographed ballet of ultraviolence all set to "Free Bird". If you are going to see only a single scene, make it this one. Humor-wise, Kingsman stays witty and British throughout (bolstered by excellent chemistry and comedic timing among the cast) up until a controversial Cards Against Humanity-level joke involving butts and princesses which capped off the ending (I found it somewhat endearing).

In all, Kingsman the movie was really the best way to let a good comic come to life and become much more endearing, lively,and visceral with a more captivating plot, particularly with regards to Eggsy's training and character development. The movie spends a lot of time paying homage to old spy movies which keeps it just short of being genius, but it is incredibly entertaining and definitely a must-see if you like action, blood, and dry humor as much as I do.

Bonus! There is no romantic subplot (even with the presence of Eggsy's pretty and competent fellow Kingsman Roxy with whom he has a great platonic relationship with)

Jupiter Ascending IMAX 3D

Jupiter Ascending was surprisingly fun and gorgeous in IMAX 3D. However dorky the story was (poor girl becomes a space queen by virtue of being the genetic reincarnation of an industrial matriarch and is rescued by sexy dog-hybrid Channing Tatum and Sean Bean is part bees? etc.etc.) you could tell that the Wachowskis reveled in building their exquisite space opera world with a great variety of creatures and lush locales and quirks. The CGI chases and action (of which there were many) were both loud and thrilling, and every costume was on point, really making this a visual feast. The movie tries its best to ship Kunis and Tatum like a 14 year-old's OTP and Oscar nominee Eddie Redmayne turns in a so-bad-it's-good angry whisper performance as the main villain. If you want to see a cheesy adorkable spectacle, consider Jupiter Ascending.

The Theory of Everything

After seeing The Theory of Everything, I am actually completely willing to grab that Imitation Game Oscar right out of Benedict Cumberbatch's hand and chuck it at Eddie Redmayne because when he got in that wheelchair as Stephen Hawking, I totally forgot that it was an actor having to re-enact Hawking's twisted posture, deteriorating speech, and facial expressions. It was an absolutely remarkable transformative performance at the highest difficulty level. Bravo, sir. I thought Eddie was pretty charming in My Week With Marilyn, but this is next-level.

On Disney Princesses (from 9/7/2013)

Yo-ho-ho This will be a long post about Disney's Frozen:

So, apparently “Frozen” which Tumblr and animation enthusiasts have been griping about, is actually quite good, like “Beauty and the Beast” level good. It has great songs, characters, Olaf the snowman is actually funny, Elsa is a compelling antivillain, beautiful animation, a female-positive plot, and overall, hearkens back to the grandiose Disney princess features of old.

And IMHO, that latter bit is the largest issue. Disney is constantly putting on nostalgia glasses and doing throwbacks, especially in the princess department.Charles Dickens made an incredible career out of writing a lot of classic books about orphan boys (and then there’s Bleak House), but he was just one man, and Disney is an infinitely powerful corporate monster that’s pretty much immortal at this point. Of the last few Disney princess movies I’ve seen (Pixar’s Brave, Tangled, and Enchanted) all of them play on/rehash princess tropes like the spunky/feisty white lass in her late teens (Enchanted’s Giselle acts like one) in some sort of conflict with an older woman/mother-like figure and some sort of romantic entanglement (frequently royalty-related, the “I don’t want to get married” trope comes back with a vengeance in Brave) on a journey of self-discovery to the outside world with magic, destiny, and cute animals. This has been done ad nauseam. It’s formulaic, and at this point, boring in the nicest way possible. Sure, the aforementioned three movies are widly different in setting, but ultimately not different enough. [I’d really like to see Princess and the Frog soon]

I don’t want to walk out of another Disney princess movie saying, “That was cute” (my reaction to Tangled). I want to walk out saying, “That was something great that I’ve never seen before and I was emotionally invested” (which was my reaction to Mulan). I don’t think cute’s quite good enough in this day and age. I know it sells toys well, and it’s emotionally and visually safe, but if Disney wants to progress into the future, they’re going to have to make something new, with more of a bite rather than resting on sparkly laurels. Wreck-It Ralph, while not a princess movie or particularly emotionally edgy, was a great example of a twist on a zero-to-hero theme, where it put on video game nostalgia glasses (something that no animated movie had done before), it had a heroic villain protagonist (Zangief explains this better), with a great and varied supporting cast. Felix, Vanellope, and Calhoun all look totally different and and act totally different, and don’t quite fit into any traditional Disney archetypes.

Perhaps, Disney could take a hint from Studio Ghibli in regards to it’s princess and female-led movies. Like Dickens, Miyazaki and Co. really like making movies about a lead girl, with a supporting boy, and usually magic, and themes about nature and pacifism (and then there’s the Yamadas), but they’re all wildly, wildly different and none of the stories necessarily require that the lead has to be attractive or romantically involved (this is either extremely subtle/restrained or more like a rewarding subplot). Also, Ghibli’s heroines run the gamut of personalities, looks, and ages, from a curious baby goldfish to a vicious teenager raised by wolves. They know the meaning of variety.

I’ve been hearing whispers and seeing concept art for Disney’s Polynesian island-based feature, so hopefully, that’s a step towards the future.

Disney’s princesses (and non-princess heroines) are almost always spunky and doe-eyed (and frequently teens) when there’s an infinite variety of personalities to choose from. How about a true villain protagonist princess? How about a slacker, or even one of those awkward, gangly, brainy types that male protagonists often are (I’m looking at you, Hiccup)? How about a girl with a Mufasa-level tragedy? How about someone a little bit sexy? Disney had no problem with Megara and Esmeralda, though they are the romantic objects in their movies. How about my dream, a Capt. Amelia Treasure Planet spin-off? That would be something.

TL;DR Disney makes a damn good classic princess movie (Frozen), but we really need something more progressive, and not just more PoC’s, but storylines and characters that are less cute and more risky and dangerous, but ultimately more memorable.

The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug and 12 Years a Slave (from 12/23/2013)

Desolation of Smaug was the best 3 hours of shameless fanservice I've ever seen. That was one sexy dragon.

12 Years a Slave was one of the best historical dramas I've ever seen. It was utterly unflinching in its depiction of antebellum America with an incredible performance from Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Both movies had Benedict Cumberbatch, naturally.

6-Word Reviews (from 12/27/2011)

6 word reviews of movies I have seen recently:

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Still epic on the third time
Narnia: Prince Caspian: Less boring on the second try
Green Lantern: Pretty, but lacks a satisfying conclusion
Sherlock Holmes (the first one): A combination of cleverness and humor
War Horse: Slow start, but moving and adorable
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: Great murder mystery, but highly disturbing
Tintin: Fantastic animation, quick plot, very fun

Book Review: Crime and Punishment (originally written 6/26/2012)

I finally finished this a week ago, even though it was assigned for school.

It was really well-written and well thought out, though it was the length and the massive cast of characters that made it difficult.

It’s a classic, though I felt that Dostoevsky added a lot of superfluous subplot (Svidrigailov, basically) to make things more exciting in a serialized novel format, but otherwise the main plot about Raskolnikov’s murder of an old pawnbroker and his subsequent guilt was exciting at the start, slow in the middle, and riveting at the end.

Rating: Why hasn’t this been adapted into a movie within the past 5 years?

Book Review: The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling (originally written 3/2/2013)

My god, the first 50 pages are dull character descriptions, the next 300 are boring examples of character dynamics, and the last 150 is where things go horribly wrong for all the characters, but the book’s quality increases exponentially. Overall, the payoff of the ending wasn’t really worth the excessively long beginning.

Big Hero 6 (originally written 10/26/2014)

I was fortunate enough to catch a free early screening of BH6 thanks to the Austin Film Festival, and it wasn’t spectacular, it wasn’t Frozen or Wreck-it Ralph, or the LEGO Movie or HTTYD 2, but it was decently entertaining and well worth waiting an hour and a half for in line.

The animation, specifically for the development of the environment and San Fransokyo, which was so exquisitely detailed. There were recognizable landscapes and landmarks of San Fran, but layered over with bits of old and new Japan. Lighting and water effects were gorgeous. Character design was varied and creative, which was a great improvement over Frozen’s dollfaced clones, but the actual personalities and abilities of the supporting cast were so superficial and glossed over, that it was clear they were designed purely to sell toys.

The plot was the weakest link. It’s the nice love-child of the engineering part of Iron Man and the zero to hero plot of Spider-Man. Any sort of surprise or tension or feels was removed (for me as an adult, I think the kids will be more surprised) since it so slavishly stuck to the standard superhero narrative that every damn plot point was predictable. It was done adequately, but there was so much potential for a Hans-level twist. It went through a checklist of dead parents, dead Uncle Ben, build the super stuff as a result, get the team, team training montage, control your anger, do good, find out identity of obvious bad guy. Really, no surprises and it was also very morally black & white instead of subverting tropes like the LEGO Movie, or doing something like Wreck-it Ralph breaking Vanellope’s car with good intentions. I didn’t emotionally connect very well to the characters because of this, and so it was fun but not excellently so.

Humor-wise, it was much weaker than the wittiness of Frozen, or Ralph, and ended up veering into silly and gross underwear territory. The after credits cameo is totally worth it, as well as the animated short “Feast” in front of it (about a dog’s life experienced through food and eating) and it is just ADORBS and feelsy and animated like Paperman.

Overall, it has some winsome charm, and potential, and there are some genuinely sweet and funny moments with Baymax the robot, but it lacks the sharpness, snark, originality, and feels of better Disney movies and HTTYD (Baymax has nothing on Toothless the dragon). It earns a B-, though if this manages to get kids interested in science and engineering (despite the complete lack of accuracy or lab safety in the film) then that’s the best sort of success this film can have.

Sucker Punch (originally written 6/1/2014)

I will say, Sucker Punch had a really slick, wonderful sense of visual style and really great potential, especially in the fighting-girl team department. However, it was all wasted potential, as it was poorly executed with a plodding checklist of quest items plot, lack of story momentum due to terrible editing and great big lulls between the fights, the fantasy vision scenes were overly compartmentalized and didn’t connect with each other or the real world other than serving to complete the quest checklist, characters were one-dimensional (Oh her name’s Rocket, so she must be the fiesty headstrong one, indeed), one hell of an unsatisfying downer ending for Babydoll, and I’m aware that the ladies were using their bodies and minds as weapons, but the whole movie felt exploitative nonetheless. Like really, of all the premises a fighting-girl team could have existed in, they are forced to be strippers in an asylum. In all it was undoubtedly a great idea/effort by Zack Snyder, but a frankly awful movie.

Ender's Game (originally written 9/9/2013)

Regardless of your opinion of Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game is a damn good movie and hit all the right marks of both action and emotional gravity. Mmm dang, that ending.

If 10/10 is insta-classic, this is a 9/10, I would watch it at least three more times.

Asa Butterfield was a fantastic Ender, and had the perfect balance between cute, vicious, and charismatic. He deserves a trophy for being a champion of Hollywood crying with those gorgeous big blue eyes and capacity to produce that perfect single tear in about a dozen separate scenes. He’s backed by an engaging supporting cast (Yeah Hailee!)

I will probably write up something more substantial later.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (originally written 8/9/2013)

Ok, I just saw this today, and it was no Pacific Rim, but it still was pretty good clunky, dopey, and adorable fun on the level of a good episode of Merlin. What it lacks in writing and its 2007-era special effects, it makes up in an increase in book accuracy, good action, likeable new cast members, and a fairly traumatic last 20 minutes for anyone who is as attached to the characters as I am.

From Up On Poppy Hill (originally written 5/5/2013)

If you can find it, you’ve got to see From Up on Poppy Hill. Goro Miyazaki has proven to be just as capable as his father Hayao with lovely characters and gorgeous art like no other studio. Despite having none of the regular Studio Ghibli magical happenings (it’s about high school students saving their clubhouse in pre-1964 Japan, instead of spirits running a bathhouse), the film manages to strike the same emotional chord as Spirited Awaybytouching on themes of family, love, and nostalgia. Finally, even though the romance is restrained relative to a typical Disney movie, it reaches levels of tension, complexity, and sweetness that Disney can only dream of. Watch out for that plot twist!

Argo (originally written 2/8/2013)

So, there’s Ben Affleck (Daredevil and Gigli) and the movies that Ben Affleck makes (Gone Baby Gone and The Town). The second category is the much better one, and Argo serves to cement Ben’s place as the new Clint Eastwood, an actor who turns out to be even better at directing.

Here’s the premise: angry Iranian protesters break into the US Embassy and take everyone hostage. Six people escape and hang out in the Canadian ambassador’s house. The question is, how do you get the six people out? The ambassador can’t keep them around forever, and Ayatollah Khomeini’s supporters are so, so close to figuring out that the six escaped the embassy. Ben Affleck’s CIA agent character comes up with the best of the bad ideas tossed around for the exfiltration. He gathers up an Oscar-winning makeup artist (John Goodman) and a producer (Alan Arkin) to make the titular sci-fi movie (concept art above) and say that the six are part of the crew. 

This was the best heart-pounding, hand-wringing thriller I’ve seen since The Departed and Aliens. Every time Ben and Co. met a new obstacle during their escape, I could feel the audience screaming internally because of the tension. For me, this trumped the more traditional biopic, Lincoln, and the blandly directed, yet lovely Les Miserables, in that Ben directs with both skill and panache, and never misses a beat. The story rolls along at a fast clip, and I can’t stress how exciting and occasionally funny it was. All the awards that Argo’s been picking up lately are well deserved.

Finally, this is very much a late 70’s period piece, straight down to the shaggy hair and big glasses, and since I was watching it on the big screen in low quality, it looked like a movie from that time, which made it all the more believable.

Congratulations, Ben Affleck. You’ve made a fan out of me.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (originally written 9/29/2012)

I haven’t written a review for a long time, but that was because I was waiting for this puppy to come out. Being a low budget but high quality indie about high school, it’s hard to find in theaters, but worth all the effort.

Basically, a high school freshman named Charlie writes letters to an anonymous friend (the reader/audience) and it turns out that he has issues, including the suicide of his best friend and a mess of social anxiety issues.

Luckily, he meets two oddball friends, stepsiblings Sam and Charlie, who turn him around and push him forward to his coming-of-age moment. But it’s a lot more fun and emotional than that. The plot itself and the nostalgic 90’s setting are perfectly intertwined and the soundtrack (with extra Rocky!) is brilliant and gives an extra sense of grounding and reality that brought it above the book. The book is a definite must-read as it expands on subplots briefly touched upon in the movie such as Charlie’s family life, but the movie definitely keeps the meat of the plot in there by focusing on everyone’s dark secret pasts and the Charlie/Sam love story.

Even if you’re not interested in a high school movie, go for the performances. Emma Watson sparkles as Sam and is a fine supporting actress here, Ezra Miller is hilarious and multidimensional as Patrick, and if Logan Lerman (as Charlie) was a girl, he would totally get an Oscar nomination (like J. Lawrence, H. Steinfeld, A. Breslin, S. Ronan, and K. Castle-Hughes) but alas, his incredibly sympathetic and subtle performance will be passed over this year in favor of the traditional favorite (and undeniably awesome actor) Daniel Day-Lewis as Abe Lincoln. But, this has definitely cemented Logan as a rising star, and I’m sure we’ll see him grow to DiCaprio levels of fame and finally win something when given the right material.

I’d see The Perks of Being a Wallflower again and again, and so you should see it at least once.

My Three-Day Movie Fest (originally written 8/13/2012)

I had some free time and so I watched movies nearly non-stop for three days. I attempted to have a real mixed bag of movies, so that the tones and genres would vary throughout the three days. Here’s what I saw:

1.       Zombieland (Quite entertaining, Jesse Eisenberg a plus)

2.       Lions for Lambs (Interesting ideas, but poorly executed. Andrew Garfield a plus.)

3.       Eye of the Beholder (Crap.)

4.       The Other Boleyn Girl (That Tudor drama! More exciting than history.)

5.       My Sister’s Keeper (Nice, but it’s basically a Hallmark Channel movie.)

6.       Speed Racer (Weak story, but ooh shiny.)

7.       Frida (It’s good if you’re a fan of Frida Kahlo to start with.)

8.       Citizen Kane (I thought this was a snooze. Maybe I’m too young to understand.)

9.       Kung Fu Panda (Well done, Jack Black.)

      An Education (Story’s all right, but Carey Mulligan is the real heart of this movie.)

11.   Star Wars: The Clone Wars (It was like a dead Fall leaf.)

12.   The Notebook (The ending made me laugh instead of cry.)

13.   The Shawshank Redemption (SUPER AWESOME)

Good Will Hunting (originally written 6/26/2012)

This is an old movie, but I just got it on Blu-Ray and watched it for the first time.

The best part was the Damon/Affleck script, the Boston-accurate accents and slang, and the friendship of Damon and Affleck, which comes through both on and off-screen.

Basically, Will Hunting (Damon) is a math genius and has both wit and encyclopedic knowledge to spare, but he’s unmotivated, and all he wants to do is be a janitor, pick fights, and bar-hop with his friend (Affleck). He is discovered by Gerald Lambeau (Skarsgard), an MIT professor, who is forced to bring Will Hunting to his community college psych professor Sean Maguire (Williams) because Will keeps being unmotivated and has a tendency to antagonize everyone. So, Maguire is faced with the daunting task of finding out what is wrong with a young man who seemingly has a snarky response to everything. Meanwhile, Will falls in love with Skylar (Driver), a Harvard pre-med student, but he is reluctant to take the relationship further.

The summary sounds like a hokey inspirational movie, but director Gus Van Sant really used all of his actors well to create a rather sharp-edged story of an imperfect, wounded genius.

Rating: I think this made my top ten.

The Hunger Games IMAX (originally written 6/26/2012)

Apologies for lateness aside, I have read all of the books (which I thought were decently written and thought-provoking, though without any of Harry Potter’s charm).

First, I got to see this movie twice, once in IMAX, and once in regular, and the movie had a lot of replay value. I’m assuming the reader of this post has seen the movie/read the books, and so I won’t summarize it and there are probably spoilers ahead. 

For brevity:

Pros: Pitch-perfect tone, with action-based entertainment on the surface, with undercurrents of the horror and sorrow from the realization that this is a televised child-murdering event; JENNIFER LAWRENCE’S PERFORMANCE. If this movie didn’t have her, it would have been mediocre.; Classy set design, makeup, and costumes all around.; Reasonable performances from everyone not named Jennifer Lawrence.

Cons: That shaky-cam was nearly intolerable in IMAX; The relationships between characters could have been developed more (Katniss/Peeta, Katniss/Rue) but this movie was already 2.5 hours long.

I’ve seen enough good books turned into terrible movies such that I’m pretty lenient about book accuracy and I know what works well in a visual medium and what needs to be inserted so that a non-book reading audience can follow the story. So, the big challenge here was effectively doing a movie without Katniss’s narration. Gary Ross and Co. managed to do that reasonably well with the addition of more Seneca Crane, and that expositional propaganda video. Oh yes, and good job cutting all of Katniss’s food descriptions, those were the worst parts of the books.

Rating: The only terrible thing was the shaky-cam. Not quite a classic, but pretty good.

Men in Black III (originally written 6/26/2012)

Apologies, this review is really late. Let’s recap, MIB was great, albeit goofy sci-fi fun, MIB II was crap.

This one was definitely more like the first. Basically, Agent J (Will Smith) and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) are aging now, but they still have the same personalities. After some grumpiness on K’s part, Boris the Animal (pictured above), chocolate milk, and wibbley wobbley timey wimey stuff, a time fracture occurs where K no longer exists in the present day and only J remembers the regular time stream. So, J needs to go back in time, defeat Boris, save K, and fix the time stream.

Overall, I loved how it kept the same mix of humor and action that makes MIB so distinctive, and Smith and Brolin (young Agent K) are excellent here. I would have liked to see more of the one Woman in Black (Agent O).

The reason why this is worth seeing was that it went beyond a popcorn movie and had a real emotional center based off of J and K’s friendship. Smith’s nuanced portrayal really brought out the sense that J truly cared about K, and despite their differences, he would even go back in time to save K. There’s also a great twist regarding this aspect of the story.

Rating: Worth watching. (Maybe not twice, but YMMV.)

The Avengers 3D (originally written 6/14/2012)

I have seen a great many messy action movies. Any Michael Bay stuff would fall into this category, and Iron Man 2 comes to mind as a movie that would’ve been great if it wasn’t so messily plotted and executed.

The Avengers was indeed messy, hopping from explosions to fight scenes to more explosions, it was overstuffed with action. But Joss Whedon, our overlord, is special. He managed to organize this chaos (especially with a large ensemble cast) into something really slick, cool-looking, and entertaining.

It’s a given that the CGI and sound are good, so it’s the story and the characterization that make or break a superhero movie. Whedon nailed it. I was especially surprised with Black Widow actually having a legitimate story arc. In the aforementioned Iron Man 2, Black Widow was there just to be the tight leather and boobs of the story. In the Avengers, she wasn’t Smurfetted at all and was an integral part of the story, with real ass-kicking skills, real feelings (Aww, Hawkeye), and an especially great acting scene where Black Widow tricks Loki. Mark Ruffalo is also notable for fleshing out the Hulk even more than Edward Norton did in The Incredible Hulk. Thumbs up to RDJ, Hemsworth, Evans, SLJ, Hiddleston, and whoever played Maria Hill and Coulson too.

It didn’t really plumb too deeply into the heroes’ psyches a la Nolan Batman or Spider-Man 2, but I didn’t expect it to and that’s okay. Also, there were a hell of a lot of convenient plot devices, such as the relatively easy creation of the space portal, but these are comics after all.

Did I mention this movie is really funny? I’d like some shawarma now.

Rating: Damn good summer movie kick-off.