f4f3: (Movies)
Last night I went off to the cinema on my own, to see Kingsman.

I had mixed feelings about the movie before going in.

I’ve largely avoided Mark Millar since the nasty taste left in my mouth by the last page of Wanted. The overt message that he can take your money for fulfilling your power fantasies (oh, ok, that he can feck you up the *rse and you’ll be happy about it) didn’t really sit well with me. That means I didn’t actually get to read the rape scene in Kick Ass 2, so I can only be outraged about that by proxy.

On the other hand, Kingsman is a comic book adaption with an interesting cast and premise, so I wanted to see it.

Having seen the movie, I’m still ambivalent. There are lots of good things about it – it’s funny in spots, it has some gripping scenes (the sky-diving sequence in particular) and some excellent dialogue. There are also some bad things in there – a clumsy anal sex joke, a gratuitous lisp, Mark Strong’s ludicrous accent – but they don’t spoil the movie.

What I do think spoils it is a failure in tone, which reminded my painfully of Casino Royale (no, not the Daniel Craig version, the one with David Niven). The writers and director are far too canny for this to have been accidental, but it makes the climax an uncomfortable stab at hard-boiled farce, which didn’t come off for me.

Oh, and I’ve seen a few articles saying that the movie is an admission that the working class need aristocrats to save them – given that the body count includes just about every example of the elite, chosen few, I think this is a bit of a muddled conclusion. 
f4f3: (Movies)
Watched "There Will Be Blood" last night, looking forward to striking desert photography, and an exploration of the dark heart of capitalism.
Am still trying to clean Daniel Day Lewis's saliva off my shirt.

The last time I saw this much ham on display it was in a butcher's window. I mean, fair enough, it was hardly the most three dimensional character to get your teeth into, but did he have to spend so much time chewing the scenery? He made James Dean in Giant look like Kenneth Williams in Carry on Cleo. This wasn't just a bad, self-indulgent, nonsensical dish of pish, it wasn't even entertainingly bad. Oh, ok, I did burst out laughing as he bludgeoned someone to death, but I'm sure that wasn't the reaction he was going for.

Jack Nicolson, I will never say anything bad about you again.

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