Movie Review: Kingsman The Secret Service (2015) - Well it certainly isn't a James Bond film

Welcome to the final part of our (accidental) three part series of movies that were delayed from last year. So far we’ve seen a butchered nightmare in Jupiter Ascending and an unoriginal after thought in Seventh Son, how will the originally made for the summer spy movie do in the cold month of February? Honestly, surprisingly well.

Pros - The first thing that comes to mind is the sense of humour. If Daniel Craig was right when he said Austin Powers killed the idea of humour in Spy Movies, this would be the movie that could bring that element back. It mostly plays itself as both a send up of the old british spy films and a bit of a straight man routine while also quietly tackling ideas such as the gap between the social classes and global warming. Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is basically the comic foil to the Kingsmen’s serious tone. All of the actors we’re pretty good as well, but Taron Egerton and Samuel L. Jackson to me were the stand outs amongst the group.

Cons - Mixing all those elements together works for the most part, but the movie does have a couple of off moments. Combine that with being a send up of british spy films which means they do have to have some of the more cliche moments mixed in as well. Now, I’m going to disclose something that truthfully I’d thought I’d never have to disclose. It’s rare that when I see a movie that I suffer from lowered expectations but after the last couple of movies I feel that I should disclose that on this occasion that there was a bit of this when watching it. The movie is still good, but I’m not going to let that slight bias affect my judgement. That being said though…..

Final Score: 8/10

it’s not quite a homerun, but after those last two outs, I think it’s enough to get a triple. Okay shitty analogy I know but honestly this might be the last good movie until at least March. Also for anyone curious I WILL NOT BE SEEING FIFTY SHADES OF GREY UNLESS I HAVE A GUN POINTED AT MY HEAD. Even then, I think i’d rather choose death.

I’m mostly sure I won’t be seeing any new movies next week, so expect one of my retro reviews and also a netflix review as well. Maybe a DVD review as well, I got a few on my shelf. Until next time, I’ll see you guys at the movies.

Movie Review: Seventh Son (2015) - We waited a year for this?

So I’m going to have to preface this one by saying SPOILER ALERT because there’s one scene in particular that I want to talk about that kind of SPOILS one of the “big moments” of the movie, but I need to talk about in order to point how stupid and unoriginal this movie is. Yeah it’s going to be one these kind of reviews.

Originally slated for release last year, Seventh Son was apparently delayed multiple times times to “touch up on the digital effects.” Judging from what I saw they mainly did that to try and make it look better for the post production 3D conversion that they clearly tacked on to this in hopes to try and make more of their money back. I’m just gonna go straight into the pros and cons from here because it’s my blog I’ll do what I want.

Pros - The character designs of the villains were really cool, even if one them was kind of a rip off of the Hindu God Vishnu (I have no idea if it’s spelled correctly if it isn’t I apologize.)

Cons - The best way to describe this movie is this: Imagine if somebody made a list of every Medieval Fantasy Adventure movie cliche, and then decided to make a movie out of them. This thing does not have a single original bone in it’s body, and it honestly wouldn’t surprise me if this was just a rewritten version of season of the witch. Don’t Remember that movie? good on you it was boring. But the SPOILER moment I want to talk about was possibly it’s dumbest moment of all: They ripped off Star Wars. The good Star Wars movies. “But Ryan, it’s a fantasy movie how could they rip off a Sci Fi movie? I’ll tell you, remember in Star Wars when the ghost of Obi Wan Kenobi talks to Luke about his father? Yeah, that's the scene they ripped off. Okay, the main character’s mother is revealed to have been a witch who betrayed the main villain of the film, but she gets killed when the main villain attacks a village where one of her associates was killed. So later on at the part of the movie where his master gets kidnapped and he is presumed dead, she appears in ghost form to tell him to keep going. That’s right folks, she is Obi Mom Kenobi. Just…what the fuck man?

Final Score - 1/10

Without a single unique original idea in it’s story, it makes the whole movie as boring as the day is long, and a boring movie to me is just worthless.

Kingsman The Secret Service is out on Thursday, I actually am really hopeful for it and I hope I can get a review out the day of, so keep an eye out for that.

Until then, I’ll see you folks at the movies.

Movie Review: Jupiter Ascending (2015) - Yeah it just crashes and burns.

This one is gonna bug the crap out of me. I was already worried when it got delayed from last year and now I can see why. I place the blame solely on Guardians of Galaxy, not because it was bad, but because it was so good I’m guessing Warner Bros. who funded the thing wanted the movie re-edited to try and compete with that instead of letting the film keep the clearly much bigger ambition it had in mind instead. This one smells of studio manipulation but first let’s get to the positives shall we?

Pros - The movie looks really cool, the set designs are amazing as well as some of the character designs. The action scenes are also really well done (they should be as they literally take up 85 - 90% of the movie.)

Cons - There’s no easy way to say this: This movie feels like a transformers movie, and I HATE THE TRANSFORMER MOVIES! However, I will say that this is a better looking and smarter Transformers movie, but it’s still basically a bunch of action scenes strung together by, in the case of Jupiter Ascending, what feels like a very heavily edited plot cut down to try and streamline it. Also Eddie Redmayne as the villain in this reminds me of Hayden Christensen in the Star Wars Prequels, and I HATE THE STAR WARS PREQUELS, SURPRISINGLY LESS THAN TRANSFORMERS, BUT STILL A GREAT DEAL! and yet despite all that, I will add an addendum to the final rating.

Final Score: 2/10 (Theatrical Version.)

From what I could scavenge off of the remaining story, there seemed like at one point to be a great amount of potential and some really big ideas in the original cut of the film. So the score for today only applies to the theatrical version, on the condition that if there is a Director’s Cut made of this film I’m gonna watch the shit out of that to see if they can salvage any of that potential.

Now I know the last time I posted I said I’d have five Retro Reviews coming up, I still do, but I plan to post those out on weeks when either nothing is playing or I’m too busy to go to the movies. But until then, I’ll see you folks at the movies.