Kingsman: The Golden Circle

It is without question that the first film, Kingsman: The Secret Service, can be called one of the biggest surprises of the last few years. So, it’s also no surprise that the sequel was met with immense expectations. By bringing back the visionary director, the fun cast, and exhilarating action, Kingsman: The Golden Circle looked to be a worthy continuation of the world the original set up, but did it succeed? Spoiler alert... No, it did not.

Following an attack from a powerful drug cartel that devastates the Kingsman organisation, Kingsman: The Golden Circle follows Eggsy and Merlin as they travel to America in order to team-up with their American counterparts, the Statesman. It turns out that the Statesman have been looking after a somehow still alive Harry Hart since he was shot in the previous film, but the retrograde amnesia he's suffering from means he remembers nothing from his life as a Kingsman. Around the same time, the leader of the aforementioned drug cartel, the Americana-obsessed Poppy Adams, announces to the world that she's been poisoning her product, and won't release the antidote to her hundreds of millions of users around the world until the President of the USA ends the War on Drugs once and for all.

There's a lot going on, and that's just one of the many problems that Kingsman: The Golden Circle suffers from. Matthew Vaughn has admitted in interviews that if he'd known Kingsman was going to become a franchise then he wouldn't have killed off Harry Hart in the first film, but undoing that decision ends up costing a lot more than it's actually worth. We spend a lot of time jumping through hoops in order to explain and attempt to add some dramatic weight to Harry's return, but when all is said and done his character has no purpose in the film beyond merely establishing that he's still alive and available for future movies. 

As far as the American counterparts are concerned, their roles feel rather wasted. Those that received so much attention during Kingsman: The Golden Circle's marketing campaigns are ultimately little more than extended cameos. Channing Tatum may have been a focal point in trailers and posters, but he, much like Halle Berry and Jeff Bridges, has no purpose in the film - Elton John has more screen time than most of the Statesman crew combined, as well as being far more vital to the story. And maybe that would have been forgivable if the plot was more interesting. Unlike Kingsman: The Secret Service, which slowly doles out information about Richmond Valentine's plan to the audience as the Kingsman investigate (which in effect positions much of that film as a mystery), we're told the full extent and intent of Poppy Adams' plan early on in the film, and spend the rest of the time waiting for Eggsy and Merlin to catch up as they get distracted by the Statesman and the return of Harry. It's a pretty fundamental mishandling of an otherwise perfectly acceptable, albeit uninspired, plot that robs it of any urgency or intrigue it might have had, meaning that by the time the finale actually rolls around it all feels totally perfunctory. 

These plot problems are only made all the more damaging by the simple fact that the film-making of Kingsman: The Golden Circle isn't a patch on that of Kingsman: The Secret Service. Vaughn's approach made everything feel artificial and weightless, both physically and dramatically. There are a few action scenes here that could and should have been spectacular, but in attempting to top the now infamous church scene from the first film, Kingsman: The Golden Circle can't help but come across as trying far too hard. This is particularly noticeable during the film's opening and closing action sequences - they're at times virtually incomprehensible thanks to the swooping and diving from the camera, rapidly cutting from extreme close-up to extreme close-up in a way that ends up feeling far more reminiscent of a sequence of live-action comic book panels than it does a well shot and edited action scene.

But by far the biggest problem with Kingsman: The Golden Circle is that it lacks the kind of spirit, heart and creative drive that the first film had in droves. It's easy to forget that "fun spy flick" was only one part of what made Kingsman: The Secret Service so enjoyable - Eggsy's journey through the British class system and his subsequent rejection of the upper class was the real story of the film, working in tandem with Vaughn's own commentary on the ruling elite to create a surprisingly smart and subversive piece of satire.

Ultimately, Kingsman: The Golden Circle is a film that simply lacks any real reason to exist from a creative or artistic perspective, and is instead content to be nothing more than a substandard spy movie. Kingsman: The Secret Service deserves a far better sequel than this.

It

Here we go, the most anticipated horror reboot since the Evil Dead in 2013... at least according to me. As a self confessed horror, thriller, gore, suspense super-fan, the 2017 remake of Stephen King's infamous It, filled me with excitement from the very first casting announcement through to the trailer and up to now as I type after having left the cinema in the dark nearly an hour ago.

Based on the 1986 novel, and thankfully not on the 1990 TV movie, the 2017 reboot is directed by Andy Muschietti with a screenplay from Chase Palmer, Cary Fukunaga and Gary Dauberman. Muschietti also directed the 2013 hit Mama, which was not particularly thought provoking but did it's job with jump scares and creepy children. It follows seven young outcasts who face their worst nightmare in the shape of an ancient, shape-shifting evil that emerges from the sewer every 27 years to prey on the town's children. Banding together over the course of one horrifying summer, the friends overcome their own personal fears to battle the murderous, bloodthirsty clown known as Pennywise.

It is almost as much a coming-of-age film as it is a horror thanks to the way that fears of the self-described "Losers' Club" often represent a more general fear of growing up, and the characters we follow throughout - particularly Bill, Bev, Eddie and Richie - are believable, authentic ones whose interactions with one another ring true. They're so well-developed and enjoyable to spend time around that one has to wonder if It would have still been a decent, entertaining movie even if the horror aspects hadn't have worked - I know for sure that my interest in the second part of this story comes more from seeing how these characters will have grown and changed over the best part of three decades than it does in seeing them fight Pennywise the Dancing Clown for a second time.

Which itself is a credit to It's young main cast, all of whom give great performances throughout - a good thing too, considering how easily the film would have fallen apart if even one of their performances hadn't been up to scratch. Obviously, Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard is excellent as the mouthy Richie, but surprisingly he doesn't overshadow the rest of the cast - with the sole exception of Chosen Jacobs (who unfortunately simply doesn't get enough screen-time to leave much of an impression as Mike Hanlon) the entire "Losers' Club" have their time in the spotlight. Particularly brilliant are Sophia Lillis as Bev, Jack Dylan Grazer as Eddie and Jackson Robert Scott as Georgie - Lillis really helps sell a number of scenes that could have come across as clichéd with a weaker actress in the role.

But that's not to say that It stumbles when it comes to the horror - quite the contrary, in fact. For large stretches of it's running time It operates more as a montage of brilliant little set-pieces than it does a traditional narrative. Between director Andy Muschietti's firm grasp of tone throughout, Chung-hoon Chung's gorgeous cinematography and a brilliantly unrestrained performance from Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise, It manages to achieve the effect it is going for, whether that be a subtly creepy moment in a library, outright terror in a darkened garage and everything in between. There are a lot of elements in It that could have wound up feeling outdated or even cheesy in 2017 (it's about a child-eating clown who lives in a haunted house, after all), but from literally the opening scene It is performing a careful balancing act that ensures that's never the case.

There are minor nitpicks to made but they do little to hurt It in the grand scheme of things thanks to how enjoyable it is when it's firing on all cylinders. All in all, It ends up being the film that I imagine it was always meant to be - an enormously entertaining and effective horror with slightly more going on under the surface than most, and one I hope to revisit sooner rather than later.