Winnie the Pooh's depressing backstory.

Goodbye Christopher Robin (2017)

7.2/10 on IMDb
64% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright

Watch it if you: Are a fan of Domnhall Gleeson;
Are interested in the relationship between the real Christopher Robin and his parents
Goodbye Christopher Robin tells the story of how A. A. Milne's creation (and the following success) of the Winnie the Pooh novels impacted his relationship with his son, the real life Christopher Robin.

I wasn't a huge fan of Winnie the Pooh when I was a kid (I mean, I did watch the cartoon but I never went crazy for them), so I wasn't too interested in this movie, but it was getting alright reviews and it had a good lead cast. I went in thinking I might get really bored and it might be a movie just for old people, but it was surprisingly entertaining. It's not the most entertaining story out there, and definitely not a movie for everyone, but I certainly wasn't bored and was even a little surprised at how engaged I was in the movie.

So since the cast is what sold me on this, let's talk about that since there's not much else to talk about. Domnhall Gleeson, who I love, stars as the post-war-traumatised A.A. Milne, while Margot Robbie stars as his commanding wife.

I really loved Domnhall Gleeson acting as Milne, and Margot Robbie did a great job at making the audience absolutely repulse her. I'm not too sure exactly what these people were like in real life, but their relationship with their son Christopher Robin was very strained, and you can definitely see and feel that in this movie.

Gleeson plays the distant father who kinda-sorta wants to connect with his son. He spends a lot of his time writing (or trying to), and so he ignores his son a lot, but the times that he does spend with his son, you can tell that he was trying his darndest to occupy and engage with him. On the other hand though, Margot Robbie's character thinks that literally just giving birth gives her the right to be a mother, and she doesn't actually put any effort into her relationship with her son. In between this and I, Tonya (2017), Margot Robbie is really making a name for herself with her diverse acting roles.

Speaking of, young Christopher Robin is played by Will Tilston, and Alex Lawther plays him grown up. It's been a great few years for child actors, since Will Tilston did a really good job! He was really cute, with his chubby face and huge dimples, and it didn't help that Mrs. Milne thought it best to dress up her little boy in girls' smocks...

Alex Lawther was also a pleasant surprise to see, as he was in the Shut Up and Dance episode of Black Mirror (2016) which he did a fantastic job in. His role in this is very small, and I hope to see him in bigger and better things.

Then the very Scottish Kelly Macdonald plays Christopher Robin's nanny, which makes her the third Black Mirror cast member here, so it was like a little fun reunion! I really loved her character, I felt so sorry for her because you could tell how much she loved Christopher Robin and how much she cared and looked out for him, especially when she had to witness his parents fighting all the time, and his eventual success after the Winnie the Pooh novels were published. She was Christopher Robin's true mother, since she always played and raised him, and since his real mother (Margot Robbie's character) was never emotionally around for him. Macdonald did a fantastic job here.

So the acting was really good, and I think that was the main thing that kept me engaged. The story was interesting and I don't remember ever getting bored, but I do recognise that it could be slow for some people and therefore it's not really a movie for everyone. It's also not a super memorable movie, but it's engaging in the moment. I'm quite interested in movies based on real people and real events, because I think that even if it was really dramatised and overly-Hollywoodised, it still happened to actual people, and so it's interesting to see that. I think it's also really interesting to see how the story of Winnie the Pooh was developed, just from A.A. Milne seeing how his son played with his toys. And to see how the stories became successful and sort of destroyed Christopher Robin's childhood was so fascinating because I never realised that at all. I don't know if I can see the cartoons the same way anymore.

Wouldn't you go to prison to stop this war?

The Post (2017)

7.5/10 on IMDb
88% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright

Watch it if you: Are interested in the event (The Washington Post's publication of government secret reports);
Are a fan of Meryl Streep and/or Tom Hanks
Katharine Graham, the first female American newspaper publisher, faces a difficult decision when it comes to light that four US Presidents were covering up government secrets relating to the Vietnam War. With her company's reputation, her family's legacy, and even her freedom, at stake, she must be the one to ultimately decide how to expose the truth.

The film ends up getting better, but the first half of the film felt like a bit of a drag. It was a bit slow, and I found it a bit confusing when they just rattled off names. It was hard to figure out which name was which character and which character played what role in the big conspiracy. As a result, you had this idea that something bad was happening with some papers, but they don't focus on it too much. It would have been nice for them to not rush through the important facts, which they kind of did in order to focus on the superb acting ability of the cast. So these important tidbits of information felt like they went by too quickly and it was hard to follow.

Sometimes you also feel like the film is trying a bit too hard to get some Oscar awards, with the camera work and such happening in some scenes. But at the same time it doesn't feel as epic as it should be, so I don't think the fancy camerawork, long takes, and difficult dialogue felt worth it. It didn't feel like they pulled it off well.

In saying that, there are some great scenes with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. Any film directed by Steven Spielberg that can sell itself just by using two words, "STREEP. HANKS." isn't going to be terrible after all. There is one scene where Streep and Hanks are just having coffee or something, and it's a really long take chock-full of dialogue, and it's great to see them just talking and acting so naturally well with each other.

And the film does get a lot better, but then it kind of goes downhill again right at the very end where they end up publishing the news article. It's all a bit... anticlimactic. And they even end the film with a snippet of the Watergate scandal, which felt really out of place. It made me feel like they were suddenly a Marvel movie teasing a sequel that was going to be much better than the one we just finished watching, particularly because the Watergate scandal was an even bigger deal at the time.

All in all, this film did not hit its potential. It didn't feel at all very out there or dramatic and different. It just felt like a pretty typical Hollywood retelling of a historical event that was famous enough to get seats in the cinema. Even though it's got Spielberg, Streep and Hanks, three of the greatest names in Hollywood, it's only alright.

A few side notes:

• At one stage there was Jared from Silicon Valley, Meth Damon from USS Callister, and then Tom Hanks in between the two of them! I was so in awe during that scene I was hardly paying attention to what they were talking about.

The Outrageous Misfortune of One of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty: Painfully Rich, Indeed.

All the Money in the World (2017)

7.1/10 on IMDb
77% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: Signed, sealed, and recommended by Chloe;
It's alright

Watch it if you: Are interested in films based on true events;
Want a tense drama with some great acting, particularly by Christopher Plummer

Inspired by true events, All the Money in the World tells the story of when the richest man in the world refuses to pay the 17 million dollar ransom for his kidnapped grandson.

I think this film wasn't really marketed or hyped a lot, and thus there wasn't much talk about it, particularly in the light of other Oscar-season movies such as The Post (2017) coming out around the same time. Surprisingly, this movie was actually really well done, and it just goes to show that Ridley Scott is far from being done with his directing days.

While I don't think this is a particularly amazing film in terms of rewatchability, it is actually a pretty intense film and really well made.

It's a bit long, with a run time of 2 hours and 15 minutes, but the movie felt pretty tight, and you don't really think of how long it is since it's 2 hours and 15 minutes of tensions. The fact that it is also based on true events makes the story feel so incredulous when watching it.

In fact I think if I didn't know it was a true story, I honestly would have thought, "This movie is so stupid. It's unrealistic, unbelievable, and just stupid."

And while they do dramatise some things that didn't happen, some things that happened in real life were actually worse than in the movie! You walk out of the theatre absolutely hating John Paul Getty Senior. Even though he's in the film for a short amount of time, his sinister presence overshadows the entire film.

Christopher Plummer did such a great job at playing this complete dickhead of a character. His blasé attitude and frugal nature to the kidnapping, ransom demands, and torture of his own grandchild make you really, really, despise him.

And to top it all off, Christopher Plummer wasn't even in this movie originally! It was meant to be Kevin Spacey in old age make up and prosthetics, but over the sexual assault allegations made over Spacey, they had to quickly reshoot his scenes with Christopher Plummer in something like 9 days. And you can't even really tell, because the movie was edited so well and even almost flawlessly.

Christopher Plummer was Ridley Scott's original desired actor, but I heard somewhere that the studio wanted someone more famous to help sell the movie. Which in hindsight is ridiculous not just because of the sexual assault allegations, but because 1) Kevin Spacey looks ridiculous (same link as before but honestly, he looks so weird!), and 2) Christopher Plummer is one of the best parts of this movie.

I mean, this guy walks in, rushes to learn his lines and do a quick 9 day job, does an amazing job while he's at it, and he gets nominated for a Golden Globe, and is possibly getting nominated for an Oscar. And, he's 88 years old! He's a legend, basically, is what I'm saying.

The other actors did really well too, with Michelle Williams being a really strong and determined mother who's stressed out to the max and is trying her darndest to convince J. Paul Getty Sr. to pay the ransom. The same goes with Mark Wahlberg, he's been doing a really good job with his most recent films lately, and I'm happy he's been choosing to do these good dramatic roles (I mean, for a guy who's doing stuff like Daddy's Home and Transformers movies...)

Charlie Plummer was also convincing as the kidnapped grandson, and I really loved his scenes with Romain Duris who plays Cinquanta. Duris was fantastic and he stole the show every time he was on scene.

So this film was surprisingly very intense and well made. It was able to build that tension relating to the kidnapping and J. Paul Getty Sr. not wanting to oay a single cent of the ransom. It can be quite suspenseful, and some scenes are really graphic and not for the faint-hearted. Christopher Plummer does an amazing job, as do the other actors, and Ridley Scott does a fine job as a director for seamlessly recasting Kevin Spacey so last minute. It's probably not something you will re-watch, but it provides a really interesting insight into this dysfunctional family.

A few side comments:

• Sometimes real life is worse than in the movies. According to Wikipedia:

When the kidnappers finally reduced their demands to $3 million, Getty senior agreed to pay no more than $2.2 million—the maximum that would be tax-deductible. He lent his son the remaining $800,000 at 4% interest. Paul III was found alive in a filling station of Lauria, in the province of Potenza, shortly after the ransom was paid. After his release Paul III called his grandfather to thank him for paying the ransom but, it is claimed, Getty refused to come to the phone. Nine people associated with 'Ndrangheta were later arrested for the kidnapping, but only two were convicted. Paul III was permanently affected by the trauma and became a drug addict. After a stroke brought on by a cocktail of drugs and alcohol in 1981, Paul III was rendered speechless, nearly blind and partially paralyzed for the rest of his life. He died 30 years later on February 5, 2011 at the age of 54.

This is brave, this is bruised, this is who I'm meant to be... This is me.

The Greatest Showman (2017)

8.0/10 on IMDb
55% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: Signed, sealed, and recommended by Chloe;
It's alright

Watch it if you: Enjoy watching musicals;
Care more for great songs and dance performances rather than writing and plot
Inspired by P.T. Barnum's creation of the circus, The Greatest Showman explores what it may have been like to start up a circus in 18th century America.

I was really keen to watch this since I've been seeing the trailer for this over and over and over again (not deliberately, just every time I see a movie in the theatre), constantly getting 'This is Me' stuck in my head when I hadn't even heard the full song! And while it's not the best film or best musical ever, it still didn't disappoint because in the end it was a fun musical with great performances and superbly catchy songs.

This film doesn't have a very high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but that's mainly because of the criticism of having this film portray P. T. Barnum as some revolutionary visionary who protected his circus 'freaks' and wanted them to have better lives. No, in actuality P. T. Barnum was kind of a jackass who faked a lot of his 'exhibits', exploited his 'freaks', and did everything (even philanthropy) purely because of the profits. While they sort of touch on Hugh Jackman's character as being a bit of a con artist and gathering his 'human attractions' just for a buck, they still portray him as a nice guy who genuinely cares for them.

While I agree with needing to accurately portray people in movies, I don't recall this movie actually saying it was based on a true story or true events. I know in the ads it said it was inspired by true events, which is fair enough since it was inspired by the creation of the circus. But I guess having that same name sort of puts a sour taste on the movie because you have this feeling that something is just off. Imagine if there was a musical out there celebrating Hitler as a nice person. It's not the same, but if you think about it, it's understandable why a good movie can get low ratings because the character is nothing like their real life persona.

So I think if they just made this movie about someone who creates a circus, someone other than P. T. Barnum, then it would have been more positively reviewed. I don't even mean change how the character was written, I mean literally just change the character's name and keep everything else the same. I think that way it would have been received better.

Apart from that, there's not much else to fault on this movie. I did find it was a bit sloppy in terms of writing and editing, like the plot and the transitions between scenes were a bit all over the place, but in the end I went in not wanting a great movie with great writing, I just wanted a great musical with catchy songs and great feel-good music performances, and I got that.

All the songs were great, and all the dancing was great too.

Each song has a very unique feel to it, either because of the singers, the dancing, or even the set location. Seriously I was so amazed that not every single song was just in the circus setting. Each set choreography was great because they adapted the song and dance to match where they were. For example, I loved the song 'The Other Side' which Zac Efron and Hugh Jackman sing together, and in the background there's a cool bartender doing crazy moves, and the choreography includes the usage (and drinking) of shot glasses.

I also loved when Michelle Williams and Hugh Jackman were dancing on their roof to 'A Million Dreams' in between the white sheets hung up, it looked really magical. And Zendaya and Zac Efron singing 'Rewrite the Stars' was another great visual performance, since they were dancing on the trapeze and it looked amazing.

That is possibly my favourite song of the whole soundtrack, but I also really like 'This is Me' and 'Never Enough' (which is not actually Rebecca Ferguson singing, but someone called Loren Allred who was on The Voice U.S. in one of the seasons). But honestly, all of the songs are really good.

So in the end, this wasn't the perfect film. The writing lacked a bit and the movie felt a bit all over the place with so many things happening, but I understand they didn't want to cut much out of the movie because these plot elements made way for some really great song and dance performances. Hugh Jackman is such a legend, being a quadruple threat with acting, singing, dancing, and being a great action hero. The songs really make this film, and I know what I'll be singing for the next month or so.

Our two children are dying in the other room, but yes, I can make you mashed potatoes tomorrow.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)

7.4/10 on IMDb
79% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright;
Proceed at your own risk

Watch it if you: Want to watch a weird, artsy, and philosophical movie;
Are a fan of psychological thrillers and suspension of belief

Cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Steven Murphy becomes a father figure to a young teenage boy, Martin, hoping to take him under his wing. However, Martin's presence brings out a deep tension in the Murphy household, which climaxes in an intense family tragedy.

I knew absolutely nothing about this film going in, except that it had very divisive reactions and it starred Colin Farrell and Nicole Kidman. The start of this film was pretty weird, but in a very interesting way, and by the time I walked out of the theatre, my heart was racing. It's an intriguing film, but definitely not for everyone.

It's really hard to review this film without going into spoilers, so my spoiler-free section is going to be pretty short.

My overall impression of this movie is that it has a really weird tone to it, and that's not something that everyone would like. I quite enjoyed the tone because it was mesmerising and really captivated me, but to others I think it could be seen as really strange, and boring.

This can be because of all the characters speaking in a really monotone and flat way, which may make it seem like the actors (even Nicole Kidman) aren't really trying, but to me it just added to the bizareness of this world, a world that seems like our real world but has enough peculiarity in it to make it very different from our own world. In this world, people talk very robotically and very formally, and so relationships between friends, colleagues, and even family, do not seem natural or loving in the way they should be.

There's also a lot of silence in this movie, and a lot of... space (for lack of a better word). There's awkward silences between characters, there's long nothingness shots of characters not really doing anything, and there's lots of scenes where there isn't much happening, but there's an eerie sort of emptiness to the film that somehow unsettles you. The soundtrack is also extremely creepy and really made me shiver at times, it did a great job at setting this tone that made you keep fearfully anticipating what was going to go wrong. This, coupled with those slow, nothingness panning shots, really brings out the underlying sinister tone of the film.

Another thing is that it's actually really easy to laugh in this film. Like it was really bizarre, but at the same time there was humour within the bizareness. Particularly at the beginning of the film, where you're not quite used to the unnatural way the characters talk to each other.

I haven't seen any of the director's (Yorgos Lanthimos) films, although I've heard that The Lobster (2015) is amazing. After having seen this film, I am really really keen to see The Lobster because I do think he has a really unique way of directing that can't be ignored.

Spoiler time.

Click to show/hide spoilers:

So apparently this film is a modern retelling of the Greek tragedy Iphigenia in Aulis, written by Euripides. In this tragic play, Agamemnon has to make a decision to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, to please the goddess Artemis.

Likewise, here Dr. Murphy needs to decide on which of his family members he needs to sacrifice in order to please the very supernaturally powerful Martin. His son comes close to dying when he decides that fate would be the ultimate decider. And fate chooses to kill his son anyway.

Firstly, I think the biggest thing everyone was thinking was just, "Why can't he just shoot himself?!" It would have been a cleaner and easier resolution if he just shot himself. However, we don't know if this would actually resolve anything. His two children might die anyway, followed by his wife.

But besides that, I think the point of this movie was to try and show human selfishness. Here, Dr. Murphy is seen to be extremely selfish, not wanting to reveal his previous fatal mistake of drinking while on the job, wanting to hold Martin hostage until he reversed his curse upon the family, and also choosing to murder one of his own family over himself.

However, he's not the only one that's selfish here. Martin is selfish for putting this curse on the doctor because he wants to seek out his own vengeance, and he also wants his mother to get with Dr. Murphy despite his very evident unwillingness to (and I love how this scene just shows that Alicia Silverstone is still being as clueless as ever when it comes to reading men; I also loved the actor for Martin, the same boy from Dunkirk).

Then we see the rest of the Murphy family. Anna, Dr. Murphy's wife played by Nicole Kidman, is also extremely selfish, saying that the only logical thing is to kill one of the children because they could always have another child together. Then she lays down in bed naked trying to seduce him to remind him what he will miss if he kills her.

The children, too, try to bargain for their lives, with the son cutting his hair like his father wanted him to, and saying how he wants to be a cardiovascular surgeon to rub his father's ego. His daughter tried to tell him how much she loves the family, and tells him to kill her off in an attempt at reverse psychology. Heck, the father even goes to their school to see which of his children are better and, terribly, which one deserves to live more.

And yet none of this matters because he ties them up and shoots them at random. How many rounds was he willing to do before he finally shot someone? We will never know, because on the third shot, he kills his own son. It's a sad scene, but it's also kind of a relief, for both Dr. Murphy and the audience. We as the audience are put in this terrible fly-on-the-wall position with an intense roller coaster ride of emotions, and when it's over, it's a big sigh of relief.

But I would have liked to have seen him spinning around a third time, and then hear the sound of a gunshot just as the screen goes black, and the credits start to roll. I would have liked that idea of not knowing who was actually murdered, and whether a murder actually did appease Martin. But as the movie did, it continued, and we saw the long stare off between the family and Martin in the diner.

I think I left a bit unsatisfied not at the way the movie was directed, but more at the premise of it. We've seen movies before where our protagonists had to make tough choices related to their families. One example that I can think of (and probably not the best one) is The Box (2009), where a married couple is given the choice to receive a million dollars if they press a button that kills someone they don't know. The couple make a decision, and have to live with the consequences of their decision.

Moral dilemmas are not new to cinema. In fact they are pretty much just 2 hour long elaborations on the classic "Would You Rather" schoolyard games that we played. But it's interesting to have a moral dilemma because there are pros and cons to each option. Here, there's not really any option. We are not made to believe that anything can be done about the situation. It's a shitty situation, but it's one that the protagonist has to ride. There is no stopping Martin and his curse of the Murphys. The only option you're left with is who to kill.

And that can be a bit boring in retrospect. It definitely wasn't boring watching the movie, but after leaving and thinking about the movie, I was like, "Oh. That wasn't actually anything too special." And to me, it wasn't special because there wasn't much hope left in the audience for how things would end. Also, the ending itself is a bit mediocre, because even though they have to live with Dr. Murphy killing his own son, you almost feel like none of the characters have really developed or changed after the events of the movie.

Why? Because we've already seen how selfish they are. And how accepting they are of their situation. Sure, they try to fight back a little, but in the end they're all pretty accepting of the fact that someone has to die. So accepting, in fact, that they try to bargain for their lives instead of sacrificing their own. And so, because of that, having one of them die doesn't really seem like enough of a punishment for them. They seem to have accepted this as their fate, and if anything it seems like they're all a little bit relieved at the end of that cafe scene. Almost like how relieved Agamemnon was, because the sacrifice of his daughter meant he could lead his troops to Troy to fight in the Trojan War. The Murphy family is upset, of course, but they're relieved that they can keep on living.

In saying all that, I did enjoy this movie. It's not a film I would recommend to many people, though, because it is very weird and I don't think I know many who would actually take well to it. There are a lot of questions leaving this film, particularly because there seemed to be a lot of small storylines happening that didn't lead anywhere. But this all added to the confusion and creepiness of the film. It was a very tense movie, and that is props to the directing, acting, camerawork, and music of the film.

The greatest teacher, failure is.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

8.0/10 on IMDb
93% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright;
Watch it in cinemas

Watch it if you: Have seen the original Star Wars movies;
Don't have your expectations tooooo high in terms of plot;
Want to see something that's quite different to a typical Star Wars movie;
Want to see some really cool fight scenes and action sequences;
Want a really amazing-looking movie with great cinematography;
Are okay with perhaps needing a second viewing to fully appreciate the movie
The eighth installment in the main Star Wars series starts right after the literal cliffhanger that was the end of The Force Awakens (2015). Rey learns more about herself and the Force while Luke, who now resides on an Adidas-shoe-shaped-island, must come to terms with his past. On the other side of the galaxy, Finn and Poe, together with the rest of the Resistance, must find a way to escape the encroaching First Order and establish a new rebel base.

Against my better judgement, I really hyped myself up for this movie, and while it was really entertaining, it was a bit disappointing. I think I'm still processing it though, and upon a second viewing I might enjoy it more. It's hard to pinpoint what exactly was so underwhelming about this movie, particularly since I didn't go in really expecting anything in terms of plot or even character arc, but it still turned out to be not what I expected. It's still a fun and enjoyable watch, but I do think that if you have only seen The Force Awakens and you haven't seen the other Star Wars films, then you might get a bit lost and confused with some of the lore.

I'll start off with my major gripe: this movie is unnecessarily long.

Its runtime is 2 hours and 30 minutes and honestly, it could easily have been 30 minutes shorter.

Why? Because Finn and Rose's plotline was not needed. In fact this was the worst part of the whole movie.

Right when their subplot starts, I thought, "Oh geez, is this a movie, or a video game?" It seemed like something so out of the blue, I couldn't help but think of those cheesy sidequest missions that always pop up whenever I watch my brother play a video game. It didn't feel like it belonged in a Star Wars movie, and this, more so than anything else in the movie, made it very clear that Star Wars is now under Disney.

In fact it felt like the writers of this film wrote a complete story, and then realised, "Oh crap! We forgot about Finn!" and then hastily shoved him back in to the story. It's not like his storyline doesn't affect the ending of the story, but all of Finn's scenes felt very shoehorned in.

So Finn's storyline was very underwhelming, but it wasn't the only thing I was underwhelmed with. I don't even want to mention what I was underwhelmed with until my spoilers section though, because even a generic line is going to give away so much.

I think what strikes me the most is it doesn't feel like you're watching a Star Wars movie. In fact, it's written and directed very differently to any other Star Wars movie we've seen, and perhaps that is why I was disappointed in the film. I understand why director Rian Johnston made it like this, though, and I do commend him on taking this risk, but as I said before I think a second viewing is needed for me to really understand how I feel about this movie.

But yeh, I can see why they felt that it was necessary to make it different. I mean, after all this is the 8th movie in this series, and The Force Awakens was pretty much a rehash of A New Hope (1977). So they really needed to differentiate The Last Jedi from Empire Strikes Back (1980). But I just think the way they did it was not the best. Like adding all these unnecessary scenes to give a different tone to the film when they could have just written a better plot.

I will say, though, that the movie does a really great job at subverting your expectations. As I said, I didn't even really have many expectations on what characters would do and how the plot would go, and yet it still seemed to subvert my expectations. More about this in the spoilers though.

Another great thing about the movie is the action scenes. I know I'm kind of hating on this movie but I actually really enjoyed both the acting and the action sequences. The movie does seem to have a lot more evident CGI in this, but after you get used to it, you can't help but agree the action is very good here. The sequences looked so amazing, we got to see some great choreography and cinematography during these scenes, and we got to see some cool costume designs and cool new weapons. There is also one scene towards the end that is such a good wallpaper, it honestly takes your breath away when you see it!

The new planet Crait was also really cool, I loved seeing all the red dust/salt getting kicked up because the stark contrast between the red and the white was awesome.

As to the characters, I felt a bit off about some things that they did. I'll speak about this more in the spoilers section, but I really did not agree with what they did with Leia. Although there is a moment where Luke says to Leia, "No one is really gone", and my goodness that broke my heart thinking about Carrie Fisher's passing.

But the acting in here is great. Daisy Ridley is fantastic as usual, Adam Driver is great as Kylo Ren and I felt like I understood his turmoil and conflict much better here than I did in The Force Awakens. Mark Hamill also does some of his best work in this movie. Domnhall Gleeson is also so amazing as usual, and even if Hux is really annoying, I still love that Domnhall!

One last thing I will say about this before spoiler territory is that I think the movie explores a lot more lore than we're used to in the Star Wars, and I have mixed reactions to this. I think it was interesting but there was a lot of unexplained things that I think if someone did not see the original trilogy, or even maybe the prequels, they might get a bit lost in. I haven't spoken to anyone who has only seen The Force Awakens about this movie, though, so I'm not sure but I have a feeling it would be hard to understand without knowing the other films. I'm not saying I'm the biggest fan of Star Wars (I don't know a lot about the lore and stuff), but even I was a bit confused at how this movie portrays what can or cannot be done with the Force.

Click to show/hide spoilers:

So when I said I felt underwhelmed, I was underwhelmed by a few characters. Snoke felt underwhelming, Captain Phasma's return was really really underwhelming, the end "battle" was not even a real battle, and Poe and Leia's roles in here were also very underwhelming.

With Leia, I felt like they could have given her a really nice send off when she appeared to die in space. It was so nice, it was honourable and treated her with respect while also giving us the time to mourn her. But then her fingers tingled, her eyes twitched, and she Marry Poppins'd through space.

Um, what?

And then they kept her alive at the end of the film, which makes me really curious about what they will do for the next movie. I was reading the Reddit discussion thread and a good point someone made was it would have been great if Leia was the one who sacrificed herself to do the kamikaze warping. That would have been an excellent send off because while it was nice to have Holdo do it, it felt like she kind of deserved it because she didn't tell Poe her plans and that resulted in a lot of unnecessary subplots. I really hate the movie trope where the whole movie could have been avoided if characters just TALKED to each other! Why didn't you just tell him your plan, Holdo! If you just told him, then Finn and Rose wouldn't have to go through that stupid side quest, Benecio del Toro wouldn't betray them and alert them to the small Rebel ships, and they wouldn't have lost so many people!!! Also that hyperdrive scene was AWESOME and it would have been even more awesome if it was a lovable character doing it like Leia, not this Holdo chick we only met 10 minutes ago. And if Holdo survived into the next movie, she could have been developed as a character and could have been the Rebels' new leader.

Another comment in the Reddit thread was that they could have gotten rid of the tracking-through-lightspeed MacGuffin and just made it that someone was a mole on the ship. Then that would explain why they couldn't warp again and why she couldn't tell Poe her plans.

BUT, I think the film really subverted everyone's expectations. Someone was asking me if the plot twists were any good, and I didn't know how to answer that. Mainly because on one hand, the plot twists were underwhelming (sorry, but that word is just going to be the theme of today's blog). All the fan theories about Snoke? Out the window. Even his appearances and death was pretty anticlimactic. This superbly disfigured and powerful being does pretty much nothing and then dies quickly (although it was really cool how he could use the force through the hologram transmission thing with Hux). And then all the theories about Rey? Out the window. Her parents are nobodies. And they're dead.

But in having a plot twist that is super underwhelming, they are actually pretty good plot twists. Like they knew all the hype and expectations that audiences had, and they managed to give us a plot twist by showing us there wasn't really any plot twist at all! That's kind of smart actually. Especially since they were conditioning us to expect these plot twists, like paralleling Rey and Ben's connection with Leia and Luke's.

But now I am concerned over how they will do the next movie. Who will be the super villain? Kylo Ren is evil, but he's far from being the super powerful being that was Snoke. And what will Leia be doing? Of course they can just use CGI, I mean they did alright with it in Rogue One, but I just think out of respect to Carrie Fisher they shouldn't do anything else with her character...

They also had this consistent theme of learning through failure, and while I understand why they wanted to show this message, it just made the film seem very anticlimactic when character after character, subplot after subplot, kept failing. Rey failed at turning Ben over to the light side, Kylo Ren failed at turning Rey over to the dark side, Luke failed at getting over his past failures, Finn and Rose failed massively in their side quest, and Poe failed in his attempts at a mutiny too.

Everyone fails in this movie. At the end of it they're much much worse than they were at the end of The Force Awakens. There's literally, what, like ten people in the Resistance left??

It's a movie about failure, and getting over the past, and how we keep persisting to grow and to welcome the future despite our previous failings, but it's still just weird and leaves you a bit disappointed that our heroes dont get much of a break.

But in this it was good because it made itself different from other Star Wars films. So many times we see heroes being so close to failure because a billion different people have to get everything just right at just the right time and somehow by an act of God they all line up and save the day. Here, Finn and Rose needed to disable the tracker and get back to the ship within 6 minutes. While this is happening, Poe needed to cause a successful mutiny, get Finn and Rose on board, and then warp to lightspeed within those specific 6 minutes that the tracker is disabled. In real life, that sort of sheer luck does not happen (I'm sure C-3PO can give you the odds on that happening), but in many films, everything works at the very last second, the heroes escape, and everyone's all fine and dandy. I'm glad they didn't do that, but it just made it feel like every single person's plot was completely unnecessary.

A few side notes:

• The Kylo and Rey fight scene was so cool, I loved that weapon that one of the Elite Praetorian Guards had that locks on to the lightsaber and the guy could reel in Rey towards him.
  
• The salt planet with the red dust was soooo amazing, even if there wasn't even a fight. I loved the scene with the ships kicking up the lines of red dust.
  
• That scene with Kylo Ren and Luke was amazing, that was so wallpaper-worthy.
  
• I was so weirded out about Luke defending all those blaster shots and then just shrugging it off easily, and then you realise that he wasn't being a badass, he just literally was not there at all and was just a massive troll.
  
• So is that how the Force works now? You can die in space, then use the Force to fly back to your ship? You can also use the Force to physically (not holographically) project yourself halfway across the galaxy?
  
• Also loved how that one guy needed to taste it and tell us it was salt, and not snow. But to be fair if they didn't clarify it I would have been like, "Why does the snow planet look so weird?" But maybe they could have just described it when they were talking about the planet.
  
• That beautiful cinematography with Luke looking at the binary sunset as he dies. So heartbreaking and touching.
  

So I still need time to digest this movie, but all in all I think it's very enjoyable. I was initially quite disappointed but that was mainly at the decisions they made in terms of characters and plot. The action sequences were very enjoyable, and if you watch this just wanting a cool action sci-fi/fantasy movie, it's great entertainment. But I think this film is very divisive and needs a second viewing to fully appreciate it. I think I would find it to be much better upon rewatching, so that the initial shock of the plot isn't there anymore and I can really look at what the director is trying to tell us. But as I said there is a lot of lore in here that I don't know would make sense for someone who has not watched the other Star Wars movies.

"What are your superpowers again?" "I'm rich."

Justice League (2017)

7.2/10 on IMDb
41% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright;
Low-energy entertainment

Watch it if you: Are a fan of DC;
Want some mindless action with a few laughs;
Aren't expecting a really great, cohesive, character-focused superhero movie

Following the events of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Bruce Wayne (Batman) and Diana Prince (Wonder Woman) must recruit others to form a superhero team to stand against an apocalyptic new threat.

Reviews for this movie have been very meh, so I wasn't rushing out to see this film, but I found it to be entertaining. I had low expectations, given DC's track record lately (except Wonder Woman (2017)), and this movie is skippable, but it was definitely not trash, it was still enjoyable to watch.

First off the bat though, I have to say my very first impression of this film is: CGI. There is SO MUCH CGI in this it becomes distracting. From fight scenes, to backdrops, to costumes, even to characters' faces! It was aesthetically very weird to watch.

Secondly, I didn't realise this but Zack Snyder had to step down from this movie early this year because his daughter suicided, and they hired Joss Whedon to finish it off (although Snyder is listed as the only director for the film). If I heard about this before watching the movie, I would have been concerned that the movie would be really disjointed. After all, I'm not really a fan of Zack Snyder's style, but I am a fan of Joss Whedon's. In the end I didn't even realise there were two directors for this film. I actually thought it was pretty consistent, and if anything funnier and more light hearted than I expected it to be, which is probably props to Joss Whedon.

However, in saying that the film was consistent, the film was still a little bit of a let down. Apparently Warner Bros wanted the film to be no longer than 2 hours, so a lot of Snyder's material was cut and re-edited, and in that sense the movie did feel a bit rushed.

The thing is, when we first saw The Avengers back in 2012, Marvel had already given us movies on a lot of the team, so we didn't need that much character development in the actual Avengers movie. They could instead focus on the arc of the team as a whole, from their conflicts and differing personalities to how they would end up working as a team.

But here, we've only gotten a bit of Batman from Batman v Superman, and Wonder Woman from earlier this year. We got snippet cameos or teasers of the rest of the characters, Aquaman, The Flash, and Cyborg, but for people like me who aren't fans of the original comics or the TV shows, we ultimately don't know these characters at all. So it was really hard to understand and feel for these characters and to even see why they were necessary in this film, since they are pretty lame.

In fact, it felt like Wonder Woman was the only one who really did anything, and even still, she doesn't really do much here. Batman, who is usually any movie's big seller, the one that everyone loves, does even less and is pretty useless in this. I mean, they even throw around a lot of jokes about how his only super is being rich, but you watch this movie and the truth of that statement is very obvious.

I quite liked The Flash. I mean, they made his character really goofy and I don't know enough about the original character to know if they stuck to his original personality, but I'm not sure if they needed him to be so awkward. Although Ezra Miller is great and was actually really funny. There is one great scene where his shocked face, and his eyeballs alone, made me laugh so hard. That scene was absolutely priceless and even in the rest of the film he was generally the comic relief.

Then there was Cyborg who was a bit confusing for me. They explain his character a little bit but I think they could have delved more into his armour and his powers and things like that. We were meant to feel sorry for him but in the end I didn't care about him because there was like no backstory and I didn't really understand what he was going through. It also seemed like he could have been really really powerful, but in the end he just was like... hacking things? And that's it? He was just a hacker? I'm pretty sure he would have done more in the comics, right...?

And goodness me, I thought I was finished with the characters of Justice League but I looked at the poster again and completely forgot: Aquaman is a part of this movie too! Firstly, it is so weird seeing Khal Drogo speak English. It was almost unsettling. It was also pretty funny because Khal Drogo and the Dothraki are terrified of the sea, and the only sea they would go near is the Dothraki Sea, which is actually just a huge region of grassy plains.

Anyway, back to Aquaman: he doesn't do anything! At one point they have to force in a water scene just to make him useful, and even then he does something for like 2 seconds and that's it. Then for the rest of the film he's just like... really strong? I guess?

So basically I was a bit disappointed in the characters. When they band together and fight it doesn't seem like they're all necessary to the story. The fight scenes also seem very chaotic. I don't know why, but the DCEU just can't seem to get it right, from Man of Steel (2013) to Batman v Superman, and even some parts of Wonder Woman's action scenes, they just seem really really weird. They just don't look as aesthetically pleasing as I think the studio thinks they do.

There is one section though that they're talking about the history of the villain, and that was pretty cool. There was even a Green Lantern cameo.

Anyway, that's pretty much all my comments on the films. There's a lot of other things to discuss, but these are the things that stayed in my mind after watching it.

I do have a mini spoiler section though, so just quickly, Click to show/hide spoilers:

So, Superman came back to life. Was that a spoiler? I don't actually remember the trailer so I'm not sure, but I thought that at the end of Batman v Superman, there was a shot of Superman's grave and the soil lifted up or something to hint that he would return (although this wasn't even used in the movie), so maybe it was obvious. Regardless, it's a spoiler for people who watch this without knowing much beforehand.

Anyway, I actually did think he looked really weird, and I didn't actually know what it was (I thought it was just overuse of the CGI), but it turns out apparently Henry Cavill needed to have a moustache for another role when he was filming his reshoots, and so they had to CGI out his moustache which made him look funny. Oh and yeah, I guess since they had reports on this, his return was not a spoiler.

Anyway, Superman's return was really meh. It wasn't as epic as I think they wanted it to be, but him fighting the rest of the team was probably one of the best parts of the movie and even better than them fighting the main villain I think, mainly because once Superman enters, the fight gets really easy.

My favourite scene was when the Flash was trying to get to Superman at lightning speed and Superman slowly turns his eyes and his head and Ezra Miller has the most bewildered look on his face. That's where Ezra Miller's almost-too-comical awkwardness really pays off. Still, no one can beat the Quicksilver scene from Days of Future Past...

Ultimately, this was an enjoyable movie. Is it a must see? Definitely not, but if you watch it, it won't be terrible. It's actually quite forgettable, I saw it a few days ago and I'm already starting to forget a lot of details. But if you're a fan of the comics I guess you'd enjoy it, and if you just want some mindless action and a movie that makes you laugh a bit, then it's a decent watch.

There is something about a tangle of strangers pressed together for days with nothing in common but the need to go from one place to another and never see each other again.

Murder on the Orient Express (2017)

6.8/10 on IMDb
58% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright

Watch it if you: Are a fan of the murder mystery genre;
Are a fan of Hercule Poirot novels
Hercule Poirot, probably the world's greatest detective, boards the Orient Express when a murder happens overnight. Stuck aboard a train trapped by an avalanche, Poirot must solve his most difficult case yet in this classic whodunnit where everyone is a suspect.

So this is like the thousandth remake of one of the greatest murder mysteries of all time, but despite that I was super excited for it, mainly because of the star-studded cast. Unfortunately it did not live up to my high expectations, but it was still entertaining since I was already a fan of the novel and of Agatha Christie. I wouldn't recommend seeing it in cinemas, though, and I'm not even sure I would recommend it to someone who wasn't a huge fan of the murder mystery genre.

Firstly, let's talk the main character Hercule Poirot: arrogant but genius detective. He is what makes or breaks any Poirot adaptation, and while I think Kenneth Branagh did a good job as Poirot, I think I just love David Suchet too much as Poirot that Branagh's performance seemed a bit off to me. I think he kind of went over the top at the start of the film on Poirot's quirkiness that it didn't seem genuine. Also, because I think they didn't make him look fat, they had to overcompensate with a ridiculous moustache, and I just could not take him seriously with that moustache. But his moustache protector, though, was awesome and we needed to see more of that.

Secondly, I think the story itself was lacking and felt all over the place. It felt like they spent a lot of time on certain dramatic elements of the movie, but these were essentially unnecessary to the plot, and for the parts that were very important to the plot, it felt rushed. When they went over important details, they went over them way too quickly, it was very hard to follow along.

Part of this is the huge cast. There are so many characters, and they are all played by famous people, but these people are a bit wasted on their characters with very little screen time. It would have been way easier if they just named them, like, "Oh that was why Penelope Cruz was doing such and such," since they hardly focused on the characters themselves, so naming characters like "MacQueen" made you have to think who that was, and by the time you thought about who it was, they were off naming some other character's motives and it was just hard to follow.

So it did feel really rushed and I'm not sure how people who haven't read the novel could actually follow along. I mean, it gets clearer later as they go and you sort of fill in the gaps yourself but they could have spent way more time on each character and getting us to know the characters really well so that the big reveal didn't feel so rushed and out of nowhere.

Of course, having done so many remakes it would have been a great miracle if this turned out to be the best one, but for some reason I was just so excited for this and really wanted it to be amazing. I feel like they don't do many classic murder mystery movies anymore which is really sad, and perhaps this doesn't help for the future of the whodunnit genre in movies.

So in the end, this movie had a great cast but they didn't realise their full potential with these actors, they were essentially just there to sell the movie. A lot of the all-star cast had very minor roles, and while I know you can't have every actor in an all-star cast shine through, I feel like they wasted a lot of opportunity to develop these characters. Daisy Ridley and Michelle Pfeiffer were pretty great, but I would have liked to see more of the other characters. They could definitely have spent more time developing characters, and perhaps that would have made the film not feel like a drag in the middle, and perhaps the ending would not have felt like it was so rushed. The movie looks very beautiful, and it is an enjoyable movie, but still a bit disappointing.

Nothing like this ever happens here. This is a safe place.

Suburbicon (2017)

4.7/10 on IMDb
27% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright;
Proceed at your own risk

Watch it if you: Are a fan of the cast;
Have nothing better to do;
Are bored at home

In Suburbicon, nothing ever happens. It is a safe, peaceful, and idyllic suburb for you to raise your family. But events start occurring that start to shake the tranquility of Suburbicon.

I had seen the trailer for this sooo many times when I went to watch other movies, and I was pretty excited for it. Seeing that it was written by the Coen brothers, directed by George Clooney, and starred Matt Damon, I was down. And while I don't regret seeing this movie, the film's interesting plot had a lot more potential than what this film did with it.

So as I said, the trailer for this seemed super interesting, and I thought it was going to be a pretty good dark comedy. And the movie starts off like this. The opening scene is pretty funny, however over the course of the movie it starts to get a bit boring.

Unfortunately it ended up not being as funny as the trailers made it out to be, and another thing is that the movie seemed to lack direction

Don't get me wrong, the plot was actually interesting, but there are still quite a few issues with it.

Firstly, there are two plots happening in this movie. There's the main one with Matt Damon's family, and then there's a subplot that serves as a social commentary on racism in the neighbourhood.

The main plot is the interesting one. It's a bit bizarre, but in an interesting way. It's not really what the trailers tell you, but if you've seen the trailers enough times (I think I saw it like 3 or 4 times because it would play whenever I saw a movie in the cinemas), then there are scenes in the trailer that spoil this movie. Because things happen in the film that make you recall scenes in the trailer, and that makes the film lose its element of surprise.

However this might be a reason why I thought this film was a little predictable. I'm not usually clever enough to guess the ending of movies, but from near the start of the film you have a rough idea of where they're going with this. I suppose there's nothing too wrong with that, I mean predictability could make it more intriguing and funny, but this was not executed well and the film became quite boring later on. Some scenes went by slowly and it felt like a drag even though it was a short movie (with a run time of 1 hour and 45 minutes).

The subplot on racism was pretty funny and interesting at the start, and in fact I actually thought that was going to be the main plot, but it ends up going nowhere. It serves as pretty good social commentary, but it's so oddly sprinkled throughout this whacky Matt Damon plot that it's just out of place and feels like they're just forcing a racism lesson down our throats the entire movie. Towards the end of the movie I kept thinking, "If this film manages to tie in this racism thing to the main plot, that would be GENIUS!" But it didn't. It just went nowhere.

I will say, though, that none of the faults are with the acting. Matt Damon and Julianne Moore did excellent jobs here, and you even have a small appearance by Oscar Isaac that's fantastic.

The kid actor in this, Noah Jupe, did a fantastic job as well. He's pretty much the only character that you root for and have compassion for, and he did a really convincing job for his age.

But overall, this film just had a lot more potential. I think if the Coen brothers were the ones that were directing it, it would have been much better. It has an average rating of 4.8/10 on Rotten Tomatoes and that sounds about right. It's nothing special and I wouldn't tell anyone to watch it in theatres, but it's interesting if you're a fan of the cast or that sort of feel of the movie, where they live in an idyllic society that ends up not being so idyllic after all. The cast are great, but the pacing and tone is weird. It's not really a dark comedy satire, but it tries to be, and the two different subplots means the film loses its direction. It could have done with being maybe 15 minutes shorter, and focusing on the comedy a bit more. It's still interesting, though, but probably for something you would watch at home when you're bored and curious. I wouldn't watch it again though.

Male chauvinist pig versus hairy legged feminist, no offence.

Battle of the Sexes (2017)

6.9/10 on IMDb
84% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright

Watch it if you: Are a fan of the actual Battle of the Sexes;
Are okay with the film not 100% concentrating on the actual battle of the sexes;
Are a fan of Billie Jean King
Based on the true story of the 1973 tennis match between female tennis star Billie Jean King and retired self-proclaimed male chauvinist pig Bobby Riggs in what was deemed a 'Battle of the Sexes' match to determine the worth of women's tennis.

I went and saw this movie because I had nothing better to do, but I wasn't too keen on it to begin with. It ended up being interesting because I never knew anything about this event, but to be honest the film itself wasn't the best, and I'm not actually sure how I stand on it. I expected there to be a lot more focus on the match and the sexism, but a lot of it seemed to be more on Billie Jean King's personal life.

So as I said, most of this film is about Billie Jean King's personal life, particularly her love life. It seemed like the actual match event wasn't substantial enough to make a whole 2 hour movie, so they filled it with a lot of filler, such as Billie Jean's life, and even Bobby Rigg's life. This was a bit weird, because it seemed like they were trying to bring across this message about LGBT people while also bringing us a message about equality, and both messages seemed only halfway there. In the end this made it seem like the movie did not have a clear direction and it was a bit all over the place.

It was interesting seeing the characters, though. Emma Stone did a good job and she'll probably be nominated just because the Academy likes her and this is based on a true story and has an important message (all things that the Academy drools over), but I will be extremely surprised and utterly disappointed if she wins.

I love how Steve Carrell has been doing more serious roles. I was really impressed with him in Foxcatcher (2014), and even though his role in this film is more of a caricature it's still interesting to see him in a serious film.

His character was a bit weird though. As I said, I don't know much of the event, but it was weird to see Riggs say all that chauvinistic stuff. I get that he was just saying it for show because he really wanted to make the match more exciting, and I think they heavily implied that he wasn't actually a chauvinist, but it was still weird. It must have been terrible being a female tennis player at that time and hearing him say all those terrible things all over the news.

I thought it was interesting how they set up the sports organisers and the entire system as the antagonist, though. I can't ever see Bill Pullman without thinking of the President from Independence Day (1996) or the father from Casper (1995), but he plays the sports organiser here and it was interesting to see how he truly believed that female tennis was unworthy, even if it sold the same amount of tickets as the men's tennis.

As to the rest of the characters' stories, the stories about Billie Jean's husband and lover was interesting but as I said I think they focused a bit too much on that, and they didn't really enforce many of their messages, so it felt a bit weak. It was interesting to see how Larry King (not the talk show host) handled it all, and man, he truly was such a nice guy! I felt really sorry for his character and even though the movie had a happy ending, it was still sad to see him go through that.

I wasn't a big fan of the directing. The camera was handheld most of the times and as a result a lot of scenes were really shaky and weird. They also spent a really long time on some parts, particularly with Billie Jean and her lover, and this made the film seem really long and a bit dragged out. I guess it was to look like it was a part of the film's time, but I was not a fan.

Overall, this film isn't memorable. I'm not sure how tennis fans would react to this movie, but for me I found it slow and lacking any direction. It was interesting to see the values of the time but it was not interesting enough for me to feel deeply moved by anything that happened.

A few side notes:

• I found it so weird every time she got a haircut, especially when she just got the haircut right before the match? Did that honestly happen???
  
• I want Alan Cumming to play Willy Wonka now. Or someone terribly evil. I don't know.

Manners Maketh Man redux

Kingsman 2 (2017)

7.4/10 on IMDb
50% on Rotten Tomatoes

Chloe's thoughts: It's alright;
Low-energy entertainment

Watch it if you: Are a fan of the first Kingsman

When the Kingsman headquarters are destroyed in a mass terror attack, the Kingsmen resort to getting help from their US ally, Statesman.

I loved Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014), and really wanted to love this sequel, but it was a bit disappointing. While it was enjoyable, it tried too hard to be like its original, without actually being anywhere near it.

Ahh yes, we've got another ridiculously crazy save-the-world situation happening. What made the first Kingsman so great was that it was nothing like what we expected. The movie swept us off our feet unexpectedly and we had no choice but to just go along for the ride, loving it all the while.

Unfortunately, this has set a precedent for The Golden Circle, because we expect another weird, whacky, hilarious, and gory movie that's at least just as good as the first. And knowing that, Matthew Vaughn, the director, as well as the producers/studio have all tried to deliver an even crazier and even more action-packed film. And while this paid off in some respects, this film definitely does not live up to its predecessor.

The first half in particular was not that great, and it was obvious that a lot of elements that were happening were put in purely to try to outdo the craziness of the first film. They were just trying too hard, particularly with some of the directing and the camerawork.

After we all loved the impressive tracking shot of the crazy church sequence from the first movie, they must have thought it would be a good idea to do a lot more of that, even if the scene itself didn't call for it. So, especially in the beginning, some of the fight scenes looked really artificial and weird to watch. They spent too much time trying to make everything look cool and smooth, so much so that it had a really unrealistic and digital look to it.

And I think this is where most of my issues with this film lie. They constantly try to add things in for the sake of "people liked it in the first movie, so let's do it AGAIN!" They were never actually adding things in because it made sense to add them in.

For example, they tried to recreate an iconic scene from the first movie and it just did not work. I'll talk about this more in the spoiler section, but it was so ridiculous and illogical to incorporate that in except to have a fun fight scene that also serves as a throwback to the first film. The fight itself was cool because of the choreography, but the reason the fight started in the first place was so silly!

Another thing is that the soundtrack is also super loud and quite distracting. I don't know why I had a gripe against this, though, because I enjoyed when they did this in the first film. For some reason, it just seemed really distracting when they would blare up a song during a fight scene.

But it did get better towards the end, when it got back to being ridiculously badass with all the weapons they were using in the epic fight scene.

However, in the middle there seemed to be just a lot of a waste of characters and actors, and there were certain scenes where you just didn't believe the characters were in any danger at all. More about this in the spoilers.

One thing I did like was how they sort of tied every element together in the final fight scene. Throughout the movie there seemed to be a lot of unnecessary things being shown through the movie, but they do all pay off towards the end.

However, I think the message of the film was a bit... odd. Again, it's hard to discuss this in a non-spoiler way but where the first movie focused on climate change, this movie focused on the war on drugs. And I just don't think they did a very good job at making a stance on the topic of drugs, maybe because the studio wanted to keep it safe. But when your films depict violent and gory fight scenes (which include people being cut in half or having their heads explode colourfully), or even when your film unapologetically makes recurring jokes about anal sex or fingering someone, I don't think a safe stance on a heated societal debate is really the way to go.

So most of the issues come down to the directing, pacing, and writing of the film. The cast itself is great though.

The very handsome Taron Egerton is back as Eggsy, our favourite kid-off-the-streets-turned-gentleman-spy. He did a great job in the first film and was still able to hold his own alongside the very impressive cast of this sequel.

Colin Firth returns (not a spoiler, it was in trailers and on posters), and he does a great job in this. I actually quite like what they did with his character, although I do have some gripes about his arc which I will leave to the spoiler section of this review.

Julianne Moore also plays the villain, and she looks so great in this film! She also looks like she really enjoyed herself, but her villain character was a bit too whacky and comical for my liking. I get that there is an element of suspension of belief here, but it just felt too parodic, even for a Kingsman film.

There's also Jeff Bridges and Channing Tatum in this, but I felt like their characters could have done so much more. The marketing for this film implied they would have a really big role, but unfortunately they don't do all that much and it seems like a waste of casting.

However, Pedro Pascal is great in this film, and I loved it whenever they showed him using his whip and lasso. I actually really liked the idea of the classy Kingsmen having these country-bumpkin-like Statesmen as their cousins. It allowed them to show us some new styles of uniform and weaponry, and was a good contrast to the idea of the gentleman spy that we're used to.

So before I start my spoilers section, I think in the end there are just too many things happening in this movie that the film feels like a mess. It's a very fun and very enjoyable mess, but most of the things here are unnecessary call backs to the first film, or unnecessary sequences specifically made to try and outdo the first film. There are a lot of whacky characters and crazily far-fetched plot devices, but when we loved these in the first film, it's a bit cringey and unrealistic in this film. So while the movie is really fun and enjoyable, and I would still definitely watch another sequel, I probably won't watch this film again. If I wanted to watch another Kingsman movie, I'd just watch the original again.

--------------
Okay, so this is the start of my spoilers section. I was going to incorporate spoilers throughout my points, but there are just way too many things I want to talk about.

Click to show/hide spoilers:

(A word of warning: this spoiler section is a bit all over the place and is mostly me just ranting and nitpicking.)

So the biggest thing that was running through my mind was: I know they killed Roxy, Eggsy's friend Brandon, his dog JB, and the entire Kingsman headquarters and staff homes to raise the stakes, but to me it sort of reinforced the idea that no matter what happens, our beloved Eggsy would still be safe.

This also branches out into a heap of issues I had with the film:

1. Why did Roxy have to die? She did jack all in the first movie, I was excited to see her do so much more here. Also there wasn't really any emotional weight to Roxy's death even though her and Eggsy were such great friends.
   
2. Why was it so easy for Brandon to see all the guns and weaponry in Eggsy's room? Surely they would have better security measures than that?
   
3. I loved how Eggsy put up his own newspaper clippings on the wall, that was very sweet.
   
4. Why did Merlin have to die? I thought they specifically gave Eggsy a minesweeper? Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought the whole point of a minesweeper is to make sure no one dies from a mine?!
   
5. You honestly want me to believe that when you put two people into the equivalent of a free-falling human salad spinner, they would come out unscathed? I mean, if you don't want to kill them, then at least injure them or something! Even just having a shoulder dislocate and then making a scene out of them popping it back in or something, I dunno! Anything! They literally just walked away from that debacle.

Okay let's talk the bar fight scene. They were obviously trying to do a throwback to the first movie, but there was almost no logic behind that fight.

Firstly, the guy at the bar was listening in on their conversation, but he didn't realise like holy shit they're talking about hacking and showing each other crazy spy gadgets, maybe they're SPIES?!

Secondly, his reason for picking a fight with them was so ridiculous, it was just, "You're British, get out of here, I have no foundings for my feelings of anger towards you."

Thirdly, it's so out of character for Harry to start fighting them over that. That is not very gentlemanly. In the first film, he was about to walk away until they personally insulted him, and only then did he start fighting them. And the only reason he started killing these people violently was because he heard that his colleague Lancelot had died and he needed to "let off a bit of steam". I understand, though that perhaps he just wanted to fight again after spending such a long time not fighting since he was amnesic, but still the whole thing seemed really forced. It made more sense for Whiskey to step in and have fun with them, but I think it would have been better for the redneck to pick the fight with Whiskey in the first place.

Speaking of Harry, how on earth did he suddenly improve his coordination? They show him accidentally stunning a computer instead of the security guard, then he doesn't really do any more fighting except throwing a freeze bomb at people and shooting Whiskey (who is right in front of him and would have been hard to miss), and then he can suddenly take on all of Poppy's goons? Almost as if his near-death never happened?



As to some things on the characters:

• Channing Tatum was a huge waste in this film. All he did was one small fight scene, and then a scene where he danced a bit and they didn't even get him to dance very well! They could have at least asked him to pull off some sick moves
  
• Also Jeff Bridges hardly did anything at all! Elton John did more than Jeff Bridges!
  
• Speaking of, at first I was not keen on the Elton John cameos. I liked them and I found them funny, but just thought there were too many of them and they were overdoing it. However it did pay off at the end though, especially when he just intercepted the robot dogs eating Harry (ELTON JOHN DETECTED - FRIEND)
  
• Also Halle Berry's character could really have been played by anyone but I guess they're just trying to set up a sequel with Channing Tatum and Halle Berry
  
• I was surprised to see that Princess Tilde and Eggsy were so committed. It was nice to see that (especially the asking-for-permission scene) because it was so different to the James Bond spy movies we're used to (and the first movie made it a point to show they were different to James Bond movies). I also think they tried to make Tilde look younger than she did in the first movie so that it wouldn't look too weird that she was dating Eggsy.
  
• I think Charlie was a better character in this film than the last one. His shaved head made him look more menacing, he wasn't being a whiny pompous brat, and I liked his upgrades. The only thing was that it made it ridiculous to see Eggsy fight him. He literally casually chucked a bowling ball through layers of walls, and yet when he throws Eggsy around, his suit doesn't even get scuffed by the teensiest bit. Sigh, I miss Gazelle I wish she didn't die.
  

Nearly finished, I promise.

Do you think they went a bit too far with the fingering joke? I mean, it was funny, but there was an entire like 10 minutes dedicated to that joke. There was seriously no other way to track someone? It was such a lengthy gag.

Also, they put down cannabis and ecstasy in the same class as meth and heroin? Like, really? This was the point I was trying to make about the film trying to not really make a stance on the war on drugs. On one hand, they have Poppy say that sugar is more addictive and deadly than drugs, and they have the President's employee say that people who do drugs aren't bad and sometimes it even helps them function properly at work. Then on the other hand, they have people saying to their friends, "I told you not to use that stuff!" or even "Maybe you should stick to booze!" It just seemed so weird, almost like the studio wanted them to go against drugs just because they were concerned about regulation...

And with that, that's the last of my spoilers points! Congrats on making it to the end.