Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014)

1/5

Matthew Vaughn's Kingsman is an abhorrent exploitation film masquerading as a delightful action flick. The movie serves as a modern send-up of the British spy movies from the 60's, but it does everything it can to distance itself from James Bond. It trades in dry humor for vulgar jokes, action for violence, and style for looks. It's self-referential in a way that outdoes even the countless satires of the genre. It's funny and fun until it's not. It takes a sharp turn and quickly becomes dark and disturbing. The ultra-violence is grotesque and nauseating, seemingly thrown on screen with gleeful abandon and disregard for taste. It's hard to imagine a world where people enjoy the stomach-churning images and call it entertainment, but the success of this film means that we are apparently living in it right now.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2802144/

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007)

3/5

After the atrocity that was Pirates 2, I told myself I wouldn't see the third one. But I did anyway. Partly because Sameer said it was pretty good, but mostly because I had the option to see it in Blu-Ray. Here are my conclusions: Blu-Ray is amazing. Pirates 3 is okay.

The best thing about Pirates 3 is how pretty it is. The striking cinematography combines seamlessly with the special effects. And it is breathtaking in high definition. (The text was so crisp!) The second best thing is the humor. The drama and tension are very regularly punctuated by comic relief that I found hilarious. (I was especially happy when I discovered that Ragetti, the pirate with the wooden eye, was played by the same actor who played Gareth on the UK version of The Office.) The third best thing is the action. It was always fun, mostly because it was so utterly preposterous and fantastical. Also the music worked pretty well.

The worst thing about the movie was how unnecessarily convoluted the plot was. I had no idea what was going on. Ever. About an hour and a half through, I gave up, paused the movie, and forced everyone else to explain to me what was going on. That took about 20 minutes. Then there was another hour and a half of movie. Which brings me to the second worst thing about the movie. The length. It is unnecessarily long. This is probably to deal with the unnecessarily convoluted plot. But there are also literally about 30 minutes that could have been taken out without any effect on the movie, except making it better. Also, I'm sick of movies that lead into the sequel at the end. That also happened at the end of Heroes, season 1. And that show sucks.

IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0449088/