Day 76. 128,036 words.
I drafted this a while back, but it’s going to be a busy weekend so here you are.
Back during our flight home from our Australian adventure, I got some time to watch a few random movies. Here’s some brief reviews. On the flight from Perth to Hong Kong, I saw:
1) Kingsman 2: Oh Fuck We Got Asked For A Sequel. Featuring Eggy, the word “bruv”, and a horrifically bad explanation for Mister D’Arcy surviving the first movie (not to mention that anal-sex-reward-based relationship with Swedish royalty), this was mildly amusing but my airline chicken and sausage was better. And my airline chicken and sausage wasn’t great. Also starring Maude Lebowski and The Dude as themselves.
2) Deadpool. Because it was on the list so of course I watched it. Duh. I tried something new with movie #1 and I got burned.
3) Passengers. Starring Star Lord as Bill Murray and Jennifer Lawrence as Andie Macdowell, this futuristic Groundhog Day remake was fun to watch and very pretty, but who hires Laurence Fishburne to be part of a starship crew? That fucker’s CV is a mess at best. Also, Star Lord’s best bet was either to break down on the first day and admit that he woke Katniss up out of loneliness and then work through that issue over the course of the next year, or READ THE FUCKING PASSENGER MANIFEST AND START WAKING UP USEFUL PEOPLE I DON’T CARE IF THEY WEREN’T CREW.
I also watched some episodes of Family Guy. They were a travesty but at least I cracked a smile.
On the flight from Hong Kong to Helsinki, I saw:
1) Big Game. I’d been meaning to watch this for a while because the Rare Exports movie was pretty good (although their short movie was much better, and worth buying the DVD just for that). This was … meh. Not particularly interesting, although an amusing Finnish variant on Crocodile Dundee 2. If laughing at USians out of their element in foreign countries is wrong, I don’t want to be right. I mean, look at Full Metal Jacket. Anyway yeah, this was not a terrible movie, but I can’t recommend it. I can’t even say it was an accurate portrayal of Finnish woodsfolk.
2) The Martian. An amusing and entertaining movie, lots of fun to watch even if it was a bit dodgy on the believability (I think you have to forgive that once movies start putting people on other planets) and I was beginning to have serious trouble staying awake at this point. I think I actually drifted off, was woken up for breakfast, and skipped back to the last bit I remember to watch it through properly. So I can say it was worth doing that, so it can’t have been all bad. I was annoyed at the way they’d dubbed and smudged over the swearwords, too. The best line in the movie, about Matt Damon sciencing the shit out of his situation, was ruined.
3) The Simpsons Movie. Just, again, because I knew it was good and I hadn’t seen it in a while – and also because I wanted to nap. And I did.
Hatboy's Hatstand 
I heard much the same about Kingsman 2…or rather I think some were raving about it but I THOUGHT there’s no way I’d like it. Plus I didn’t see 1. Or 0. If there’s no number shouldn’t it be 0? And then 1 would be the sequel? Damn movie makers, make some sense next time XD
Oh, and I think Passengers did poorly because a lot of people were triggered by the ultimate truth of what he was doing. Which I can understand, sure. But it looked interesting. Probably give it a drunken go at some point. I don’t deny Star Lord is a great actor.
Although more and more I’m getting the impression J Law is NOT. Women power and all that, but isn’t she roughly the same unemotional beauty in every movie?
My go-to reviewers, who many would call SJWs by the way just to pre-defend, actually gave a list of movies to watch INSTEAD of Red Sparrow. LOL
I think, given the way she seems to behave in real life, she’s a pretty damn good actor. But yeah, haven’t seen much range from her. Also haven’t seen many of her movies, so.
She did alright in this one. And yeah, there’s a really interesting discussion to be had about the ethics of what Pratt’s character was doing. Maybe some other time. I was mostly just annoyed at the stunning illogic of it. I mean, for a start, there should have been some sort of emergency system in place so if any passenger gets woken up, crew would be woken up too. Or it should have been possible for him to just go back under (massive systemic failure of the ship notwithstanding, that shouldn’t have taken a year to happen either by the way). Or he should have woken up somebody else. Or…
Yeah, there were a lot of problems with the premise, which was crafted with very specific rules so as to create the exact thought experiment they wound up showing. So I can’t really argue with that. They did the movie fine. If they were actually designing an interstellar colony ship, they fucked up at every step of the design process. I mean, right after designing the bartender, they just took the rest of the year off.
Kingsman was pretty good. The sequel, not so much. Well, obviously. Like I said. But yeah, if you’re not certain (on seeing the trailer) whether you’d enjoy it, I’d suggest don’t bother. I mean, I’ve come to trust my reactions (from “meh” to “OMG SQUEEE GOTTA SEE THAT”) to trailers, I’m sure you have too.
For the purposes of full disclosure, I was OMG-SQUEEE about the first Kingsman movie, then when they did a sequel I was like “duh, of course they did a sequel but they absolutely shouldn’t have, it’s going to be bad.”
I was right[1].
[1] Opinion, not fact.
“[1] Opinion, not fact.”
A widely shared opinion is good enough for me. As for Kingsman the first, I think my quota for such action movies is typically full with just a few per year. Some are bound to fall by the wayside.
On J Law, ok she can do ONE other personality pretty well, as you said, not a lot of range. That keeps her in the “bad actor” category for me.
But don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy her in movies. I’ll leave it there.
Good analysis of the movie itself, breaking down the plot issue vs. the movie theme. I think I agree, not having seen it. Not sure if I will, but from what I heard, you’re nailing it on the issues, and what was cool about it.