Kingsman Franchise (Matthew Vaughn, 2015/2017)

[colinr0380]

Worst: Kingsman: The Secret Service (I'm not sure anybody makes films as consistently ugly as Matthew Vaughn)

Do you mean visually or morally?

[Lost Highway]

Worst: Kingsman: The Secret Service (I'm not sure anybody makes films as consistently ugly as Matthew Vaughn)

Do you mean visually or morally?

Both. Vaughn's films are the worst art directed and worst costumed films I keep seeing. I also can't stand the glibness, the flat footed attempts at black comedy, the pseudo-subversiveness, the fetishisation of CG cartoon mega-violence, unoriginal song choices and the desperate wannabe hipness of these drearily formulaic films. The worst type of fanboy catnip.

I only watched it because some of it was shot around my home, the brutalist 70s London social housing estate the lead lives in (only the exteriors, they shot the inside of the apartment somewhere else or on a set).

[RossyG]

Was that Thamesmead, the former haunt of Alex and his Droogs?

[Lost Highway]

Was that Thamesmead, the former haunt of Alex and his Droogs?

No, it's this one: http://www.greatbuildings.com/cgi-bin/g ... _No=ENG001" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

We get film crews and fashion shoots all the time. It was featured extensively in Anthony Minghella's Breaking and Entering and it's been in lots of TV series like Prime Suspect and Silent Witness. It's a nice place to live, but we are always made out to be some crime ridden hell hole.

[RossyG]

Thanks.

It actually works quite well as a cinematic space in Kingsman, I thought.

[Lost Highway]

Thanks.

It actually works quite well as a cinematic space in Kingsman, I thought.

It does for anything it appears in, it's a beautiful example of 70s modernist architecture and that's why I live here. But at this point, in the UK at least, it's become so overused as a backdrop to crime ridden, low life social housing, it's become a bit of a cliche when it pops up in yet another thing. The flats are beautiful on the inside, too beautiful for Kingsman apparently, so they replaced the interior with some ugly ass flat.

[hanshotfirst1138]

Worst: Kingsman: The Secret Service (I'm not sure anybody makes films as consistently ugly as Matthew Vaughn)

Do you mean visually or morally?

Both. Vaughn's films are the worst art directed and worst costumed films I keep seeing. I also can't stand the glibness, the flat footed attempts at black comedy, the pseudo-subversiveness, the fetishisation of CG cartoon mega-violence, unoriginal song choices and the desperate wannabe hipness of these drearily formulaic films. The worst type of fanboy catnip.

I only watched it because some of it was shot around my home, the brutalist 70s London social housing estate the lead lives in (only the exteriors, they shot the inside of the apartment somewhere else or on a set).

What I don't like about the perception of them is that his films keep being touted as "subversive." Vaughn is a postmodernist who takes great glee in expanding on every trope and cliche he can, but dressing them up with more outrageousness. But he's not really saying anything of actual substance or deconstructing things. Personally, I don't mind his films stylistically (though curse him for abandoning 35mm after X-Men, but I find them a little garish. His X film in particular has almost gaudy cotton candy colors to it, and most of the periods detail had more interest in looking like James Bond than in tying everything in with the 1960s social issues which would've been interesting in the setting. I just think his films feel fundamentally adolescent. That's not a bad thing, but I do find it gets tiresome after a while.

[thirtyframesasecond]

Do Take That do the theme song to this film, like they seem to do for all his others?

[colinr0380]

I think perhaps some of the responsibility needs to be passed to Jane Goldman too, Vaughan's screenwriter for all of these troubling films in which comic book violence is made (empoweringly?) equivalent with real world brutalities.

Do Take That do the theme song to this film, like they seem to do for all his others?

That would be a yes.

[Lost Highway]

Personally, I don't mind his films stylistically (though curse him for abandoning 35mm after X-Men, but I find them a little garish. His X film in particular has almost gaudy cotton candy colors to it, and most of the periods detail had more interest in looking like James Bond than in tying everything in with the 1960s social issues which would've been interesting in the setting. I just think his films feel fundamentally adolescent. That's not a bad thing, but I do find it gets tiresome after a while.

I didn't mind the film itself that much, but X-Men First Class is one of the worst big budget films I've ever seen in terms of art direction and costumes. I get that Vaughn is obsessed with the Bond films, but those films had style. X-Men First Class gets almost nothing right about the the early 60s, which is such a shame because it could have been such a cool looking film. Mad Men did it perfectly on a TV budget, so why does X-Men look so cheap and sloppy ? Not only do costumes range in style from all over the 60s to now (those baggy, GAP style training suits with hoodies!), but many costumes wereoff-the-rack clothes with a 60s twist, bought from low price fashion retailers like H&M and Topshop (I'm into clothes, I've seen them, I even have one item featured). You maybe can get away with that for an extra but not for lead characters. The hair for many of the male characters was too long for 1962 and and the architecture was all over the place as well with buildings which clearly were decades later than the 60s. Some purpose built sets were Ken Adam rip-offs, but they lack Adam's talent for proportion and perspective and again, for making things look substantial and real. Even January Jones' statement dresses had the look of cheap fabric and sloppy needle work about them. If you have an eye for these things, it all looks cut rate and like it was done by people who have no pride in their work and who are too lazy to do a little research.

I suppose you could make the excuse that they are superheroes, so they have "special" looks, but even then you can make things look coherent and sophisticated. With the exception of the anachronistic design of the Sentinels, Bryan Singer did a fine job with the X-Men sequel set in the 70s, so it can be done. And there are costume designers like Shirley Russell who could do period in a way that which was gleefully inauthentic but she had style and she made things work on her terms. Every Vaughn film I've seen has ugly costume design, sets which look like sets and poorly done wigs (something I found particularly distracting in Kingsmen)

Sorry I just thought I'd better elaborate why I think Vaughn makes ugly looking films, but poor design is one of those things which can totally ruin a film for me. I love good design, from fashion, to product design to architecture and as film is a visual medium, I like a bit of thought to go into what someone puts In front of the camera. Poor art direction bothers me more than forum hot button issues like film vs digital or CGI vs practical effects.

[domino harvey]

I didn't think it was possible for there to be a worse action film than Die Hard 5 but here we are. Not since Larry Crowne has there been a big budget film so transparently marketed towards older males dying to feel young and relevant (and at least Hanks' movie was sorta sweet in its squareness, something this oh so hip cynical mess never worries with). I got so much second-hand embarrassment from all the Esquire/GQ-fellating "Know how to order an alcoholic beverage the cool way / be sure to be a real gentlemen by wearing only these most stylin' duds / &c" that even if this film made up for its stale state of existence elsewhere by being funny, exciting, interesting, novel, clever, or even entertaining, the film would still be operating with the largest and most dapperly-dressed but slovenly mannered albatross around its point-collared neck. But this film is utter shit, filled with "fight" scenes (more like scenes of mass slaughter alternating with scenes of longer individual slaughter) that are horrifyingly filmed-- not due to the violence, which is so overwhelming and tasteless that it hardly seems worth clutching the pearls over, but thanks to the virtually incomprehensible direction, blocking, and massive CGI branch-work, most of it expended on Colin Firth's body-double (if they're going to do all of these neverending, virtually all CGI fight scenes, why not take a little more time and make sure the body whooshing around on-screen actually looks like the star?). The action scenes just fall with a dull thud and keep hitting the one note over and over and over (I think the church massacre scene might still be going on no matter when you read this). I'm not sure cinema can withstand a film any faster-cut or more slackenly composed than this. And then we get that hee-larious anal sex punchline to round out the whole experience firmly on the level to which this film belongs: the bottom.

[RossyG]

I thought the film was great fun.

(Edited for clarity)

[swo17]

I too thought that domino's takedown was a lot of fun.

[cdnchris]

I didn't hate it as much as domino and there were aspects I liked (the obvious Bond references, short of when they were actually talking about the films), despite a general nastiness that was turning me off. But that final, rather demeaning point-of-view anal shot probably killed any goodwill I was willing to give it.

[RossyG]

I didn't like the anal gag, I must admit.

[cdnchris]

I admit I did chuckle when she tells him that she'll let him go there if he saves the world, because I'm apparently still pretty juvenile. But then actually getting a first person shot was so unbelievably demeaning, and easily the most offensive thing in the film, which is saying a lot.

Also, saying this is worse than the last Die Hard is a pretty damning conviction and borders on hyperbole! Kingsman doesn't have Jai Courtney in it, so therefore it is better.

[YnEoS]

Film Critic Hulk wrote a really long article on the film. (Obligatory De-Hulkifier link.) His main point is that the film is critiquing James Bond films by bluntly and crudely showing their implied viewpoints that are normally made more palatable through innuendo. I'm not entirely convinced that this is a useful way of making films, especially given the wildly different ways people are reacting to it. But I found the analysis interesting and he covers a lot of different angles like the difference between this kind of satire/critique and something like Austin Powers. I'm willing to give Goldman and Vaughn the benefit of the doubt that they meant well. Though, I can't say I fully appreciate the end result.

[domino harvey]

Tommy Wiseau thought he was making a film with the passion of Tennessee Williams, and we all know how the final product turned out. The filmmakers' intentions may have been as self-aware and critical as they claim, but it doesn't translate as delivered-- and this film is in love with Bond et al films, I don't buy negative readings on the part of Vaughn and company of this kind of spy material. This movie has the kind of ending you hear about in a commentary track where the director mentions it in passing and goes, "We quickly realized that was a bad idea" and you have a chuckle at how they could have ever considered it. Only here it happened.

[knives]

Also, saying this is worse than the last Die Hard is a pretty damning conviction and borders on hyperbole! Kingsman doesn't have Jai Courtney in it, so therefore it is better.

The new Terminator was actually pretty decent and he was very likable in it plus I hear he's good in Spartacus. That's about the limit of my defense for him though.

[cdnchris]

I've only seen him in a few films (not Terminator yet) but I haven't been impressed. In the last Die Hard Bruce Willis didn't so much as phone in his performance as text it in but he still had way more charisma and heft than Courtney did.

I have to say I'm not surprised that Tarantino loved this movie. It probably appealed to me in places in the same ways it did with him but ultimately there's just a level of nastiness to the film that turned me off. Either I'm getting older or the makers just didn't know when to stop. It's also possible he'll just love anything Jackson is in (and despite the lisp, I liked Jackson in this, and if they had maybe toned back the obviously childlike qualities of the character he actually could have been just as good as some of the more megalomaniac Bond villains).

Also, I don't think I buy the film being a criticism of the Bond films since it's such a love letter to them. It's possible to be both (honestly, I think the first Austin Powers movie was better with criticisms against the sexism and dated ideals of the films while also making fun of the superficial elements, yet it was a bigger love letter to the franchise), but I didn't get the feeling anyone involved in this really cared about criticizing them, or even disagreed with the more negative aspects (saying that as someone who is admittedly a very big Bond fan), other than to maybe say they've grown too serious in recent years.

[starmanof51]

Whether intentional or not (probably not) the crudity and crassness is not out of place when the "hero" organization is so blatantly a fascist fantasy

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

But then actually getting a first person shot was so unbelievably demeaning, and easily the most offensive thing in the film, which is saying a lot.

Did Film Crit Hulk indicate if the shot was an homage to Donald Cammell or merely Gaspar Noe?

[John Cope]

I'd be willing to play apologist for Die Hard 5 FWIW.

[domino harvey]

Sequel coming in 2017

[domino harvey]

Julianne Moore to play the villain