The Lost City (2022) Review

Time: 112 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence & nudity
Cast:
Sandra Bullock as Loretta Sage
Channing Tatum as Alan Caprison
Daniel Radcliffe as Abigail Fairfax
Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Beth Hatten
Brad Pitt as Jack Trainer
Director: Aaron Nee, Adam Nee

Reclusive author Loretta Sage writes about exotic places in her popular adventure novels that feature a handsome cover model named Alan. While on tour promoting her new book with Alan, Loretta gets kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire who hopes she can lead him to an ancient city’s lost treasure from her latest story. Determined to prove he can be a hero in real life and not just on the pages of her books, Alan sets off to rescue her.

I had been seeing trailers for The Lost City, an adventure rom-com starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum. Although I didn’t watch it in cinemas, I did want to check it out because it looked enjoyable at the very least. I’m glad I did watch it, The Lost City was a simple, cliched and flawed yet fun adventure.

The writing really isn’t much to ride home about. This plot really could’ve been auto generated by a bot, and contains multiple romantic comedies and adventure tropes. There’s plenty of predictable moments, and these types of movies have definitely been done before and better. But that doesn’t matter a whole lot if the execution is good enough, and that is the case. The story is straightforward, but that works for this movie, it is easy to follow and it never gets needlessly complicated. It functions well enough for this sort of movie. The humour can occasionally be hit or miss, but works for the most part.

Ultimately, it is the solid cast that makes The Lost City work as well as it did, the actors play off each other very well and a lot of their charisma and chemistry carries the film. Even the humour is helped a lot by the performances, and had the acting not been as good, I wouldn’t have found the film to be as funny. Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum are really good in the lead roles, they have a nice relationship with good chemistry between them. Daniel Radcliffe plays the villain who kidnaps Bullock to find a sacred treasure, he’s gloriously over the top and having fun in this role, very enjoyable to watch. Then there’s Brad Pitt in a brief but memorable role. He’s very much a cameo in the movie but is nonetheless very funny.

The Lost City is decently directed. The visuals can be a little generic and typical of a movie of this genre these days, but its shot well and there’s some good production design. I also liked that they used some real locations sometimes, especially with the jungle environment. While its not the highlight of the movie, there are some genuinely good action moments here too.

The Lost City is a typical rom com meet adventure flick, and it doesn’t necessarily do anything new. Nonetheless it is good for what it is, and it is fun to watch and entertaining. It’s carried by a strong cast who are enjoyable to watch and are quite funny. It is pretty much the kind of movie you’d expect from watching the trailer and if you think it looks fun to you, I’d say it is worth checking out.

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Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) Review

Time: 141 Minutes
Age Rating: Contains violence, offensive language, drug use & sex scenes
Cast
Colin Firth as Harry Hart/Galahad
Julianne Moore as Poppy Adams
Taron Egerton as Gary “Eggsy” Unwin/Galahad
Mark Strong as Merlin
Halle Berry as Ginger
Elton John as himself
Channing Tatum as Tequila
Jeff Bridges as Champagne “Champ”
Pedro Pascal as Whiskey
Edward Holcroft as Charles “Charlie” Hesketh
Director: Matthew Vaughn

With their headquarters destroyed and the world held hostage, members of Kingsman find new allies when they discover a spy organization in the United States known as Statesman. In an adventure that tests their strength and wits, the elite secret agents from both sides of the pond band together to battle a ruthless enemy and save the day, something that’s becoming a bit of a habit for Eggsy (Taron Egerton).

Kingsman: The Golden Circle was one of my most anticipated films of 2017. I’m a huge fan of the original Kingsman, it was fun, violent, different, and was well executed by director Matthew Vaughn. With the sequel introducing the American equivalent of the Kingsman (Statesman) and including some top notch actors, of course I was excited to see it. Having finally seen it I can say that I liked The Golden Circle… but I was slightly disappointed. On its own, it is a fun movie with actors having a lot of fun in their roles and some entertaining action sequences. However, there were some odd choices made with story and character, and at times is a little too over the top for its own good.

I was consistently entertained throughout the 2 hours and 20 minute runningtime of The Golden Circle, I was interested in the plot or entertained in what was going on. This movie does have one of my concerns in the lead up to its release, which was that it would feel a little too much like the original Kingsman. Not that its bad, if it aint broke don’t fix it, its just that I would’ve liked some more differences. There were some differences that were for the worst. The original Kingsman was both good at poking fun at the spy genre, while still being its own thing. The sequel however falls into self parody at times, going so over the top that its borderline Austin Powers territory, and not necessarily in a good way. There is also a sequence with Poppy Delevingne’s character which was just completely random and pointless, and it is definitely the worst part of the whole movie. Think of Kingsman 2 as being Kingsman, just not done as great. However, I almost have to give credit to Matthew Vaughn ‘s willingness just go out there and make whatever he wanted to do, despite how bonkers it can get. Silliness aside I didn’t have too many problems with the plot, there were some decisions with some of the characters that were rather questionable however (and I can’t go into that too much because that’s spoiler territory).

Taron Egerton returns once again as Eggsy, who’s now a Kingsman agent. Taron is flawlessly charismatic and likable as ever. Usually I wouldn’t mention this up because it may be a spoiler but since the marketing seemed to show it, so I guess we can talk about Colin Firth returning. As usual, Firth is effortless as Harry Hart in both his action and non action scenes. I’m not a fan of characters in big franchises being brought back from the dead, but I have to admit it’s nice seeing Colin again. Also, the explanation for Harry returning is fairly good. Mark Strong also returns as Merlin, getting even more to work with than in the original.

One of the reasons I was so hyped for Kingsman 2 was the talented actors involved with Channing Tatum, Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry and Pedro Pascal. I wouldn’t say that they are used to their fullest potential in this movie but they do very well to leave an impression in their scenes. Don’t let their talent fool you, in the film they are very much supporting characters, some only appearing in a few scenes. With that said, apparently the original running time of The Golden Circle was 3 hours and 40 minutes, so who knows, maybe they originally had bigger parts to play. The standout of the newer cast to me was Pedro Pascal, there is something that they do with his character at a point though which still kind of irks me. I also think Sophie Cookson’s Roxy (who was in the original Kingsman) should’ve been used a lot more. Julianne Moore is the villain as Poppy Adams, a drug lord. Moore is a fantastic actress but for whatever reason, her character really didn’t do anything for me. Samuel L. Jackson’s villain in the original film was silly and not threatening but he actually seemed to work for the movie. Moore’s character… not so much. She was crazy while acting all sweet and I get that’s what they were going for, but she didn’t really leave an impression on me at all. I didn’t find her entertaining or interesting, not to mention Poppy has some very weak motivations. Moore definitely did as well as she could with the role and she looked like she was having some fun, but overall her villain felt quite underwhelming, though I wouldn’t call her bad. Also Elton John is in this movie, I am feeling quite mixed about him. At times he was fine and even funny, but at times he was given way too much screentime and became just rather distracting.

Matthew Vaughn’s direction and style really worked in the original Kingsman and he thankfully returns here, in fact its his first attempt at a sequel. The action like in the previous Kingsman was pretty good and entertaining. The action with Pedro Pascal’s Agent Whiskey character is particularly great, including a scene in a bar. If you remember from the original Kingsman, there was this sort of hypercam that was used in the church scene. Well it appears here many times, and it really wasn’t always utilized the best. A good example is the opening action sequence, the action is good but the way it was filmed was rather distracting. It wasn’t terrible but it did take me out of the movie a bit. The CGI like in the original Kingsman is a little fake at times. The score from Henry Jackman like in the original Kingsman was great.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle is not as good as the original. It’s decent, has some good performances, its enjoyable if silly but it has some issues with regards to the plot and some of the characters. However it is so much fun to watch that I’m willing to overlook some of the issues. If you don’t like the original Kingsman, I don’t see this one being any different for you. For everyone else, give it a go and see it for yourself whether it does it for you, I know it did it for me. I’m perfectly willing to give Kingsman 3 a shot, despite some issues in this instalment of the surprise franchise.

Jupiter Ascending (2015) Review

Time: 127 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence
Cast:
Mila Kunis as Jupiter Jones
Channing Tatum as Caine Wise
Sean Bean as Stinger Apini
Eddie Redmayne as Balem Abrasax
Douglas Booth as Titus Abrasax
Tuppence Middleton as Kalique Abrasax
Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Famulus
Director: The Wachowskis

Jupiter Jones (Mila Kunis) was born under signs that predicted future greatness, but her reality as a woman consists of cleaning other people’s houses and endless bad breaks. Caine (Channing Tatum), a genetically engineered hunter, arrives on Earth to locate her, making Jupiter finally aware of the great destiny that awaits her: Jupiter’s genetic signature marks her as the next in line for an extraordinary inheritance that could alter the balance of the cosmos.

As directors, the Wachowskis haven’t found much success in big budget films since The Matrix and Jupiter Ascending goes down as one of their (debatably) biggest failures. Although the technical side with the special effects and soundtrack might be nice, its dialogue is bad, its story is predictable and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It’s times like this when I think that The Matrix was a fluke.

The writing for this movie is all over the place and I didn’t really care about what was going on. A lot of the time it felt like the film was padding out the scenes more than it had to as there are lots of exposition scenes full of unnecessary and drawn out dialogue and it does nothing to drive the plot forward. Because of this I felt overall bored with what was going on. The film also has some weird concepts, for example Jupiter can control bees because they are genetically modified to recognise royalty. There is also a romance between Mila and Channing which was really forced, I never really bought the relationship, it comes straight out of nowhere and the film doesn’t seem to have a reason to have it. It doesn’t help that the romantic dialogue is very cheesy and terrible. There are also lots of unresolved plot holes and inconsistencies which really don’t work at all.

Mila Kunis doesn’t seem that well suited in her role, however to be fair she doesn’t have much to work with. Jupiter isn’t given any character depth and doesn’t have an interesting personality. On top of that she doesn’t do much of anything and has to be saved so many times. She doesn’t need to shoot guns or anything but she should at least show leadership or develop by the end of the film. Channing Tatum is decent and does his best to act through his terrible make up. Sean Bean does as much as he can in this movie despite appearing for only 10 minutes. Eddie Redmayne plays the main villain and his performance is basically if you crossed an asthmatic Voldemort with Zod from Man of Steel. He whispers most of his dialogue but sometimes out of nowhere he starts screaming. He was one of the few entertaining aspects of the film for how crazy he was, however it is still a pretty bad performance from a great (and academy award winning) actor.

Some of the designs of the aliens are fine but at times they are really distracting. It’s like the Wachowskis made these designs because they looked similar to other sci-fi designs that other better films used. The visual effects for the most part are nice to watch, even though you can tell that there’s a blue/green screens being used. The action scenes are also well filmed and they were the most entertaining parts of the film. The soundtrack is also quite good, I just wished it was used in a much better Sci-Fi movie.

The best way to describe this film is that it’s like The Phantom Menace with better special effects. There’s a lot of exposition that they try to put in to make the film seem more epic than it really is and the action scenes are the best part of the movie. After many attempts at having a large blockbuster it’s clear that the Wachowskis should take a break from blockbusters.