Triple Feature: Focus, Kingsman, and Chappie Reviews

Three reviews for the price of one!


So there I was. Sitting on a plane heading for England. Past midnight. With an old drunk woman leaning her head against me as she slept. Literally caught in between a rock and a 30,000 foot drop into the middle of the Atlantic. So with over seven hours on a plane with nothing to do besides sleep, I made the bold decision to binge watch some movies on a plane. So... here are all the movie's that I've seen on my flight over. And all of them are actually going to be scored. Yaaaaaaaaay!

Now because I'm doing three at once, they're not going to be in as much detail as my other reviews. They're going to be quick, cut and dry, and right to the point. No fluff, just pure, unadulterated, opinion. So in no particular order, here's every movie I saw while an old woman snored on my shoulder.

Focus (February 20th, 2015)

This is pretty much the exact polar opposite to Fifty Shades of Grey in nearly every respect. This movie is stylish, has great chemistry between Will Smith and Margot Robbie, and is actually a sly little love story. From the first few minutes, I was hooked watching this movie. It's a movie about con artists falling in love while conning the hell out of people, and both aspects work. It's a great crime drama and a great romance. Why don't these two genres mix more often?

The soundtrack in particular is great, and can I just say how nice it is to see Will Smith again in a legitimately good role? Seriously, nearly every movie he's been in for the past few years have been awful, but we let him coast by because we know he could do better. And he is doing better. This is him being better. This is Will Smith at his most Will Smith. And dear lord is Margot Robbie good in this movie. I mean, it's not just because her and Will Smith are a beautiful, sexy couple that makes me jealous of my own sexual prowess and makes me want to be either/both of them. That's not it at all...

If there is one low mark I can say about the movie is that there's a really weird time jump that happens halfway through for no real particular reason. Focus feels like two hour long episodes of a miniseries smashed together. They don't have anything to do with each other besides the fact that they're both con artists doing con artisty things. And there's no real reason for the time skip besides... umm... actually I don't know why there is a time skip in this movie. It just doesn't work. Weird. 

Still, great movie. Surprised I didn't see it before, but hey, now I can say I saw a good romance movie this year.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (February 13th, 2015)

Hot damn, in a year where Spectre is coming out, it's going to be tough to decide which is the better British spy movie. I adored Kingsman for being a 21st century James Bond movie, more so than Skyfall or Casino Royale. There's just so much energy and livelihood here that it's impossible to not love it. True, most of the movie is just one long training montage and only in the last 15 minutes does our main character actually go on a secret spy mission, but the buildup and the characters make it worth it in the end.

The two things that really drive this movie home for me are Samuel L. Jackson as the main villain, Mr. Valentine, a tech savy American, and I do mean AMERICAN, that is trying to make paradise on Earth, save the world, blah blah blah, but who cares about his plan? It's SAMUEL L. JACKSON trying to take over the world as an over charismatic American. What's not to love? Then you have a single, incredible fight scene in a Church that will rock your socks off. Plus it plays to Free Bird, one of the best rock songs period. It's just so good.

There's hope for a sequel, and after seeing this movie, I want more of it. I want more British spies. I want more intense action. I want more sleek and stylish movies filled with life. I just want more Kingsman damnit!

Chappie (March 6th, 2015)

Wow this movie was unimpressive. I have nothing against Neill Blomkamp, but there was nothing about this movie that kept me interested. When it first came out, everyone was comparing it to Short Circuit, a movie about a cute little robot that eventually develops a soul and personality. Take that child friendly concept, and turned it into a hard R-rated drama (?) about life, death, and my God I don't care.

It's not that I'm not a sci-fi fan, far from it, but there are too many weird things in this movie to stop me from enjoying it. Okay, so it's set in South Africa. That's fine. But then we have Die Antwood, a music group that I have never heard in my life appear as arguably the main characters... and they're called my their stage names of Yolandi and Ninja. So there are characters actually named Yolandi and Ninja, but they're real people, but they're made up for the movie, but one of them becomes a robot, and I just don't know. 

This movie was all about the feels, but I didn't care about the feels. Nothing happened here for ages, but apparently we were supposed to care about everything. People died, people became robots, and I guess that now a few people have been digitized and now can flow from robot to robot? Chappie definitely wasn't for me, but if you're a Die Antwood fan, this will probably be the greatest film i the history of ever. 

So there you have it! Three movies in three short paragraphs each! Out of all of them, I can't decide whether Focus is better than Kingsman, but both of them were definitely better than Chappie. Sunrise, sunset, now for me to start binge watching massive loads of anime for two seasonal reviews!