#2,391: Kingsmen: The Golden Circle
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me - ★★★☆☆
After wrapping up The Return, it was time to go back to the movie and look for clues. I thought the insights of the new show would make the movie more palatable. What I'd forgotten was that the chunk of the movie that relates to The Return, the first part with Chet Everett, was always the good part. Then they stick you with hours and hours of garbage about Laura Palmer. I've never cared about Laura Palmer. She's an impossible character with an insane, retroactively engineered to do list.
Logan Lucky - ★★★☆☆
I was clueless about this one. I didn’t know who was in it, what it was about, or that it was another experimental Soderbergh project. Which is a shame, because I like experimental Soderbergh projects. So it was only chance that I got to see this one. And I liked it! I’m a little suspicious that the logic might not exactly hold up, and there was a part where I got all distracted wondering if people in the Carolinas refer to freeways with a "the" in front of their names. Other than that, a fun heist.
I just need to see Lucky now, so in case the awards season is lousy there’s a chance that my top ten list for the year might include Logan, Lucky, and Logan Lucky!
Kingsman: The Golden Circle - ★★½☆☆ I didn’t love the original but this one clicked for me. You know right from the opening that it’s all nonsense and somehow I felt free to get on board. Like you know it’s Brave and the Bold, not Batman Begins, so don’t worry about what the grappling hook is attached to.
When I saw the original I wondered how they were going to do a sequel without the most / only interesting character. Then, as though out of spite, he’s both a) in this movie anyway, just because, and b) bland.
I bet that people making spy movie sequels just love doing that meta joke of repeating gags from the first one, because it’s like getting paid again for the same screenpla–I mean, because it’s a bitingly satirical look at the formulaic nature of classic Bond movies.
Also, I wonder if action scenes where everything is played back a little too fast (see: Civil War, Fury Road) read as sped-up to ‘normal’ viewers. (Normal used in this case to refer to people who aren't editors doing tricky things to video all day.)