Chris At The Pictures

Adapted from Kick-Ass collaborator Mark Millar’s comic book, Kingsman: The Secret Service is the latest offering from director Matthew Vaughn. Veteran agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth) takes streetwise teenager Eggsy (Taron Egerton) under his wing as the world is threatened by megalomaniac eco-warrior Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson).

The characters – whilst enjoyable to be around – are paper-thin from the offing. Colin Firth fills in the father-figure/gentleman spy role and Taron Egerton is the charming if predictable child prodigy who we all know will develop into the hero. Mark Strong is a reliable screen presence (even if his Scottish accent isn’t) and Samuel L. Jackson gets to deliver the funniest lines in the film whilst Vaughn proves yet again that he cannot write female characters to save his life (Eggsy’s pug sidekick appears to have more screen-time than Sophie Cookson as Roxy).

Where Vaughn really excels is as an action director: unlike the awkward and heavy set-pieces of an Olivier Megaton project, the fight sequences in Kingsman are delirious and erratic yet expertly directed, light on their feet but skull-crackingly felt. His trademark approach to violence is ever-present and you will chuckle as much as you wince. The editing is continuously stylish (presented in the director’s usual golden-yellow colour scheme) and though it tends to beat you over the head a little with the ‘style’, it never becomes dull even after an outrageously protracted sequence in a church that pushes the 15 certificate to the very limit.

Aside from the comic violence, there’s an awful lot of geezers-versus-poshboys snickering, Bond pastiche and (towards the end) a very poorly handled sequence of bawdy humour that is increasingly infantile and – much like the entire plot – will fall apart if you stop and think about it for more than two seconds. But the film prevents that by simply upping the ante every five minutes so you’re too busy trying to keep up with the pace to pause for thought, a problem (if indeed it is a problem) exacerbated by a cracking soundtrack that begins with Dire Straits’ Money for Nothing and goes up from there.

Politically bonkers and flimsily written but packed with inventive gadgets, villains and quips to rival Bond, Kingsman is an entertaining if forgettable action flick whose spell will be broken the instant you leave the cinema. Despite half the synapses in your brain screaming at you to stop watching – that it’s riddled with cliché and the characters are one-dimensional and the whole thing is throwaway nonsense – you’ll have a lot of fun, and having fun is what Vaughn does best.

★★★☆☆

From acclaimed director Christopher Nolan, Interstellar sees retired pilot Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) depart on a desperate mission to save what is left of mankind. With an intrepid group of space explorers in tow (including previous Nolan collaborator Anne Hathaway), Cooper is forced to leave his children behind on a dying Earth and search for new life among the stars, by way of a newly discovered wormhole.

In the past, despite his many technological or visual achievements, Nolan has often been criticised for a lack of emotion in his movies, and Interstellar proves once and for all that this is nonsense: the central performances from Matthew McConaughey and Mackenzie Foy as his daughter Murph are powerhouses of emotion, and I’ll let my tear-stained face attest to that. Usual Nolanites Anne Hathaway and Michael Caine put in fine turns, but annoyingly the most surprising and interesting performance I can’t actually talk about because of (very complex) plot reasons.

Without the guiding hand of usual cinematographer Wally Pfister and with a heavier reliance on digital effects than most of his back catalogue, Nolan has somehow managed to pull of the most visually awe-inspiring film since Gravity. Hoyte Van Hoytema perfectly captures the grounded, dust-caked world of Earth whilst the injection of CGI is blended seamlessly with the physical locations and sets. There is considerable debt owed to 2001: A Space Odyssey, but the coldness many find in Kubrick is refuted by the aforementioned performances.

Composer Hans Zimmer has been scoring movies for over twenty years, and going into Interstellar I was slightly concerned as to what direction he’d take the piece, and whether his goldmine of composition would finally run dry: I needn’t have worried for a second, because the film contains his finest work. The bombast of Man of Steel and the honking of Inception is thrown away and replaced with an ethereal, pulsing soundtrack that is based on an incredibly simple two-note foundation but grows to encompass the galaxy-spanning journey of the film.

At its heart, the film looks like a high-concept genre picture but expands into something much more, taking on philosophy, theoretical science and morality and emerging not only unscathed but triumphant. The nearly three-hour running time gives the story time to introduce these complex issues and trusts that they will take hold and develop within the audience without feeling long or languorous at all. It is completely unafraid to challenge the audience and even Nolan’s staunchest critics have to accept this.

Interstellar is an incredible experience, marrying the visual ballet of Kubrick with the tangible reality of the original Star Wars and the heart of Spielberg. If we strip away the stunning visuals, expertly-woven plot and the entrancing soundscape, we are left with the heart-rending story of a father and daughter torn apart by space and time but whose love transcends both. Only one question remains: where can Nolan go from here?