While not as good as critics would have you believe, it's still the best film of 2015 thus far

Rating: 7/10 (26 March 2015)

I saw two films in two days here, yesterday I saw Chappie which I was told I would hate and actually kinda liked, and today I saw Kingsman, which I was told I would LOVE and actually only kinda liked. As much as I try not to have any expectations going in, there's only so much you can do to avoid that. And because its hard to get a gauge on your outside influences, it can be hard to know just how much not loving a movie was because you had it over-hyped, and how much is because its just not your thing. I had the same problem with Gone Girl, and, like Gone Girl, I'm gonna assume it was predominantly the former and not the latter, and bump it up from three starts to three and a half by the skin of its teeth. Now you may have noticed that I said I "didn't love" it rather than "it was garbage". That's because I liked it, I really liked it and there is a lot you'll carry out from Kingsman that you'll hold on to for a long time. Matthew Vaughn is an absolute goddamn MASTER filmmaker, Colin Firth, Mark Hammil, Sam Jackson, Michael Caine, Mark Strong and Geoff Bell all get to flex their acting muscles here, and that is never gonna fail to get me stoked. You may not have heard of Taron Egerton or Sofie Boutella before, but mar my words, after their performances in this, you're gonna start hearing about them a lot, real damn soon. I'm calling it now, unless they somehow start making some monumentally poor decisions, household names by 2018. I did like Kingsman, and I feel obliged to tell you it earned the right to hold onto the top five box office for over a month, and its appeal is, while not universal, still broad. It may well be the best film of 2015 thus far, but it's also not so glamorous as most would have you believe.