This time Buster Moon (McConaughey) and his friends are tasked with persuading a reclusive rockstar to join them for the opening of a new show.
Those super adorable piggies stole my heart in the first movie. So I’m glad to see them here too, and excited for all the animated cuteness, plus the many big hit songs the movie will feature.
McConaughey is definitely in this but his voice kind of sounds different, no?
Pharrell Williams, Bobby Cannavale, Nick Kroll, Chelsea Peretti, Seth MacFarlane, Letitia Wright, Halsey, Eric André, Adam Buxton, Garth Jennings and Tori Kelly also star.
As confirmed in my recent review of The Greatest Showman– which I loved, I’m a fan of very few musicals. In fact, when a musical comes along that I’m curious enough about, I prepare myself mentally to have to sit through at least 3 musical numbers that I’d much rather skip or fast forward.
The good news about director Dexter Fletcher’s Rocketman, a biography of singer, songwriter, pianist and composer Elton John, is that, even though I wanted to fast forward through two or three musical moments, there were at least three or more that I wish lasted for double the time.
Rocketman is, for me, a notable achievement for all involved. The entire cast, including Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden and Bryce Dallas Howard, performed very well. A great relief since I actually wasn’t sure about Egerton when I heard he’d be playing John. My doubts were very much silenced soon after the film started. Not only did Egerton perform notably musically, but some of my favourite scenes are when he’s portraying the singer at his most vulnerable. I actually had no idea that John’s story was quite so heartbreaking. I’m therefore glad to know how much happier his life appears to be now.
‘Rocketman’, ‘I’m Still Standing’ and ‘Your Song’ are my favourite of all the music performance scenes. I particularly love the scene that shows how ‘Your Song’ actually came to be; a scene as moving as the sentiment behind the song itself.
Egerton and Madden’s on screen chemistry and Bryce Dallas Howard’s performance won’t be forgotten by me anytime soon. I also won’t be forgetting the great friendship at the heart of Rocketman. Said friendship is perhaps the most beautiful part.
Directed by Dexter Fletcher, Rocketman is the story of singer, pianist, and composer Elton John.
Starring Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Richard Madden and Bryce Dallas Howard, Rocketman will show John’s life as a prodigy at the Royal Academy of Music, through to his enduring musical partnership with Bernie Taupin.
Egerton isn’t exactly the first person I’d think of to play John, and so I’ll hopefully find out just how wrong I was for not thinking of him.
I’m also looking forward to finding out something more interesting about John than ‘Reginald Kenneth Dwight’, the name his parents gave him.
Steven Mackintosh, Michel Alexandre Gonzalez, Gemma Jones and Kamil Lemieszewski also star.
The Robin Hood story of an audacious revolt against the corrupt English crown has been refreshed for a new outing.
Directed by Otto Bathurst; key cast includes Taron Egerton, Jamie Dornan, Jamie Foxx and Ben Mendelsohn.
Before I knew that Bathurst was in charge, I couldn’t help but think of Guy Ritchie as the director while this trailer played. I’m in to see Egerton have even more fun on screen.
Eve Hewson, Josh Herdman and Tim Minchin also star.
Kingsman – The Golden Circle (2017), Taron Egerton, Mark Strong
This isprobably unsurprising since Kingsman – The Golden Circleis a sequel but I did not enjoy this movie as much as the original. In director Matthew Vaughn’s sequel, the Kingsman head offices are blown up and the kingsmen must team up with an allied spy organisation in the US.
Not that Kingsman – The Secret Service (2014)was super realistic, but something about this follow-up felt quite ridiculous. Starting with the opening scene; somehow it just didn’t feel as thrilling as I’d ordinarily expect.
Part of the problem is that I found myself immediately disappointed with the story’s choice of villain, the one we meet in the first few minutes. There’s also the fact that everything happened so suddenly, and so quickly, whereas I somehow wanted or perhaps expected to be eased into the action, as odd as that may sound.
This movie has one or two fight sequences that hearkened back to the first film. These scenes played a little too ‘the same’, for my liking. In this way they reminded me of part of the reason why Quantum Of Solace (2008) was such a terrible follow-up to the brilliant Casino Royale (2006). It tried too hard to almost repeat so much of what worked so very well in the first movie.
As for the matter of the main villain of vaughn’s movie, let’s just say that I have officially found a Julianne Moore performance I do not like. In the role of the villain, I did not fully buy into her evil, which begs the question, is her face simply far too angelic for the kind of moral turpitude required? Maybe. What I know for sure is that I didn’t see it in her eyes or feel it through her words and I needed to.
Luckily, there is some good news here; namely the beautifully executed ‘singing scene’ towards the end. I was moved. Overall though, my favourite scene in this film has to be the ‘infiltration’ of Poppy’s compound. That’s the moment I saw a fight scene that truly felt as though it belonged to Kingsman – The Golden Circle. Rather than something borrowed from Kingsman – The Secret Service and as a result, proved tedious.
