iTunes Exclusive Episode Kingsman The Golden Circle

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Number 318, keep in a moving, welcome.
My name is Rob, I am the executive producer of the Clubhouse Podcast and this is the
first one that I've been able to be an active participant in a minute.
Probably about three or four weeks now?
Not just asking questions, go figure.
I'm not alone for this particular episode, joining me in the co-host chair as she does
from time to time is the lady of the house and another active participant in tonight's
discussion.
She is Jen Roe, welcome friend.
Welcome, hello.
I'm welcoming you.
Normally we would have the official fact checker of this show, Don Ford, you may know him
is fond, don go, but his mom made him in Don Ford, I'm going to call him Don Ford.
Normally he would be with us tonight, but he is actually down in Houston working, helping
some of the victims of Hurricane Harvey get the benefits they need, Don works for the
state.
So he's going to be down there for the next couple of weeks.
He raised his hand and said, I want to go, I want to help these people need our services
and I can do it and he got chosen to send down there.
So faith, we love you if you need us, call us.
Yeah, he called me today at work the day that we're recording this.
He said that there's over 400,000 applications that still haven't been processed.
So Don, we're with your brother, please stay safe, please get home safe.
Yes, faith, if you need anything, you know how to find us, we're not hard to find.
Whenever we do one of these, it is to review something.
This is no exception to that rule.
Matthew Vaughan is a guy, he kind of gets to do what he wants to do.
This is the guy that directed Kickass, it's the guy that brought us Kingsman, the Secret
Service.
But today we're going to talk about the sequel to that Kingsman, the Golden Circle.
And before we get rolling, got us in a shout out to some of our favorite people in the
world.
All I did in the great marketing, they did a great job at this, they always do it easier.
And when they go baffo like they did for this screening, Josh and Tanya and everybody
over there, they were stamp and temporary tattoos on people's arms and fidget spinners
and a table with glasses on it that you could take your picture with and the eye glasses
and the high ball glasses, like they, I love it when they do cool stuff.
And it was smooth.
It was organized.
It was organized.
Angelica did great.
Tows at the Angelica because, you know, it's been three years, almost three and a half
now since Kingsman, the Secret Service, took the world by storm based on a graphic novel
called the Secret Service.
There were definitely some liberties taken from Mark Miller's graphic novel.
Right.
And I read the first issue and I really didn't have a problem with the liberties that they
took.
So we're going to do the sequel.
Yes.
Takes place a year after the events in Kingsman, the Secret Service.
EGZ played by Terran Edgerton is, he's well-established as Kingsman after the events that took
place in the middle of the first one.
We don't want to talk too much about it.
If you haven't seen it, we're not going to spoil it for you.
I've been granted it's been two and a half years.
What are you doing?
What?
He is, you know, he's balancing his super spy life with, he's trying to have a relationship
with Princess Tilday.
She's back in this one.
Oh, yes.
If you remember her from the end of the first one, that's all we'll say.
And he's balancing friendships with, you know, we didn't have that last time.
We had Roxy.
Roxy still, she's a Kingsman and she is the Lance a lot where he is, I don't want to ruin
anything.
So if you haven't seen the first one, they're still dealing with Merlin played by
Mark Strong.
He runs into an old friend, which turns into an opening chase scene, we were just right
out of the gate.
Here we go.
Let's get that heart going.
Shift to Cambodia, where the biggest drug dealer in the world lives.
Her name is Poppy.
She is played by Julianne Moore.
She decides that she doesn't want to live in seclusion anymore.
So she is going to unleash a virus on the world that will help her get her drugs legalized
and she'll be able to do whatever she wants.
And through a series of events, which we won't talk about, I've seen the trailer, I mean,
they give it away in the trailer, but we're not going to give it away here.
Exy and Merlin end up needing help from what they find out is their American counterparts
called Statesman in Kentucky, where their guys with Kingsman, their cover is a Taylor
shop.
Statesman's cover is a bourbon distillery, and I have to ask you a question.
Yes, ma'am.
Are you going to suit up?
Or are you going to boot up?
Exactly.
I will suit up.
Me and boots.
Nah.
Yeah.
Not really a thing.
I'm just saying it.
It's happened.
Don't get me wrong, but not really a thing.
The cast in the movie, I'm happy either way from the single female perspective.
Just say it.
Nicely done.
So they come out, they find out and they meet as with Kingsman because they're British
and they're gentlemen and ladies.
They're all codenamed after Knights of the Round Table.
Where has Statesman, as you said, booting up, they're in a distillery.
So all of their codenames are after Whistler after alcohol.
Bar drinks, yes.
Yes.
So you have Halle Berry, who plays ginger ale.
You have Channing Tatum, playing Tequila.
You have, oh, I just lost his name.
I shouldn't have lost his name because I know who he is.
He's from Narcos on Pedro Pascal plays Whiskey.
And he's also a Chilean actor.
Yes he is.
He's on Narcos.
Well, but I mean, he's also a Chilean.
And then you have Champagne, also known as Champ, played by Jeff Bridges.
So once there's a little bit of awkwardness at first because they don't really know about
each other, but then they end up teaming up to try to, again, save the world.
There's also some other great actors in this.
I don't want to give away too much.
No, I did find one thing interesting.
There is an actress whose first name is Poppy.
She does not play Poppy.
But there's a character Poppy in the movie.
And that being a unique name that just struck me as a comic book.
Poppy Deleving, who plays Clara.
She's an ex-girlfriend of a bad guy that they have to go get information from.
Yes.
But I just thought it was cool to have a real named Poppy and an actor Poppy.
So when I looked at, when we talk about my written review, currently located at www.theclubhousepodcast.com.
That's our website.
I open my opening line states, at the time that I write this,
the rotten tomatoes rating on this is not even 60%, which was surprising to me.
I will say in my opinion, this is not as good as the first one,
but for very minute detail reasons.
This is an enjoyable film.
This is a fun film.
It's two hours and 20 minutes.
This is where the main difference between the first and this film come to me.
The first film is only 10 minutes shorter than this one.
This one felt longer.
The pacing on the secret service I thought was better.
But with the first film, you're really only telling one main story.
And it's more about EGZ's journey to become a part of Kingsman or not,
with the side of the Valentine story kind of working its way in.
Here, you're dealing with three or four different storylines all at the same time.
So you're stretching things a little thinner.
The pacing did get a little slow for me in a few places.
Watch gauge was still 30 minutes.
Not bad.
Again, once we get to the EGZ walks out of the shop, chase scene starts.
I mean, we deal right in.
It's some of the exposition gets a little bit rough for me.
It didn't take me out of it.
I still enjoyed this film.
I had a blast watching this movie.
The audience made this one so much better for me because there were moments.
I mean, it was like, why did you see the first one theatrically?
Yes, but it was later after it had been out for a bit.
A little light in the run.
So this was, of course, press core and people who stood in line for hours to be able to sneak in.
They didn't sneak in, they got it.
I mean, sneak peak.
To get you to go to the sneak preview.
Yes, not.
Yeah, for us, it's a press screen.
For them, it's a sneak preview.
Yeah, they were allowed in.
They stood in line and did their time to do it.
Right.
There were some things in this one that really just made it better.
But there were moments, I mean, the audience was owing and eyeing and cheering.
And there was some hooting and holler.
I mean, and I admit at one point, I felt like I was at a constant.
I was not as cheering the performer who is one of my all-time favourite performers,
but I'm not going to, you know, just...
Oh, you saw him at the cameo?
Yes.
Yeah, actually took that out of Don's review.
Yeah.
Because I don't know that I missed it in trailer, but I didn't know.
Right.
So I don't want to spoil that for anybody else.
But great moments out of that individual.
There's several hidden things with that too.
Oh, absolutely.
You can't have to catch.
And, you know, you can reach out to me through...
Yeah, you want to talk to us off here?
No, we'll tell you.
I'm happy to tell you what I'm talking about.
But it was just a lot of fun...
You were air on a side of caution then.
Yes.
But it was kind of like seeing when the last Star Wars came out.
The audience was really into this and it made it more enjoyable.
Yeah, there were little places that the pacing was a little slow.
Mm-hmm.
I actually enjoyed this one better.
Did you really?
There was one slightly uncomfortable scene, but it was a quick scene and it was one of
those where it's like, are they going to go there?
Yeah, they're going to go there.
Okay, done.
This is definitely not for kids.
No.
But I will say the graphic violence, not as over the top as it was in the first one.
Right.
There's some great fight scenes.
Yes.
And there is still some blood and gore, but not to the excess of the last one.
No.
There's nothing...
And that didn't deter it for me either.
No.
It made it better for me.
I thought the fight choreography was a little bit tighter, except for the church scene
and the first one.
Like, that's one of the most...
It took them two weeks to film that.
Oh, a week to scout it and then another week to film it.
Yeah, there's some fighting with the one of the statesmen.
And you're seeing these things and it's like, man, the rifleman, if he could have done
that would have been so awesome, if he could have done that himself.
Yeah, I mean, there's the gunplay in this is great.
The weapons use in this is great.
There is a nice little homage to the first film at one point.
There's actually two or three that I caught.
Well, one for sure.
Yes.
And...
Literally the same.
Yeah, but you knew that.
You knew he was going there.
Yes, he had to lean over to me and a rob going last.
You know, you know him.
But we love you, Rob.
We just have to shout out.
I will be done.
You're talking to me.
Oh, my God.
I'm Rob.
That's done.
This is after work.
I know.
I get brain points.
So, I mean, like I said, it didn't take away from my enjoyment of it.
I'm a huge fan of Mark Strong, especially in the role of Merlin.
It's my synestro and I will acknowledge that film.
I don't care what anybody says.
I enjoyed Green Lantern.
Go Pound Sand.
I insisted to go see it and I loved it.
I enjoyed it very much.
This film is one of those.
And I guess maybe people are putting too much expectation on it.
And I think that's maybe where some of the negativity is coming from.
But outside of the pacing of it, I had no issues.
Now, I had so much fun with this one.
There's a couple of actors that I thought there would have been more of that there weren't.
And that's all I'm going to say there.
I will say there was just enough Halle Berry not to annoy me.
She did really well as ginger ale.
And she stayed, it gave her just enough screen time so that she could be on screen
and not enough for me to go.
So, I'll take it.
And she did it all day long.
She did good with the part.
She did? She did a very good job.
I was pleased with the acting pretty much across the board.
And there's some, I guess there's some other stuff in there that we're not going to talk about.
Because there's another whole subplot too.
Oh, yeah.
That if you don't know, I ain't telling you.
But the very first teaser poster that was ever released for it gave it away.
For those of you that do know about that little spoiler,
I will say it's handled in a way that great any film like this is going to be a suspension of disbelief.
There's a level of that.
But the way they handled that particular character,
I was like, okay, I can roll with this.
I can roll with this.
It's still a little bit shaky, but I've seen worse ways to reintegrate a character.
And we know it's a spy movie.
And they do push the past reality of what spies have the abilities to do.
But it's kind of fun to see the toys.
Yeah.
Well, that's that suspension.
I mean, it makes it so much fun to add like, oh my gosh, that would be so cool to do.
And then you're also going, okay, are they going to push this?
Man, they went way past the background.
And Jane Goldman back as the co-writer.
She co-wrote the first one.
So there's a lot of great moments in this.
It is two hours and twenty minutes.
That's my only real complaint that I did feel it.
And that could have been because I was not feeling well at the time.
And I was a little more time-conscious than normal.
I'll, when I go back and see it again, because that's going to happen.
I will, when I sit through it again, when I'm back at a hundred percent,
I think I'll be a lot better with it.
Yeah.
So anything else you want to talk about for the final analysis?
I think I covered all my points.
All right. Well, the way we do the final analysis on this show,
we're not going to give you a thumbs up, thumbs down.
We're not going to give you a letter grades.
We're not going to give you trends, emitters, anything like that.
The way we do this, we're going to ask two questions.
Question number one is, would you see this film again?
If the answer is no, then we're done here.
But if the answer is yes, here's how we measure it.
From the best of the best to the worst of the best.
Full price of the theater, down to twilight, down to matinee,
down to early morning, down to second run at the dollar theater,
down to you actually leaving your house and getting it from red box,
down to you streaming it on Netflix, down to for you waiting it on cable.
Would you see this again?
Yes.
How far are you willing to go?
Full price and pre-order the Blue Ray DVD.
I absolutely agree with every word you just said.
I definitely will see this again theatrically.
I've got some other friends that are fans.
I have told Chad that he is not allowed to read any spoilers
at all about this film.
Oh, yeah, no.
And he was just like, okay.
If you've seen the film and you know Chad,
you know what I'm talking about.
I want his reaction to be pure.
I wouldn't be there to see that reality.
And it ain't going to take long.
I will, because I own the first one on Blue Ray.
I own this one on Blue Ray too.
It's a fun spy movie.
Matthew Vaughan did it again.
It's just so much fun.
It is Kingsman, the golden circle.
Thanks again to everybody at Allied Integrated Marketing.
Some of our favorite people in the entire world
who give us the chance.
Josh, Tanya, everybody over there.
I got a fidget spinner.
I've never owned a fidget spinner.
I've got one now too.
And I've been using the cramp out of it the last few days.
Oh, yeah. One of my coworkers was like,
how'd you get that?
The movie's not out yet.
And I said, go see it.
You need to go see it.
My wife was incredibly jealous.
She's like, you got a fidget spinner.
She's like, yeah, I did.
You should come.
But thank you guys over at Allied for everything you do for us.
We love the fact that they give us the opportunity to see films
in advance so that we can tell you our empire about it.
So you can make good decisions with your harder and dollar.
That being said, let's do the plugs.
Visit our website.
We've mentioned it a couple of times.
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My normal co-host for this show is Chad Womack.
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I'm Jen Rome-Home on Instagram.
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You can follow him at F-A-N-D-O-N-U.
I think there's like fouros in there.
I don't remember.
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Email him.
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Brittany Palmer, I'm telling you.
It's a spy movie.
You put pretty ladies in the spy movies.
Come on, man.