Daniel Garber talks with Jeff Harris about the Oscars
My Oscar predictions (plus who I want to win):
Best Picture: Oppenheimer (The Holdovers) ✔️
Directing: Christopher Nolan (Justine Triet) ✔️
Actor in a Leading Role: Cillian Murphy (Paul Giamatti) ✔️
Actress in a Leading Role: Lily Gladstone (Emma Stone) ❌ Emma Stone
Actor in a Supporting Role: Robert Downey Jr. (Ryan Gosling) ✔️
Actress in a Supporting Role: Da’Vine Joy Randolph ✔️
Cinematography: Killers of the Flower Moon ❌ Oppenheimer
Film Editing: Oppenheimer ✔️
Costume Design: Poor Things ✔️
Production Design: Barbie ❌ Poor Things
Makeup and Hairstyling: Poor Things ✔️
Music (Original Score): Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ❌ Oppenheimer
Music (Original Song): “I’m Just Ken” (from Barbie) ❌ What Was I Made For? from Barbie
Sound: The Zone of Interest ✔️
Visual Effects: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One ❌ Godzilla
Writing (Adapted Screenplay): American Fiction ✔️
Writing (Original Screenplay): Anatomy of a Fall ✔️
Animated Feature Film: The Boy and the Heron ✔️
Documentary Feature Film: To Kill a Tiger ❌ 20 Days in Mariupol
International Feature Film: The Zone of Interest (Perfect Days) ✔️
Road movies. Io Capitano, Ordinary Angels, Drive Away Dolls
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
The road from the festival circuit to your local cinema is a slow and tortuous one. I reviewed Meredith Hana-Brown’s Seagrass — a moving drama about a young couple and their daughters at an island retreat in BC — five months ago, but it’s finally hitting theatres this weekend — check it out! (Review here).
So, in recognition of that long and twisted path, this week I’m looking at three new road movies. There’s two lesbians in their twenties driving south from Philly, two teenaged boys travelling across the Sahara desert from Dakar, and a middle-aged hairdresser trying to get a little girl to a far-off hospital in time for a transplant.
Io Capitano
Co-Wri/Dir: Matteo Garrone
It’s present-day in Dakar, Senegal. Seydou (Seydou Sarr) is a 16-year-old student who works part time as a builder. With his best friend Moussa (Moustapha Fall) they’re saving money for a major purchase. Their goal? To travel to Europe to make it big as singer-songwriters. But though Seydou’s mother and others object — People die at sea! Europe is not like what they show on TV — the two boys sneak out one night, and head off on their journey. They buy their tickets for a long trip across the Sahara, via Mali and Niger to Tripoli, Libya, and from their on to Europe. They are promised modern new trucks to whiz them there. But they soon discover, the world is full of thieves, swindlers, and worse. They are forced to pay bribes to cross borders. Anyone who falls out of the rusty flatbed trucks is left behind to die. They are set upon by cruel bandits, separating the boys, with Seydou sent to a prison run by the Libyan Mafia. Inmates are subject to extortion and torture. And those who survive are sold into de facto slavery. But, somehow, Seydou makes it to Tripoli. Now he has to find Moussa, and get a boat to take them to Italy. But what will the future bring?
Io Capitano is a powerful, heartfelt drama about two young 
migrants trying to reach Europe. Seydou is a heroic figure who gradually matures from boy to man to leader. (The title means I am the Captain.) Garrone, as in most of his films (Reviews: Dogman, Reality, Gomorrah), again casts first-time actors in the main roles, giving the movie a hyper-realistic feel. Seydou, for one, is amazing, totally believable. And lest you think this is a gruelling journey, it is also filled with music, dance and magical fantasies that appear in Seydou’s mind.
Io Capitano is an uplifting and heroic story.
Ordinary Angels
Co-Wri/Dir: Jon Gunn (Writer/Producer: I Still Believe, American Underdog, Jesus Revolution)
It’s the 1990s in Louisville, Kentucky. Sharon (Hilary Swank) is a hair stylist who owns a beauty parlour. She’s known for her sparkling skirts, fringed leather jackets, and her long, curly hair with frosted tips. She likes getting drunk at roadhouses and dancing on the bar. But her best friend and coworker Rose (Tamala Jones), sees trouble ahead if she doesn’t stop drinking. Clearly, Sharon needs something — a lover, a religion, or a cause — to devote herself to. But her first marriage was a bomb (her adult son won’t even talk with her), and going to church isn’t her thing. But when she spots a local newspaper headline — Man’s wife dies, his 5-year-old daughter is suffering from a rare illness — she decides to do something about it. She starts raising funds at the hair salon, and spreading awareness of this family’s plight. Ed Schmitt (Alan Ritchson) is a simple roofer in debt half a million bucks, and his daughter Michelle (Emily Mitchell) needs expensive treatment. Sharon starts giving him envelopes of cash she raises, but he doesn’t feel comfortable. Why is this strange alcoholic woman giving him money?
But the kids and Ed’s mom take to Sharon like bees to honey. 
She helps him balance his books, and raises money from the bigwigs in Louisville. Soon everyone knows about Michelle’s plight. But when the big day comes for a liver transplant, the city is closed down by a freak snowstorm. And the hospital is halfway across the country. Are Sharon — and the community’s — wits and determination be enough to save a dying girl?
Ordinary Angels is an uplifting, non-preachy faith-based drama about an ordinary woman trying to change the world. It feels a bit manipulative at times, with gushing music, and twinkling stars overhead . Ed barely talks — he’s the strong, silent type, just yes ma’am, no ma’am — and little dying Michelle is way too cute. Luckily, Hilary Swank is just great as the indefatigable Sharon, a woman who won’t take “no” for an answer. Yeah, the movie is a little bit forced and a little too long, but it also tugs your heart-strings in just the right places. And it’s great seeing a large group of people working together in an attempt to save a life. (It’s based on a true story.)
So if you like tear-jerkers, this one is a two-hankie classic, one that’ll leave you crying, for sure.
Drive Away Dolls
Co-Wri/Dir: Ethan Coen
It’s 1999 in Philadelphia.
Jamie and Marion are best friends, but couldn’t be more different. Jamie (Margaret Qualley) has a southern drawl and a wild-at-heart attitude. She’s always up for a roll in the hay with any chick she meets in a lesbian bar. Marian (Geraldine Vishvanathan) is reserved and uptight, stuck in a futureless, cubicle office job. But when Jamie’s long-time girlfriend Sukie (Beanie Feldstein) catches her cheating in their own apartment, she goes ballistic. Sukie is a hot-headed cop and Jamie knows when it’s time to skedaddle. So she decides to go for a drive home to Tallahassee with Marian as her co-pilot. Luckily, Jamie knows about a great deal at Drive Away autos — they deliver the car to Tallahassee and they get the ride for free. What they don’t know, is they’re driving the wrong car, carrying unexpected cargo in the trunk: a metal suitcase… and a human head!
You see, that metal suitcase contains something of crucial importance to someone with a lot of power, and a gang of ruthless men want it back. And they’re racing down the highway trying to catch up with 
Jamie and Marion and take back the suitcase. But the clueless pair are taking their own sweet time, with Jamie smoking pot and meeting up with nubile soccer players in honky-tonk bars and sleazy motel rooms on the way, while Marion has to deal with over-zealous redneck sheriffs. But the criminals are steadily getting closer, and who knows what will happen if they meet. What’s in the metal suitcase? Can Jamie and Marion stay friends? And is there something deeper going on between them?
Drive Away Dolls is an unapologetic B-movie, a non-stop comedy-thriller about lesbians on the road. It’s full of wanton sex and gratuitous violence, though nothing overly explicit. It also features cameos by A-listers like Matt Damon, Pedro Pascal and Colman Domingo. And it’s all strangely interspersed with vintage, psychedelic soft-core hippy-porn, (its meaning only revealed at the end). This is like a Coen Brothers movie, but no Joel. Instead Ethan is paired with longtime film-editor (and wife) Tricia Cooke who also co-directed and cowrote it, apparently based on her own salad days. It’s great raunchy fun. The only thing that puzzles me is, in a movie that’s all about lesbians, why does the trailers completely hide that fact? (Not to mention changing the title from Drive Away Dykes to Drive Away Dolls.) But I guess you have to sell a movie to a broader audience or you won’t get the crowds.
Either way, I really enjoyed this one.
Io Capitano is now playing at the TIFF Lightbox; with Drive Away Dolls and Ordinary Angels both opening theatrically this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
It’s all about the mood. Films reviewed: Bob Marley: One Love, The Taste of Things
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Many film critics — including myself — say that the most important part of a movie is the story. But that’s not always true. This week, I’m looking at two new movies where it’s all about the vibe, all about the mood, not the plot. There’s a cook cooking in 19th century France, and a musician making music in 1970s Jamaica.
Bob Marley: One Love
Dir: Reinaldo Marcus Green
It’s 1976, in Kingston Jamaica. Bob Marley (Kingsley Ben-Adir) and the Wailers are riding high with a string of worldwide hits. But the city is in turmoil, rocked by gang violence in the run up to a crucial election. US guns are flooding into the country. Bob Marley plans a “Smile Jamaica” concert to bring peace and lessen the tension between supporters of the leftist PM Manning and the pro-American conservative candidate Seaga. Bob — known as Skipper to his friends — is Rastafari, an anti-colonialist, afrocentric religion calling for a return to Africa from Babylon. But just days before the concert, Bob, Rita Marley (Lashana Lynch), and others were shot and wounded in a planned assassination attempt, with cars full of armed gang members invading their compound to stop them from singing. The concert goes through as planned, but they are forced to move to London for safety.
There, they put together their next album, Exodus, and embark on a tour of Europe, to be followed by a triumphant trip to Africa, Bob Marley’s dream. The album is a 
huge hit, and his fame grows. But there’s trouble brewing between Bob and Rita, who have known each other since they were kids. They also face financial questions — are they being cheated out of their money by backroom management? And a wound to his foot from a soccer game isn’t healing like it should. Can Bob and Rita work out their problems? Will they ever make it to Africa? And can Bob Marley and the Wailers return to Jamaica and live in peace?
Bob Marley: One Love is the long-awaited biopic about the musician and his life. Aside from a few flashbacks to his childhood and his start as a musician, the film focuses on two years of his life in the 1970s. So we see the musicians playing, in studio and at stadium concerts, hanging out in nightclubs and concert halls, or writing new songs at home. We also see them smoking spliffs (a Rastafarian sacrament) and playing soccer or fussball in their off hours. But what we don’t get much of is Bob Marley’s inner thoughts, his love life, his heart and soul. This is a common problem in hagiographic biopics that are approved every step off the way by his family.
Bob Marley is sanctified, but not humanized — there seems to be a glass wall separating the audience from the character. At the same time, there are some fascinating revelations about his past, and interesting glimpses into the workings of Jamaican music scene (mainly through flashbacks). So we get to see Scratch Perry in studio, and the Wailers grooving on stage. The script is not great, it drags a bit, but photography is quite pretty, and the acting (largely played by British actors speaking Jamaican patois) is believable. Most important of all is the music, which sets the vibe that keeps the film moving all the way to the finish.
It’s the music that makes Bob Marley: One Love worth seeing.
The Taste of Things (La passion de Dodin Bouffant)
Co-Wri/Dir: Tran Anh Hung
It’s the late 19th century, in France. Eugenie (Juliette Binoche) is an haut cuisine cook at a chateau, surrounded by a lush vegetable garden. She’s preparing an elaborate meal for Dodin (Benoît Magimel) and his fellow gourmets. She’s assisted by Violette, the maid, and supervised by Dodin. And what a meal it is, with each dish requiring multiple stages, and dozens of steps. Even something as simple as consommé is actually a complex, refined broth known for its subtle flavours. We follow each step, from picking vegetables in the garden, to sautéing the meat, simmering it, and removing the scum.
This day, there’s a new face in the kitchen, Violette’s young niece. Pauline (Bonnie Chagneau-Ravoire) has a preternatural ability to taste all the elements of a dish, despite not yet developing a refined palate. Perhaps she’ll become Eugenie’s apprentice some day? In the meantime Eugenie takes pains to hide her occasional dizzy spells.
After 20 years, Dodin and Eugenie have an unusual relationship; they work together, 
effortlessly in the kitchen, like a well oiled machine. And at night, if she chooses to do so, Eugenie leaves her chamber unlocked so Dodin can spend the night.
But it’s hard to tell if they are lovers, boss and worker, or husband and wife (with all that entails). What future dishes will they prepare? And will they ever tie the knot?
The Taste of Things is a mouth-watering look at 19th century French cooking. It’s nominally about a relationship, but not really. There’s also a visit to dine with a wealthy prince, and a look at strange new gardening techniques. But the plot is unimportant. As I watched this movie, I wasn’t thinking about why Eugenie has dizzy spells, or trying to keep track of Didot’s gourmet friends. It’s inconsequential.
It’s the food that’s important, the cooking and the eating. I was kept drooling for two hours, trying to guess what they’re making. Oh, that’s vol au vent! What’s with the meringue? Is it Baked Alaska? (a.k.a. omelette à la norvégienne). I was mentally 
cooking alongside the burbling, burnished copper pots on the wood-burning stove. And the eating is remarkable, too, including a scene where the gourmets cover their heads with white napkins as they consume a tiny songbird (known as ortalans) whole.
Certainly, Binoche and Magimel have chemistry — apparently they were once a couple in real life — but not enough to carry the movie. It’s the food — and the mood — that makes watching it worthwhile.
Bob Marley: One Love and The Taste of Things are both playing now in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Life, death. Films reviewed: Lisa Frankenstein, Perfect Days
Audio: Coming soon!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
This weekend is Lunar New Year, a time to push out the old year and bring in the new one, and to think about long-gone ancestors. This week, I’m looking at two new movies both opening this weekend about life and death. There’s an older man who lives his life to the fullest, and a young woman who exults in death and misery.
Lisa Frankenstein
Dir: Zelda Williams
It’s the 1980s. Lisa Swallows (Kathryn Newton) is a unhappy teenager in Wisconsin. She is socially awkward with frizzy hair who loves reading sad poems and listening to The Cure. She works part-time mending garments at a dry cleaner. She moved there with her hapless father who recently remarried after her mom died. Her new stepmother (Carla Gugino), a Nurse Ratchet manqué, treats her like trash. But her stepsister, Taffy, a popular and chirpy cheerleader, (Liza Soberano) goes out of her way to cheer Lisa up. She lets her use her makeup and wear her clothes, to no avail. Lisa prefers to hangout in cemeteries mooning over long-dead young men. The one living guy she’s crushing on is Micheal (Henry Eikenberry), the editor of the school paper. But he already has a girlfriend, a goth rocker who is bigger and meaner than Lisa.
After an awkward incident at a pool party, she gets sloshed on Absinthe and ends up in Bachelor’s Grove, her secret 
graveyard hangout. And, unknowingly, in a pique of drunken wishful thinking, she conjures back to life a young man buried there more than a century earlier. And soon she hears a knocking at her door. It’s a moaning monster (Cole Sprouse) covered in dirt with worms crawling out of his ears, and missing a number of body parts. She screams and runs away, but, gradually she figures out who he is and what he means to her. And after washing him, dressing him up, and putting him in the tanning bed, she decides he isn’t half bad. Lisa changes too, gaining new self-confidence. And she puts her seamstress skills to work by sewing new organs he gives her onto his body. The thing is, these body parts come from people he murders. Will Lisa become a Bonny to his Clyde? And can a human find love with a reanimated corpse?
Lisa Frankenstein is a mildly humorous, high school horror rom-com about a self-styled Dr Frankenstein and the dead man she resurrects. It’s done in a brightly-coloured campy aesthetic, with lots of goth-punk tunes playing in the background. The problem is, it’s not as funny as it thinks it is. It has a slapdash feel to it, and comes across as clunky and misguided. And it seems to side with the conventional, popular kids, portraying the oddballs and introverts as the psycho-killer bad guys. It borrows liberally from horror-comedies like Edward Scissorhands and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but without any pathos for the main characters. There are some good parts: a gross-funny sex scene, and some lovely paper silhouettes that tell the monster’s back story. But most of the movie is as painfully awkward and misbegotten as the monster himself.
I found Lisa Frankenstein disappointing.
Perfect Days
Co-Wri/Dir: Wim Wenders
It’s present-day Tokyo. Hirayama (Koji Yakusho) is a single man in his sixties. He lives a simple life.in a spotless, but threadbare, apartment in a rundown part of town. He likes reading novels, listening to music in his little white minivan he drives and eating lunch outdoors on a park bench. He is thoroughly dedicated to his profession, performing each task with scrupulous care and attention. He’s never late and never breaks the rules, checking off each task as he completes it. What’s surprising, though, is the nature of his job. He cleans the toilets in public parks. And he does so with a smile on his face and a kind word to passersby.
But his daily routine is disrupted by a young assistant, Takashi (Emoto Tokio). Takashi is filled with troubles — he’s undependable, always broke, and perpetual problems with his girlfriend. He needs special attention and special favours. And he’s trying Hirayama’s patience. And when an unexpected visitor shows up at his door in a very expensive car delivering unexpected news, he has to rethink his life. How did Hirayama end up where he is today? What is he running away from? And who will take his place when he retires?
Perfect Days is a wonderful study of a few days in the life of a 
kind, generous and warmhearted man. It’s a joy to watch. Dialogue is sparse to non-existent evoking Jaques Tati and Charlie Chaplin in its perfect simplicity. But it’s not silent. Music plays a big role, mainly singers from the 60s and 70s — Patti Smith, Velvet Underground, Van Morrison — on the cassette tapes he listens to as he drives around. The movie is filled with details, and tiny, continuous storylines, like the anonymous notes he finds in a crack in a wall in a ladies room. Even the toilets themselves are amazing! Things like opaque, tinted glass that magically becomes transparent when you leave the booth, and rest stops disguised as rustic log cabins. And thankfully, no potty mouth or toilet humour anywhere. Though directed by German filmmaker Wim Wenders, this is a quintessentially Japanese movie; it’s even their Oscar nominee this year.
Perfect Days is a perfect film.
Lisa Frankenstein and Perfect Days both open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks with Mia McKenna-Bruce about How to Have Sex
Mia McKenna-Bruce Photography: David Reiss, Hair: Ben Talbot, Make-Up: Sara Hill, Styling: Tilly Wheating
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Tara and her two best friends, Em and Skye, have finished school, written their A Levels and want to celebrate. So, like tens of thousands of others, off they go to a mediterranean resort with more sex, drugs, alcohol and loud music than you can shake a stick at. But the elephant in the room is Tara — she’s a “big fat virgin”, and her mates want to make sure she returns home cured of that ailment. But when the time comes, Tara doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do, who she’s doing it with, and whether she has any say in the matter. And when it doesn’t go as planned, she doesn’t know what to do, or who to turn to. Turns out she still doesn’t know how to have sex.
How to Have Sex is a stunning bittersweet, coming-of-age 
drama about friendship, cultural expectations and consent. It’s writer-director Molly Manning Walker’s first feature and stars Mia McKenna-Bruce as Tara. The film won the prestigious Un Certain Regard Best Film prize at Cannes, and is nominated for best British film at the BAFTA awards. Mia won Best Lead Performance at the British Independent Film Awards and was named Screen International’s ‘Star of Tomorrow’. She has also appeared in many TV shows and films since 2009, including The Witcher, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and Vampire Academy.
How to Have Sex opens in Canada 0n February 9th.
I spoke with Mia in London via Zoom.
Mia won the 2024 BAFTA Rising Star Award on February 18, 2024.
Surprising fantasy lives. Films reviewed: Sometimes I Think about Dying, Argylle
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
February is Black History Month, which is the best time to celebrate black cinema from a historical perspective. The Toronto Black Film Festival is running from Feb 14-19th, showing new features, docs and shorts. This year they’re celebrating actress Pam Grier, with her 70s film Foxy Brown, and in a tribute to the late, great Charles Officer, they’re showing Akilla’s Escape, a thriller set in Toronto. And Sway, Emmanuel Kabongo’s new thriller is having its Canadian premiere at this same festival. Mubi, the streaming site for avant-garde, indie and festival films, is programming black cinema this month in their Cut to Black series. You should check out Samuel D. Pollard’s excellent documentary MLK/FBI about J Edgar Hoover’s wiretapping and execrable treatment of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and his family.
This week, I’m looking at something completely different: two new movies about lonely women with surprising fantasy lives. There’s an office worker who dreams of dying, and a reclusive novelist who dreams of adventure.
Sometimes I Think about Dying
Dir: Rachel Lambert
Fran (Daisy Ridley) — best known as Rey in the Star Wars movies) is a young woman in a small coastal town in the pacific northwest. She works at a dull office job, in charge of supplies and flow charts. Fran likes beige sweaters and cottage cheese. She spends all day staring out the window at ships docking in the harbour, loading and unloading containers by crane. Basically, she’s depressed, bored and lonely; she lives alone and never goes out. The only unusual thing about her — something that she’ll never confess to anyone else — is the strange fantasies that bounce around her head. She pictures herself lying in a grassy forest… dead. She enjoys the calm and peacefulness of being a corpse. She isn’t suicidal, she isn’t a zombie, she just likes the concept.
Until one day, a stranger arrives at the office, taking the place of Fran’s recently retired coworker. Robert (Dave Merheje) comes directly from Montreal. He’s bald and bearded with a dry sense of humour. His big secret is he has never worked in an office job before, and is completely baffled by the culture. They bond through texting, and he eventually asks her out on a date. And suddenly Fran’s life changes for the better. Her fantasies shift from grassy knolls to funeral pyres! They go to an actual party and meet new friends. But will she ever open 
up to him? Can she reveal her secret? And will she ever smile?
Sometimes I Think about Dying is a tender social satire about the boredom of daily life and the bubbling cauldron of emotions lurking just beneath the surface. It feels like an Aki Kaurismaki movie transplanted to small-town USA. Daisy Ridley — the British actor best known as fighter-pilot Rey in the Star Wars franchise — is subtly funny as Fran. And Canadian actor and stand-up comic Dave Merheje is good as her “normal guy” foil Robert. It’s a simple movie, but with enough twisted humour to keep you interested.
It’s cute.
Argylle
Dir: Matthew Vaughn
Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) is a frumpy middle-aged woman who lives with her cat Alfie in a log cabin between a picturesque mountain and a lake. She earns her living writing action novels about a dashing spy named Argylle, who roams the planet on daring missions. Elly, on the other hand, is a homebody who is deathly afraid of flying and will only leave her home to attend a book launch in a nearby city. Her books are bestsellers, with her devoted fans eagerly awaiting #5 in the series. But her mom (Catherine O’Hara) — who proffers advice on all her books before they’re published — says the ending just doesn’t do it.
So she sets off on a train ride to hash through the manuscript with her mother. But everything changes on that train ride, when a stranger — a bearded long-haired man in dirty clothes — aggressively takes the seat across from her and refuses to move. He’s a fan of her books, he says. Turns out the entire train knows exactly who she is… and for some reason, they think her books are the key to the secret world of espionage, and for that reason, want her dead!
This strange man (Sam Rockwell) turns out to be a spy 
himself, fighting for the good guys. He manages to fight off dozens of would be assassins and brings Elly to safety. She grabs her cat and they fly off to Europe. But this is just the first step in a whirlwind journey of international intrigue, where the CIA — the good guys?! — are fighting the bad guys (a sinister cabal known as The Division) for worldwide domination. Why does everyone think her fiction is prophetic? Can frumpy Elly solve these mysteries? And will she ever know the truth?
Argylle is a highly stylized roller-coaster ride of light comedy and high-speed action. The bright colours and extreme violence and mass murder — but with no blood — is fueled by a non-stop infectious disco soundtrack. The movie begins with scenes from her novels where Argylle (a plastic-looking Henry Cavill) and his teammates have unbelievable ridiculous shoot outs and chase scenes in exotic locales. But it soon resets to “real life” where things are slightly more believable. The thing is, it all starts to merge, to the point where “reality’ is even more extreme than “fiction”. In Elly’s mind, her fictional spy Argylle periodically takes the place of her less appealing cohort.
The story makes marginal sense, with so many U-turns and double crosses your head will spin. But that’s not what the movie is about. It’s there for sheer entertainment — a ride on planes, trains and ice skates — as the film chugs along its merry way. Visually, it’s one giant green screen, with endless CGI and special effects, to the point where it’s almost a cartoon. Is that Henry Cavill’s face and hair or a computer generated plastic figurine? Is that Bryce Howard’s breasts or a CGI simulacrum? Who knows? Who cares!
This is all about spectacle, with some truly spectacular scenes of mass murder muted by bright billows of pink and lavender smoke. There’s gun porn, with the camera caressing thousands of assault weapons lined up in a shiny-white tribute to machine guns. And major star power, including Dua Lipa, John Cena, Ariana DeBose, Bryan Cranston, and Samuel L Jackson.
Is Argylle a good movie?
No!! It’s ridiculous, high-budget schlock… but it’s also eye-candy perfection.
Argylle starts this weekend, and Sometimes I think about Dying opens next week; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
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