Spies, mansions and ‘pompyang’
THIS week’s Hollywood blockbuster is “Argylle.” It’s directed by Matthew Vaughn whose resumé as a director should give you a good idea of the feel of the movie; he did “XMen: First Class,” “Kick-Ass” and “The Kingsman” franchise films.
Argylle is about a spy novel author who gets caught up in a real life “Mission Impossible” type scenario. It’s an action comedy that gets more and more outrageous the further along it gets. Bryce Dallas Howard and Sam Rockwell leads the cast along with Henry Cavill, John Cena, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, Samuel Jackson, Ariana DeBose and Dua Lipa.
It’s fast paced, funny, with a lot of twists. I just found it a bit too long at 136 minutes. It might have been better with a tight two. Stick around for the credits as there’s a surprise scene.
To viewers of “The Crown,” Emerald Fennel is known as the actress who played Camilla Parker-Bowles. She was part of the season where so many members of the cast were up for and/or won awards (Helena Bonham-Carter, Olivia Colman, Emma Corrin, Josh O’Connor, Gillian Anderson).
She didn’t get an acting award that year but she did take home the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for “Promising Young Woman” (which she also directed and produced).
Her latest movie, “Saltburn,” is bizarre, darkly funny, slightly disturbing and freaky. People have called it “Brideshead Revisited” meets “The Talented Mr. Ripley.”
The extremely talented Barry Keoghan (“Banshees of Inisherin”) plays Oliver Quick, a somewhat awkward student at Oxford who is on the outside looking in on the world of the popular, gorgeous and loved Felix Catton.
Felix is played by “Euphoria’s” Jacob Elordi, another actor who is getting just as busy as Keoghan these days. A series of events results in Oliver getting invited to the Catton’s mansion for the summer and things go quickly haywire from there.
Rosamund Pike and Carey Mulligan are fabulous in this and there’s not enough of them. There are some neurotically erotic scenes. I wouldn’t watch this one with family.
Fennel is co-writer the script for “Ballerina,” the next film in the John Wick franchise. Barry Keoghan was “The Unseen Prisoner” in “The Batman” who we now know to be The Joker. The details on that character figuring in the sequel are unavailable. You can find him on Apple TV’s “Masters of the Air” with Austin Butler (Elvis).
Jacob Elordi can also be seen currently playing Elvis in “Priscilla,” he’ll also be The Monster in Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming “Frankenstein.”
The celebrated directorial debut of Martika Ramirez Escobar, “Leonor Will Never Die,” which probably had more screenings internationally than it did here, is finally out of Netflix.
Shiela Francisco is great as Leonor, a script writer of those action movies we saw a lot of in the 70’s and 80’s. She gets hit by a giant TV — the kind we watched the reruns on. She’s knocked unconscious in our world but gets sucked into a movie she wrote with all the usual cliches and tropes like the abusive mayor/ mayor’s son/ goons/ the “pompyang” fight move/ tumbling/ the damsel who dances in the club.
“Leonor” is an homage to movies, to the love of movies and a bit of a family dramedy.
“Argylle” is out in cinemas and at the IMAX, “Saltburn” is out on Amazon Prime.