‘Argylle’

Fun but ultimately silly and shallow, agent Wilde needs to protect novelist Elly Conway whose series of spy novels seem to be more than fiction.

Author Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her fictional spy hero Argylle (Henry Cavill) constantly top the best seller lists. Yet nervous and neurotic, she rarely leaves the isolation of her home. But with demands for the conclusion of the fifth and final book, a train journey to her parents’ home proves to be a journey straight out of her own imagination. It’s Aidan Wilde (Sam Rockwell) who needs to protect her as Conway finds herself drawn into the world of espionage. Little is how it’s portrayed in the books – with the normally timid Conway surprising herself.

Well inside his comfort zone of espionage parody, director Matthew Vaughn keeps the plots and subplots of excess coming, some more ridiculous than others. We’ve seen it all before but Argylle still has its moments.

Rating: 51%

Director: Matthew Vaughn (Kingsman: The Secret Service, Stardust)

Writer: Jason Fuchs (I Still See You, Ice Age: Continental Drift)

Main cast: Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World Dominion, The Help), Sam Rockwell (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Vice), Henry Cavill (Justice League, Enola Holmes)

’Killers of the Flower Moon’

Deeply respectful slow burn of a feature as, following the discovery of oil on Osage Nation land in 1920s Oklahoma, Native Indians standing to benefit are murdered – with no enquiry into the cause of death.

An aimless Ernest Buckhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives in town and, taken in by his wealthy uncle William ‘King’ Hale (Robert De Niro), is encouraged to marry a member of the Osage to ensure inheritance of their wealth. Buckhart befriends and later marries Mollie (a heartrending Lily Gladstone), one of four sisters heirs to a small fortune. Three of the sisters are murdered in extreme circumstances with the authorities doing little to investigate.

Conflicted, Buckhart struggles. He loves his wife and mother of his children. But King is only too happy to remind him of the reason why he married her in the first place. Family first – in this instance, white blood family rather than through marriage. The Osage Native Indians are ultimately disposable in order to achieve long term objectives – ensuring wealth acquired through oil finds its way into the pockets of the ‘right’ people. Until, finally, investigators from the fledgling FBI, led by Jesse Plemons, arrive.

At three and a half hours, Killers of the Flower Moon is an epic in commitment of time, energy and emotion. No broad brushstroke for director Scorsese as, through quiet pacing and detailed minutiae, he builds the twisted, tragic dark side of human nature. Brutal, yet unlike Goodfellas or The Irishman, one of his most thoughtful and self-reflective.

Nominated for 10 Oscars in 2024.

Rating: 74%

Director: Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, The Irishman)

Writer: Eric Roth (A Star is Born, Munich), Martin Scorsese (Goodfellas, Silence) – based on the book by David Grann

Main cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street, The Revenant), Lily Gladstone (First Cow, Fancy Dance), Robert De Niro (Goodfellas, The Irishman)

‘The Family Plan’

Entertaining if predictable, a family man and star car salesman is exposed as an ex-government assassin when his photo appears on social media.

Family life has suited Dan Morgan (Mark Wahlberg) just fine for the last 20 years. Only his wife Jessica (Michelle Monaghan) and three kids know nothing of his prior life. When his photo appears on social media, their safe Buffalo lifestyle comes to an end and the Morgans are forced on a road trip to Las Vegas where new identities and passports await. As long as McCaffrey (Ciarán Hinds) and his henchmen do not get to them first as they pass through Ohio, Nevada and Colorado.

Original it’s not but The Family Plan is a fun, entertaining ride with a likeable cast and a family full of secrets. Sure, plot lines are left dangling with little follow up and on reflection, it’s all a little dumb. But there’s a certain charm to proceedings in spite of the numerous shoot outs.

Rating: 57%

Director: Simon Cellan Jones (Some Voices, TV’s Years and Years)

Writer: David Coggleshall (Prey, Orphan: First Kill)

Main cast: Mark Wahlberg (The Fighter, The Departed), Michelle Monaghan (Gone Baby Gone, Source Code), Ciarán Hinds (Belfast, Road to Perdition)

’Fingernails’

Technology is able to measure love. The Love Institute is there to prove it – fail the test and you can save yourself wasted years and broken hearts. It’s all about fingernails. Remove a fingernail from each couple and the machine will do the rest.

Anna (Jessie Buckley) took the test with partner Ryan (Jeremy Allen White) three years earlier. Their domestic life mirrors the positive results. But there’s a nagging doubt for Anna, in part due to an idealistic concept of what love actually means. Losing her teaching job sees Anna take up a support assistant position at The Love Institute working directly with Amir (Riz Ahmed). Anna finds herself deeply conflicted as a result.

Lots of uncertainty and dead space within its narrative as writer/director Christos Nikou facilitates an amble of a reveal with dead ends and an air of miserablism as sad, obviously mismatched couples desperately search for that 100% positive result.

Rating: 50%

Director: Christos Nikou (Apples)

Writer: Christos Nikou (Apples), Sam Steiner (TV’s Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons, Lemons), Stavros Raptis (Apples)

Main cast: Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter, Beast), Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal, Four Lions), Jeremy Allen White (The Speed of Life, TV’s The Bear)

‘Still’

Raw and honest yet suffused with humour, Still is a moving portrayal of actor Michael J. Fox’s personal battle with Parkinson’s disease.

Diagnosed with the incurable ‘old person’s disease’ at the height of his fame and months shy of his 30th birthday, Michael J. Fox went public a decade later in 2000 and, in founding the Michael J. Fox Foundation, has raised more than $2 billion for research. But Still, as directed by Davis Guggenheim (He Named Me Malala, Waiting For Superman) is the story of the more personal battle as Fox, along with wife Tracy Pollan and their (now adult) kids, come to terms with the progressively debilitating effects of the disease.

The charm of Still is Fox himself. He matter-of-fact talks of pain management and the black eyes and broken limbs during the making of the documentary, the result of falling over in domestic places such as the kitchen. Through interviews and the interweaving of archival footage from early television and film hits with playing more recent television characters openly suffering from Parkinson’s, Still creates an unexpectedly warm tale of a quite and quietly extraordinary person.

Rating: 74%

‘Ghosted’

Gender reversal all action, gun blazing rom com as Cole discovers the woman of his (first date) dreams is a CIA operative.

Having moved back home to help his dad on the farm, the romantic Cole (Chris Evans – Captain America: the First Avenger, Knives Out) is looking for love. A sparky contact at the farmers market with Sadie (Ana de Armas – Blonde, Knives Out) results in what seems the perfect first date. But over the next few days, there’s no response from Cole’s 30+ texts. Discovering she is in London, what could be more romantic than surprising Sadie at her hotel? Wrong!

Packed with Marvel cameos, an excess of everything follows as every cliché in the book is packed into Ghosted by director Dexter Fletcher (Rocketman, Sunshine on Leith). The result is a tedious hotchpotch of OTT, predominantly Pakistan-set action (dead bodies galore) as the intrepid two look to prevent Leveque (Adrien Brody – The Pianist, The Jacket) selling a WMD to the highest bidder.

Rating: 30%

‘Tetris’

Based on the true story of the development and marketing of what was to become one of the world’s most popular video games, Tetris is as knife-edge as any espionage thriller as American companies lock horns with the Soviet Union.

With Henk Rogers (Taron Egerton – Rocketman, Billionaire Boys Club) looking to secure the Japanese rights to a new video game, so a complex web of ownership unravels as the author of the game is revealed to be a Russian, Alexey Pajitnov (Nikita Efremov – Leto, Syostry), living in Moscow. A global bunfight ensues as claim of ownership is countered by a second and third claim, all overseen by Soviet bureaucrats and corruption within the KGB. Rogers travels backwards and forwards between them all in an attempt to protect Pajitnov and his own interests, but each move is thwarted by would-be buyer, British media baron Robert Maxwell (Roger Allam – Tamara Drew, The Wind That Shakes the Barley) and Moscow.

There’s an overload of dry wit and 1980s nostalgia (the launch of handheld Game Boy consoles!) in Tetris, directed by Jon S. Baird (Filth, Stan & Ollie). And, whilst the thrills are exagerated to beef up the narrative, Tetris is an exuberant, engaging, crowd-pleasing entertainment.

Rating: 64%

‘The Greatest Beer Run Ever’

There’s something uncomfortable about watching The Greatest Beer Run Ever. Well intentioned though barfly Chickie Donahue (Zac Efron – Gold, The Disaster Artist) may have been, taking beer to 1967 Vietnam to show support for ‘our boys’ is incredibly glib and naive.

Extraordinarily, Peter Farrelly’s latest film (his last was the Oscar-winning Green Book but he is also responsible for Dumb and Dumber) is based on true events. From Inwood, Manhattan to Saigon and beyond, Donahue weadles his way across country, erroneously thought to be, on occasions, CIA. But deliver beer he does to the boys from Inwood.

From flag-waving patriotism to a sneaking realisation that maybe the US should not be in Vietnam, Chickie’s rites-of-passage is limited. Bemused recipients of the beer, disbelieving journalists (including Russell Crowe – Gladiator, The Nice Guys) help that awareness of the realities of a war zone. Yet, like Green Book, the narrative skims only the surface.

Rating: 50%

‘Raymond and Ray’

A wry, buddy buddy narrative as two half brothers head to a funeral of their estranged father that offers a number of surprises.

Uptight Raymond (Ewan McGregor – Moulin Rouge, Trainspotting) persuades a reluctant former addict Ray (Ethan Hawke – Boyhood, Training Day) to travel with him – only to find the final wish is for them to dig his grave along with leaving them personal items and a few unexpected revelations.

It’s a complex, occasionally laugh-out-loud character-driven slow reveal of a feature written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia (Albert Nobbs, Mother and Child). As the two men come to terms with a man they never knew and the impact he had on them, so the people they meet at his funeral provide a different side to their father’s character.

Rating: 64%

‘CODA’

An English-language remake of the French hit La famille Bélier, CODA moves the action to a coastal fishing village in New England as teenage Ruby (Emilia Jones – High-Rise, One Day) struggles to be the only hearing member of her family.

It’s a feelgood narrative underpinned with wry humour and serious issues – the isolation of the family in a close-knit community and the pressures placed on Ruby to translate for her family. As school years come to a close, Ruby’s dream is to enrol in Berklee College of Music in Boston. But with the family having no idea how good a singer she is, the concern is for their fishing business.

A sincere and heartwarming crowd pleaser, CODA, with an exceptional cast, provides rare mainstream focus on its subject. Writer/director Sian Heder (Tallulah) allows the film to evolve into total predictability, but when you have Troy Kotsur (The Number 23, Wild Prairie Rose) in the cast as dad, it’s best to simply go with the flow.

Expect Oscar nominations.

(Update: Nominated for 3 Oscars in 2022, won 3 – best film, best supporting actor (Kotsur), adapted screenplay)

Rating: 73%