The Media Tourist

New spy spoof purrs along with crazy action, an all-star cast, a cat in a backpack…and rumors of Taylor Swift

Argylle
Starring Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Henry Cavill & Bryan Cranston
Directed by Matthew Vaughn
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, Feb. 2

The greater the spy, the bigger the lie.

That’s a phrase you’ll hear several times in this frisky tale of double agents, triple crosses, sexy sleuths and golly-whopping lies, and how a popular, fan-favorite author of espionage novels literally becomes part of the spy-lit stories she’s famous for writing.

Bryce Dallas Howard stars as reclusive writer Elly Conway, whose character of agent Argylle (Henry Cavill) is a superstar in the fictional spy genre—an impossibly handsome, dashing dreamboat secret agent on the trail of a sinister global criminal syndicate. When Elly gets writer’s block about how to wrap up her latest Argylle novel, she’s suddenly, surprisingly swept into the literary world she’s created, finding out that perhaps it’s not so fictional after all.  

Argylle is a crazily creative riff on the spy-action genre, with winks and nods to a lot of things we’ve seen onscreen before, from James Bond romps to Mission: Impossible stunts and John Wick’s hyper-stylized, close-range ultraviolence. But it’s also totally and uniquely its own, zip-zapping and zig-zagging with twists and turns, feisty humor and some wowza sequences, including a battle royale with improvised ice skates on an oil slick and a slo-mo shoot-‘em-up ballet inside a colorful smoke-grenade cloud.

The cast is full of familiar faces, and they all look like they’re having a ball. Sam Rockwell is a hoot as a real-life superspy with a deep secret, or two—or maybe three. There’s also a dastardly duplicitous turn by Bryan Cranston, Samuel L. Jackson as a basketball-loving, wine-aficionado counterspy, and Schitt’s Creek’s Catherine O’Hara along with John Cena, plus singer-actors Ariana Dubose and Dua Lipa. Just about everyone is pretending to be someone else, or hiding something, or both, or more. There’s computer hacking, skull-cracking, screwball romantic comedy and a plot sweetly serenaded by “Now and Then,” the final Beatles song, and some classic dance-floor groove-ery by Barry White. Oh, yeah, and Dua Lipa on a motorcycle, with a machine gun.

And one very cool cat. Elly’s constant companion is her Scottish fold feline, Alfie, who spends most of the movie inscrutably going along for the wild ride, peering through the porthole in her backpack decorated with Scottish, argyle-pattern diamonds. But when Alfie gets out, watch out for those claws (and the same for Elly!). Alfie isn’t agent Argylle, but he anchors the movie with his presence—not to mention some of its best gags. Hello, kitty, indeed!

British director Matthew Vaughn certainly knows his way around a labyrinth of spies and deception, peppered with high-octane violence and zingy Brit wit, as he demonstrated in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, and The Kingsman and its two sequels. (Stick around for the credits and see the movie’s shoutout to the spy world of The Kingsman, plus how Argyll is connected.)

Speaking of connected, there’s been a lot of buzz about how Argylle might be connected to cat-loving superstar Taylor Swift. Bryce Dallas Howard let the cat out of the bag when she admitted that the director was “inspired” by a photo of Swift with one of her cats—a Scottish fold—in a backpack, just like the one strapped to Elly in the movie. Swiftys have buzzing about how perhaps the whole movie was even ghost-written as a side project by the hitmaking singer-songwriter. (It wasn’t, the director insists.)

“I don’t know who to trust,” Elly says, her eyes opening wide to the crazy swirl of danger and deception in which she’s found herself. But trust me on this: You’ll have to open your eyes and see Argylle for yourself to sort out the lies from the spies, the facts from the fiction, and tap into the cool-cat vibes of this high-spirited, creatively fresh spin on a time-tested genre. And Argylle might not turn out to have nine lives, but it’s supposedly meant to set the stage for at least two more installments.  

It’s a delightfully preposterous, big-budget popcorn movie with the improbable power to unite action lovers, espionage buffs, cat fanciers and Taylor Swift fans, wrapping them all up in the merry mayhem of flying bullets, multi-layered mystery and the sweet bow of a Beatles swan song.  

And, yes, great spies, big lies, huge surprises and lots of fun!

—Neil Pond

A classic teen comedy gets fletch new faces and a zippy new musical spin

Mean Girls
Starring Reneé Rapp, Angourie Rice, Auli’I Cravalho & Christopher Briney
Directed by Samantha Jayne & Aururo Perez Jr.
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, Jan. 12

It’s time to go back to high school with this zippy new musical spin on a teen-comedy classic.

The revamped Mean Girls combines the storyline, deets and characters of the original film—released 20 years ago—with songs and showtunes from its later incarnation as a Broadway musical, which opened in 2018 but shut down two years later due to the COVID pandemic.

And it’s unquestionably grool.

That means groovy and cool, for anyone un-hip to the many memorable lines from this oh-so-quotable coming-of-age tale about a young math nerd, Cady (Angourie Rice), who becomes an unlikely competitor to her high school’s alpha female, Regina George (Reneé Rapp), while joining Regina’s tight clique of bratty hangers-on (Bebe Wood and the mono-monikered Avantika).

Mean Girls fans—especially the next-gen crowd to whom the new film is clearly targeted—will spot a host of recognizable fresh faces. Rapp is a 24-year-old singer/actress who’s reprising her leading role from the Broadway version; she also plays Leighton Murray in Mindy Kaling’s teen-comedy Max series The Sex Lives of College Girls. The Australian-born Rice got her start in The Nice Guys with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe, and she’s also appeared in Spider-Man: Far From Home, Sofia Coppola’s remake of The Beguiled and alongside Miley Cyrus in an episode of the horror anthology Black Mirror.

Christopher Briney, who plays Cady’s dreamy crush—and importantly, Regina’s ex-boyfriend—Aaron, also stars in the Prime YA video series The Summer I Turned Pretty. Tina Fey, whose script provided the quippy zing for the 2004 film, reprises her original role as math teacher Ms. Norbury, along with fellow SNL alum Tim Meadows, who once again mines the low-key hilarity of the school’s ever-unamused principal Duvall. Fey also joins Lorne Michaels, the iconic producer of Saturday Night Live, as a co-producer—financing the bottom line of this production, where Mean Girls means serious movie business.  

Cady’s friend Damien (who’s “almost too gay to function”) is revitalized by a scene-stealing Jacquel Spivey, who honed his award-winning, Grammy-nominated chops in musical theater. Auli’i Cravalho, who plays Damien’s bestie and Cady’s art-nerd pal Janis, previously provided the soaring voice of Moana in Disney’s 2016 animated musical fantasy.

There are loads of fan-favorite callbacks to the original film (which sparkled with now-indelible performances from Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Amanda Seyfried, Lacey Chalbert and Lizzy Caplan). Watch for a very special cameo at the math competition! But this new Mean Girls stakes its own claim as a top-notch new adaptation with a vibrant singing cast and some truly standout performances, especially from Cravalho, Rice and Rapp in absolutely showstopping numbers like “World Burn,” “Revenge Party,” “I’d Rather Be Me” and “Someone Gets Hurt.”

Tina Fey almost breaks into a song; Fargo’s Jon Hamm (below) doesn’t come near it, but he certainly makes the most of his two scenes as Coach Carr, who pulls no punches as he hits below the belt in the health class he also teaches. (I can’t wait to see all his outtakes in the bonus materials when the movie comes to Blu-ray.)

It all adds up to a mile of smiles, an engagingly witty cautionary tale about the bubbling caldron of peer pressure, snobbery, gossip and backstabbing fibbery that is—and has always been—high school, wrapped now in catchy songs and an uplifting teen-spirit message about true friendship and acceptance, and never pushing anyone in front of a bus.  

And if anything can, indeed, make fetch happen, it’ll be the infectious musical fun of Mean Girls. So get in, loser!

—Neil Pond

Awards-buzz drama about connection, revisiting the past, loss and two men who find each other

All of Us Strangers
Starring Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy & Jamie Bell
Directed by Andrew Haigh
Rated R

In theaters Friday, Dec. 22

A struggling writer embarks on a fantastical journey back into his childhood in this gorgeously rendered existential meditation on loss, loneliness, memory and the power of love. All of Us Strangers is a wild ride full of feels in which past and present overlap and intertwine, time is fluid and fleeting, and Adam (Andrew Scott) gets to go home and visit again with his parents—who died in a car crash some 30 years ago, when he was just about turn 12.   

Is he hallucinating? Seeing ghosts? Did he fall into some kind of quantum-leap afterlife loop? How does his neighbor in his high-tech high-rise apartment complex, Harry (Paul Mescal), fit into things? There are more questions than easy answers in British director Andrew Haigh’s metaphysical, mind-bending adaptation of a 1980s Japanese novel with horror-story undertones.  

As Adam reconnects with his parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell, in smashingly good performances), he reenters a world that’s exactly how he remembers it, when he was a little boy. And mum and dad naturally want to know how he’s been, what’s he’s been doing, what kind of grownup he’s become. After all, they’ve been out of his life for a long time.  

So they’re not really prepared when Adam tells them he’s gay, in a relationship with Harry.  

That’s the crux of this improbable tale, as Adam’s gobs-smacked wonder becomes an emotional, heart-tugging reunion with parents who now realize they weren’t as supportive of their then-young son as they should have been, turning a blind eye to the bullying he endured and the loneliness he felt as a child. It’s left a hole in Adam’s heart.  

But as he’s nursing that deep wound, the void is being filled by his new relationship with Harry. They learn they share similar feelings of estrangement, as if being queer made them outcasts from their families, like strangers in their own homes. And two lonely people find each other in a world that can be indifferent or even hostile. Two lonely people who happen to be gay.

Scott, who played Professor Moriarty on TV’s Sherlock, and Mescal, who drew raves for his role last year in the acclaimed Afterlife, are both extremely committed to their characters in this exceptionally moving journey together, exploring a love and connection as vast and unknowable as the universe, as deep as infinity, yet as intimate and close and thrilling as the soft touch of bare skin. It’s a love powerful enough to transcend time and space.

And as Adam gets a rare, unbelievable opportunity to say a tearful goodbye that he never got the opportunity to say before, all that love becomes a cosmic thing, fuel for the universe, a glowing star in the thread of eternity.  

—Neil Pond