The Media Tourist

Bob Marley biopic undersells the story of reggae’s global superstar

Bob Marley: One Love
Starring Kingsley Ben-Adair & Lashana Lynch
Directed by Renaldo Marcus Green
Rated PG-13

In theaters Wednesday, Feb. 14

The new movie about the late, larger-than-life Jamaican superstar depicts Bob Marley bringing reggae music and his Rastafarian mindset to the masses, becoming an almost messianic figure to fans and followers around the world. Focusing on one relatively narrow but significant segment of his life 1976-1978, it shows him as a family man, a rebel caught in the middle of the fractured politics of his home country, a Utopian musical shaman and an adherent to Biblical signs and symbols.

We hear Marley talk more than once about the Lion of Judah, making an Old Testament reference central to the Rastafarian religion.

But unlike a lion, this movie feels rather timid, failing to soar—or roar—with the depth or drama of other hit musical biopics, like Rocketman (Elton John), Ray (Ray Charles), Get Up On It (James Brown) or Bohemian Rhapsody (Freddy Mercury). We see Marley survive an assassination attempt, stage two concerts for peace, smoke prodigious amounts of ganga, release his groundbreaking Exodus album, and muse on his white-Englishman father, who abandoned little Marley when he was a just a lad. We see Marley when he learns he has a rare form of melanoma from an old soccer injury. But the story unfolds in what feels like a mostly haphazard, episodic fashion, showing us things that happen with little connective tissue or real consequence, and the movie never breaks out of its meandering biopic blahs.

In a repeated flashback, we see young Marley as a boy running from a literal ring of fire—without ever really knowing what it’s supposed to mean or represent. But the movie itself fails to catch fire and show us where Marley’s passion for peace was rooted, just how he became an emblem of laid-back, rasta-fied global groovery, or what made his music so uniquely popular in Jamaica and beyond.

British actor Kingsley Ben-Adair gives a solid, all-in performance as Marley, convincingly delivering dialogue in the singer’s Caribbean creole dialect and mimicking his ragdoll-like swept-away-in-the-music onstage movements. Lashana Lynch—who might be recognizable to Marvel fans from her recurring role as Maria Lambeau in MCU movies—is even better as Marley’s wife, Rita, especially in a scene where she smacks him for his infidelities and his unawareness of how he’s becoming corrupted by his success. “You swallow pollution, you get polluted,” she spews, her eyes ablaze.

We hear renditions of Marley’s greatest hits, including “Three Little Birds,” “I Shot the Sheriff,” “One Love,” “Jamming,” “War,” “Redemption Song,” “Get Up, Stand Up” and “No Woman, No Cry,” songs with potent messages—of rebellion, reckoning and reconciliation—that made him a musical hero to millions before his death in 1981, at the young age of 36.

Bob Marley: One Love was made with members of late singer’s family—including wife Rita and son Ziggy—involved as producers (along with Brad Pitt!). That kind of close-range, “hands on” might have steered the director and the project away from some of the broader, nitty-gritty that would have made it feel more lived-in and authentic, and less “deifying.”  

You may be happily “Jamming” to the jaunty sounds of this play-it-safe movie portrait, but music’s rasta messiah would have been better served by a more adventurous, more multifaceted flick about a complicated man and the music that became his message, and his mission.

—Neil Pond

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

Zac Effron puts on the true-story tights of a wrestling family dynasty

The Iron Claw
Starring Zac Efron, Jeremy Allan White & Lily James
Directed by Sean Durkin
Rated R

In theaters Friday, Dec. 22

There can be a lot going on inside a wrestling ring—villains and heels, good guys, tough girls, cartoonish personas, flamboyant feuds, deep grudges, bucketfuls of trash talk. But there’s a lot going on outside the ropes, too, in this muscular movie saga about one of wrestling’s most successful real-life family dynasties.

The Von Erichs, a Texas-based clan of brothers and their father, dominated the sport in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. But their triumphs on the mat were swamped by waves of tragedy at home. Many wrestling fans spoke of “the Von Erich curse,” a grim reaper that seemed to relentlessly stalk the family.  

The Iron Claw opens with the eye-opening sight of Zac Efron, bulked up to balloon-ish proportions to portray Kevin Von Erich, the first sibling to follow the pro-wrestling footsteps of his father, whose signature wrestling “move” was a one-handed clampdown on an opponent’s face he dubbed The Iron Claw. If you ever wondered what the former star of High School Musical would look like with an ornately sculpted, Herculean body like He-Man or the Hulk, and a bowl-ish ‘70s haircut to match, well, wonder no more.

Kevin’s brothers Kerry (Jeremy Allan White, above, from TV’s The Bear), David (Harris Dickenson, now starring in the FX series A Murder at the End of The World) and Mike (Stanley Simmons) also become wrestlers, working to develop their father’s Iron Claw “finishing touch,” the unbreakable grip that almost always led to a quick end to a match.

We learn that the family’s firstborn, Jack Jr., died by drowning at the age of 6; he’s absent throughout most of the movie, but we meet him briefly in an ethereal “afterlife” scene. (The movie does not portray or mention at all another brother, Chris, who took his own life with a handgun in 1991.) But by 1993, five of the six brothers were dead, succumbing to suicide, drug overdose or disease. It’s a Greek tragedy written in spandex, served with a Texas twang.  

Holt McCallany, who played FBI agent Bill Tench on TV’s Mindhunter, is terrifyingly good as the Von Erich patriarch, Fritz, who also rules with an Iron Claw at home. The Affair’s Maura Tierney is his stoic, God-fearing wife, Doris, saying goodbye to her sons one by one. Lily James loses all traces of her proper British accent as Pam, the Texas belle who becomes Kevin’s wife, trying to calm his worries that he will pass on the dreaded family “curse” to their children.

It’s a walloping tale cloaked in woe, but the performances are gripping, and the wrestling sequences have the meaty slap, slam and thud of authenticity. You may not know a piledriver from a German suplex or a gutbuster drop, but, man, they all look convincingly uncomfortable here. The movie also depicts the heightened, hyped-up showmanship of the sport, with combatants huddling before matches to go over their “choreographed” moves; one cautions his opponents, “Don’t f*ck too much with my hair.” Afterward, they all go out for drinks and split up the night’s proceeds.

Songs by Tom Petty, Rush, Eddy Money, John Denver and Blue Öyster Cult add to the movie’s spot-on look and feel as the decades unfurl.  

Was there a Von Erich curse? Or was everything that befell the family just an unfortunate cascade of accidents, combined with risky behaviors, macho toxicity, the high-impact lifestyle of wrestling, and the psychological pounding the Von Erich boys took from their tough-as-nails father? This brawny-lad, testosterone-fueled tale won’t bring you much festive holiday cheer, but it packs a powerful punch with its often touching, true-life saga of sibling wrestlers held together in another kind of unbreakable grip—brotherhood.

—Neil Pond

Timothèe Chalamet turns on the charm in the backstory of Willy Wonka

Wonka
Starring Timothèe Chalamet, Calah Lane & Hugh Grant
Directed by Paul King
PG

In theaters Friday, Dec. 15

Do you have a sweet tooth?

That’s the musical question asked early in this new candy-coated spinoff prequel from author Roald Dahl’s 1960s novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Timothèe Chalamet stars as the younger version of Willy Wonka as he begins his journey to become a famous—and famously eccentric—chocolatier, as played in later movies by Gene Wilder (1971) and Johnny Depp (2005).

Maybe you saw Chalamet as a lanky, sensitive young man yielding to a homoerotic crush in Call Me by Your Name. Or as a lean young cannibal in Bones and All. Or a lovestruck young 19^th century swain in Little Women. Or the universe-hopping heir of a cosmic dynasty in Dune. Or a swooning prep school paramour in Lady Bird. Or, on TV, as the sexy new cologne ambassador in TV spots for Chanel’s latest fragrance.

But did you know he can sing—you likely did, if you saw him hosting Saturday Night Live a few  weeks ago—and he can dance? The twice Oscar-nominated actor has a smooth, charming singing voice and some stylish prancing flourishes for the tunes he croons in the new movie, including a remake of “Pure Imagination” from the original film. Wonka proves his versatility and willingness to stretch, though he may not be Fred Astaire or Bing Cosby—yet!

He’s perfectly pitched, though, in this whimsically imaginative tale as young chocolate innovator (and magician) who arrives in London with his bag of tricks and a headful of dreams. But not so fast. First Willy has to outwit, outfox and out-chocolate the city’s comedically diabolical “chocolate cartel,” a trio of treat-making moguls who keep a crackdown on competition of any kind.    

Young Wonka may be irrepressibly optimistic, all but destitute and as nutty as a fruitcake, but man, he sure can make some amazingly delicious candy! (Ingredients for his “incredible edible” confections include giraffe milk, tears of a Russian clown and beams of sunshine, and in one particularly significant instance, little insects appropriately called hoverflies.) British director Paul King brings some of the same witty, smile-inducing snap to this tasty tale that he demonstrated in Paddington as well as its sequel, and a fine supporting cast rounds out the story with campy silliness as well as sweetness and heart.

There’s Oscar-winning Olivia Colman as the starchy proprietress of a Dickensian fleabag hotel and sweatshop laundry. And is that the British funnyman known for playing Mr. Bean, Rowland Atkisson, as a priest whose holiness has room for lots of chocolate? Yes, it is! Keegan-Michael Key is an easily corrupted chocoholic cop. Oscar-nominated Sally Hawkins plays Willy’s mum, who teaches him to make chocolate with a very special secret ingredient. You might recognize Jim Carter from his role as the butler on Downtown Abbey. And newcomer Callie Lane is Noodles, a little homeless urchin who becomes Willy’s colleague and collaborator.

But it’s Hugh Grant who nearly steals the show as the little orange-hued man, known as Oompa-Loompa, who intersects with Willy on his own quest for candy. And he provides the backstory of his “people,” who would become the Minions of the Wonka-verse.

So, have you got a sweet tooth? This holiday-movie season, forget your dentist. Instead, indulge yourself with a trip to the wildly creative, deliciously unconventional world of Wonka for fun, laughs and frolic, and the sugary spice of infectiously clever songs, all wrapped around a soft, sentimental center—and covered in rich, magical chocolate, of course!

—Neil Pond

Emma Stone puts a stridently fem-centric Franken-spin on a fabulously freaky tale

Poor Things
Starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo & Willem Dafoe
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Rated R

In theaters Friday, Dec. 8

A young woman breaks free of stuffy Victorian society in this elegantly weird, delightfully far-out skewering of class, culture and carnality.

But Bella isn’t just any young woman—she’s the experimental creation of a mad-scientist surgeon that she calls “God.” Because to her, he is. Dr. Godwin Baxter gave new life to an anonymous woman he’d found after she’d committed suicide by jumping off a bridge to her death. He reanimated her lifeless body with electricity and the transplanted brain of a prenatal infant taken from her own womb. And he named her Bella, Latin for beautiful.  

Emma Stone is mesmerizing as Bella, a beautifully almost-grown adult when we meet her, just now to the point—with her developing brain—of learning how to eat, walk and talk. Willem Dafoe plays Baxter, his face a horrendous roadmap of scarry, maimed disfigurement from surgical experiments. Ramy Youssef (from the Hulu comedy series Ramy) is the earnest young med student hired to record Bella’s progress who finds himself falling in love with his endearingly odd subject. When a caddish Lothario (Mark Ruffalo) steals Bella away for his own lascivious enjoyment, it marks the beginning of her wide-ranging odyssey of self-discovery, of always wanting more and wanting better, and finding out who she is, what she wants and what makes her happy.

And that includes sex, and a lot of it. Sexual liberation, Bella learns, is just one of the freedoms of womanhood, and being whole as a woman. Be prepared: You’ll get an eyeful of body parts you might not be accustomed to seeing in movies with major, well-known actors.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for his highly stylized, deliriously bonkers provocations in The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Favourite (which also starred Stone) and The Lobster. In this brilliant, black-comedy sci-fi parable—based on a 1992 satirical novel by Scottish author Alastar Grey—he creates a richly detailed wonderland for Bella to experience and explore and bring her ever-expanding mind up to speed with her body. She learns how to dance (in one of the movie’s most exhilarating scenes), develops empathy for the poor, absorbs philosophy, works in a Paris brothel (with a madam played by Kathryn Hunter, who portrayed all three witches in The Tragedy of Macbeth), and ultimately discovers her own mysterious past.

Frequently caustically funny, it’s hyper-visual and packed with marvelous detail. There are strange characters (including a man who walks like a crab, another with a claw for an arm), fabulous clothes, fantastical sights and expansive, period-piece sets, as if the movie has tapped into a brainstorm of gonzo ideas from Monty Python, Tim Burton and Wes Anderson. Seeing some of Dr. Baxter’s other “experiments,” like a chicken with the transplanted head of a dog, and watching some moments through a fish-eye lens, we know we’re in a skewed, wackadoo, off-kilter world, accentuated by an appropriately off-key, atonal soundtrack signaling that something’s…not quite right. But hey, look at that! And that!

And you can’t help looking at Bella, as her innocence, candor, guileless self-expression and effusive embrace of femininity becomes threatening to men—the real “poor things,” pitiable, sometimes pathetically needy creatures. One of them even plans to surgically remove part of her female anatomy, which he thinks has made her hyper-sexed and uncontrollable.

This fem-centic Frankenstein-y tale is a daring parable about the rights of women in a world where men try to make them, mold them, possess them, use them, lock them up and contain them. In having none of that, Bella, who ultimately learns that kindness is key to countering life’s beastly cruelties, becomes a vibrantly potent avatar for female liberation and empowerment, in all its forms.

And Emma Stone, miles away from one La La Land, finds herself dancing up a lusty storm in another.

—Neil Pond