ARGYLLE SUCKS

Okay, it doesn't totally suck; I just really wanted to use that headline.

Opening in theaters this weekend:

Argylle--For about the first half or so of this action comedy, our heroine Elly is pulled through chases and shootouts, squealing in girlish fright. Played by Bryce Dallas Howard, Elly is an author of popular spy thrillers featuring the flawlessly suave secret agent man Argylle, represented in her mind's eye by Henry Cavill.

One day on an Amtrak train she's accosted by Aidan (Sam Rockwell), a scruffy obnoxious guy who tells her that she's in grave danger, as her books are proving prophetic in real-world counterintelligence. Within seconds Aidan is defending her, and her put-upon Scottish Fold cat Alfie, from countless assassins in extended, cartoony hand-to-hand and gun combat, all the while dispensing reassurance and encouragement, and she's swept off into a globetrotting adventure.

You may recall that this was the central gag in the lame 2010 comedy Night and Day, with Cameron Diaz as the civilian and Tom Cruise as the hypercompetent and comically supportive secret agent man. Rockwell's woebegone manner is funnier and more agreeable than that of Cruise, but even so too much of this film feels derivative of previous spy parodies, both recent and vintage, from 2022's Bullet Train to the Mission: Impossible and Bourne flicks, and beyond. As in many of those films, the preposterously over-choreographed action scenes carry no real emotional weight, and I found the first part of the movie pretty tedious.

It started to grow on me after a while, though. The stars help; I've long been inclined to approve of Howard, with her lush pin-up beauty and her sweetness, and as Elly delves deeper into the case and gains more confidence, Howard is able to overcome the condescending hysterical woman stereotype she's forced to play along with early on. And she and the self-assured sad sack Rockwell play off each other nicely and without phony bickering.

The supporting cast is also top-notch; director Matthew Vaughn and screenwriter Jason Fuchs would have to work hard to prevent Bryan Cranston, as the fed-up evil kingpin, or Samuel L. Jackson as another spy boss, or the great Catherine O'Hara, pestering Elly to spend a weekend with Mom, from giving the audience any amusement. Along with Cavill's Argylle, the movie offers such overtly glamorous types as Jon Cena and Dua Lipa and Sofia Boutella and Ariana DeBose and Richard E. Grant, and they add another layer of drollery.

But just about the time I was loosening up and starting to think that Argylle was pretty good after all, it overplays its hand in the way of so many contemporary action blockbusters, shoveling one exhaustingly explosive finale after another at us. At two hours and twenty minutes it's at least thirty minutes too long. After a while you might start wondering if the movie has ended, and you're already a half-hour into Argylle 2.

WHALE TALE, HOLY GRAIL, HITCHCOCK HAIL

Opening this weekend:

In the Heart of the Sea—In 1820, the Nantucket whaler Essex was attacked by a sperm whale in the Pacific, thousands of miles west of South America. It sank, and the crew went through hell and resorted to extreme measures to stay alive. Ron Howard has tried to turn Nathaniel Philbrick’s acclaimed 2000 account of this awful trip, one of the inspirations for Moby-Dick, into a psychologically and spiritually fraught adventure in its own right.

As usual with Howard, it’s a well-made movie with many rousing scenes. The whale effects are mostly very good and convincing, and the actors do solid, respectable work. But the movie doesn’t come off, overall.

Chris Hemsworth plays Chase, the first mate, at Melvillian odds with the haughty novice Captain, Pollard (Benjamin Walker, nicely restrained in a thankless role). The product of a venerable whaling family, Pollard resents the effortless seamanship of Chase, the son of a “landsman.”

This conflict becomes moot when a huge, patchy-white sperm whale decides to go Zidane on the hull of the Essex. I must confess that I enjoyed the leviathan’s vengeance more than anything else in ITHOTS. I felt good for the beast, much the way one might feel good for Charles Bronson in a Death Wish movie.

I found it hard to sympathize with whalers, not because they weren’t courageous and skillful but because I brought a 21^st-Century sense of their enterprise as an environmental atrocity into the movie with me. I realize that this response is pious hindsight, and that our age doesn’t have any real right to feel superior about how we light our cities, that indeed in the grand scheme of things it’s probably a far greater blight on the planet than hunting a few sea mammals to the brink of extinction. It may come down to Orwell’s observation in “Shooting an Elephant”: “Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.”

But whatever the reason, it interfered with my enjoyment of ITHOTS. I think Howard and screenwriter Charles Leavitt anticipated it too. They’ve toned down the horror wrought by the Essex crew, omitting, for instance, their ecologically disastrous visit to the Galapagos, and giving Chase’s final encounter with the whale an ambiguity that falls flat as drama. Melville turned this story into an astonishing, exasperating myth, an allegory that transcends and almost reproaches the very idea of allegory. But ITHOTS is just one more story about The One That Got Away.

Opening this weekend at Harkins Valley Art in Tempe:

Don Verdean—Sam Rockwell plays the title character, an evangelical archaeologist who claims to have unearthed such relics as the shears used to cut Samson’s hair. Bankrolled by a preacher (Danny McBride) anxious over his dwindling flock, Don travels to Israel in search of the skull of Goliath. Under pressure from his patron, and abetted by his unscrupulous local digger Boaz (Jermaine Clement), Don, who sincerely wants to save souls, gradually succumbs to the temptation to fake this discovery. Of course, things only get wackier and worse from there, as Don and Boaz eventually agree to provide a buyer with the “Holy Grail of Biblical artifacts,” which is, of course, the Holy Grail.

This is the latest from Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite, again from a script co-written with his wife Jerusha. As with their other post-Napoleon films, Nacho Libre and Gentlemen Broncos, it’s seriously uneven. The Hess touch, so to speak, is all about awkward pauses and fitful, off-kilter bursts of slapstick action, and when it works it’s punishingly funny, and when it doesn’t, it just hangs there on the screen, not working.

The acting is terrific, however. McBride and Will Forte ham it up a bit more than they have to as the rival preachers, but Clement takes the opportunity, as he did in Gentlemen Broncos, to deploy another shamelessly silly accent. Amy Ryan gives us so much subtext as Don’s adoring assistant that she’s almost too touching for the farcical tone.

And as usual, Rockwell is a marvel. His Don hides his poker face behind a thick beard, speaking in a firm, sober drawl—he sounds like George W. Bush mixed with Johnny Cash—and authoritatively puts everyone at ease. In their ridiculous way, Rockwell and Hess offer a plausible, even somewhat affectionate portrait of how a decently-intentioned person could allow himself to be corrupted.

Opening this weekend at Harkins Shea:

Hitchcock/Truffaut—This documentary is both a film version of and a tribute to the famous 1966 book-length interview of Alfred Hitchcock by the young Francois Truffaut. Familiar to just about every film geek of the ‘60s and ‘70s, the tome is credited with helping to change the perception of Hitchcock as a talented craftsman and entertainer to that of an artist.

Thus the movie, directed by Kent Jones, features talking heads ranging from Wes Anderson to Richard Linklater to Kiyoshi Kurosawa to Martin Scorcese, talking not only about how much they love Hitchcock and Truffaut but also about how much they loved the book. We get clips from the movies, and audio clips of the interviews, and a little narration, by Bob Balaban.

So what’s not to like? Nothing; it’s a fine way to spend 80 minutes. But as with the best documentaries about cinema, it’s an appetizer—it leaves you hungry for whole movies.

GHOST CLOWN

Opening this weekend:

Poltergeist—One of the wittier moments in the original 1982 Poltergeist came when the little boy’s clown doll finally came to life and attacked him. What makes the scene brilliant is that, though the poor kid is terrified, he doesn’t really seem surprised.

Do any children actually enjoy clowns? Did they ever? The poster for this Poltergeist remake features another awful clown with a look of indolent evil on his face. At what toy store was this nightmare purchased, and by who, with the idea that it would delight a little kid?

The clown face on the poster is a key to why this new Poltergeist doesn’t work. Like this image, the movie pushes too hard. I like the original film, but have never thought it was all that scary. Its chief appeal, aside from the legs of Jobeth Williams, was its idyllic vision of suburban life, the charm of which was only strengthened by the interruption by malevolent supernatural forces.

The family in the new film, directed by Gil Kenan, has downsized into the haunted house after Dad (Sam Rockwell) has been laid off. The structure is more or less the same as that of the original—indeed, it’s probably a tighter, more coherent piece of storytelling. But despite a few halfhearted attempts at humor, the subtext this time is all anger, disappointment, economic impotence and sexual frustration. Mom (Rosemarie DeWitt) walks on eggshells around Dad’s wounded breadwinner’s pride, and Rockwell gives off such seething fury, especially toward the beginning, that he seems like a greater danger to his family than the ghosts.

Into this already queasy atmosphere Kenan introduces the scare scenes whole-hog, way too early after a perfunctory build-up. I’m pretty easy to scare, and I found most of them routine.

As for the rest of the cast, all three of the kids are excellent, and Jared Harris isn’t bad as a daring celebrity ghostbuster, but the standout among the adults is Jane Adams as a frazzled paranormal researcher. She doesn’t get enough to do, however.

Oh yeah, it’s being released in 3-D. There’s one decent effect, involving a drill bit. Otherwise, as usual, it’s superfluous.