Argylle (Matthew Vaughn, 2024)

Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Sam Rockwell, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O'Hara, Henry Cavill, John Cena, Dua Lipa, Samuel L. Jackson, Ariana DeBose, Sofia Boutella, Richard E. Grant. Screenplay: Jason Fuchs. Cinematography: George Richmond. Production design: Russell De Rozario, Daniel Taylor, Film editing: Col Goudie, Tom Harrison-Read, Lee Smith. Music: Lorne Balfe. 

A time- and talent-wasting spy spoof that was a perhaps well-deserved box office flop (which probably means it will emerge as a cult film someday), Argylle features Bryce Dallas Howard as Elly Conway, the author of a series of spy thrillers that have a way of predicting actual occurrences in the world of secret intelligence. She's tipped off to the peril this puts her in by Aidan Wilde (Sam Rockwell), a real-life espionage agent, and a manic series of revelations and counter-revelations ensues. Henry Cavill plays the title character, a James Bond clone with a flat-top haircut that would have offended Ian Fleming's Bond as much as a stirred martini. 

One Way or Another (Sara Gómez, 1975)

Cast: Mario Balmaseda, Yolanda Cuéllar, Mario Limonta, Isaura Mendoza, Bobby Carcases, Sarita Reyes, Guillermo Díaz. Screenplay: Julio García Espinosa, Tomás González Péres, Tomás Guitérrez Alea, Sara Gómez. Cinematography: Luis García.  Art direction: Roberto Larrabure. Film editing: Iván Arocha. Music: Sergio Vitier. 

Sara Gómez's One Way or Another is a clear-sighted docudrama that personifies the attempts of postrevolutionary Cuba to establish a stable, egalitarian state by focusing on a young couple: Yolanda (Yolanda Cuéllar), a schoolteacher, and Mario (Mario Balmaseda), a laborer. Old ways and old attitudes die hard, and Gómez resorts to a wrecking ball smashing into slum buildings as a visual metaphor throughout the film. Though it ends with Yolanda and Mario walking away from the camera arguing, a measure of hope for the couple, and by implication for Cuba, remains. It's a propaganda film with a heart, though the chilly speech and manner of the authorities trying to engineer a new society contrasts sharply with the messy vitality of the daily lives of the Cuban people. 

 

The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011)

Viola Davis in The Help

Cast: Viola Davis, Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, Ahna O'Reilly, Alison Janney, Cicely Tyson, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, David Oyelowo. Screenplay: Tate Taylor, based on a novel by Kathryn Stockett. Cinematography: Stephen Goldblatt. Production design: Mark Ricker. Film editing: Hughes Winborn. Music: Thomas Newman. 

The Help is Gone With the Wind for white liberals, as a line in the film suggests. Glossy and superficial, its treatment of race and class annoyed me, though not quite as much or as deservedly so as it annoyed its star, Viola Davis, who has expressed her regret that she appeared in the movie. I lived through the time and pretty much in the place it depicts, and while I can vouch for the accuracy of much of its portrayal of the racial and social attitudes in the movie, it's the point of view that brings the movie crashing down into mediocrity and irrelevance. Both the writer-director Tate Taylor and the novelist Kathryn Stockett, whose work he adapted, were born in Jackson, Miss., in 1969, too late and too white to give a more informed and nuanced look at the subject they treat. While their hearts and minds are in the right place, they rely on tired tropes like the Magical Negro and the White Savior to tell their story. The result is a soothing reassurance that all of this took place in the past and things are not as they were as far as racism in America is concerned, an attitude at odds with every day's headlines.  

Once Upon a Time in China (Tsui Hark, 1991)

Cast: Jet Li, Biao Yuen, Rosamund Kwan, Jacky Cheung, Kent Cheng, Kam-Fai Yuen, Shi-Kwan Yen, Shun Lau, Wu Ma, Jianquo Qiu, Cheun-Yan Yuen, Chi-Yeung Wong, Shun-Yee Yuen, Xiong Xinxin, Jonathan Isgar, Mark King, Steve Tartalia, Colin George. Screenplay: Tsui Hark, Kai-Chi Yuen, Yiu-Ming Leung, Elsa Tang. Cinematography: Tung-Chuen Chan, Wilson Chan, David Chung, Ardy Lam, Arthur Wong, Bill Wong. Art direction: Chung-Man Lee. Film editing: Marco Mak. Music: Romeo Diaz, James Wong.  

John Wick (Chad Stahelski, 2014)

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Michael Nyqvist, Alfie Allen, Willem Dafoe, Dean Winters, Adrienne Palicki, Ian McShane, Lance Reddick, John Leguizamo. Screenplay: Derek Kolstad. Cinematography: Jonathan Sela. Production design: Dan Leigh. Film editing: Elisabet Ronaldsdóttir. Music: Tyler Bates, Joel J. Richard. 

Keanu Reeves reminds me of Gregory Peck, another handsome movie star of limited acting range who succeeded by being eminently likable. Just as Peck was miscast as the demonic Captain Ahab of John Huston's Moby Dick (1956), Reeves struggled to play the villainous Don John in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing (1993) -- something about both performers seems to draw a sympathetic response from the audience. That something is certainly needed in John Wick, with Reeves playing a remorseless hit man, though the actor is so innately likable that the filmmakers didn't really need to kill Wick's puppy to elicit audience sympathy. Shoot-'em-up thrillers are so common these days that adding another franchise to the action genre seems like overkill. But what makes John Wick work is screenwriter Derek Kolstad's ability to craft a believable alternate world in which the character can seem plausible. Director Chad Stahelski (and his co-director David Leitch, who was denied that credit by the Directors Guild) manage to create an ambience that evokes both French gangster movies and Hong Kong martial arts films -- Jean-Pierre Melville meets Tsui Hark -- while retaining a peculiarly American love of artillery and automobiles. 

Battling Butler (Buster Keaton, 1926)

Cast: Buster Keaton, Snitz Edwards, Sally O'Neil, Walter James, Budd Fine, Francis McDonald, Mary O'Brien, Tom Wilson, Eddie Borden. Screenplay: Paul Gerard Smith, Al Boasberg, Charles Henry Smith, Lex Neal, based on a play by Stanley Brightman and Austin Melford. Cinematography: Bert Haines, Devereaux Jennings. 

Rich man Alfred Butler (Buster Keaton) goes glamping with his valet (Snitz Edwards) and falls in love with a backwoods maiden (Sally O'Neil). When he's mistaken for the lightweight boxer Alfred "Battling" Butler (Francis McDonald), he has to prove his manly prowess to her burly father (Walter James) and brother (Budd Fine). Unfortunately, Keaton's comic routines in the boxing ring pale in comparison with Charles Chaplin's boxing scene in City  Lights (Chaplin, 1931). Keaton gets more laughs from entering the ring, getting tangled in the ropes, than he does while in it. Not one of Keaton's more inventive feature films, Battling Butler suffers a little from predictable plotting, derived from a Broadway musical that starred Charles Ruggles. Still, even a second-tier Keaton film is better than almost anyone else's standout movie.

Kingsman: The Secret Service (Matthew Vaughn, 2014)

Cast: Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Mark Strong, Samuel L. Jackson, Sofia Boutella, Michael Caine, Fiona Hampton, Samantha Womack, Mark Hamill, Jack Davenport. Screenplay: Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn, based on a comic book by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. Cinematography: George Richmond. Production design: Paul Kirby. Film editing: Eddie Hamilton, John Harris. Music: Henry Jackman, Matthew Margeson. 

Torch Singer (Alexander Hall, George Somnes, 1933)

Cast: Claudette Colbert, Ricardo Cortez, David Manners, Lyda Roberti, Baby LeRoy, Charley Grapewin, Sam Godfrey, Florence Roberts, Virginia Hammond, Mildred Washington, Cora Sue Collins, Helen Jerome Eddy, Albert Conti, Ethel Griffies. Screenplay: Lenore J. Coffee, Lynn Starling, based on a story by Grace Perkins. Cinematography: Karl Struss. Costume design: Travis Banton. Film editing: Eda Warren. Music: Ralph Rainger. 

Claudette Colbert displays a contralto singing voice athrob with vibrato in Torch Singer. She also runs the gamut from suffering unwed mother forced to put her infant daughter up for adoption to hard-bitten nightclub singer who sins her way to success. It's not a great performance either vocally or dramatically -- Colbert seems to be channeling Mae West's attitudes and mannerisms -- but it's fun to watch. The plot hinges on whether she will reunite not only with her daughter but also with the man who done her wrong. What do you think?