In Review: 'Argylle,' 'How to Have Sex,' 'Anselm'

Matthew Vaughn returns with a flopsweat-drenched spy comedy alongside an incisive British coming-of-age story and a new 3-D doc from Wim Wenders.

Argylle
Dir. Matthew Vaughn
139 min.

With all the desperate merriment of a crying toddler’s birthday party, Argylle keeps throwing distractions at the screen in an attempt to entertain. Don’t like that fight scene aboard a train? How about a hallway tussle? How about a funny cat? How about John Cena? You like him right? Here he is! A decade out from the franchise-starting spy comedy The Kingsman, director Matthew Vaughn has settled into a specialty of cheeky action movies full of fizz and pop that eventually grows tiresome, but usually not until late enough in the movie that what you’ve just seen doesn’t feel like a total loss. Charismatic stars and a clever moment or two tend to raise his films to the level of “good enough, I guess.” But with Argylle there’s no guessing. It’s flat from first to last.

The film opens with handsome secret agent Aubrey Argylle (Henry Cavill) running into trouble with his latest mission in Greece, discovering by mission’s end that he’s been betrayed by the organization he’s long trusted. Except, hold up, Argylle’s actually a fictional character created by Elly Conway (Bryce Dallas Howard), a meek bestselling writer whose life revolves around hanging around her (very nice) house with her cat. Except, hold up, it turns out her books have actually been a little too close to the actual world of spies and intrigue, requiring an agent named Aidan (Sam Rockwell) to swoop in to rescue her.

If that sounds a bit too much like the basic plot of Romancing the Stone and The Lost City, more twists lie ahead. But none are particularly interesting and all are in service of digitally processed-to-death action scenes that could be called cartoonish if that wasn’t an insult to the artistry and careful choreography of cartoons. Instead, everything goes a beat too long, hits a little too hard, and pushes the gag a little too emphatically. If you like the device of a confused Elly blinking her eyes and alternately seeing Cavill and Rockwell mid-fight scene the first time, you are in for a treat. (Also, Vaughn’s trademark gleeful violence feels somehow more disturbing in bloodless PG-13 form.) Charming under better circumstances, Howard and Rockwell can’t save this sinking ship that both seem to realize they’re stuck in and the film’s big twist, teased in the trailer, is on loan from another, better movie. Cute cat, though. —Keith Phipps

Argylle is in theaters everywhere now.

How to Have Sex
Dir. Molly Manning Walker
91 min.

For young vacationers on the Greek resort town of Malia, Crete—by all appearances, the European equivalent of Cancun or Panama City Beach during spring break—a morning-after “walk of shame” involves shuffling through a main drag that’s like a cross between the vacant streets of a Western at high noon and a frat-house lawn on a Sunday morning. All the businesses are closed, partygoers have scattered to the floors, and couches of crowded hotel rooms, and the empty plastic cups, greasy napkins and paper plates have yet to be picked up for a reset later that night. Through the lens of first-time director Molly Manning Walker, the whole place reeks of stale vomit and regret. 

Starting with a title that drips with acid, How to Have Sex feels like a subtly sinister reversal of ‘80s American sex comedies where horned-up college guys and virginal nerds would clash in a party atmosphere marked by peer pressure and sexual humiliation. Here, it’s a trio of British teenage girls who have arrived for a few days of binge drinking and casual hook-ups, even though their frequent “woos!” and “best vacation ever” declarations can feel a little strained, as if they’re hyping themselves into a good time and not always having it. To be a virgin in this atmosphere is to get escorted into the sexual abattoir, where liquor and conformity tend to rewrite the rules of consent. One’s first time is more likely to be criminal than special. 

Walker plugs into this environment with astonishing persuasiveness, not least because her story is so damnably common. There’s nothing particularly special about Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), a 16-year-old virgin who’s vacationing in Malia with her best friends Em (Enva Lewis) and Skye (Lara Peake), and nothing particularly special about what happens to her. She might feel it acutely but no one else is paying much attention. The trio are blowing off steam after an important standardized test that Tara knows she’s blown, so the seat-of-the-bikini-bottoms uncertainty of her time in Malia seems tied to the uncertainty ahead. Her friends, Skye especially, are eager to help get her laid and Tara doesn’t seem against the idea, though she tries to be a little choosy about the right candidate. 

Across the balcony from their room is one such candidate, Badger, who has blond highlights in his hair, a “Hot Legends” tattoo on his shoulder and greets Tara with “Oi, smoke show.” Tara’s group links up well with Badger’s group, who includes the more quietly predatory Paddy (Samuel Bottomley), and they hit the nightclubs together and participate in public parties where DJs whip people into a frenzy with drinking contests and sex games. When Tara is put off by Badger volunteering for a particularly crude stage show, Paddy catches her on the rebound and takes her to the beach. 

What follows is both predictable and precise, which is a primary strength of How to Have Sex. Consent between strangers absolutely blitzed on shots and punchbowl-sized cocktails can get awfully blurry, even when a “Yeah?” is affirmed, but the impact for someone like Tara is seismic. She wants to have a good time and blow off steam, but there’s also the pressure of being the “cool girl” type, endlessly accommodating to men even when she feels uncomfortable. An incident late in the film could be called shocking by description, but the way Walker stages it, it’s insidiously nonchalant. What happens in Malia may stay in Malia, but it will stay in Tara’s mind forever. — Scott Tobias

How to Have Sex opens in limited release tomorrow.

In brief: For a few years after Avatar sparked a digital 3-D boom—predictably undone by poor conversion jobs and cash-grabbing surcharges—a handful of auteurs explored the creative possibilities in earnest, like Jean-Luc Godard (Goodbye to Language), Martin Scorsese (Hugo), and Werner Herzog (Cave of Forgotten Dreams). But Wim Wenders stuck around after his superb dance documentary Pina—maybe the greatest use of three-dimensional space to date—and now he’s returned with Anselm, an immersive tour through the mind and work of German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer. Kiefer had already been the subject of another reasonably acclaimed documentary, Sophie Fiennes’s Over Your Cities Grasses Will Grow, but his interaction with his work here feels reminiscent of the angels in Wenders’s Wings of Desire. He strolls through his immense exhibits and workspaces, and philosophizes bleakly about their historical, death-haunted themes. The 3-D experience is absolutely essential for Anselm, because it’s easy to imagine the 2-D version getting flattened by Kiefer’s droning austerity: Do recall that Wings of Desire had Peter Falk. Fans of Kiefer’s work should adjust their expectations accordingly. — S.T.

Anselm opens in Chicago tomorrow at Music Box and is currently open in select cities.