WHAT I WATCHED (AND WANT TO WATCH)

So, yesterday my screenwriting partner Alex and I went to the local multiplex and really enjoyed “Ferrari,” despite the fact it was in a theater where the stadium seating was old enough to have cramped seating.

I’ll say this about the movie right off: female readers can surprise the guy in their life by suggesting a Movie Night Out to see “Ferrari,” secure in the fact that they will like it, too.

The movie tells the Origin Story of how Ferrari became FERRARI. You could say it’s the other side of “Ford vs Ferrari,” telling us why Henry Ford II became so pissed off at Enzo Ferrari that he paid to create the GT-40 and blow Ferrari off the track in 1963.

It’s 1957 and Enzo’s company is on the rocks. They don’t win enough races to sell the sports cars, and the only way to stave off bankruptcy is to win the Mille Miglia so they can produce and sell 400 sports cars a year, like the investors want.

The Mille Miglia (Italian for Thousand Kilometers) was an open-road, endurance race established in 1927 by Counts Francesco Mazzotti and Aymo Maggi that took place in Italy 24 times from 1927 to 1957. It was the event that introduced the world to the names Alfa Romeo, BMW, Ferrari, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche. It was also the only race that was so dangerous it was ended due to the fatalities. The movie specifically shows why that happened, when it restages Spanish driver Alfonso de Portago’s crash when his left front tire hit an object that had fallen off another racer at 110 mph, flipping the racer into the air and somersaulting it into the onlookers standing beside the road in the village of Guidizzolo, killing nine villagers and de Portago. (For the squeamish, this is done in real-time - no slo-mo.) In fact, more spectators and drivers had been killed in these races than any other. Guidizzolo was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” (Since 1977, a “race” for car collectors has been restaged, allowing only cars produced by 1957 to participate.)

The racing sequences are only about 15 minutes of a 2 hour 10 minute movie. They’re really fantastic - they actually stage running the race through the streets of Rome! And the wheel-to-wheel racing through the countryside leaves you in no doubt about just how dangerous it was to be in one of these racers. No CGI anywhere, thank goodness. It’s Michael Mann at his deliver-the-goods best.

The rest of the movie is a tour de force performance by Adam Driver as “Il Commendetore,” Enzo Ferrari, in a story about him, his wife, Laura Ferrari (Penelope Cruz), his mistress, Lina Lardi (Shailene Woodley), and his unacknowledged son, Piero (Giuseppe Festinese). All of them at their best. I commented to Alex as I was watching these sequences that Mann was directing and shooting in the style of Bertolucci. That’s not a complaint. Doing a movie about Italy and Italians in the manner of Bertolucci is a Damn Good Idea. (As Billy Wilder once said, “Steal from the best, and then make it your own.”) Mann follows that dictum.

This is the best movie I have seen this year besides “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Come for the racing, stay for the story.

Thirty minutes of Coming Attractions before the movie came on managed to reinforce “the word” here in Okeefenokee West that the Super-Hero Movie is coming to the end of the line, showcasing several coming sequels that all had the combined “life on screen” of a wet dishrag, to the point I can’t even remember their names. (When “The Ankler,” a screenwriter Substack, published an article on that last week, I posted “See? There is too a Santa Claus!” which so far has 20 “likes” from fellow writers, so you can see there are some of us who’d like to get back to “original” and “different’).

There was, however, one trailer that was both “original” and “new” and “different,” to the point I have its release date - February 2 - circled on my calendar to go see it.

That is “Argylle.”

“Argylle,” was originally announced in 2021, with the statement it was based on the unreleased debut novel from author Elly Conway, who turns out to be a character in the film, which follows a writer who gets caught up in her own spy story. (However, Penguin Random House has a real website for author Elly Conway’s upcoming debut book, “Argylle.” Go figure.)

Here’s the official plotline:

Bryce Dallas Howard is Elly Conway, the reclusive author of a series of best-selling espionage novels, whose idea of bliss is a night at home with her computer and her cat, Alfie. But when the plots of Elly’s fictional books—which center on secret agent Argylle and his mission to unravel a global spy syndicate—begin to mirror the covert actions of a real-life spy organization, quiet evenings at home become a thing of the past.

Accompanied by Aiden (Sam Rockwell), a cat-allergic spy, Elly (carrying Alfie in her backpack) races across the world to stay one step ahead of the killers as the line between Elly’s fictional world and her real one begins to blur.

How can a writer say “no” to something like that?

Especially when the cast includes Samuel L. Jackson (as the Guy Who Knows Things), Bryan Cranston (as the head of the spy organization), Catherine O’Hara (as Elly’s mother), Sofia Boutella (as the terrorist), Henry Cavill (as “Agent Argylle”), and Alfie (as the gray tabby). Along with a large cast of other solid actors. The screenplay is by Jason Fuchs, who wrote “Wonder Woman” and it’s directed by Matthew Vaughn, who did “Kingsman: The Secret Service” among others, so you know he knows how to pull off this sort of thing.

I am in hopes this is another “Romancing the Stone,” which I watch whenever it shows up.

2024 is going to be tough, but even wars have respites, and That’s Another Fine Mess thanks the paid subscribers whose support allows me to go to the movies ahead of you and warn you off the wastes of time and money, and let you know what interested me and might interest you. Your support really helps!

Comments are for paid subscribers.