Director Matthew Vaughn is one of the most divisive action filmmakers working today. Known for such extravagant and humorous movies as Kick-Ass and Kingsman: The Secret Service, Vaughn continues to make his mark on the action genre with his latest spy comedy, Argylle.
Most of his films certainly aren’t for everyone, especially considering how they emit Quentin Tarantino levels of violence and profanity. Whatever people think about these films, they still succeed in getting audiences in theaters. So, as Argylle makes its way to cinemas, let’s look at the best and worst movies in Vaughn’s filmography.
A year after saving the world, Eggsy (Taron Egerton) and Merlin (Mark Strong) must team up with Kingsman’s American counterpart, the Statesman, after the titular drug cartel all but destroys their agency. For better or worse, this sequel features the franchise’s brand of extreme humor and violence.
But by killing off and bringing back characters on a dime, The Golden Circle seems to embrace the spy genre’s tired tropes rather than deconstruct them. And with its contrived and convoluted plot about the war on drugs, this movie falls from chasing the high of its own excess.
Exploring the origins of Kingsman, this prequel shows the original Arthur (Ralph Fiennes) and his ragtag team as they try to thwart a secret society’s attempts at orchestrating the Great War.
With The King’s Man, the franchise proves it’s just as excessive as ever with its globe-trotting adventure and many flashy displays of ultraviolence. And by having real historical figures like Rasputin, Lenin, and Hitler be in a league of mustache-twirling supervillains, this movie makes for Vaughn’s most ambitious, if not outrageous, movie yet.
Based on Neil Gaiman’s novel of the same name, Stardust follows Tristan (Charlie Cox) when he enters the kingdom of Stormhold to retrieve a fallen star to gain Victoria’s (Sienna Miller) hand in marriage. But to his surprise, the star turns out to be a woman named Yvaine (Claire Danes), who is hunted by princes and witches alike.
This movie remains one of the most underrated adaptations of Gaiman’s work, as it’s a charming, wacky, and heartfelt adventure with plenty of jokes and stunning visuals to entertain fans of the fantasy genre.
When an angsty teenager (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) decides to become a costumed crime fighter, he learns the hard truths of the job as he teams up with vigilantes Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage) and Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz) to take down mafia boss Frank D’Amico (Mark Strong) and his son Red Mist (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).
This controversial film brought a new approach to the superhero genre, deconstructing many familiar tropes with its dark and shocking humor. Many people imagine themselves as superheroes at least once in their lives, and this satirical film shatters that fantasy with uber-bloody brilliance.
When young Eggsy gets recruited to the Kingsman spy agency, he and his new team must stop billionaire Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) from eradicating most of humanity. Like Kick-Ass, this meta-spy comedy pokes fun at the many tropes established by the Bond films that inspired it, all while relishing in its over-the-top violence and extravagant story.
The film’s crowning achievement is arguably the now-iconic church fight scene that plays to the tune of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird, cementing itself in action movie history.
This film arguably helped Daniel Craig land the role of James Bond and gave Tom Hardy one of the most significant early roles in his career. Based on the novel by J.J. Connolly, Vaughn’s directorial debut follows an unnamed cocaine dealer (Craig) who hopes to retire from crime, only to be forced to complete two more tasks that throw him into a web of death and betrayal.
Layer Cake takes audiences into the alluring and all-consuming world of drugs and crime with captivating visuals, gory violence, and a killer soundtrack. At the same time, it displays the tragedy of the protagonist’s criminal lifestyle as he and his allies fight to escape a lethal business they’re all too good at.
Taking place decades before Wolverine meets the X-Men, First Class shows Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) meeting his friend-turned-nemesis Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and forming the iconic team to stop the Hellfire Club from setting off World War III. Though it doesn’t do every one of its characters justice, this stellar prequel was the jumpstart that the X-Men movie franchise needed. With spectacular performances from its cast, a well-balanced tone, and an engaging throwback story, Marvel’s world of mutants has never felt more real.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?