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Outtakes

De”FIN”itive

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Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story

by George Wolf

You may have heard Jaws celebrated its fiftieth anniversary last month. The celebrations and remembrances, the memes and mementos have been joyous fun, reminding us of a landmark film that changed the landscape of the movies.

And now, like the fashionably late party guest everyone was waiting for, comes Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story. Streaming concurrently on Hulu, Disney + and the National Geographic channel, the film serves up a boatload of BTS goodness that fans will wish was twice as big as the 88-minute running time.

At the heart of director Laurent Bouzereau’s deep dive is the time spent with director Steven Spielberg. His approach to adapting the book for the screen, his tales of how the shoot went months behind schedule, how there was real doubt that it could even be completed, and the PTSD that followed him into his filmmaking future are all completely captivating. Looking back, he still seems amazed that they pulled it off, and Bouzereau finds an effective contrast between Spielberg remembering what went wrong and famous fans such as Quentin Tarantino, Jordan Peele, Guillermo del Toro, Steven Soderbergh and more lavishing praise about what went right.

The Martha’s Vineyard location and its unique citizenry become characters themselves, but of course its Bruce the mechanical shark that always steals the show – for better or worse. Fifty years later, you’re glad that CGI wasn’t around in the summer of 1974, as Bruce’s “less is more” performance still holds up every time.

From the cast members to the score to the USS Indianapolis monolog to the film’s effect on studio production, marketing and even shark conservation, Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story covers just about every angle you’re hoping for. It is the perfect exclamation point to this month long birthday celebration.

I just wonder why the “fin” in Definitive isn’t capitalized.

I don’t find that funny. I don’t find that funny at all.

Never mind, then.

Outtakes

The Mushy Middle

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The Old Guard 2

by George Wolf

Look, it’s just science. You get a glimpse of Uma Thurman and Charlize Theron in a sword fight, you get your hopes up. I did, hopeful that The Old Guard 2 on Netflix could match – or maybe even exceed the fun of the original.

But while it is a blast to see those two bad asses in a blade battle, it’s too little too late in a sequel that gets bogged down in speeches, heavy meaningful glances, and plans for the future of this group of immortals.

It also really helps to have seen part one, or at least be familiar with the graphic novels by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández. They’re both back as co-writers, with director Victoria Mahoney taking over for Gina Prince-Bythewood. They put the now-mortal Andy (Theron) and her crew (including Kiki Layne, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Matthias Schoenaerts) on a collision course with the long-lost Quynh (Veronica Neo) – who returned at the close of part one after centuries locked in an Iron Maiden.

Andy also has a new friend, Tuah (Henry Golding) who speaks a lot about legends, lore, and the power of Discord (Uma), the original immortal who rescued Quynh as part of a nefarious plan.

This veteran cast looks a bit lost amid the bright neon palettes, plodding dialog and awkwardly choreographed fight sequences. Mahoney never really lets the fun in, returning to tired blocking and exposition dialog every time you think we’re finally gonna get cooking.

And just when you’re wondering what the point of this sequel is…you find out.

Mild spoiler ahead.

This is a just a bridge to the next chapter. And when that works in a film series, it’s because the bridge also supports its own story arc, one that leaves you satisfied while still wanting to follow these characters into the future.

The Old Guard 2 just leaves you frustrated on all counts, with nothin’ mister but boring stories of the glory days.

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Formula Won

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F1: The Movie

by George Wolf

With Top Gun: Maverick, director Joseph Kosinski understood the assignment better than any director in recent years. Talent, swagger, airborne thrills and pinpoint vibe control made that film better than we could have imagined.

Now Kosinski brings a very similar blueprint to F1: The Movie, right down to that punctuation in the title.

Brad Pitt effortlessly assumes the role of a rogue mentor flying by his own rules, this time on the racetrack. Thirty years ago, Sonny Hayes (Pitt) had a promising career as a Grand Prix driver. A nasty crash derailed that, sending him to decades of minor league racing, professional gambling and even some cab driving.

But now, Sonny is the Hail Mary called by his old racing partner. Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem) is a desperate team owner with a cocky young driver named Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) and a losing streak about to bring the whole thing down.

If Sonny’s “maverick” approach to driving can somehow get Ruben one win before the season ends, he can save the whole APX team.

Can Sonny be the Crash Davis to Joshua’s Nuke LaLoosh? Is he up for taking one more shot at glory and maybe some sexy time with APX tech director Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon)?

It doesn’t matter if you already know, just like it doesn’t matter that much of the dialog is cheesy, many reaction shots deliver sitcom-worthy mugging and the TV commentators narrate straight from “Racing for Dummies.”

Pitt, Bardem, Condon and Idris might as well be winking through it all. They’re clearly having a ball, and elevate material that – like Maverick -would have been insufferable in lesser hands. F1 may not have nostalgia in its cockpit, but the swagger and the vibe are too fun to resist, while Kosinski (also a co-writer this time) delivers the pinpoint control.

Filmed for IMAX, F1‘s racing sequences are as thrilling on the track as Top Gun is in the air. The camerawork and pacing, the editing and some rockin’ needle drops keep the adrenaline pumping, and even that two and a half hour run time doesn’t feel as bloated as it probably should.

F1: The Movie won’t keep you guessing. And it won’t challenge your brain. But that isn’t the mission of this race team. The goal here is (really) big screen entertainment, movie star glamour, plenty of speed-fueled visceral thrills and maybe even a fist pump or two.

Ground control to victory lane: get the champagne ready.

Outtakes

Mommy Can You Hear Me?

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Echo Valley

by George Wolf

The barn roof at the Echo Valley horse ranch is bad. Like $9,000 bad. And when Kate (Julianne Moore) makes the trip to her ex-husband Richard’s (Kyle MacLachlan) office for some financial help, we get some nicely organic character development.

In those few important minutes, director Michael Pearce and writer Brad Ingelsby let us know Kate and Richard’s daughter Claire may have some serious issues, and that Kate may be enabling her.

From there, we can guess that Claire (Sydney Sweeney) will be showing up soon.

She does, and says she’s clean. She just needs for Mom to buy her another new phone while she breaks away from her boyfriend Ryan (Edmund Donovan). But of course Ryan shows up, followed by their dealer Jackie (Domhnall Gleeson – a nicely subtle brand of menacing), and it isn’t long before a frantic Claire comes home wearing someone else’s blood.

The somewhat pulpy, kinda noir-ish pieces aren’t exactly new, but Pearce (Beast) and the terrific ensemble always find frayed edges that keep you invested. We’re set up to pull for the put-upon Kate, then continually given reasons to doubt that very support.

Does Kate’s aversion to tough love make her an easy mark? Maybe, but maybe Kate’s smarter than anyone expects. Especially Jackie.

Pearce keeps the pace sufficiently taut and supplies some hypnotic shots of a countryside that comes to play an important part in the mystery – as does modern tech. Instead of copping out with a 90s timestamp, Echo Valley leans into the texts and tracking. True, the resolve might not be water tight digitally, but the timeliness gives the tension some relatable urgency.

It’s also refreshing to find a streaming release that doesn’t continually cater to lapsed attention spans. From that opening meeting in Richard’s office, Echo Valley assumes you’re settled in for the ride, all the way through a rewarding deconstruction of events and a final shot that cements what the film was getting at all along.

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Thanks for the Memories

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The Life of Chuck

by George Wolf

Near the end of The Life of Chuck, a character enters a room and is careful to test the floor as he steps in. Organic dialog earlier in the film has let us know why he’s doing this, so no voiceover narration explaining the action is necessary.

This moment stands out, because it’s one of the few where viewers are given space to think for themselves.

This is a film that is impressively crafted, with an immensely likable cast and a broad, generically inspiring message that many people will be quick to embrace. Writer/director Mike Flanagan adapts the Stephen King novella with such earnest polish that the film can leave you feeling guilty for not liking it – and I didn’t.

Flanagan, who has already done stellar King adaptations (Doctor Sleep, Gerald’s Game) and whose own great work (Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Hill House) can have a distinct King feel, keeps the story’s reverse chronology intact.

In chapter one, teacher Marty Anderson (Chiwtel Ejiofor) and his ex-wife Felicia (Karen Gillan) try to make sense of repeated ads thanking Charles Krantz for “39 great years!” as the world seems to be ending.

From there, we see how the buttoned-up accountant “Chuck” Krantz (Tom Hiddleston) learned to rediscover his love of dancing.

And finally, we go back to two different periods in the life of young Chuck (Benjamin Pajek and later, Jacob Tremblay), as he’s raised by his caring grandparents (Mark Hamill and Mia Sara) to find joy in dance and fear of the cupola upstairs.

It’s wonderful to see Sara back in a feature for the first time in 14 years, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear Oscar talk for Hamill. The film is often warm hearted and lovely, but the familiarity of the cosmic profundities and the constant narration from Nick Offerman reduces its overall effect to that of a pop-up audiobook.

Causes, effects and motivations are provided at nearly turn, diluting potential magic down to mundane and undercutting the power of the film’s eventual sleight-of-hand reveal.

It’s a twist you may see coming, you may not. But you will understand the surface deep lesson being sold. The Life of Chuck leaves no room for nuance or interpretation, just take your dose of bland inspiration and move on.

So yeah, thanks Chuck. I guess.

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Fins to the Left, Fins to the Right

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Dangerous Animals

by George Wolf

When are they going to run out of ideas for new shark movies?

Well, not today.

Dangerous Animals – director Sean Byrne’s first film in a decade – rises above the glut of silly sharksploitation yarns by aggressively hunting an adventure thriller of abduction and survival.

Jai Courtney stuffs his own jaws full of scenery as Tucker, a bawdy and boisterous boat captain in Australia who takes tourists out for shark encounters. But Tucker is always on the lookout for those visitors who may be alone and not easily tracked. And when Tucker identifies his prey, he pounces, hooking them up to a harness and slowly feeding them to the sharks while he records it all on VHS.

Free vegemite with any blank VHS tape purchase!

But when Tucker abducts American surfer Zephyr (Hassie Harrison) on the beach one very early morning, he quickly realizes he’s hooked “a Marlin,” a real fighter. Tucker loves a fight, and Zephyr is going to give it to him.

Byrne (The Loved Ones, The Devil’s Candy) shows a pretty firm hand juggling the sharky business with other genres and influences. You’ll see clear nods to The Silence of the Lambs and Hounds of Love, and Byrne is able to draw some tense, terrifying moments out of fairly standard tropes and the obligatory nonsensical choices made by potential victims.

Nick Lepard’s script falters most by wedging in a potential love story between Zephyr and local dude Moses (Josh Heuston). The narrative need to have someone miss Zephyr when she’s gone is understandable, but the thread lands as forced, contrived, and a heavy weight that drags the film down.

Courtney has never been better. His Tucker is a hammy hoot, and Courtney leans into a Mad Aussie physicality that makes the heavy handed predator metaphors more entertaining. Harrison sells the defiant grit that makes Zephyr a worthy adversary, and the two trade blows in a power struggle that keeps you engaged on the way to a finale that you’ve already guessed.

Byrne makes sure the shark footage is occasionally thrilling and always competent. But he also finds plenty of ways to make this more than just another preposterous fin story, and Dangerous Animals is better for it.

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Crane, Meet Dragon

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Karate Kid: Legends

by George Wolf

The success of cable’s Cobra Kai probably made a new Karate Kid movie pretty inevitable. So here we are, in the Kai universe, bringing Ralph Macchio, Jackie Chan and the ghost of Pat Morita all together for Karate Kid: Legends.

Don’t expect “The Crane,” the new move is “Dragon Kick,” but getting to it follows the well worn KK formula. Li Fong (Ben Wang, last seen in Mean Girls) and his Mom (Ming-Na Wen) move from Bejing to NYC, where Li meets the cute Mia (Sadie Stanley) even before the first day of high school.

But Mia’s ex-boyfriend Conor (Aramis Knight, who should license his name for a new cologne) is mean, jealous and the reigning champ of the 5 boroughs karate tournament. And this year’s tourney is coming up.

Can Li put aside his tragic past – not to mention the vow he made to his mother – and shock the crowd?

Give screenwriter Rob Leiber credit for working some much appreciated script flips inside these plug-and-play story beats.

First, Li is no novice when he comes to town. He’d been studying with Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) back home, and is already skilled enough to train Mia’s Dad (Joshua Jackson) – a former boxer looking for much needed prize money – for his upcoming fight.

Plus, the choreography for Li’s early fights with baddies and bullies is total Jackie Chan – complete with nimble acrobatics and a humorous, Chaplin-esqe style that delights. Still, Li is in need of help, so Mr. Han arrives to provide it.

But Han’s specialty is Kung Fu. Where can they find a karate master? Enter Daniel LaRusso (Macchio), the prize student of Han’s old fried, Mr. Miyagi.

It is a nostalgic kick seeing them train Li together, and some nice moments of goofy humor come from the pairing. But like almost every other positive in the film, they’re buried under director Jonathan Entwistle’s breakneck pace.

At barely 90 minutes, a film that was already less-than-subtle becomes a lightning quick series of contrived blows to the head that we know are coming but powerless to stop. Whether from meat cleaver editing or a calculated nod to short attention spans, the result feels too much like an ESPN 30 for 30 highlight reel, robbing us of any chance to get truly invested and forget that we already know how this ends.

Still, Legends manages to land a few fun blows. Just don’t blink or you’ll miss ’em.

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Jane Says

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Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

by George Wolf

The Cult of Jane is strong, for good reason. On film, Austen’s groundbreaking work has inspired faithful adaptations, inspired re-imaginings and even romance fantasy. Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (Jane Austen a gâché ma vie) gets filed behind door number three, a fanciful rom-com that finds its joy by throwing a devoted fan into the Austen formula.

Agathe Robinson (Anatomy of a Fall‘s Camille Rutherford) is a “desperately single” bookseller who has dreams of becoming a writer -dreams that she is too scared to pursue. Her love life falls along the same lines, so Agathe seems destined to wander through life in her own fantasy world.

Things change when Agathe’s friend with possible benefits Felix (Pablo Pauly) submits the first chapters of her manuscript to a Jane Austen residency. The organizers there are impressed enough to offer Agathe a spot at their next writer’s retreat, where she’s greeted by Jane’s great-great-great-great nephew Mr. Darcy, er, I mean Oliver (Charlie Anson).

Oliver thinks Jane is overrated. Agathe thinks Oliver is unbearable and arrogant. Felix thinks he and Agathe are ready to take things to the next level.

Guess how that all plays out.

Writer/director Laura Piani knows you can guess, and she makes sure her feature debut leans into that part of the fun. This is meta Jane that manages to be both entirely predictable and consistently pleasing. It’s lush and beautifully shot, intelligent but always accessible, with strong performances and plenty of gently amusing dialog.

And while Piani scores by planting Austen’s centuries-old anxieties into our timeline, she can never quite find a groove of comedy and/or romance that feels memorable. This Jane Austen is hardly a wreck, but it lands as more sweet distraction than solid persuasion.

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Samurai West

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Tornado

by George Wolf

Less than ten minutes into Tornado, you’ll be wondering about the cinematographer behind the expansive beauty on the screen. That would be the Oscar-nominated Robbie Ryan (The Favourite, Poor Things), who elevates writer/director John Maclean’s Samurai survival thriller with consistently sumptuous framing of Scotland’s savage beauty.

In the late 1790’s, young Tornado (Kôki) is on the run from a ruthless crime gang led by Sugarman (Tim Roth) and his son Little Sugar (Jack Lowden). Tornado performs enchanting puppet shows with her father Fujin (Takehiro Hira), but when their traveling show crosses paths with Sugarman and his boys, some impulsive choices lead to deadly consequences.

A full decade after Maclean’s impressive debut Slow West (also shot by Ryan), he returns to a similar story structure. A young adult must again navigate harsh countryside and the threat of violence, while keeping their wits about them and their focus on a committed goal.

But this time, the young Tornado has a bit more going for her when events turn ugly. Fujin is a Samurai, and though he has been teaching his daughter the importance of patience and peace, Tornado is more than handy with a sword.

She also prefers to speak English and often scoffs at her father’s attempts to impart wisdom, character traits Maclean uses to place her between cultures. Tornado seems more vulnerable as Sugarman closes in, and the need to accept her destiny becomes increasingly clear.

Anyone who saw Slow West won’t be surprised by the Western themes here, but the influence of martial arts classics starts simmering early in Tornado before Maclean puts Samurai lore at the heart of act three. The transition isn’t completely seamless and does seem a bit overdue by the time it arrives, but terrific performances by both Kôki and Roth create a compelling dynamic on the way to a showdown.

The offbeat humor of Slow West is missed, and though the support cast is strong (especially Joanne Whalley and Jack Morris), no side character makes a mark as unforgettable as Ben Mendelsohn’s Payne from a decade ago.

Instead, it’s Ryan who isn’t afraid to steal the show. Tornado is a simply gorgeous movie, a compelling Samurai Western hybrid that’s painted on a canvas deserving of the big screen.

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Running Man

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Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

by George Wolf

Remember that eye-popping train stunt in Dead Reckoning? How is this latest Mission: Impossible chapter possibly going to up that ante? Well, it takes two of the film’s nearly three hours to get there, but once Tom Cruise and director/co-writer Christopher McQuarrie break out the dual bi-planes, hang on for some serious thrills.

And The Final Reckoning delivers plenty of them, more than enough to cruise past (pun intended) some clunky moments for a crowd-pleasing, satisfying capper to an epic franchise.

We pick up where they left us two years ago, with Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team of Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), and Grace (Hayley Atwell) on the trail of villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) and the secrets of disarming the doomsday AI program known as “The Entity.”

In just 72 hours, The Entity’s efforts to frighten and divide the population will enable it to gain control over every nuclear arsenal in the world, and deploy each one. Hunt’s mission? Find The Entity’s original source code, and pair it with Luther’s poison pill algorithm that will distort the AI’s reality enough to bring it down.

That’s a mighty big ask in three days, one takes the MI team across the globe, under the sea and in the air for more IMAX-worthy stunts and camerawork. And Cruise – one of cinema’s great movie stars – sells every minute of it with his ageless physicality and effortless charisma.

And though the the film’s themes are mighty relevant, McQuarrie can lean too much on exposition dialog and some forced visual reminders. But he also knows the last three decades have earned some capital that the film spends quite well, bringing in plot points and characters from previous installments to play important parts of the plan. Sure, The Final Reckoning gets a bit sentimental toward the final shot, but after all this time that feels right.

It also feels like a fitting start to summer movie season, a fitting end to a solid franchise, and a fine mission accomplished.