Films

Top Gun: Maverick – 5 Stars

Pete Mitchell, callsign Maverick (Tom Cruise), has spent over 30 years as one of the Navy’s top aviators, doing exactly what he is best at–fl ying planes.

But it’s a new era, and the top brass ground Maverick when disobeys orders to test pilot a new high tech plane; that is, until his old friend Iceman (Val Kilmer) steps in, and selects him to go back to his old stomping ground of Top Gun. At the Naval Flight Academy, Maverick is tasked by Admiral Simpson (Jon Hamm) with a mission.

An Iranian nuclear weapons base is on the verge of readiness, buried in a crater, surrounded by SAMs and fi fth gen fi ghters. They have three weeks to destroy the base before the radioactive materials arrive, and the fl ight in and out is thought to be impossible.

Maverick has to teach a new generation, one so reliant on technology, the skills he has learnt in a lifetime, in order to not just complete the mission, but survive it. In doing so, he will have to reckon with the mistakes, regrets and memories from his past, not least of which is his relationship with his old wingman Goose, whose son Rooster (Miles Teller) is in his class.

Directed by Joseph Kosinski, Top Gun: Maverick is the sort of movie that they just don’t make anymore, and you can feel it right from the opening credits.

As the Paramount logo fades, a beautiful grainy sunrise-over-the-ocean shot is punctured by the distinctly not modern font displaying Miles Teller’s name, and the dulcet, rockabilly tones of Kenny Loggins classic Highway To The Danger Zone plays, the heart pumps a little bit faster. It’s right here that you realize you’re feeling something you haven’t felt in the cinema for years–genuine excitement.

Thus commences the 2-hour 11 minute magnum opus that is Top Gun: Maverick. From a plot perspective, it’s a genuinely ingenious way to bring back the magic of the fi rst, while modernizing it for the modern era (and Cruise’s advancing age).

The dialogue is slick for the most part, with a bunch of classically cheesy one-liners thrown in for good measure, but always aware of itself. It’s also surprisingly aff ecting in its emotionality. Scenes with Kilmer, who famously had his vocal box removed due to cancer, bring a tear to the eye, and Kosinski isn’t tokenistic with his representation of the actor; instead using him to deliver one of the best scenes in the movie.

The cast across the board is uniformly excellent. The newcomers looking for a place in the squad are, due to numbers and by necessity, largely one-dimensional, but that’s ok. The harder edges from the fi rst installment that may not play well in the modern era, like any overt bullying, are rounded off without losing the chemistry, zest and rivalry.

Miles Teller, who strikingly resembles Anthony Edwards Goose from the fi rst movie, is absolutely fantastic, re-cementing his status as one of the best young actors on the scene after a few years of missteps. Jennifer Connolly is also spectacular, bringing some real vintage vibes to the piece.

Ultimately, this is the Tom Cruise show though, and it doesn’t disappoint. This is Cruise on his A-Game, his best performance in years. There’s a joy that shines through in his performance; a little smirk constantly playing behind the eyes, that seems to say to the audience that he, too, feels what they feel; the joyous nostalgia of being back in this world.

The simple pleasures of a time gone by, when all you needed was a cracking soundtrack, a couple of planes fl ying around, and a game of shirtless beach volleyball to have a hit movie, instead of the modern requirement for hundreds of millions of dollars of CGI. Cruise is the lifeblood of this fi lm, and indeed in the resurrecting of this character, and the delivery of a fi lm that literally has to be seen in cinemas, he is the lifeblood of the modern theatrical experience.

Top Gun: Maverick is the sort of fi lm that, when fi rst discussed, seemed like a terrible idea. You’d have been forgiven for thinking that surely, there’s no way they can do anything but harm the legacy of the original.

Which is why it’s such a joy that, after you leave the cinema, having witnessed heart, pathos, some incredible action sequences, and a whole heap of sunset-drenched 80’s nostalgia in bomber jackets, you fi nd that they’ve absolutely succeeded. This is the perfect sequel; perhaps even better than the original.

Reviews by Jacob Richardson Creative Director | Film Focus www.filmfocusau.com

Mothering Sunday – 3 Stars

Beautifully shot, staged and acted, but ultimately unfulfi lling period drama.

Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) is a maid living in post-World War 1 England. She makes plans to secretly meet with the high-born Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor), whom she loves and has been having an affair with, for a romantic tryst before he leaves to marry another woman.

Surrounded by the overwhelming sense of death, mourning and grief from the high-born families around her who have all lost children to the war, and interspersed with fl ashforwards to a future Jane who, successful in her writing, is in the midst of another loss, the fi lm charts the fi nal hours before a tragic accident; one that destroys the community Jane lives in, and both forces her and liberates her in the pursuit of writing.

Mothering Sunday is a prime example of slow cinema. Fundamentally, the story charts pretty much a single afternoon, with admitted fl ashforwards and the occasional fl ashback interspersed amongst that afternoon. While it is defi nitely interesting and intriguing, and holds your interest, it would be a stretch to say that this piece captivates it.

On the plus side, it is gorgeously shot and staged. The visuals in this fi lm really are incredible, and for the lovers of cinematography among us, it may be tough to resist a second visit to rewatch those elements alone, even if you didn’t care for the fi lm as a whole.

With gorgeous colours, beautifully shallow depth of fi eld, and a penchant for focusing not on faces but on details (around lips, shoulders, hair and more), this really is stunning to look at. Be forewarned, however, this isn’t one to take the kids to nor a prickly mother-in-law; our main duo are naked for probably 45% of the runtime, and they don’t shy away from anything. It is also a wonderfully acted fi lm. Colin Firth and Olivia Coleman do wonders with small roles, completely swallowed by their pain and loss. The main duo are also extremely compelling, particularly Young, who has to play really three versions of the same character throughout; the naive young lover in fl ashbacks, the realist, desperate and last-ditch hopeful lover in the main timeline, and the cynical, but faintly hopeful and wistful one in the fl ashforwards.

The scripting is also fairly admirable. The piece for most of the runtime works extremely well, and lines like Coleman’s biting remark to Young’s Jane, or Firth’s simple approval of her characters choice to move on, hit home and trust the audience to work with little wordage, and lots of performance.

Where stems the issue then? Ultimately, Mothering Sunday feels empty, and that’s a problem. Sure, there are the occasional general missteps–chief among them a horrible reporters-at-the-door scene with a much much older Jane, which feels plucked from an entirely diff erent fi lm.

But the issue with the fi lm is more insidious than that. The whole thing feels bereft of weight, and import. It’s tough to pinpoint where exactly that happens. Perhaps the fi lm is too slow cinema for its own good. Perhaps it is the arrangement of the scenes, or a characters lack of backstory. In the end, this is a story about the lingering eff ect of loss, and both its inhibiting eff ects and its catalysing ones. We’re looking at all of these characters feeling so much–so much pain, so much loss, so much grief–and yet we feel nothing. That’s why the fi lm, despite being stunningly beautiful, is ultimately unsuccessful.