Basically about three actors sitting around on a boat while their movie, Jaws, is taking longer than ever to make because the mechanical shark rarely works, The Shark Is Broken—written by Ian Shaw and Joseph Nixon—is a decent enough diversion.

 

Ian is the son of Robert Shaw, who famously played the monomaniacal shark hunter Quint in Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster 1975 movie, which was such an enormous hit that summer that Hollywood would never be the same after its astonishing success. So it’s no surprise that Ian plays his dad Robert in this curio about the frustrations of three actors—Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss, Shaw’s costars in the movie, are the others—as they sit around waiting for the green light to continue filming.

 

It's the barest of bare skeletons, which Shaw fils and cowriter Nixon are obviously aware of. In lieu of any real plot, the trio wiles away the boredom of waiting for the shark to be fixed by playing games, drinking, telling stories, drinking, singing songs, drinking, irritating each other—the bulk of the show is filler, but what the writers are after is the camaraderie, at first tentative but eventually hard-earned, of the actors, as diverse as can be. Robert Shaw was an infamously hard-drinking Irish-Brit; Roy Scheider was the city-dwelling everyman; and Richard Dreyfuss was, at least in this telling, a young actor with the biggest streak of insecurity in history.

 

A little of their back-and-forth goes a long way, so Shaw, Nixon and director Guy Masterson keep things moving by alternating longer, conversational scenes with shorter, atmospheric—and mainly dialogue-less—moments, which makes The Shark Is Broken marginally longer—it runs about 90 intermissionless minutes—but doesn’t provide much depth.

 

Amid all the wink-wink nudge-nudge jokes about how Jaws will be a flop (or at best a piece of junk that will make money but no one will remember in 50 years) or how Dreyfuss says he’s spoken to their director about his next movie, which will be about UFOs (incredulous, Shaw bellows, “What next, dinosaurs?”) or how President (not cowriter) Nixon—who, in real life, resigned while Jaws was being filmed—is the most immoral in history, the creators understand that The Shark Is Broken is about acting, and they have created juicy bits for each character, even if Masterson seems to encourage all three actors to go further into caricature than is needed.

 

Colin Donnell plays Roy Scheider with a pinched voice and exaggerated New Yawk accent, but he perfectly plays the moderating influence that the mostly calm Scheider must have been on the diametrically opposed personalities that were Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw. 

 

Alex Brightman, always a physically adept comedian, plays Dreyfuss as a fidgety bundle of nerves—but since he’s a dead ringer for oceanographer Matt Hooper, the performance, funny and entertaining as it is, comes off as more of an impression of the character Hooper than the actor Dreyfuss.

 

From the moment he walks onto the stage, Ian Shaw is an uncanny doppelgänger of his father, and there are moments during The Shark Is Broken where it seems that a hologram of Shaw pere is interacting with the others. Ian also has the best lines as Robert reduces Richard to a pile of blubber with constant insults or when Robert extols the many virtues of being a drunkard—even while on the set, shooting. 

 

But the coup de theatre comes at the climax when Ian recreates, word for word and gesture for gesture, Robert’s unforgettable Jaws monologue about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis after delivering the atomic bomb to Japan. Although it seems out of place, slapped on to the end of the play, Ian catches some of the nuances in his dad’s original tour de force and it’s a satisfying way to wrap up, as appreciative Jaws fans in the audience can attest.

 

Masterson directs snappily on Duncan Henderson’s precise recreation of Quint’s beat-up fishing boat, the Orca; Jon Clark’s lighting, Ninz Dunn’s projections and Adam Cork’s music and sound design coalesce to ground the enjoyably slight The Shark Is Broken in our collective movie memories.

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Japanese guitarist Akio Sakurai —aka Mr. Jimmy—has pretty much turned his whole persona into a copy of Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, from his guitars and musical tone to the costumes Page wore performing in concert.

 

 

Director Peter Michael Dowd introduces Mr. Jimmy as a serious musician who respects and loves the music he plays to the point where he makes it difficult for his bandmates in Zep tribute bands to perform to his exacting specifications. But Jimmy remains sympathetic throughout, offbeat but charming, with a real talent for music making—even if it’s someone else’s music. 

 

 

 

Portrait of the Queen 

Do we need another documentary about recently deceased Queen Elizabeth II? Italian director Fabrizio Ferri thinks so, and he brings an artistic eye and subtle insight to this glimpse of her majesty through the eyes of the many photographers who were chosen to take official pictures of her over the decades.

 

 

There’s also fawning testimony from random people in pubs and parks along with the likes of Susan Sarandon, who contributes an amusing anecdote about meeting the queen. There’s even reverent narration by an onscreen Charles Dance, but the focus is rightly on the camera users, who discuss aspects of the queen’s “private” countenance even as they posed her for others’ consumption.

 

 

 

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

Andy Muschietti’s entry into the increasingly crowded superhero genre is a convoluted, occasionally fun but mostly enervating account of how the Flash deals with the murder of his beloved mother: he time-travels to meet his younger self and try and change past events by preventing her death—which then unleashes some unintended consequences.

 

 

Ezra Miller plays both Flashes, nicely modulated as the older but annoyingly herky-jerky as the younger; the great Spanish actress Maribel Verdu satisfies in a small role as his mom and Michael Keaton is slyly knowing as “alternative” Batman. But there’s too much clutter, both visual and narrative, to make this 144-minute slog consistently enjoyable. The film looks spectacular in 4K; extras are several featurettes, behind the scenes footage and deleted scenes.

 

 

 

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Irish filmmaker Mark Cousins does the seemingly impossible, creating a comprehensive history of the art of movies in a (relatively) brief 18-1/2 hours that is a treasure trove of information, witty commentary, brilliant use of film clips, location shots and interviews that make this a must-watch for anyone at all interested in the world’s most lucrative and widespread artistic medium.

 

 

Spread out over four discs are both of Cousins’ magnificent films on film: 2011's The Story of Film—An Odyssey and 2021's The Story of Film—A New Generation, the former divided into 18 chapters and the latter into two parts, covering eras from the silent and early talkies to the innovative filmmakers of Europe and Asia to Hollywood’s infamous blacklist and the digital transformation of the 21st century. Cousins finds engaging and provocative ways of tying several strands together thematically, historically, and artistically, although he’s not above criticism himself—his love for the technically proficient but shallow Baz Luhrmann, Christopher Nolan and Lars von Trier (for example) is, in my view, substantially misplaced. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

 

 

 

DVD Release of the Week 

Natalia Almada, a Mexican-American filmmaker, is rarely discussed outside of festival circles, but perhaps this illuminating five-disc set of several documentaries and one fiction feature will change that. For the past 20 years, she has been making singularly challenging documentaries, starting with her emotionally devastating 2011 short, All Water Has a Perfect Memory—about the drowning death of her sister at a young age—and continuing with To the Other Side (2005), El General (2009), The Night Watchman (2011), and Users (2021), the latter faltering a bit in bemoaning technology while using it to create stunning images.

 

 

Almada’s lone fiction feature, the observational Everything Else (2016), is also included, Almada makes personal films that are political (or vice versa), as the set’s title states, and her humanity and empathy shine through in all of her films. Brief featurettes and a three-minute director interview are the lone extras; too bad Almada doesn’t give more of her contextualizing voice to these often mesmerizing films.

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Liam Neeson is back but he’s not better than ever: this routine remake of a Spanish thriller about a financial guru who is trapped with his children in his car with bombs under their seats has moments of tension and excitement, but mostly it’s Neeson barking at his kids, soon-to-be ex-wife, the bomber, and the cops as he tries to find a way to survive.

 

 

Nimród Antal directs with a sledgehammer, and the final twist unmasking the villain is patently ridiculous. While Embeth Davidtz is wasted as Neeson’s wife, their teenage kids are enacted persuasively by Jack Champion and Lilly Aspell.

 

 

 

Blue Box 

In Michal Weits’ authoritative documentary, the director matter-of-factly rattles the skeletons in her country’s—and family’s—closet by revealing the painful truths behind the actions of her great-grandfather Yosef Weitz, one of the leaders of the Jewish National Fund, which bought up much Palestinian land that led to Arab resistance and his own prescient prediction that Jews and Arabs would not be able to live together.

 

 

Using a treasure trove of Weitz’ diaries and letters to bolster the factual evidence she presents, Weits also weaves in several tense interviews with family members that are fraught with uncomfortable conversations underlining the divide between those who believe the “official” history and those who are more skeptical.

 

 

 

Piaffe 

In Israeli director Ann Oren’s convoluted but mildly diverting psychological study, a young woman named Eva takes over sound recording on an ad shoot after her sibling Zara suffers a nervous breakdown. Eva starts growing a horse tail after observing one and the previous naïve woman begins a hedonistic sexual relationship with a local botanist.

 

 

Oren tosses in bits of Greenaway, Breillat, and even Bunuel, but despite the secondhand imagery and ideas and complete lack of humor, the thought-provoking film is anchored by a formidable performance by the striking actress Simone Bucio as Eva.

 

 

 

4K/UHD Release of the Week

It’s not surprising that this relentlessly scattershot horror parody was originally a short, since, at 95 minutes, obvious comic moments become numbing after awhile: some viewers might even miss a couple of good jokes during the end credits.

 

 

The cast is game—even though the hilarious Jay Pharoah is offed far too early—but defeated by material that’s been done to, um, death, and director Tim Story and writers Tracy Oliver and Dewayne Perkins (who also stars) never bring their A game. The film looks sharp in ultra hi-def; extras include a commentary, deleted scenes, outtakes and several making-of featurettes.

 

 

 

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

This opera by German composer Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921) is filled with complicated relationships and lovely vocal sections that come across beautifully in director Christof Loy’s clarifying 2022 production at Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam.

 

 

Of course, excellent lead performances by Olga Kulchynska, Daniel Behle, Josef Wagner and Doris Soffel greatly help, as does the music making by the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, Chorus of Dutch National Opera and a children’s chorus, all under the direction of conductor Marc Albrecht. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.