Emmys Recap: 'Widow’s Bay' Smacks 'Hacks' as Their Stars, Matthew Rhys and Jean Smart, Make History

Good evening. Sad news tonight in Los Angeles, where an NBC4 helicopter has crashed, leaving multiple people dead and several others injured.

The crash was captured live on camera, and veteran L.A. helicopter reporter Zoey Tur wrote on Twitter that it sounded like NBC4’s helicopter ran out of fuel, likely causing engine failure, though authorities have yet to announce any kind of official cause.

My heart goes out to everyone affected by this seemingly easily preventable tragedy, and I’ll keep them in my prayers tonight.

Last night, Mariska Hargitay hosted the Emmys, and I’ll share my thoughts on the show below the paywall, but first, I saw two movies since we last met — John Carney’s Power Ballad and Padraic McKinley’s upcoming drama The Weight.

I highly recommend both movies.

Power Ballad is one of the best movies of the year, period. Carney, the director of Once and Sing Sing, is a master of the modern musical, and his latest is on nearly the same level. It’s about Rick Power (Paul Rudd), a musician who gave up on his dreams of becoming a rock star to settle down with his family in Ireland and sing in a wedding band. When he meets Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), a former boy band star desperate to reinvent himself as a solo act, the two hit it off and stay up late one night, drinking and jamming together. Rick even plays Danny one of his songs.

Months later, Rick is in a mall when he hears that same song, which shoots to #1 on the charts and racks up 500 million downloads. Its success prompts Rick to track down Danny and seek proper credit for the song.

Jonas is solid as the global music sensation, but this is one of Rudd’s very best performances — he doesn’t just hide behind his goofball charm; he digs deep and really gets in there, especially during the third act. Meanwhile, Jack Reynor and Peter McDonald are perfect in supporting roles. The music itself isn’t as memorable as the songs in Once and Sing Sing, but Carney really sticks the landing here, as the ending bucks convention and delivers something far better than what you’re expecting.

I loved this movie, and it’s a shame that Lionsgate never quite figured out how to sell it...

I also watched The Weight, which comes out on Friday. Ethan Hawke plays a single father who is ripped away from his young daughter and sent to a labor camp to do hard time — moving rocks and shit. He hits it off with his jailer, played by Russell Crowe, who offers him early release if he leads a dangerous expedition across a forest to transport government gold. And gold, as we all know, will make men do crazy things…

Meanwhile, if Hawke loses a single bar, he’ll have failed in his mission, and he may never see his daughter again, as she’ll be lost to the foster care system forever.

The Weight is basically a modern-day Sorcerer — the William Friedkin movie where the guys have to transport unstable dynamite across the jungle — with the gold standing in for dynamite. It proves to be just as explosive.

Howard Hawks once said that a great movie is “three good scenes and no bad ones.” Well, The Weight fits that description, and while it may be a little too familiar to be “great,” I can promise you this much — it’s “damn good.”

Speaking of damn good, Universal and Blumhouse-Atomic Monster snapped up the rights to Joshua Giuliano’s buzzy slasher movie River, which just premiered in the Midnight section at TIFF. Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe star in the movie, and though I haven’t seen River myself, it drew strong reviews from critics before selling for $10 million. This, after IFC and Shudder already had a deal for the movie, or so I thought. I’m sure Universal paid a pretty premium to pry it away…

Universal and Blumhouse entered TIFF bullish on this year’s festival after Focus spent $15 million to acquire Obsession last year, and the film went on to gross more than $500 million worldwide. To them, there’s plenty of gold in those horror hills, which get plenty of eyeballs.

Meanwhile, Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother played through the roof at TIFF despite its unwieldy title. Bassam Tariq’s new movie stars Mahershala Ali as a Muslim hitman in desperate need of breast milk for his child, and Ali is said to have put his Blade training to good use in this film, which prominently features him with a samurai sword.

John Cho is also said to turn heads with his supporting turn. I’ve been high on this movie since I first saw the trailer at CinemaCon in April, and I can’t wait to see it next week. I just hope it finds an audience, for at least then something good will have come out of the whole Blade mess at Marvel.

Unfortunately, Zack Snyder’s new film, The Last Photograph, was greeted with, um, less enthusiastic reviews, shall we say, though I suspect that Snyder simply shared his film with the wrong audience. I saw lots of critics call it “racist” or “misogynistic,” which aren’t words I’d ever think of lobbing at a movie. Several invoked 2023’s Sound of Freedom, which I happened to enjoy, as I don’t get too caught up in a film’s politics — I care whether it’s entertaining and how well it tells the story it set out to tell.

The critics may very well be correct about The Last Photograph, but until I’ve seen the film myself, I’ll endeavor to keep an open mind, knowing how easily offended some critics can be with their delicate sensibilities. Naturally, Snyder has already responded, claiming critics had their knives out for him this time. Hmmm…

More from TIFF: Judging from thousands of miles away, the festival’s King and Queen this year have to be Anthony Ippolito, who plays Sylvester Stallone in I Play Rocky, and Rosalind Eleazar, who plays the title role in Chris Rock’s A24 movie Misty Green. Sight unseen, I expect both to be nominated for Oscars — and flooded with offers, too.

There’s one in particular that wouldn’t surprise me — Ippolito is Italian, in case you know any prominent Italian directors casting any high-profile movies right now — but whether it happens or not, I think we’re going to be hearing a lot more about Ippolito — and Eleazar — very, very soon.

And before we pivot away from festivals, May el-Toukhy’s drama Woman Unknown won the Golden Lion at Venice, though I’m not sure that’ll matter much when it comes to the Oscars. We’ll see…

Elsewhere, Jeremy Saulnier’s fugitive thriller October has reportedly been retitled Slayground, which is a terrible B-movie title. It feels like the kind of title that might’ve fit that Johnny Depp movie about Notorious B.I.G. back in the day (City of Lies). The film is also said to be 2.5 hours long, though it’s unclear whether Saulnier is still editing it down. This is one of my most anticipated movies of the year (now 2027, I guess), so here’s hoping Saulnier delivers once again, as I don’t think he’s missed yet.

We got some great trailers this week — The Further Mis-adventures of Cliff Booth (since removed), Minotaur, and Mr. Irrelevant, which, like I Play Rocky, is going to surprise a lot of people (not me, obviously), I think. After all, there’s a reason Paramount felt comfortable giving director Jonathan Levine the keys to Days of Thunder 2.

Speaking of ‘90s movies, Vertical is giving Renny Harlin’s new Cliffhanger movie a helping hand, agreeing to take over the distribution rights from the embattled distributor Row K. This is a smart bet from Vertical, which took a similar gamble on the Tom Hardy movie Capone and did very, very well with that film.

WB’s Practical Magic 2, on the other hand, underperformed at the box office this weekend, taking in just $29 million when it had been tracking for $40 million. I don’t think the reviews helped here. We’ll see if they can help WB’s next release, the Tom Cruise movie Digger, an arthouse movie with the budget of a blockbuster. Right now, it’s tracking for a $20 million domestic opening. Not good, Bob!

On the news front, Bob De Niro (just go with it for the sake of the segue) has signed on to play Tommy Lasorda in a new indie movie that reteams him with writer George Gallo, whom he worked with on Midnight Run and last year’s underrated comedy The Comeback Trail.

Speaking of reunions, Searchlight announced a sequel to The Family Stone that will bring back the entire cast and no doubt pay tribute to its late matriarch, Diane Keaton.

Just as I predicted, Amazon MGM Studios is giving Ron Howard’s war drama Alone at Dawn the American Sniper treatment, only the studio is doing it next year. Adam Driver and Anne Hathaway star in the movie, which will open in select theaters on Christmas Day 2027 before going wide in January. Sound familiar?

I’m also high on a pair of indies that were announced this week — Cory Finley’s Reasonable People, which will pair Paul Rudd and Sam Rockwell; and Ramin Bahrani’s Last Meals, which will star Mads Mikkelsen, Boyd Holbrook, Tessa Thompson, and Michael Shannon.

Finally, Skydance Animation and Netflix have ended their distribution pact, so John Lasseter’s Cosmic Motors — described as “Cars in space” — will now be released by Paramount, though Netflix will still release Brad Bird’s animated film Ray Gunn in November.

Oh, and Paramount’s mountain of lawyers will sit down with California A.G. Rob Bonta to discuss a possible settlement on Oct. 14 and 15, with billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of potential jobs at stake.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in that room! I wonder where they’ll order lunch from…

Besides Bonta’s lunch order, I’m working on a few scoops for later this month. However, we must first put a bow on the recent TV season and dive into the Emmys.

Despite being known as a film guy, I watch as much TV as anyone; I just don’t watch a lot of popular shows like Game of Thrones, Bridgerton, or Abbott Elementary. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never been terribly invested in the Emmys, which — not to be a movie snob — will never be the Oscars in my eyes. That’s because it’s impossible to watch every contender, unlike in film, where that mission is a bit more manageable.

Premium subscribers can continue reading for more thoughts on the Emmys, including Taylor Swift’s pre-taped skit with the SVU squad.

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