DVD REVIEWS
FURIOUS 7
(out of 4) Furious 7 makes you believe a car can fly and a dead man can drive.
The tragic car-crash demise of lead star Paul Walker, midway through filming, suggested that this would be a half-hearted salvage job at best for this seventh chapter of The Fast and the Furious street-racer franchise.
On the contrary, while the stunts and grunts are as dumb as ever, Furious 7 is a remarkably satisfying and entertaining action movie, one of the best in the series.
Thanks to CGI trickery, spare footage and careful doubling (by his two younger brothers), Walker’s speeddemon ex-cop Brian O’Conner is very much at the wheel.
Director James Wan, a franchise newcomer, brings his kinetic skills from the Saw, Insidious and The Conjuring series.
There’s much poignancy watching Walker risk death in various absurd scrapes, as he rejoins fellow series staples Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris (Ludacris) Bridges and others.
Put your brain in neutral and enjoy the ride.
Extras include an extended cut of the film, deleted scenes and numerous making-of featurettes. LOVE & MERCY
(out of 4) A perfect curl followed by a wipeout.
That’s the momentous wave of Brian Wilson’s life as the Beach Boys’ musical genius, or so the legend goes. It’s surfed to dramatic but polarizing effect in this biopic directed by Bill Pohlad, best known as the producer of The Tree of Life and 12 Years a Slave.
Paul Dano and John Cusack play younger and older versions of Wilson, in a narrative that skips between the 1960s and 1980s.
Both are fully invested in their shared role, but there is visual dissonance: Dano strongly resembles Wilson while Cusack doesn’t.
Dano, never better, plays the teen to 20-something Brian of the ’60s, a chubby-cheeked introvert who overcame parental abuse and paralyzing shyness to craft the closeharmony California pop sound heard ’round the world.
He perfectly evokes the Beach Boy in look, voice (lip-synched for singing) and eccentric recording techniques, as he struggles to get on tape “the music I hear in my head.”
Extras include deleted scenes, making-of featurettes and an audio commentary by Pohlad and cowriter Oren Moverman. Reviews by Peter Howell