Reviews of Nyad, Quiz Lady, and Maestro

Nyad (Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi)-The docudrama tells the story about Diana Nyad who made history by swimming from Cuba to Key West, Florida. It’s hard to make a film about this that goes wrong. It’s a classic sports film, only we don’t really know how the sport works. If we were going to watch something like a film about the 1980 Miracle on Ice (which was made into a 2004 film), most of us would understand the details about how hockey works. But how someone can continuously swim over 48 hours in the open ocean without protection against the elements? That’s a hook that no other sports movie can boast. Maybe, some constantly-changing dystopian film like Death Race might leave enough blanks in the “how” to pique our curiosity, but Diana Nyad really happened, and we all kind of remember it as a rare positive development in the 24/7 news cycle.

Since it comes as no surprise that Diana makes it to Florida, the trick is trying to amp up the suspense in the middle. This should be fairly easy sailing, but there are some head-scratching time jumps (kind of like Oppenheim) that subtract from the flow of the narrative.

The film mostly earns its stripes on the basis of the performances of Annette Bening as Diana and Jodie Foster as her trainer Bonnie and their BFF strength. Refreshingly, there’s no homoerotic subtext (though the two exchange a firmly platonic “I Love You” at a crucial choke point and dated for “like a second”), but in the same way that docudramas do composite characters, there’s barely room for…