{"id":169705,"date":"2025-09-26T03:02:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T03:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/169705\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T03:02:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T03:02:11","slug":"matthew-mcconaughey-gets-his-very-own-captain-phillips-moment-with-the-lost-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/169705\/","title":{"rendered":"Matthew McConaughey gets his very own Captain Phillips moment with The Lost Bus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Starring America Ferrera and Matthew McConaughey, The Lost Bus tells an intimate story of individual courage.The Associated Press<\/p>\n

The Lost Bus<\/p>\n

Directed by Paul Greengrass<\/p>\n

Written by Brad Ingelsby, based on the book Paradise: One Town\u2019s Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire by Lizzie Johnson <\/p>\n

Starring Matthew McConaughey, America Ferrera and Yul Vazquez <\/p>\n

Classification N\/A; 130 minutes<\/p>\n

Opens in select theatres Sept. 26, streaming on Apple TV+ starting Oct. 3 <\/p>\n

There is white-knuckle cinema and then there are the clenched-fist films of Paul Greengrass<\/a>. The British director might be best known for his work on the Jason Bourne franchise, movies which offer their own kind of intensity, but he is also a master storyteller when it comes to ordinary folk caught up in the most awful and traumatic of situations. Captain Phillips, United 73, 22 July, and now The Lost Bus utilize wide-picture geopolitical crises as the canvas to tell small, devastatingly intimate stories of individual courage. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The Lost Bus will debut Sept. 26 and begin streaming on Apple TV+ starting Oct. 3Apple TV+\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Yet The Lost Bus doesn\u2019t quite measure up to the paths of destruction previously trodden by Greengrass. By unsteadily oscillating between tiny, almost insignificant personal melodrama and gigantic, all-consuming terror, the film (which is also saddled with a terribly off-putting title) struggles to sit inside Greengrass\u2019s typical sweet spot of perfectly calibrated chaos. <\/p>\n

Like Captain Phillips and its tremendous showcase for Tom Hanks, The Lost Bus finds its strength in the performance of its lead actor, Matthew McConaughey<\/a>, who here plays a real-life bus driver named Kevin McKay. <\/p>\n

A frazzled, at-his-wits\u2019-ends good ol\u2019 boy who is just trying to do right by his family after enduring years of self-inflicted wounds, McKay fits nicely into McConaughey\u2019s long line of desperate, reluctant heroes. Relatively new to the bus-driving life, one day in November, 2018, McKay is thrust into the middle of a generational crisis, as a wildfire breaks out in Northern California and he alone is charged with ferrying 22 schoolchildren safely through the flames. <\/p>\n

TIFF 2025: The blood, sweat and fears of Matthew McConaughey<\/a><\/p>\n

While the scenes in which McKay and schoolteacher Mary Ludwig (America Ferrera) must make split-second life-or-death decisions are appropriately harrowing \u2013 with Greengrass embracing the incendiary devastation with an almost Dante-like glee \u2013 the film\u2019s most compelling and haunting narrative thread is the one following fire chief Ray Martinez (Yul Vazquez) as he comes up against the realization that all his battalions are, essentially, useless. <\/p>\n

Perhaps the Martinez scenes are most effective, though, because they offer audiences a break from the gruelling journey that McKay and Ludwig must power through. How much you might appreciate Greengrass\u2019s inventive mesh of practical and digital flames likely depends on your tolerance for hearing young children scream, \u201cAre we going to die?!?\u201d over and over again. <\/p>\n

There is courage, and then there is despair. Too often, you might feel as if Greengrass has his thumb on the more overwrought side of that scale. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Starring America Ferrera and Matthew McConaughey, The Lost Bus tells an intimate story…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[49,48,361,75,2922],"class_list":{"0":"post-169705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-noastack"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}