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'F1' and 'M3GAN 2.0' briefings

6/27/2025

F1

3 (out of 4)

Rebranding the title in marketing to F1: The Movie just makes this shit sound like Hot Wheels (Mattel? JJ? Is that happening?), or like its proper place is next to Talladega Nights or a Cars sequel. Really racing often makes for the most reliable, natural template in all of sports movie drama, next to boxing which of course has had its share of winners — but because of the risk and the cost, (and maybe the average Joe’s aversion to NASCAR) there just aren’t too many road-meets-rubber pictures, excluding Fast & Furious in this regard, sorry fam. Sure there’s John Frankenheimer’s 1966 epic Grand Prix, its impressive photography and stuntwork undone by an exasperating tapestry of romantic melodramatics, but last decade saw some classic dad movie material in two respective, fairly magnificent rivalry race-kinos for James Mangold and Ron Howard in 2019’s comfy, competent Ford v Ferrari and 2013’s vital, vibrant Rush… Meanwhile 2025’s F1 doubles down on the team nature (just one of many echoes of Top Gun: Maverick, director Joseph Kosinski’s last film) meaning there’s no point in developing antagonized opponents, even over a sizable, unnoticeable 156 minutes…

Otherwise Speed Racer doesn’t quite deserve a seat in the love bug (but it would place very high indeed, and its calibrated for the very high, same goes for 2009’s hand-drawn anime Redline) — so let’s say considering Days of Thunder is Tony Scott at his most unappetizing (again the Top Gun racing follow-up gee whiz), F1 can be considered atop a rare micro-genre, neatly standing out in the sports movie arena at large as well as a frill-free, steak ’n’ taters summer crowdpleaser to boot. It’s just a damn satisfying movie, a through and through throwback by its “originality” (qualifying just enough so), teetering toward the testosterone crowd but flaunting an authenticity that careless CG can seldom substitute. There are apparently 2500 visual effects shots in this movie but even if you tried to count you wouldn’t register 250. This movie’s already got Tom Cruise so jelly he’s said Days of Thunder 2 is on his checklist.

Seriously, what Kosinski and his team have done, akin to Maverick, in making impossible mathematical challenges, countless obstacles of editing and cinematic orientation, look so easy, it’s just dazzling, a medley of magic tricks you have to sit back and appreciate from time to time, even if the film is operating with familiar characters and their simple, stubborn, checkered-flagging ambition. A script so basic and blunt is built for the long game particularly when the spoken-for story is secured by actors as utterly agreeable as Brad Pitt at his most movie-star-like since the Ocean’s movies, Javier Bardem one freak out away from shouting “Lisan al-Gaib”, Kerry Condon as the irascible, Irish love interest not to mention up and comer in film and out, Damson Idris, complimenting and countering the old school devil may care attitude of our boomer protagonist not unlike Miles Teller or Glen Powell in Top Gun 2.

It’s just an escapist bullseye, not terribly profound in any way but proudly part of a strong summer season for action movies (alongside Ballerina with Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning out in front) all specializing in reducing digital effects and maximizing practical action. Kosinski’s look remains seamless, steely and bright, those sparkly white astronaut suits don't hurt. Pitt, playing too comfortably to himself despite some committed stuntwork, seems to have spearheaded his own epic counterpart to Moneyball — like crack to the baseball buff, I would think this to be a formidable fix for auto fanatics, even if I’m certainly too ignorant to realize what would make the movie unbelievable beyond feats of filmmaking. Sonny Hayes ain’t no Jesse James or Tyler Durden or Cliff Booth or Benjamin Button (or the literal golden god believability behind Achilles), with no range required like in Seven, 12 Monkeys, Burn After Reading or The Tree of Life… but I digress — funny or frowny, Brad shouldn’t have to try hard to charm us.

The sound design is explosive, the staging grand and the stitching tunnel-vision-focused. If not for a few ridiculously hypocritical motivations manipulated for contrived tension between our lead characters, F1 would be a spotless sensation, instead of just a sincere slice of classic romance, masterful montage and all the fascination, risk and devastation a game of seconds can provide. God MAKING RACING INTERESTING IS HARD (Frankenheimer literally had to whip out distracting gimmickry like split-screens half the time), but I’ll be damned if this movie doesn’t earn its victory lap, that soaring, cornball ending. It’s an irresistible heat-hideaway matinee — even with actor strikes sundering the filming, the change in vehicles and sponsors inflating the production cost to at least 200 million (rendering some footage unusable), Kosinski's efforts are worth every dollar spent. But for shitting on golf (c’mon, The Greatest Game Ever Played? Happy Gilmore?) and tennis (yeah apologies, Challengers so has this shit beat) it’s embarrassing how quickly Hans Zimmer drops his signature brass and guitars for hard techno beats, comprehensively cribbing from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s distinct sound. Hey, Top Gun: Maverick was let down by Lady Gaga, not Lorne Balfe. Regardless of needle drops like “We Will Rock You” and “Whole Lotta Love” (THANKS JERRY BRUCKHEIMER) the film wants to pretend it's not most specifically catered to boomers as it features Ed Sheeran, Tate McRae, Sexyy Red and other Top 40 players. No matter — F1 succeeds as a screenwriting gimme scaffolded to high heaven by utterly impeccable technical craftsmanship.

M3GAN 2.0

3 (out of 4)

Just based on the Kiwi director’s under-seen horror comedy debut Housebound, Gerard Johnstone’s mischievously fickle sense of genre fluidity is something you can’t quite get a grip on and his good-humored creativity is kinda irresistible — but then M3GAN 2.0 is even more handily satirical, uncommonly unclassifiable and profoundly entertaining than it’s sanitized starter-slasher predecessor. The biggest financial miscalculation of the summer might be the most interesting sequel in forever, or at least Jason Blum’s/James Wan’s most exceptional ‘horror’ movie to grace the 'House.

The first M3GAN had so much in its favor, from warm critical reception to trending TikTok favorability — nonetheless they still released the movie online way early, a product of this current age of shrinking release windows. The early 2023 surprise concerning kids toys of tomorrow was of course soft for a killer doll movie (Chucky's a little harder to have as your antihero), but was a welcome PSA for young teens while finding ways to have the android from hell’s Toys R Us come across cuckoo and utterly charming.

From the trailers, 2.0 was of course tagged for Terminator 2 turnarounds where it appeared the villain had become the hero with an even more evil AI to combat — on paper that’s not too far off. But in what I have to call maybe the most incredible double or triple down on a brand new, seemingly franchise-ready character (this flop was hard enough to pull the sexbot spin-off Soulm8te off the calendar, Companion already beat 'em to it anyway), this film decides to have so many functions, and it’s not like it couldn’t decide or piles too much on its plate. M3GAN 2.0 is up to the second on the AI ethics debate, and, like Happy Death Day 2U, takes one genre element of the original to chase down, from rom-com cuteness there to Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em robots here. This shit has future-espionage like a mini Reckoning-era Mission: Impossible within an accidentally awesome wannabe anime, as if Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel were done right. Thematically it's a technophobe extravaganza (film-school-level, like The Fog or Pulse), with a proper mystery villain and yes, a forced dance/meme moment, albeit at least one that has some sense to it story-wise, so to no discredit.

Our puppet antagonist Amelia (a remarkable Ivanna Sakhno) is like a lost Olsen twin out of the shadows. Violet McGraw has grown up so Cady is played better here or just less annoying, can’t tell, and Allison William’s Gemma is still a questionable twat that still makes a great foil to M3GAN (voiced with disdain by Jenna Davis, plus Amie Donald as the physical with CG and animatronics taking care of the rest), now the two reconcile the weird parental subject/creator thing, the postmodern Promethean power dynamics. The costume work is remarkable, the amount of M3GAN’s character variations is wonderfully cult-movie conscious — the film is bang for your buck counter-programming at its most paradoxically esoteric and crowd-pleasing. Bisexual lighting and lines like "hold on to your vaginas" aren't enough to make this one exclusively for the weeaboos, the gays (is it artificially queer-coded, Twitter?), or all the women who did not show up. While no great action movie or the deepest thinker, M3GAN 2.0 remains both ludicrously ambitious and well-reasoned, a movie brimming with potent, hypermodern wit.

'Ballerina' briefing

6/6/2025

3 (out of 4)

That Cuban interlude early in No Time to Die was so good it elevated the whole movie — hell it elevated the Craig era, or at least it did 90 minutes before the legacy was blown to smithereens — and it was in no small part due to what Ana de Armas brought to the table, not just as probably the last Bond girl proper but in disarming, mousy moxie. It was, for all intentions, an audition tape, one that made the announcement of John Wick’s first non-Chapter detour Ballerina (one of those spin-offs you never expect to make it anywhere close to fruition) seem like a damn good idea, even if the charming rookie energy of her character in Bond 25 had to be reduced to regular revenge motivations — I guess cute cheekiness is more permissible if you’re murdering people left and right for the CIA instead of living out the archetypal role of the righteously indignant, cold-blooded assassin.

De Armas doesn’t go for as grave as Keanu’s trademark stoicism, but her wrangled charisma and less ludicrous spite (gonna kill her cat or something?) are among the few less likable aspects of Ballerina, aside from any and every spin-off suffering from a sense of superfluousness. To no discredit, this fifth Wicked picture is unable to outstrip its small company of lady-led action thrillers, even by franchise alum — David Leitch assisted as director of the 2014 original uncredited and would immediately do what Ballerina does only better in the lucid, lean, lip-smacking Charlize Theron vehicle Atomic Blonde. Then of course it’s hard to live up to quasi-feminist, high-heeled carnage in touchstones like Kill Bill, Luc Besson’s boldest (namely the underground recruitment/revenge formula of La Femme Nikita) and Steven Soderbergh’s impeccable treat Haywire. You can throw The Villainess in there too, the most recent tragic-beauty-kicks-ass-in-some-extortion-cult scenario (Korean style!) as this franchise continues its nods in the direction of eastern influences akin to that pair from the Raid movies (Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman) popping up in Chapter 3 and, well, the whole Osaka sequence of Chapter 4 supported by Japanese legend Hiroyuki Sanada, with Donnie Yen beyond mentioning.

Even if it turns out to be one of the World of Wick’s worst (maybe I’m a soï for thinking this bests Chapter 2), it’s sure as shit sharper than similar RBF knees-to-the-nuts cinema fit for progressively duller career moments for Scarlett Johansson (Lucy/Black Widow), Angelina Jolie (Salt) and Jennifer Lawrence (Red Sparrow). And not that it means much, but Ballerina is director Len Wiseman’s finest hour by leagues — the guy hasn’t made a movie since the complete memory-holing of 2012’s stale Verhoeven recycle Total Recall and 2007’s shoddy Live Free or Die Hard (PG-13? For real?). Otherwise Wiseman’s claim to fame is Underworld and its beefed up sequel Underworld: Evolution, where in either case grave style (and no doubt Kate Beckinsdale in leather spandex) did the heavy lifting — this retains some of the hard-R larger-than-life backstabbery, swapping the strong suit of gothic edge for a clandestine, neck-deep dip in neon. However unlike the trashy, pontificating politicking of Lycan/vampire shadow wars, Ballerina insists on being as brisk in the action-comma-action-comma restlessness of its sister installment John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum. This is the best sorta numbing non-stop roller-coaster ride bullshit you could ever hope for, especially in trying to follow up Chapter 4’s slow, swelling setups to huge, sustained, orgasmic releases of tension.

In taking place during (and I suppose after?) the events of Parabellum, this primer for John Wick: Chapter 5 (Ballerina’s breather serves more as Reeves’ R&R than franchising) finds Lionsgate shoehorning Keanu’s character into the fray even before third act shenanigans, overplaying their already strong hand. I was already plenty pleased enough without his own personalized cutaway sequence on top of a “””fight””” with de Armas’ Eve Macarro in which he is conveniently completely holding back. But since the joke of John Wick is his role as the ultimate Gary Stu, despite her less legendary ledger you can’t accuse Ms. Macarro of flaunting the quite the same superhuman plot armor — she fights dirty and even goes full Karen in order to ensure her survival… however while in JW3 he gets pricked in the neck and needs a doctor in the first 15 minutes, Eve takes two nasty blows by blade to the back and it’s not a thing. But HEY Lance Reddick lives once more, my goodness!

Then, finally, spin-offs just always suck… this may be the most respectable ever made, since what, is Minions best in show for actually outstripping its progenitor? Ballerina positively dunks on the underrated Elektra, overrated Birds of Prey and, for garish excuses for fight sequences, Snake Eyes can eat it too. The fact that it feels about as assured as George Miller’s Furiosa (also key fem-revenge fare) is not too shabby… Sorry, I can’t qualify sequels to spin-offs, so Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Logan don’t really count. Leitch directed the all too relevant Fast & Furious offshoot Hobbs & Shaw but Ballerina turned out so much better, cut more from cleaner cloth and just pound for pound very, very entertaining and infinitely more rewarding in its written-off ridiculousness.

What an altogether delectable waste of time, with great variations on the assassin antics popularized by Wick (gun-fu on ice! Interrupted gear-up sequences! Grenades-only extravaganzas!) that somehow doesn’t feel like a careless comedown after the exacting cinematic surge of Chapter 4 but rather like Wiseman afforded us more traditional action movie editing rather than a daft imitation of Chad Stahelski’s now signature wide-framed stunts-do-the-talking staging. Ballerina’s a mirthful, mindful extension of the most palpably exhilarating action franchise still breathing (since I’m taking Mission: Impossible’s mammoth curtain call on its word) so even if there’s nothing terribly indispensable about this action heroine amuse-bouche, more importantly there’s surprisingly little wrong with it. It economically skips the prerequisite cult-come-up after investing in necessary tragedy (of course her Dad looks like Reeves’ stunt double), is hardly over-sexualized and male-g(l)azey like all of F&F, reduces as many in-references as it can, the solid do-nothing villain courtesy of Gabriel Byrne doesn’t whip out karate or anything and, most importantly, they don’t pat themselves on the back for bravely presenting the LADY John Wick movie, so props.

There are maybe 5-6 sequences cascading thru the second act, so especially next to Marvel’s latest bouts of boredom (Thunderbolts has what, one SINGLE sequence, also I don’t give a shit about the characters? Sweet.) this movie is just what subversive blockbusters should be, like Wick 3 was in 2019, just a sensational, stubbornly self-indulgent, semi-sadistic respite of gnarly, bisexually-color-blasted, bloody good-spirited combat and life-taking, reveling in what choreography-driven showmanship can do for the CGI-dominated dilution of summer’s moviegoing delight. “Hell hath no fury” and all that jazz… Seriously who doesn't like watching an attractive female assassin beat the shit out of people?

Cinema Briefing

'F1' and 'M3GAN 2.0' briefings

'Ballerina' briefing

To keep it brief...

Months in movies

Kino
of the Crop
(A recent selection of
consummate classics)

Cinema Briefing

'F1' and 'M3GAN 2.0' briefings

'Ballerina' briefing

To keep it brief...

Months in movies

Kinoof the Crop(A recent selection ofconsummate classics)

Kino
of the Crop
(A recent selection of
consummate classics)