F1: THE MOVIE Review

“So, what is it about?” A couple of different characters pose this question to Brad Pitt’s Sonny Hayes - a washed-up Formula One driver who lost his shot at greatness at a young age and never found his way back - to emphasize an absolutely crucial character trait necessary to justify why a 60 year-old might be afforded the biggest stage in racing, but if we apply it to the film itself the answer is pretty straightforward: F1: The Movie is a comeback story, an underdog tale, and a redemption arc that we’ve seen play out a thousand times before cloaked in a world myself and no one I personally know cares anything about. While this might not be true of most viewers around the globe, this lack of insight makes the goals of the film immediately striking to the uninitiated such as myself: immerse viewers in the world to the point they’re invested in the story it’s telling while successfully executing a fresh take on how that story is told. 

From a storytelling standpoint, this is as simple as old school versus new, an old pro coming back into the fold of a young man’s game to show the “soft” rookie how it is done. Director Joseph Kosinski (the king of legacy sequels featuring colons) gives us everything we could want in such a sports drama from flashbacks to the aforementioned turning point in our protagonists life in a hurried, intercut fashion forcing us to piece much of it together ourselves down to the inevitable third act twist that presents an unforeseen challenge to the core team just as they’ve learned to put aside their differences and come together for the greater good. While much of the plotting in F1 can be seen coming from a mile away, what’s most invigorating is that it doesn’t try to upend expectations but in fact, Ehren Kruger’s screenplay wholeheartedly embraces them with Kosinski crafting his film to excel through each and every one of them.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING Review

Tom Cruise, for the better part of this millennium, has needed the Mission: Impossible franchise as much as it has needed him. During the promotional tours for these movies Cruise touts the teams and creatives behind the production as the real reason these films continue to work and the same could be said about Cruise's character, Ethan Hunt, within the world of this franchise; one of the main thematic threads in the series has been how Hunt would sacrifice millions before allowing something to happen to those closest to him. No matter the amount of praise he heaps upon the stunt teams or how much importance Hunt places on his IMF colleagues though, Cruise is still the one at the center of it all, he is the main focus and in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning it has never been more apparent that Cruise both can’t help this no matter the amount of grace he displays and that, in truth, he wouldn't have it and doesn’t want it any other way. 

The character of Ethan Hunt represents the epitome of moral righteousness, he is literally the keeper of the nuclear keys in this "final outing" for the franchise - the guy every other character comes around to supporting because deep down they know he is the one they can trust to do what is right - and Cruise has been intent on parlaying this savior-like mentality into his own persona as the keeper of the theatrical movie-going experience upon realizing this was his path back to, if not the top of the cultural mountaintop, at least maybe the industry Mount Rushmore he so quickly demolished on Oprah’s couch in 2005. In 2025, at the time of the release of The Final Reckoning, Tom Cruise is now four years older than Jon Voight was in 1996 when the first film arrived in theaters. The impulse to make this final chapter as much a retrospective victory lap as a conclusive story is not without calculation; the inclusion of footage from the previous seven films, showing not only the symbiotic relationship between the franchise and its star but also how weathered both the character of Hunt and Cruise the actor have become in the nearly three decades since the initial installment is a bold choice. This is, of course, all in the name of the…ahem…mission to solidify Cruise’s reputation and legacy - a layered and complex web of how our persona and authentic selves can both be reflected through art - is as compelling a route to take as any but unfortunately said victory lap is ultimately more symbolically satisfying than it is conqueringly definitive.

THUNDERBOLTS* Review

Like many fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe lately, the heroes of Thunderbolts* have felt unfulfilled. Yelena (Florence Pugh), Bucky (Sebastian Stan), Walker (Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Red Guardian (David Harbour) don't have much in common besides the loneliness that being assassins, science experiments, and super soldiers has led them to yet somehow (and somewhat ironically) this shared strand of abandonment is what brings them together. This film in particular finds itself at a crossroads of a moment where the MCU is both trying to redefine itself as well as figure out what direction it goes after being lost in the void of content inundation that has occurred since Endgame. Again, not unlike this band of "disposable delinquents" who are unclear where they fit into the grand scheme of things in a post-blip world where the Avengers are no more, Thunderbolts* seeks to carve a new path forward by essentially attacking the anxieties of the heroes, and by default - the fans, head on. The good news is that this is a strong step in the right direction. 

I’m sure there's a solid analogy to be drawn around how once and current Disney CEO Bob Iger, in the Valentina Allegra de Fontaine role, tried to lock these characters that debuted under Bob Chapek (sans Bucky) away in a Disney vault somewhere but ultimately decided to reverse psychologize by pushing them to the front of the next phase in a Guardians of the Galaxy/Suicide Squad-style team-up that he then sells as “the first and best example” of the studio’s new focus on quality over quantity, but I don’t know that I have the energy to investigate beyond those surface parallels. The point being, it feels pretty bold to make the biggest issue your biggest cash cow is facing not only the main theme of your Avengers re-brand, but the villain itself as Eric Pearson (a Marvel vet) and Joanna Calo (a frequent TV writer) more or less literalize the depression and loneliness these characters (and by extension, the audience members) are feeling through the existence of Lewis Pullman’s Robert Reynolds character. What Pearson and Calo’s screenplay does so deftly though, and I’m sure it is aided by director Jake Schreier’s execution, is how clearly and directly it addresses these subjects without ever making it feel heavy-handed.

WARFARE Review

Making a war film inherently means you're making an anti-war film even if that intention was never part of the process. No matter your political persuasion, the reasons for the conflict, or even the dopamine hit certain types of personalities receive from being amidst such situations, one would hope we could agree the waste of life given in exchange for such rationale is not only unfortunate, but unnecessary. By default, most war films are labeled as propaganda - using seductions of the cinematic language to portray the horrors of combat in an idealized and/or unrealistic fashion - yet writer/director Alex Garland in collaboration with Navy vet Ray Mendoza seek to strip the genre of all such seductions in order to make audiences both more aware of such stories while also conducting something of an experiment in order to gauge what conclusions are drawn and what the perceived central idea becomes when taking a more forensic approach to these events as opposed to a more fabricated one. 

Interestingly, the film informs the audience of said experiment up front stating that the film is based on the memory of the people who lived it. Though Mendoza serves as co-director as well as receiving a screenwriting credit and is portrayed in the film by D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Warfare is an ensemble piece that is essentially a re-enactment of an encounter this platoon experienced during the Iraq War in the wake of the Battle of Ramadi. The film gives no more context than this, allowing viewers to take from it whatever they choose to glean. While the film very clearly seeks to honor and respect what these men do when risking their lives in order to execute the whims of their superiors and their superiors’ superiors, in terms of being an exercise in the “less in more” school of filmmaking and crafting what is ultimately a collage of memory pieces it is a fascinating experiment as it is inherently understood that even the most vivid of memories are subjective, that there can be no absolutes in the chaos of such confrontations, and further – that everything that has happened to these individuals since these events has informed their recollections of these moments.

FREAKY TALES Review

Neither Anna Boden nor Ryan Fleck, the writers and directors of Freaky Tales, hail from the Oakland area where their latest feature is set but Fleck grew-up in Berkeley and was eleven years-old in 1987 - when the film is set - indicating this is more a passion project for Fleck and something more akin to a challenge or an insight for Boden. Fittingly, the dynamic between the filmmakers - the homecourt advantage for Fleck and visitor status of Boden - is imbued in the final project as Freaky Tales fittingly straddles the line between being an underdog tale while understanding domination is the more appealing perception in the real world. Still, when it comes to the stories - or excuse me, tales - the underdogs continue to stand as the more inspiring option with this line of thought being present from the opening scroll of Boden and Fleck's latest.

Narrated by Too $hort with the film itself taking its title from the MC's 1989 track, we're told that Oakland in '87 was "hella wild"; the people, the culture, the music - it didn't matter - the descriptor applied to all. $hort also informs us the reason for everything feeling so fresh likely had something to do with a "bright green glow" that felt akin to an electricity in the air but clarifies said glowing green was not the same color as the city's "underdog A's uniforms". What the "bright green glow" might symbolize or represent is of course up to interpretation and will likely vary based on age and relation to the time and place at the heart of the film but broadly, it's meant to be something of a vibe incarnate; an embodiment of the attitude of Oakland at the time that lends each of the characters in each of the featured vignettes the swag necessary to convince us there's something a tad atypical or "freaky" about these tales that are otherwise as old as time.