Fast reviews for busy people! Feel the need for speed as I review three movies in less time than it takes to make a pitstop Have a look as I race against the clock to tell you about the pedal to the metal “Grand Prix,” the vroom vroom of “Rush” and the wicked quick “F1.”
Watch the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “F1 The Movie” Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a Formula One driver who became “the best who never was” after his career was sidelined in a terrible crash. Thirty years later he gets back into the game when his former teammate Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), now the owner of a struggling Formula 1 team, recruits him to mentor rookie prodigy Joshua “Noah” Pearce for the Apex Grand Prix team (APXGP). “If the last thing I ever do is drive that car,” Sonny says, “I will take that life. A thousand times.”
CAST: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, and Javier Bardem. Directed by Joseph Kosinski.
REVIEW: A pedal-to-the-metal crowd pleaser, “F1” rides immersive racing scenes and dynamic lead performances to the finish line.
A loud ‘n proud blockbuster by design, director Joseph Kosinski is all about spectacle. Whether that means sweeping sequences of Formula 1 cars whizzing around the track, or beauty shots of star Brad Pitt filling the screen with charisma, Kosinski entertains the eye.
The straightforward tale, however, won’t give your brain the same workout it gives your eyes.
Plot wise, it’s essentially an earthbound “Top Gun: Maverick.” A story of rivals, high speeds and a mentor with something to prove, it follows a very identifiable sports movie blueprint, but you’ll likely be too busy taking in the adrenalized spectacle to feel the déjà vu.
As washed-up racer Sonny Hayes, Pitt does a riff on his “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” character. Cocky and charismatic, he an older lone wolf bound to butt heads with rookie Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris). Hayes may be a walking, talking cliché, a Jack Kerouac character forced to confront his past so he can have a future, but through sheer force of will Pitt makes him feel authentic.
Pitt shares an edgy chemistry with Idris. Their rivalry is the film’s heart—much more so than Pitt’s romantic involvement with Kerry Condon’s character Kate—and the evolving relationship between the “the best who never was” and the up-and-comer provides a human backdrop in a movie mostly driven by a need for speed.
The “F” in the title could stand for formulaic, but expertly shot racing sequences and pulse pounding tension make up for the familiar bits.
It’s an old-fashioned summer blockbuster, that, despite its setting, is driven by Pitt’s star power rather than the really fast cars on display.
“You Hurt My Feelings,” a new Julia Louis-Dreyfus relationship dramedy now playing in theatres, is about the little lies we tell one another that can balloon into much bigger deals.
Louis-Dreyfus is Beth, a memoirist and writing teacher, struggling with the reactions to her second book. As a first reader, her therapist husband Don (Tobias Menzies) has studied each of the drafts of the book, and always told her how much he loves the writing.
Her agent Sylvia (LaTanya Richardson Jackson), however, thinks the novel needs to touch on more hot button topics and needs a complete rewrite. “There’s lots of new voices,” she says. “Refugees, cancer, murder, abuse.” Feeling she is an “old voice” in a rapidly changing world, Beth is devastated.
Meanwhile Don is having trouble connecting with his patients and their 23-year-old son Elliott (Owen Teague) is having a crisis of confidence.
Into this maelstrom of self-doubt comes a cutting remark that sends Beth into a deeper funk. By accident she overhears Don talking to a friend about her book, and he doesn’t like it. “It’s no good,” he says.
“I’m never going to be able to look him in the face again,” Beth says.
Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener, “You Hurt My Feelings” has a very “Seinfeld-ian” co-dependency premise. It often feels like nothing is happening—“A show about nothing!”—but within the carefully observed interactions are thought-provoking ideas about how relationships work.
So often, relationship dramas are about infidelity. This one is about a fidelity of a sort, the kind broken with good intentions.
It’s about the fine line between lying and encouraging, sparing someone’s feelings vs. being supportive. Don explains to Beth that he didn’t lie exactly, but that he was trying to be encouraging, even though he didn’t love the book. It isn’t until Beth realizes that she has done the same thing in her relationships with her son and sister (Michaela Watkins) that she begins to understand her husband’s sentiments.
Holofcener keeps the story low-key, focusing on the intersection of honesty and ego between longtime relations. It’s a small, but very human story of the way we interact, brought to vivid life by a tremendous cast, led by a terrific Louis-Dreyfus. She is fragile and raucous, anxious and hilarious, but always relatable.
“You Hurt My Feelings” is a small movie about big topics like honesty, insecurity and how we protect the ones we love, for better and for worse.
By Richard Crouse – Metro Canada
Based on the play Blackbird by Scottish playwright David Harrower, the new film Una is an uncomfortable look into an uncomfortable subject.
“In the theatre it is kind of like a verbal boxing match,” says Una’s director Benedict Andrews. “You are trapped in the same room with the two protagonists as they face each other off. There is a profound shift that happens once it becomes cinema. After living with the film for a while I think the film hurts a lot more than the play ever did.”
Rooney Mara plays the title character, a 20-something who takes action after seeing a picture of Ray, played by Ben Mendelsohn, in a magazine. The two have a past. Fifteen years earlier, when she was 13 and Ray was a middle-aged man, he seduced her, a crime he paid for with four years in prison.
Convinced his actions put her in a downward spiral, she goes to his place of work to confront him. He’s re-established himself with a new name, wife and job. She demands to know why he did what he did, and why he abandoned her when they were about to make a run for it and leave England to start a new life together.
Andrews first directed the play in November 2005 but had no interest in revisiting his previous work.
“There will continue to be fine productions of the play because it really is one of the best chamber plays of this century,” he says.
“It is rich material for actors and provocative and rich material for audiences. Neither of us wanted to make a well-made version of the play. It had to become distinct. I sometimes see them as two children coning from the same DNA. In many ways I’m trying to respect and amplify the core of the play.”
What might have been a straightforward story of a search for answers defies preconceived audience expectations with the ethical landmines Andrews and Harrower (who also wrote the script) plant along the way. In its most startling turn Una asks the audience to consider the interaction between Ray and Una, the abuser and the abused, as some kind of love story.
“This is about two people who see each other after 15 years,” he says, “the chemical charge of that meeting and their encounter is a profoundly cinematic idea. I was interested in how the camera might be able to pursue a special intimacy, the scar tissue opening up again between these two characters, and being able to microscope in on that scar tissue.”
Although the play was first performed 12 years ago, Andrews calls it “prescient” in the wake of recent events that have shone a light on sexual abuse in Hollywood.
“Part of the intelligence of the play is the way (Harrower) unpacks the moral problems of the survivor and the abuser relationship,” Andrews says.
“Thankfully that silence is breaking in journalistic and legal ways. We’ve seen that over the course of the week with the dam bursting about the systemic abuse of actresses within the Harvey Weinstein story. From my point of view it wasn’t necessarily a conscious thing although I think the play absolutely touches a raw nerve now and is part of a conversation that needs to happen about a topic that was kept in silence.”
Based on the play “Blackbird” by Scottish playwright David Harrower, “Una” is an uncomfortable look into an uncomfortable subject.
Rooney Mara is the title character, a twenty-something who takes action after seeing a picture of Ray (Ben Mendelsohn) in a magazine. The two have a past. Fifteen years earlier, when she was thirteen and Ray was a middle-aged man, he seduced her, a crime he paid for with four years in prison. “You wanted to be treated like an adult,” Ray says. “That’s what children say.”
Convinced his actions put her in a downward spiral, she goes to his place of work to confront him. He’s re-established himself with a new name, wife and job. She demands to know why he did what he did, and why he abandoned her when they were about to make a run for it and leave England to start a new life together.
What might have been a straightforward story of a search for answers defies preconceived audience expectations with the ethical landmines Harrower (who also wrote the script) plants along the way. In its most startling turn “Una” asks the audience to consider the interaction between Ray and Una, the abuser and the abused, as some kind of love story. Rooney and Mendelsohn, both very good in difficult roles, explore the thin lines the story draws between abuse and love, between right and wrong, between desire and guilt. It’s complicated and messy as Ray is forced to confront a past he’d rather subvert while Una looks for answers. “I don’t know anything about you except you abused me,” she says.
“Una” lurches headlong into controversial territory, unflinchingly presenting a painful story that offers no easy answers.
