My first question about this film is why not just “F1”, rather than “F1: The Movie”, because we know it’s a movie, in this case about the dangerous sport of Formula 1 racing.
This film is mostly about an ongoing dialogue of watching incredibly expensive racecars, that cost between 12-15 million dollars, race at speeds over 200 miles an hour around an oval track, while the racing crew monitors every aspect of the car using impressive advanced technology. The problem with this movie is that there is too much showing of this technology and racing, and not enough of any noticeable story.
The acting starring Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes and Damson Idris as Joshua Pearce, who play the two drivers, and Javier Bardem as Ruben Cervantes, who plays the CEO of the racing crew, is all very well done. With all racing movies like this one, it is at times hard to understand why any person would be willing to risk their life just to race a car, but like all professions like this one, you have to have it in your blood – you don’t have anything else you want to do.
It is impressive the work that went into this film, including risking the two main actors who actually drove their racecars at over 180 miles an hour. Given the risk, it does not make sense to risk lives like this when all of the dangerous driving could have been replaced with relatively simple special effects.
I agree with the middle-of-the-road 84% ratings for this movie, which could have been much better with an improved story and screenplay. This movie is also way too long at 2 hours and 35 minutes, and could have easily told the same story in less than two hours. Mainly for the great racecar driving effects, I do recommend this film.
The new movie “Materialists” is about dating through the eyes of people who join expensive dating services, and through the eyes of professional matchmakers, in this case, the main character Lucy, played by Dakota Johnson. It is good to see Dakota Johnson in a very good acting role, and recovering from last year’s disastrous “Madame Web”. Johnson demonstrates in this film some of the best acting of her career.
Of all the difficult professions that exist in the world, being a high-end matchmaker with a fee as high as $50,000 has to be one of the all-time emotional worst. There are several scenes in this movie where a client sits in a restaurant quoting a long list of unrealistic expectations about the person they think they deserve. All of these clients forget that any dating service cannot accept a long list of expectations and then generate the perfect person like it’s an AI-human-being-creator. This is because any dating service, regardless of the cost, is only as good as the people who join. No perfect person exists anywhere in the world for anyone.
As part of this long list of wants and do-not-wants, there is a great deal of talk about how much people earn in salary, as if that is one of the most important requirements for the perfect long-term partner. One of the main messages in this very good movie is the long-term on-and-off-again relationship of Lucy and her very broke waiter, trying to be an actor boyfriend, John, played very well by Chris Evans. The contrast between Lucy’s current rich boyfriend Harry, played by Pedro Pascal, and John, along with Lucy’s eventual decision about them, is one of the best parts of this extremely well-written screenplay.
As several critics have said that screenwriter-director Celine Song paints a very bleak and depressing story about the realities of dating in this world, but most would agree that her point of view is more about the reality of trying to find love, and much less about just being negative about all of the heartache, and depression involved. Dating will always involve putting your heart and soul into the hands of a total stranger, and then trying to accept the consequences when a person you might potentially love does not feel the same way about you.
For me, the actor who steals this entire movie is Sophie, played by Zoe Winters. Her repeated comments about “dying alone” and one scene where the pain in her eyes when she hears that the previous person she went out with did not feel the same way about her are great acting moments in this movie. Later, Sophie’s conversation with Lucy after the latest in a string of 10 bad dates attacked her, included a moment when she breathlessly tells Lucy that she “deserves love”. In my opinion, Winters is worthy of an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress for these two scenes alone.
The one thing I hated about this movie is the chain-smoking that Lucy does with several other characters. Smoking happens in movies because cigarette companies finance the production despite the downside that includes too many people continuing to smoke or taking it up as a new, stupid hobby. As we all know, smoking causes a long list of Cancers, and showing smoking in movies should have been banned decades ago.
The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a very high 87%, with my rating 95% and a 100% rating for this category of movie, showing what it is like for so many millions of us, who try to find true love in our lifetimes.
The new Tyler Perry Netflix movie “Straw” captures, better than almost any other movie I have seen, the life of a single mother Janiyah Wiltkinson, played by Taraji P. Henson, is like watching a slow-moving car wreck. Janiyah has two horrible jobs, one as a cashier in a rundown food store, with a rude, cruel boss who treats her like garbage.
Janiyah is about to lose her apartment to eviction, and her 8-year-old daughter is sick and needs medicine that she cannot afford. Janiyah’s landlord couldn’t care less about her disastrous life and refuses to give her more time to pay her rent, evicting her despite her pleading for more time – one of this movie’s singularly horrific moments. Later in this depressing story, Janiyah even has her car towed because her registration was not renewed. Life sometimes works this way for far too many of us, when it seems that everything is going wrong at the same time. How many millions in the world, through no fault of their own, fall into a life this dire and depressing?
The acting of Taraji P. Henson is outstanding, as good as her performance nine years ago in the great film “Hidden Figures” (2016). Sherri Shepherd is also outstanding as an empathetic bank executive, Nicole, who tries to help Janiyah when circumstances spiral out of control. There are some typical Tyler Perry moments in this story that do not seem to hold water, and some standard Perry movie misdirection and trickery at the end, but overall, this is a well-told story with great acting about what can happen to anyone when circumstances out of our control ruin our lives.
Tyler Perry has been one of those hard-working screenwriters and directors who has taken more than his share of bad hits over the years from several critics. This time around, few can argue that Straw is one of the best movies he has ever produced. I give this movie a solid 95% recommendation.
