In Review: ‘F1 the Movie,’ ‘M3gan 2.0’

F1 the Movie
Dir. Joseph Kosinski
156 min.

To watch F1, the new spectacle from the director-producer team behind Top Gun: Maverick, is to feel like you’re on the sales floor at an appliance store, getting pressed to consider the latest in HDTV technology. It’s to the film’s credit that you’re probably walking out of the store with a new TV you can’t afford, but there’s also no shaking the feeling that you’re being pitched on an amazingly sleek product, rather than being persuaded by a work of art. To a degree, the effect is unavoidable, given that F1 takes place in the heavily commercialized world of Formula One racing, where Teams are attached to premium auto companies and the cars themselves, along with every inch of the track, are festooned with brand advertisements. Even publicists for the film wanted to make sure that the copyright symbol appeared in the official title in reviews, but that’s a bridge too far. 

For an expensive, at times rousing display of kinetic action, F1 is a profoundly strange experience, like an uncannily realistic-looking simulation of what a real movie might be like. Just as Formula One drivers are trained on sims that recreate racing conditions without having to touch actual wheels to the track, director Joseph Kosinski’s gorgeous movie-esque scenario is almost good enough to convince you it’s a major upgrade on producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s dreadful Days of Thunder. But the promotional aspect of F1 throws it dramatically out of balance, because it’s hard to grasp any moments that haven’t been thoroughly vetted by a giant sports governing body. The airlessness gets conspicuous. This ain’t a Robert Altman movie. 

Casting a 61-year-old Brad Pitt as a has-been driver seeking one last shot at glory is helpful, though, because his A-list star power is now shaded by signs of mortality,  especially when the racing helmet accentuates the crow’s nest around his eyes. Pitt plays Sonny, a once-promising athlete whose combination of bad luck and questionable risk-taking cost him his reputation and led to a nomadic life as a driver across multiple racing circuits. When his old buddy Ruben (an enjoyably animated Javier Bardem) asks him to join Apex Grand Prix (APXGP), the bottom-of-the-barrel F1 racing company he operates, Sonny overcomes his initial reluctance and joins the APXGP team in London. Once there, Sonny runs into a lot of friction with Joshua (Damson Idris), an up-and-coming rookie hotshot who’s slow to embrace the partnership. 

The mentor/mentee friction between Sonny and Joshua is a complete zero, due partly to their stock relationship and partly to Idris’ inability to sprinkle much charisma on the thankless role of a pouty, arrogant prospect who’s constantly sniffing at superstardom. A romantic subplot involving Sonny and APXGP’s technical director Kate, played by Kerry Condon, is only slightly better, because Condon brings much more buoyancy and pluck to her sparring matches with Pitt. Yet there’s no doubting that the track is the star here, and that’s where Kosinski’s technical command pays dividends: Much as you might pine for a version of F1 where the characters’ fates and the team’s dysfunction were more compelling, the action sequences are a standalone pleasure, with the cumulative effect of showing how difficult it can be for a team like APXGP to climb its way out from the bottom. For those not yet addicted to Formula One, it is at once damning and complimentary to say the film sells you on it. — Scott Tobias

F1 the Movie vroom-vrooms into theaters everywhere tonight. See it on the largest screen possible, if you must.

M3GAN 2.0
Dir. Gerard Johnstone
120 min.

If horror sequels are supposed to reprise the original film with just enough new flourishes thrown in to set them apart, no one told the makers of M3GAN 2.0. The follow-up to the 2023 hit M3GAN, in which a robot doll designed to befriend and defend its child companion develops a murderous mind of its own, picks up where the original left off, then runs in a new direction. Written and directed by the returning Gerard Johnstone (working from a story by Johnstone and original screenwriter Akela Cooper), the film is unmistakably a sequel to M3GAN but also an attempt to advance the ideas introduced in the original in ways beyond seeing what new havoc the Model 3 Generative Android can unleash on the world.

It even takes a while for M3GAN as we know her to find her way into the world. As the film opens, Gemma (Alison Williams), her inventor, has moved onto the next phase of her life and career. Though Gemma continues to work in artificial intelligence and robotics, now operating a boutique tech firm with surviving co-workers Cole (Brian Jordan Alvarez) and Tess (Jen Van Epps), she’s also become an advocate for the implementation of AI guardrails, a passion she shares with a new partner, Christian (Aristotle Ahtari).

Gemma’s also busy parenting her niece Cady (Violet McGraw), whose plan to put the events of the previous film behind her include learning aikido. (Will this play a role in the events of the film? We won’t spoil that here.) Fortunately, M3GAN’s nowhere to be seen. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean she’s not around or that, miles away, another doll-like android, this one named AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhano), hasn’t gone rogue after being used as a tool of international espionage.

This sounds like a set-up for a confrontation between M3GAN and her successor leading to a battle royale—which it is, but only up to a point. Johnstone’s film piles on a bunch of twists and wild science fiction ideas while maintaining the first film’s careful balance between comedy and genuine tension. Amie Donald and Jenna Davis again play M3GAN, supplying, respectively, the doll’s physical form and voice. Together they help the character, for want of a better word, mature. Though the film still finds room for dancing, quipping, and singing, it’s also interested in what it means for a killbot to grow up and develop a conscience and at what point it’s fair to call an AI creation a person, issues M3GAN 2.o explores between well-staged action scenes and fun nods to Metropolis, THX-1138, and the Terminator films. The new model loses some of the single-purpose directness of its predecessor, like a Roomba that decides it also wants to help with the cooking and bookkeeping,  but the new features feel like welcome additions anyway. —Keith Phipps

M3GAN 2.0 is available for download in theaters tonight.