F1: The Movie (2025, PG-13)

As I said in my response to this year’s Oscar nominations, F1 struck me as the “dad movie” Best Picture nominee, and now that I’ve seen it, I think that assessment was pretty accurate. From a filmmaking standpoint, it’s well made, and it has qualities that I enjoyed more than I expected, but on the whole, this one isn’t really for me.

Back in the 90s, Sonny Hayes was a promising Formula One driver, but a traumatic accident derailed his career. These days, he drives anywhere people will take him in between indulging his gambling addiction. Then his old racing buddy Ruben comes to him with a proposition: Ruben owns a Formula One team now, and while his number-one driver is solid, he needs a strong number-two to bring the team to the next level.

This is the sort of nominee that’s up for Best Picture, a few technical awards (editing, sound, visual effects,) and nothing else, which always makes the “Best Picture” part feel like a bit of a headscratcher. The thing is, F1 is put together quite well. It looks good, there’s a talented cast, and I’d say it’s mostly effective in dramatizing the races in a cinematic way. But while the story has its moments, that’s the main area where the film falls flat. In particular, it’s the lead character who isn’t working for me, which isn’t an ideal spot to be in.

Yeah, I’m not all that interested in Sonny. He’s a “maverick” type—he gains advantages on the track for the team by pulling cheap tricks, and for a good chunk of the film, this includes disregarding everything the mission control people are telling him to do and not telling anyone on the team what he’s up to. He brushes off crashing two cars as incidental, and he seems to delight in infuriating everyone on the team Just ‘Cause. It’s the epitome of “we let him get away with being an asshole because he gets results.” While Sonny eventually becomes a bit more of a team player, it’s only after most of the people on the team come around to his way of thinking and follow his lead.

The person who gets the worst of this blowback is Joshua Pearce, the team’s number-one driver. Joshua is young and talented but has been struggling to really stand out from the pack. Getting paired with a showboating wildcard, in his estimation, makes the team look like a joke and means he gets lost in the background behind Sonny’s antics. His distrust and resentment is understandable, but by and large, the narrative frames this as a Joshua problem, that he’s the one who has to get with the program.

Not much to say about Brad Pitt as Sonny. While he delivers what the role is supposed to be, it kind of feels like the sort of thing he could sleepwalk through. I’m not familiar with Damson Idris, but I enjoy his performance as Joshua, although the role is a bit thankless. Javier Bardem is effective as Ruben, and I like Kerry Condon as Kate, the engineer who designs and makes modifications to the car. Some other familiar faces here as well, including Tobias Menzies (I know he had a recurring role on Game of Thrones, but I remember him best as William Elliot in the Sally Hawkins Persuasion,) Kim Bodnia (Konstantin from Killing Eve,) and Will Merrick (Alo from Skins.) I was most excited to see a few of the actors in Joshua’s side of the story. Sarah Niles (Dr. Sharon from Ted Lasso) plays his mom, while Samson Kayo (Oluwande!!!) plays his manager. Are either of these roles very demanding? No, but it’s still nice to see them.

Warnings

Violent car crashes, language, drinking/smoking, sexual content, and thematic elements.

Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Rocky (Yesterday)

*Rocky-related spoilers.*

When the actor playing Frenchie looked familiar to me after season 1 of Our Flag Means Death, I looked him up and realized that I recognized Joel Fry from this movie, where he played the main character’s quirky buddy. Back in 2019, I’d been really excited for Yesterday, but unfortunately, the movie didn’t fully pan out for me. In my review at the time, I praised Himesh Patel’s strong performance but disliked the super clunky romantic storyline and lamented that the cool premise wasn’t executed very well.

Watching it again for Joel Fry-days, my overall impressions of the movie are much the same. Himesh Patel’s acting and singing are both terrific, I like Jack’s imperfect recall of the Beatles’ catalog—a la his ongoing struggle to remember the lyrics to “Eleanor Rigby”—and it cracks me up that Ed Sheeran’s ringtone is “Shape of You.” But the story is still a letdown, and I get aggravated that Richard Curtis’s singular plot device for the film is “character gets repeatedly interrupted by meaningless stuff when they’re trying to share something important.” Seriously, it happens even more often than I’d recalled!

Since I’ve already reviewed Yesterday, I wanted to write something different for today’s post, so it’s time for another Neurodivergent Alley! Before we get into it, here’s my Joel Fry-days addendum to my original review:

Accent Watch

Southern British English, maybe a bit London.

Recommend?

In General – A soft maybe. The parts I like, I like a lot, but there’s a lot of fat surrounding it.

Joel Fry – It’s another yes from me. Look, it’s still relatively early days for Joel Fry-days, so I might just be in the “I love everything!” phase. But I really, really like Fry’s performance as Rocky, which is goofy and fun with moments of unexpected sweetness.

To me, Rocky reads as maybe AuDHD. He’s viewed by others as a terminally unemployable screwup that you can’t depend on. Sadly, even Rocky’s friends see him this way. When Jack runs into him working at a musical festival, Jack remarks, “So everyone who said you were a lazy, useless, drug-taking drunk who’d never get a job were wrong.” Rocky affirms that they were wrong about him, except he’s fired later that day and winds up couch surfing with another friend of theirs. When Jack hears about this, he commiserates with the friend, calling it “a disaster” and warning that it “could last forever.”

To be fair, Rocky struggles with executive function stuff, and he makes easy mistakes when he’s distracted, dropping the ball on important things. He’s also blunt in ways that most people don’t appreciate, and he doesn’t care much about social hierarchies. When Jack gets the chance to open for Ed Sheeran—bringing Rocky as his roadie, as a last resort—Rocky has no problem telling the pop star to his face that it “sounds a bit crap” when he tries to rap. It’s not the only moment where, in Jack’s view, Rocky says something embarrassing or inappropriate in front of someone important.

A key part of Rocky’s bluntness, though, is that he’s not great with social cues. After accompanying Jack on his frantic race to the train station in Liverpool to meet Ellie, Rocky sits down beside them as they prepare to have a serious talk about their relationship. Jack has to tell him, “Rocky, this is completely not a conversation you’re part of.” And later on, when Ellie tells Jack she’s started seeing someone, Rocky can’t figure out why Jack never dated her. Which leads us to this exchange:

ROCKY: “If I had been you, twice a day, I would have loved her up like a lusty lion.” 

JACK: “Rocky, if I ask you to just shut up—really, really, really shut up—would that be okay?” 

ROCKY: “...Right. Can I just start again and say, isn’t it wonderful news? And I hope they’ll be very happy together and have gorgeous kids! Is that better?” 

JACK: “No, it’s worse.” 

ROCKY: “I have got a third option, but—”

And that’s the point where Jack cuts him off. Lots of comedies have the inappropriate friend who says horny things or inadvertently makes the hero feel like crap when they’re down. But I don’t often see this dynamic, where it’s clear that the friend realizes they said the wrong thing and tries to course-correct, only they’re not sure how. Rocky asking permission to start again, wondering “is that better?” once he does, and then offering to try a third time? All of that screams, Oh wait, social interaction fumbled—how do I fix this?

Similarly, when the distracted mistakes happen and Rocky screws things up, he’s not just the happy-go-lucky guy who brushes everything off. When he gets fired near the start of the film, he says, “Fair dues,” admitting his fault in it, then sheepishly shakes his head at Jack as he has to admit he’s just lost another job. He does try, and he wants to do well, and it bothers him when he doesn’t. That’s another thing that a lot of movies wouldn’t do with the funny wildcard friend who causes comedic mishaps and makes the hero’s life more difficult. Generally, you’re not “supposed to” empathize with this guy when his own best friend thinks he’s not good for anything, but I do.

For me, a lot of that comes down to how Joel Fry plays Rocky. He brings out the earnestness amid the goofiness and the chaos, making Rocky feel more like a genuine person instead of a caricature. I feel it in those moments where Rocky realizes he’s miscalibrated a social cue, or where he shows that he’s not immune to the perception of him as a hopeless screwup.  Best of all, Fry does this while still filling the “goofy chaotic friend” role to a tee—he has some great line deliveries and reaction shots, and I love a moment where it’s revealed that Rocky slept on the couch in his own hotel room, with his jacket, shoes, and sunglasses still on. Hee! 

Y tu Luna también: Narcos: Mexico: Season 1, Episode 2 – “The Plaza System” (2018)

My first time through the respective series, I liked Narcos but grew to really love Narcos: Mexico. Diego Luna’s fantastic performance, understandably, is a big part of that. However, I also really like the way this story is told, all the different elements that come together to make it happen.

One reason that Félix and Rafa needed to go into business with the Guadalajara traffickers is because they can’t grow sinsemilla, Rafa’s revolutionary new strain of marijuana, in Sinaloa. It needs to be away from other plants to avoid cross-pollination. As Rafa gets underway with their new fields, Félix plants some seeds of his own, looking to unite traffickers from multiple regions of Mexico under one central cartel operated out of various “plazas.”

We’ll start with the DEA stuff. Mexico definitely isn’t what Kiki hoped it would be; the DEA has hardly any real power there, and they’re stuck working within the narrow constraints put upon them by the various corrupt forces around them. When they make a drug bust and one of his colleagues notes that they’re seizing nearly the exact amount they seized the month before, Kiki asks, “So this is a setup?” His colleague drawls back, “It’s more like a donation.”

But Kiki is still determined to make something, anything, happen here, to the point where he stops on the way home from his wife’s OB appointment to check out a lead, because “you never know when you’re gonna get lucky.” His crusading is tenacious, but it’s also all-consuming for him, and his colleagues are also quickly getting irritated at his attitude toward them.

Meanwhile, on the cartel side of things, a lot of different players are making their way onto the board. Amado, a pilot who probably has the best knack for this business after Félix. Acosta, a old trafficker from Juarez who’s set in his ways and holds old grudges. The Arellano Félix brothers, Benjamín and Ramón, Félix’s nephews in Tiajuana. Isabella, a friend of Félix’s from back home, one who’s looking to make her own moves in a male-dominated business. And Avilés, “the lion of Sinaloa,” a man who’s used to being a big fish in a small pond and isn’t sure about Félix’s expansion ideas.

In this episode, we get a closer look at a couple of Félix’s particular talents. First, as the narrator puts it, is “the fucking audacity” of his dream, his shrewd idea to unite Mexico’s competing plazas under one banner. He proposes a system where everybody gets rich together, fixing prices and eliminating violent rivalries—as another character puts it, it’s like “OPEC for weed.” Félix identifies all the pieces he’s going to need to make his vision a reality, including trafficking infrastructure, police protection, and the blessing of the local cocaine king.

This brings us to Félix’s second major asset. He’s really good with people, up to a point. His sheer belief in his ideas can get him in trouble at times, can carry him confidently into situations he’s not prepared for, but on a surface level, he has a talent for managing people, which he really needs in this business. In order for his plaza system to work, he needs to take a bunch of people who aren’t inclined to play nicely with each other and get them to break bread. As he travels from plaza to plaza making his proposal, the narrator explains, “He’d done his homework. That meant knowing which asshole responded to flattery and which just wanted to hear the fucking numbers.”

Luna is so, so good in these scenes. We see the way Félix walks into each plaza with a tailored pitch already prepared, knowing what to say to each of his chess pieces to get them to move. We see how he sometimes adjusts his approach on the fly when a curveball is thrown at him, like when he discovers Acosta refuses to work with Avilés due to an old feud; he immediately recalibrates and starts BSing, saying what he needs to to keep Acosta on the line.

The really interesting thing about this is that many of the things that motivate the other plaza bosses mean very little to Félix. He’s driven by his belief in the logic of his own plan, and for all intents and purposes, he thinks everybody ought to align behind that simply because it makes sense. The plaza system will bring everyone money and power, and it will cut out a lot of extraneous headaches—where’s the downside? But he accepts the reality that most of these people are driven by other things, and so he plays a dozen different little games to keep everybody happy long enough to realize his vision. That air comes across in Luna’s performance. Félix doesn’t feel like a con man who has an easy talent for manipulating people to get what he wants. Instead, he feels a little bit like an alien who’s become an expert on human behavior and begrudgingly submits to their illogical whims in order to achieve an advantageous outcome.