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Brad Pitt and Damson Idris - F1: The Movie
Brad Pitt and Damson Idris in F1: The Movie (2025)
F1: The Movie
(In Theaters June 27)
This role is a surprisingly good fit for 61-year-old Brad Pitt. He plays Sonny Hayes, a washed-up Formula One driver who believes he’s still got his chops. Sonny lives out of a cruddy van, showing up on the circuit to pinch-hit for any team willing pay him $5,000 dollars. Sonny is barely getting by when he’s found at an Orlando laundromat by old friend Ruben (Javier Bardem). Ruben needs Sonny to join his Formula One team, which is on a losing streak. Sonny tries to refuse the corporate gig, but Ruben persuades Sonny to man-up and prove himself in the wake of a career-ending crash years ago.
Sonny’s job is tutoring and playing second fiddle to Ruben’s star driver Josh Pearce (Damson Idris), a brash, hotshot British rookie. Cue all the expected age-vs-youth drama, but you can’t argue with the thrilling race footage. Pitt did most of Sonny’s driving at speeds that make your stomach churn. Director Joseph Kosinski uses every known camera technique to capture engaging races, while Ehren Kruger’s script delivers the required emotional beats from actors able to infuse gravitas. Jerry Bruckheimer produces. (Lisa Miller)
M3GAN 2.0
(In Theaters June 27)
Supposedly destroyed following her murderous rampage in M3gan, AI doll M3gan is brought back to destroy Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), a military grade AI robot gone rogue. The original film’s main characters return. They are Jenna Davis voicing M3GAN, Allison Williams as M3gan’s creator Gemma, and Violet McGraw as Gemma’s daughter Cady. Having originally been programmed to protect Cady (above all else), Gemma first puts M3gan into a Teletubbie doll, until she is certain that M3gan retains this protection as her primary directive. Gemma and her engineers then upgrade the companion doll to be stronger, faster and taller (M3gan especially likes “taller”). Director-writer Gerard Johnstone focuses on “bigger, badder, bloodier action,” while ensuring that M3gan’s snarky dialog remains the doll’s constant companion. Plasticized M3gan owns the film, her innocent appearance disguising killer abilities and giving no hint of her ferocious potty mouth. A PG-13 rating certainly isn’t what it used to be. (Lisa Miller)
The Nightwatch Collection: Limited Edition
(Arrow Video Blu-ray)
Intriguing, suspenseful and perverse, Nightwatch (1994) follows its law student protagonist, Martin, through an increasingly nightmarish scenario. He’s earning beer money as the nightwatchman in the Copenhagen morgue during a time of grisly serial killings. The facility’s empty silence unsettles him, as do the increasingly sinister antics of his friend Jens, whose practical jokes cross into cruelty. Danish writer-director Ole Bernedal captures the college atmosphere of parties, parttime jobs and pushing limits as suspicions coil more tightly around Martin. Set 30 years later, Bernedal’s sequel, Nightwatch: Demons are Forever (2023), is included in this Blu-ray set. (David Luhrssen)
