Directors: Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans
Writers: Hannah McMechan, Danya Jimenez, Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans
Stars: Arden Cho, Ahn Hyo-seop, Ji-young Yoo

Synopsis: When they aren’t selling out stadiums, Kpop superstars Rumi, Mira and Zoey use their secret identities as badass demon hunters to protect their fans from an ever-present supernatural threat. Together, they must face their biggest enemy yet – an irresistible rival boy band of demons in disguise.

Did I have any expectations for the direct-to-Netflix KPop Demon Hunters? Absolutely not. In fact, I had only heard of this movie just a few weeks ago, shocked that it was produced by Sony Pictures Animation, and dumped on Netflix, thinking we had moved past this and that this entity of Sony Pictures would resume releasing their library theatrically. Yet, some part of me felt that this production could be as worthwhile as The Mitchells vs. The Machines and Vivo, which were both unceremoniously dumped on the streaming service but became massive hits during the COVID-19 pandemic. And while KPop Demon Hunters doesn’t reach the same heights as those movies, it’s at least aesthetically exciting and thematically cogent enough to at least warrant a recommendation. 

This year, the animated landscape has been more than lacking. With the exception of the incredible Ne Zha 2 and Dog Man, many families have been left hanging as to when the next must-see offering will be released. Granted, audiences will have the chance to see Elio this week as well, but we’ve not had something genuinely creative from Hollywood in this medium of filmmaking in a long time, so much so that a small independent production from Latvia was able to beat the Pixar and Dreamworks of this world at this year’s Oscars. 

KPop Demon Hunters may not flow as easily as Gints Zilbalodis’ feature, but it is one of the most artistically interesting animated productions Sony has ever released. From its show-stopping, hyperkinetic action to songs of raw emotional power, wondrously visualized in a style blending the comic-book textures of 2D with the boundless spatial imagination of 3D, there isn’t a single frame in Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans’ feature that doesn’t look incredible, or won’t make your jaw drop. It’s a genuine shame that audiences will be unable to see this movie in a theater, when each large-scale action setpiece warrants the price of admission on the largest possible screen, especially when hearing its bevy of emotionally-stirring KPop music.

There’s also a tangible feeling in capturing the story of Rumi (Arden Cho), the leader of a popular KPop band known by the name of “Huntrix,” who, when they are not singing, hunts demons with her co-members Zoey (Ji-young Yoo) and Mira (May Hong). This is all well and good until we find out that Rumi herself is part-demon and begins to notice marks on her skin, which progressively get more significant as the malevolent presence of Gwi-Ma (Byung-hun Lee) starts to take hold of her body. The villain, while frequently omnipresent, is genuinely terrifying to the point where we actively feel for the people he successfully possesses, and the spirits he steals, even if they may not be truly good people. 

Case in point: Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop), the leader of a rival boy band, Saja Boys, is a demon, and attempts to break Huntrix by getting under Rumi’s skin. He initially tells her of a miserable story that eventually led him to join forces with Gwi-Ma, until we learn more about him and see that he is far more than a “broken” individual. While I anticipated these developments, how Kang and Appelhans treat his story is honestly far more interesting than how most studio-driven animated films usually illustrate, and the alchemy between both Jinu and Rumi makes up for some of the narrative shortcomings and childish humor of this project. 

Because, yes, it’s easy to see where this scenario is going, even right at the top of the movie. It can act more as a bug than a feature, especially when the screenplay is filled with inconsistent comedy, but the directing duo more than makes up for their imperfections with a profoundly human story at its core, one that opens itself up in surprisingly cathartic corners as it reaches its climax. That scene is a perfect marriage of staggering visuals and musical editing, whose rhythm is created from the song Huntrix is performing, as we reach an apex bound to make everyone tear up, even non-fans of KPop alike. 

It’s so powerful, one has to ask if directors Kang and Appelhans played a Hideki Kamiya game before diving into the family-friendly world of the KPop Demon Hunters. The blend between music and images is the strongest it has been in an animated piece of media since Kamiya’s Bayonetta 2 – my eyes couldn’t believe it. I didn’t much care for the bog-standard, albeit universal, story, so much so that I thought I would forget KPop Demon Hunters as I do most Netflix films. Yet, the final half or so is immensely staggering that I’ll long think about why some of the most artistically exciting works of animation, which beg the big screen (IMAX) experience, are always relegated to streaming, whilst the ones that do nothing for the medium are played in a cinema. 

It’s a question to ponder, but, as of now, Kang and Appelhans’ film more than deserves your attention, and could act as a gateway to the incredible, highly imaginative world of KPop. You may never be the same after the credits roll, and that’s the best endorsement I could give for a film like this one. 

Grade: B+

Director: Danny Boyle
Writers: Alex Garland
Stars: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes

Synopsis: A group of survivors of the rage virus live on a small island. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors.

In 2002, Danny Boyle and Anthony Dod Mantle pioneered digital filmmaking by shooting 28 Days Later on a Canon XL1 DV camera, giving the Zombie apocalypse film a unique look and feel, while also paving the way for the acceptance of digital cinematography as the film industry began the transition from celluloid to memory cards. In the post-digital era we live in today, it is now routine for studios (and directors) to use newer cameras for their projects, as it is much cheaper and less cumbersome than film. And while there were formal innovations at the time where digital was not widely accepted, such as in Michael Mann’s Collateral and Miami Vice, the sludgy pictures filling our screens today is the most significant symptom of a desire to make each “big screen” experience as televisual as possible. 

Digital filmmaking requires different considerations than film, yet few directors are actively interested in exploring these newer technologies and offering never-before-seen images for the audience to question their place in society. However, in the year of our lord 2025, auteurs like Jia Zhangke, Steven Soderbergh, David Cronenberg, Takeshi Kitano, Leos Carax, and Joseph Kosinski have all begun to question how filmmaking in this era should be approached when the big-budget productions of this Earth have grown more and more sterile. It makes their movies stand out amongst the rest of the pack, as they figure out the purpose of cinema at a time when few moviegoers actively want to see a film on the big screen. 

For the much-anticipated 28 Years Later, Danny Boyle fundamentally understands that, for an audience to see his latest project in the cinema, he must offer them images they have never witnessed before, even if filmmakers like Sean Baker and Soderbergh experimented on the predominant device Boyle (and Dod Mantle) shot their Zombie film on: iPhones. Transcending the artifice Soderbergh established in Unsane and High Flying Bird, Boyle immediately jolts our attention with his perversely funny opening scene, as a group of children are mortified in terror as they are forced to watch the Teletubbies, whilst the rage virus outbreak is creeping at their doors. 

In a recent interview, Boyle had discussed how he wanted to “desecrate the innocence” of the popular BBC children’s television series, but how Dod Mantle shoots the dingy television gives us our first honest look at how genuinely terrifying Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po (alongside the Baby Sun, likely the most accurate visualization of Hell ever created) have always been. As editor Jon Harris cuts to the reaction shots of the petrified children who are attempting to ignore the horrors around them by watching the most horrifying television show made for kids, the outbreak begins to multiply rapidly, until it affects everyone in the room. It’s an intense cold open that primes the audience for the multiple tonal shifts Boyle’s latest film will play with, often darkly funnier than you expect, while also being unafraid to explore nastier, upsetting territories. 

The opening 35 minutes or so of the movie (it could perhaps be even longer, I don’t carry a watch, but there’s a clear shift between the first and second half that most will notice) is the franchise at its most cogent and aesthetically exciting. Screenwriter Alex Garland, with best screenplay since…2015 (Jesus), is not only angry at how pessimistic society has become, but also violently rejects what most fans have been looking forward to seeing in a movie like this. Instead of giving answers to how the world looks 28 years after the initial outbreak, he immediately subverts expectations by paralleling the present-day story of Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Isla (Jodie Comer), and their son Spike (Alfie Williams) to the darkest periods of world history and cinema. 

Through a riveting collage of archival footage as Jamie and Spike step out of the comforts of their remote island to hunt for the infected, Garland associates their actions to a bevy of medieval-set movies, as society has had to regress from the innovations of their times to the most primal human needs, with no access to cutting-edge medical treatment, weapons, and technologies. Spike has grown up in a closed-off community, away from the infected, and doesn’t know what a phone or the internet is. But they must do what they should to survive. However, when Isla begins to experience strange symptoms of an illness, and Jamie speaks of a doctor (Ralph Fiennes) who has gone mad, and lives away from the island, Spike takes her mother to him, hoping he will have an answer to her predicament. 

It’s at that point where the movie begins to slow down and remind us that what we’re watching is indeed a Part One™, replete with some of the worst tendencies these films usually have: endless bouts of exposition and lore-dumping that feels, through Garland’s dialogue, like dense plotting, unresolved character arcs, and a denouement that acts more as a tease for what’s to come than a satisfying conclusion that will bridge the gap between the first and second installment. 

The climax, in particular, is not at all one. It is more or less an extended teaser for what audiences will be getting in the Nia DaCosta-directed sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, than wrapping up this part of the story in a way that will naturally encourage the audience to see what’s next instead of basically forcing the characters to go, “Did you like this? We’re not done yet, you better show up in January for Part 2!” Stuff like this halts the momentum of an all-timer opening section, one that’s filled with as much important commentary on the state of the world we live in today, in a post-COVID society, as it is with revolutionary filmmaking techniques, capturing Zombie action we’ve never seen before done at this scale, and with such a device. 

Formally, 28 Years Later is as much of a leap forward in digital cinematography as the first, though with different (and more exciting) considerations. The 2.76:1 aspect ratio adds immense texture to Dod Mantle’s staggering iPhone-shot frames of an orange sky bathing on the human characters, or nature being captured in ways I’ve simply never seen before. The lush greens of the grass, moss and leaves, the bright yellows of daffodils, the bluer-than-blue water that separates the island from the mainland. 

Every single image is jaw-dropping: the slight robotic freeze-frames as an infected, whether slow (Garland is finally tipping the hat to George A. Romero) or fast, is violently killed, the claustrophobic close-ups of Isla and Spike as they attempt to shield themselves from a massive gas leak, the slow-motion employed to demonstrate the Alpha Zombie’s strength (complete with an alpha dong, making Bruce LaBruce proud), as it runs in extreme conditions with the intent to dismember as many humans as it can. There’s so much one can extract by just looking at how Dod Mantle captures its characters, especially during its more melancholic conclusion, as Spike and Isla are directly haunted by the specter of Death, when they meet Fiennes’ Doctor Kelson, who tells them of a harsh truth Spike isn’t prepared to hear. 

That’s why I didn’t much care about the endless Part One-isms, because Dod Mantle’s cinematography is so revelatory we can dissociate the film’s plotting from its staggering visuals. In an era that has mostly forgotten how to shoot movies and formally innovate, Dod Mantle continues the legacy he began with Thomas Vinterberg in The Celebration and Harmony Korine in Julien Donkey-Boy to continue questioning how a film can be shot at a time where one simple phone (or 50 phones mounted on a rig) can create the most impeccable visual poetry you’ve seen. In a way, it acts as a companion piece to Joseph Kosinski’s incredible F1 The Movie, where cinematographer Claudio Miranda continues his collaboration with the TRON: Legacy filmmaker in their rethinking of large-format photography as they take the exact same set up they experimented with for Top Gun: Maverick, and mount it on racing vehicles. 

Kosinski is more of an architectural perfectionist than Boyle, who loves to showcase the imperfections of filmmaking (as demonstrated in 28 Days Later) and its artifice, which he frequently does in 28 Years Later, especially during its DIY-coded final scene, where everything is thrown at the screen in pure maximalism, a complete swing for the fences that will either make or break your appreciation of the work. The narrative paths of both Isla and Spike will also divide audiences, who were looking for a more thrilling affair, especially as Garland halts momentum and decides to ruminate on what life in a post-apocalyptic society means, as medical progress has ceased to exist. Still, Comer and Alfie Williams give the film’s best performances, while the contribution of Taylor-Johnson gets sidelined as soon as the movie shifts tonalities and becomes a more meditative affair. 

While I’m not entirely sold on which direction the upcoming Bone Temple will take, one can’t entirely dismiss Boyle and Dod Mantle’s formal daring based on a few baffling screenwriting decisions from Garland. After all, this is the best screenplay he’s written in a long time, but he still seems a bit wobbly from his past missteps. Perhaps the second one will be much clearer, though I’m afraid it will alienate audiences way more than this one does, especially in how it sets up a central character with a strange connection to those godforsaken, Satan-created Teletubbies, making them this franchise’s recurring motif?? What did the children of the world do to deserve such a horrifying show like this one…

Grade: A-

Director: Simon West
Writers: Cece Pleasants, Shaina Steinberg
Stars: Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, Anna Chlumsky

Synopsis: When a mercenary group takes a lavish wedding hostage, they have no idea what they are in for as the maid of honor is actually a secret agent ready to rain hellfire upon anyone who would ruin her best friend’s wedding.

Bride Hard is a new action comedy designed as a vehicle for Rebel Wilson, the star of films like the Pitch Perfect franchise, Bridesmaids, Jojo Rabbit, and even a viral clip where she humorously told Idris Elba at an awards show that she’s socially programmed to want chocolate on Valentine’s Day. Wilson is hilarious and, at times, downright adorable, with a distinct comedic persona and a talent that stands apart from anything else in the industry. Given her physical transformation, one would expect a role that leans into her gift for physical comedy to be a natural fit.

However, Bride Hard ultimately misuses Wilson’s comedic strengths, resulting in a final product that fails to reach the low bar set by even Kevin James’s Paul Blart: Mall Cop films. It’s a tedious bore—and one of the worst films of 2025.

The story follows the genre playbook step by step, focusing on the strained relationship or lack thereof between Sam (Wilson) and Betsy (Cafe Society’s Anna Camp), childhood best friends. Betsy is now marrying Ryan (Sam Huntington of Jungle 2 Jungle fame) and has chosen her long-absent bestie as maid of honor, much to the irritation of her future sister-in-law, Virginia (Veep’s Anna Chlumsky). Sam is always too busy with work to help plan the wedding, but she has a good reason: she’s a secret agent, quietly serving and protecting her country from the scum of the earth. 

For example, during the bachelorette party—which she has the government relocate to Paris to multitask while on a mission—Sam disappears to hunt down a terrorist involved in a suspicious drop, presumably linked to nefarious activities. Her boss, Nadine (Joy Ride’s Sherry Cola), disapproves of her recklessness, while Betsy’s friends—including Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph—resent Sam for never thinking of anyone but herself. However, everyone will be relieved later when the wedding is taken over by a band of terrorists, led by a no-nonsense muscle of the Columbian cartel, Kurt (Stephen Dorff), looking to break into Betsy’s future family’s vault to loot the family fortune, which looks like Fort Knox-lite.

Bride Hard was directed by Simon West, who has maintained an impressive streak of misfires since executive producing Black Hawk Down, making his directorial debut with Con Air, and capturing Rick Astley’s smooth pop ballad “Never Gonna Give You Up” on the small screen. Frankly, after his last thirteen films, we should be concerned that West took the title of that song a little too seriously—Rickrolling his way through Hollywood with jaw-droppingly bad efforts ever since. 

Bride Hard may be his crowning achievement: an action comedy with no thrills, no laughs, and no purpose beyond featuring Justin Hartley as an inept heartthrob—the film’s only mildly amusing element, which grows tiresome than the extra “F” is Stephen Dorff’s last name. 

Bride Hard is not worth watching—unless you’re a fan of flat jokes, predictable plotting, and a completely lazy, inept excuse for a cinematic swing. To put it politely, the freshman script from Shaina Steinberg is tedious; to be blunt, it’s atrocious. I didn’t think a movie could be worse than Flight Risk, but at least that film had an over-the-top, entertaining Mark Wahlberg reveling in its awkwardness. 

At least, with that film, you were not bored, whereas West’s film is so charmless that it has no sense of its own watered-down identity. 

You can watch Bride Hard only in theaters now!

Grade: D-

Director: David Kabbe
Writer: Sarah Padbury
Stars: Iosua Barbu, Sarah Padbury, Lucian Igna

Synopsis: Disabled children are banished in 1988 communist Romania. But one daring nanny resolves to take 8-year-old Izidor outside for the very first time. She never could have imagined the consequences.

It is no secret that people with disabilities have been treated differently than those without. This has taken many forms in many cultures, and to varied extremes. Even something as simple as visibility and representation plays a large part in othering those with mobility issues. This is bad enough, but during some parts of history, the treatment was much worse. For example, in the mid-to-late 1980s in Romania, the communist regime essentially banished disabled children to orphanages. Talk about visibility, they were not allowed to be seen on the streets at all. This is a drastic decision, and one that seems deeply disturbed and barely real. But these histories must be faced, so we can learn from them across cultures. 

David Kabbe’s Izidor tells the story of one of these children hidden away in Romania during this time. An opening scrawl tells us that in Romania, the law demanded that all couples have five children. If and when parents cannot provide for them, they are transferred to state-run institutions. But, if children have disabilities, they are housed in asylums. And more than that, they are not to be seen on the streets at all. This is where we meet the film’s titular character (Iosua Barbu),  a young child housed in one of these asylums.

Visually, the film takes some chances stylistically. With the opening, the outside world is shown in lovely detail, giving a sense of beauty and freedom, with birds flying over lush, green trees. But, as the camera moves to the asylum, the oppression is palpable. And as the film transitions inside the building, the style changes from standard film to roughly performed animation. This decision is both odd and effective. Though most filmmakers use animation to detail freedom and vibrancy, Kabbe does the opposite to incredible effect. The animation is technically in color, but only just so. The quality gives us a sense of ugliness and a dour feeling that hangs over the scenes. Effectively, we wish for it to end or change, just like Izidor must in every possible moment.

And it does change, as a kindly nurse, Onisa (Sarah Padbury, also the screenwriter) at the asylum convinces the doctors to allow her to take Izidor for a day out. But, of course, she must be cautious as if he is seen on the streets, there will be trouble for everyone involved. Kabbe does a tremendous job of immediately making us feel this threat, just as the film begins to move back to live action film. This decision gives us a sense of reality that fools both us and the child into thinking that this is his new life. As the film is from his perspective, we are not allowed a lot of detail into what will happen later. Only this moment matters. And this moment is full of love, life, and happiness.

We are introduced to an entirely new world. A world with a kindly patriarch and adoring children. There is an extended scene with the father (Lucian Igna) telling the story of the “Bigmouth Frog” that is a perfect encapsulation of a cheesy Dad joke, but never loses its charm. The children laugh and Izidor joins in, for the first time being given both the feeling of home and a genuine family. This dinner scene, paired with Izidor’s discovery of fruit on the vine and fresh mushrooms creates a sense of wonder that feels almost like we can taste it with him. 

Although some of the actors are clearly amateurs, this actually works for Izidor. The delivery of heavily accented English draws the audience in and helps us want to experience this and build the same trust that Izidor does. But Barbu, in his acting debut, gives a stunning performance. His move from frightened to trusting back to terrified must feel genuine. And he does not have much time (the entire film is less than a half hour) to accomplish this. But through small facial expressions and gestures, we see and feel it all. He provides first a meek personality, then a sense of awe at the world around him, and then near defeat when he is returned to the asylum after one perfect day.

These stories of abuse and maltreatment must be told, no matter how difficult they are to experience, even through the distance of film. Kabbe does honor to Izidor and the countless other children who were starved and hidden away from sight. Our disabled community deserves much better and this is a reminder of both how far we have come (so far) and what we must fight to avoid in the future.

Grade: B+

Directors: Adrian Molina, Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi
Writers: Julia Cho, Mark Hammer, Mike Jones
Stars: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldaña, Remy Edgerly

Synopsis: Elio, a space fanatic with an active imagination, finds himself on a cosmic misadventure where he must form new bonds with alien lifeforms, navigate a crisis of intergalactic proportions and somehow discover who he is truly meant to be.

It has finally happened: Pixar has found its own The Emperor’s New Groove. No, Elio is not like that film—a 2000 animated comedy that Vulture’s Bilge Ebiri once described as “an irreverent, pratfall-heavy, non sequitur” in Disney’s otherwise fabled ‘90s filmography. Elio has no pratfalls to speak of, is occasionally irreverent—almost by accident—and is absolutely a non-sequitur in Pixar’s recent slate of films, which has hit a rough patch with titles like Elemental, Lightyear, and Onward. I’ll also go on record as one of the few critics who believe Inside Out 2 is one of the most overrated films of the decade.

Elio doesn’t follow Pixar’s usual narrative arc, failing to forge a coherent connection to the studio’s defining theme of exploring the human condition. Instead, the story leaps into a visually dazzling, kinetic sci-fi fantasy that feels exhaustingly hollow. Let’s look at the setup: Elio (Yonas Kibreab), an eleven-year-old boy who has just lost his parents, is taken in by his Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldaña), who gives up on her dreams of becoming an astronaut to care for him.

The script, by Julia Cho (Fringe), Mark Hammer (Shotgun Wedding), and Mike Jones (Luca), never meaningfully explores Elio’s loss or the trauma of abandonment. These themes should be the emotional glue binding Elio and Olga together, but they’re only briefly hinted at in the opening and closing scenes. The script wanders aimlessly when it comes to an emotional trajectory. Elio feels lost, so he looks to the stars for connection, hoping to bond with aliens so he doesn’t feel alone. You’d think the script might tie this into the memory of his parents—the sky as heaven, a metaphor for grief, a theme of terminal loneliness—but it’s barely touched.

Then, Olga intercepts a message from an alien civilization called the “Communiverse.” Through a mishap, Elio mistakenly identifies as Earth’s leader and is beamed into space to receive their message. Unfortunately, he’s tasked with negotiating a truce between his new alien friends and Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), a worm-like warlord in a Tony Stark-style Iron Man suit. Grigon wants to destroy the Communiverse—and Elio—until our young hero meets Glordon, an adorable alien worm creature who, it turns out, is the villain’s son.

This is where the story should focus, but it takes far too long to arrive, and the third act sidelines Glordon, who barely interacts with Elio. Directors Madeline Sharafian (Coco), Domee Shi (Turning Red), and Adrian Molina (The Good Dinosaur)  fail to meaningfully connect Elio’s coming-of-age arc with the necessary emotional realism that Pixar is known for. If they tried, they didn’t make that connection resonate with the audience. By the time the film navigates its own cosmic whimsy and absurdities, there is a touching and beautifully realized moment about fathers and sons. Still, the Elio storyline is left cold, detached, and emotionally vacant.

And the journey to get there? Just plain weird. Most of the jokes fall flat, including supposedly irreverent moments like Lord Grigon blasting cute space dandelions from the sky. Glordon is the film’s breakout star—mark my words, plush alien worms will be a hot Black Friday item—but that feels like the movie’s larger purpose: to be a visually kinetic feast for the eyes, primed for marketing. It’s a film tonally out of sync from start to finish as if pieced together from ideas pulled from different movies and forced together like mismatched puzzle pieces that never quite click.

Overall, Elio reflects a new Pixar trend: underdeveloped, not fully realized scripts. I might call it an homage to the studio’s earlier work—if it didn’t feel so much like self-plagiarism of better efforts. At least the film is coated in that signature Pixar animation goodness. 

If only it had the heart to genuinely tackle family issues, like the studio’s classic films did, with a little more heart and soul.

You can watch Elio only in theaters on June 20th!

Grade: C

Director: Joseph Kosinksi
Writer: Joseph Kosinski, Ehren Kruger
Stars: Brad Pitt, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem

Synopsis: A Formula One driver comes out of retirement to mentor and team up with a younger driver.

The new Brad Pitt summer tentpole vehicle F1®: The Movie follows the classic tradition of proving you can’t teach an old dog new tricks—but you can teach a pack of puppies a few new ones. It’s a film that’s big, flashy, and, for the first ninety minutes or so, a genuinely engrossing piece of gluttonous popcorn entertainment that is as American as, well, a bucket of buttery popcorn. 

However, as Pitt’s cinematic skid mark loses control, where even Jesus cannot take the wheel, into its final turn, F1®: The Movie becomes self-indulgent and even arrogant, unsure of when to walk away. It ultimately lets the big climactic moment it builds toward slip through its fingers despite its old-fashioned Hollywood trappings. 

The story follows the aging and weathered (and, of course, still breathtakingly handsome) Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a former Formula One driver who hasn’t raced in the league in nearly thirty years. We first meet Sonny during the 24 Hours of Daytona, where he’s racing for Chip Hart (Shea Whigham), the scrappy principal of a ragtag team.

Hayes brings his menacing, wrecking-ball style to the track, taking out a rival driver to help his team regain the lead. After earning a quick five grand for his trouble, Sonny retires to a pinball machine in a laundromat—until an old friend shows up.

That friend is Ruben (Dune’s Javier Bardem), a fellow veteran of the racing circuit who now owns his own Formula One team. Unfortunately, Ruben is $350 million in the hole, and the board is ready to replace him—unless he can shake things up and consistently finish in the top ten. He convinces Sonny to come out of retirement, not only to lead the team as its head driver but also to mentor a hotshot young prodigy, Joshua “Noah” Pearce (The Commuter’s Damson Idris)—a driver in whom Ruben sees shades of Sonny himself.

F1®: The Movie is directed by Joseph Kosinski (Only the Brave), who has been riding the high of Tom Cruise’s “saving cinema” with Top Gun: Maverick. At first, we’re swept up in the film’s breakneck pace and immersive style, which puts the audience right inside the helmet of Pitt’s Hayes. 

He comes across as the William James of racing—someone who not only endangers everyone around him but also demands they treat the sport like combat. Pitt delivers a magnetic, even visceral performance that’s deeply felt.

However, the rest of the characters are two-dimensional, with the villain telegraphed from the start. Damson Idris is fine, but his character is a cliché—used primarily to humanize Pitt’s Sonny, giving him redeemable value by mentoring Pearce to be a leader, even though he doesn’t behave like one. It’s the old trope of leadership being thrust upon the reluctant hero.

The script by Ehren Kruger—who also wrote Top Gun: Maverick and has a history with Reindeer Games, The Ring films, and Michael Bay’s Transformers franchise—suggests his Academy Award nomination may have been an outlier. You learn almost nothing about Formula One racing, not even during scenes focused on Kerry Condon’s character, Kate McKenna, a technical director and former aerospace engineer explaining changes to the cars.

Worse, there seems to be no clear logic to what the team must accomplish to save Ruben’s job, leaving the stakes muddled and convoluted. The film is also overstuffed with exposition—not just from the characters, but from the overhead announcers, who commit racing’s cardinal sin: constantly “mouth-vomiting” exposition in a desperate attempt to explain the sport’s mantra and throw out red herrings. It quickly becomes laughable—and more than a little grating.

To make matters worse, Kosinski lets the big moment slip away the movie is building towards. The final race, especially in IMAX, gives the audience a sense of flying that is immersive and, for some reason, cuts away from some trivial scenes that take away from a moment where F1 finds footing in cinematic wonderment. Along with an overabundance of goodbyes where the movie refuses to end, F1®: The Movie squanders an exhilarating premise, by overstaying its welcome. 

You can watch F1® THE MOVIE only in theaters on June 27th!

Grade: C

Director: Yûta Shimotsu
Writers: Rumi Kakuta, Yûta Shimotsu
Stars: Masashi Arifuku, Kotone Furukawa, Yoshiko Inuyama

Synopsis: A young woman navigates a discovery within her immediate family only to find much more.

Happiness for everyone looks, and feels different. For me it’s a quiet night at home with my cats, for others it’s a good book, or even their careers. It’s a basic human emotion, and when it’s missing from your life, the consequences are often dire. How does one quantify the price of the sacrifices that must take place to obtain happiness? And how do we justify happiness in a world filled with cruelty? Best Wishes to All attempts to answer these questions while making sure you’ll never want to sleep over at your grandparents house again. It’s uncomfortably isolating with its small village atmosphere that has paranoia lurking behind every closed door.

Grandparents’ homes are a place many people attribute nostalgic feelings of happiness; I often think back to the many holidays spent around a large table enjoying countless meals. As an adult, looking back at those memories has me daydreaming about the lives of my grandparents and what they sacrificed for me to allow me the success in life I have. In Best Wishes to All, we are introduced to a young nursing student (Kotone Furukawa), who remains unnamed for the entirety of the film. She’s on her way to her grandparents’ house while on a short break at school. Planning on meeting her parents and younger brother there, she ends up at her destination a few days earlier. From the moment she arrives, something about her grandparents’ home feels off; she’s not new to this feeling, as a child she’d often hear noises coming from the ceiling above her as she attempted to fall asleep.

Curious to find a reason for the strange noises coming from behind a locked bedroom door, the young woman begins to notice her grandparents are not acting the way they normally would. Both unassuming from the outside, her grandparents are eager to share with her a secret, each time showcasing stranger behavior, like standing in the middle of a hallway, mouth agape, staring at a locked door. Or eating a delicious meal with their granddaughter and coming over the table to both grab her fingers and suck on them. It’s safe to say she is disturbed, and tries to find answers for her grandparents’ sudden shift in personality. But what turns out to be a getaway trip to a once dear place quickly becomes dark while discovering the secret to happiness.

Best Wishes to All breaks the sense of normality in this young woman’s life by creating increasingly disturbing situations for her to encounter. As she navigates through the film, the answers to her questions don’t render any real solutions she can decipher, throwing her deeper and deeper into confusion even after the remainder of her family arrives for their visit. Director Yuta Shimotsu makes sure to not only keep the audience on their toes, but his lead character as well. Choosing to let us discover the evil truths and the cost of her and her family’s happiness alongside her, Shimotsu drives home the differing ideals between young and old and how the willingness to make irreversible sacrifices in the name of happiness comes easier for some than others.

There’s a lot going on within Best Wishes to All, and for those who aren’t used to Japanese horror it could become overwhelming. There’s plenty of disturbing imagery within this film, and it comes in different forms. The big reveal of the film, which is best left without spoiling, is a shock in concept alone. Paired with plenty of bleeding eye sockets and axes to the head the, visuals add an extra layer of ick. Making the main character feel like the odd one out from the start makes her easy to root for, even when she makes a decision that is hard to accept. The film tends to get lost in the more over the top ideas, leaving some of the most compelling conversations the film is trying to invoke to the side. Making it seem that the dark truth behind her family’s happiness is something she needs to accept, giving her no real choice for herself in the end.

Taking place in a close-knit community adds yet another layer to the film’s bleakness and the paranoia felt by the film’s lead. Captured through the lens of cinematographer Ryuto Iwabuchi, the focus on architecture makes the film feel like it takes place in two different realities: the home of her grandparents and the life she lives as a nursing student. Newer buildings in Tokyo capture the film’s youthfulness and progressive innovations, paired with the older, more broken-in homes of the aging neighborhood she grew up in. Iwabuchi’s work blends these two worlds together for her, giving her reminders of her family’s sacrifices even when they physically aren’t there.

Leading a film filled with some truly stomach-turning plots and visuals cannot be easy, but Furukawa surely makes it look that way. She has a unique ability to match the film’s increasingly bizarre atmosphere through the way she smiles. Earlier in the film, her smile is natural and lights up a film that has a bleak color palette. As she finds more and more darkness within her family life, the corners of her smile become sharper, and the giggles behind her smiles sound forced, making her look like she’s in pain rather than exuding real joy. She plays a bright-eyed nurse who only wants to help others like a natural; even when the film gets overstuffed with ideas, she shines as the film’s relentless lead.

Moreover, Best Wishes to All is a solid thriller that shocks with its plot and will have your stomach in knots from its visuals. Even when there’s one too many things going on at once, the film gives unconventional answers to life’s most existential questions about the costs of happiness. Shimotsu crafts an impressive film that leaves a lasting impact long after the credits roll.

Grade: B