Film Shapes

As opposed to F1: The TV Show, or F1: The Book, or F1: The Function Key. Yes, this is a film about Formula 1 racing and it really wants us to love it, the racing even more than the movie itself. Brad Pitt is Sonny Hayes, a grizzled driver who jumps around from race to race, a drifter, a mercenary. After one of these races, Daytona, his old mucker, Ruben (Javier Bardem) shows up and offers him the chance of a lifetime. Come back to Formula 1. Hitting all the right beats so far. And continues to do so. If you've seen any sports film, you know this film. Just for the record, yes, there's a cocky young pup co-driver, Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) and a gorgeous (thankfully middle-aged) love interest, Kate (Kerry Condon). It's no surprise that the writer/director combo here, Ehren Kruger and Joseph Kosinski, was also responsible for the underwhelming  Top Gun: Maverick . This is a better, more grounded (pun intended) version of that film. It may be derivative but  F1 is pretty s...

The Guardian recently ran an article on the ten best World War II films, as voted by respondents to a Deltapoll for The War Movie Theatre podcast (see their list and link at the end of this piece). As this year is 80 years since the end of hostilities, I thought it might be interesting to run down my top twenty World War II films. Here we go: 20.  Empire of the Sun   (Steven Spielberg - 1987)  This China-set drama of expats during the war in the Pacific theatre was Christian Bale's first big role at the age of 13. He's pretty bloody good too, as are most of the cast, including John Malkovich and Nigel Havers. Spielberg saw this J.G. Ballard story as a chance to make a comparatively 'darker' film about the loss of innocence and it turned out to be one of his very best. 19.  The English Patient   (Anthony Minghella - 1996)  All the press for this film was the love story angle between dreamy Ralph Fiennes (pre-Voldemort, of course) and elegantly icy Kristin Sc...