Fast Cars and Star Power: Reviewing Sonny Hayes’ Racing Journey in F1 The Movie

Hello, dear readers, this is my review of a gem I watched during the week. I can still smell the oil and hear the roars of the engines. This is a testosterone-filled, macho film. It’s like being transported back to the eighties.

It is directed by Joseph Kosinski and stars the legendary Brad Pitt, who plays Sonny Hayes.

Sonny Hayes loves to race, regardless of the vehicle. He is called in to a failing F1 team as the last roll of the dice. He is an unlikely choice given his age and the fact that his first stint as an F1 driver was somewhat of a disaster.

The driving scenes in this film are incredible and set it apart. Brad Pitt is Brad Pitt, enigmatic, charming with sex appeal. It being 2025, the love interest is a forty-something racing director played by Kerry Condon with an unforgettably strong Irish accent. She has been warned that Sonny has had a few ex-wives, but let’s be honest, that would never stop her.

Sonny’s racing partner is a young black man with a great career ahead who just needs a bit of direction. The older white guy-young black guy is now something of a trope in films. It’s never a young white guy anymore. Such is life. The part is capable played by Adamson Alade-Bo “Damson” Idris. His character lacks any real depth, though, and just sets up Brad Pitt nicely.

He saves the team. It was never in doubt.

I give it four stars out of five. However, if you like fast cars, read my lips – You must watch this film. Whatever it takes.

Till next time..

And I’d love to hear back from you all. Have you seen it? Do you agree with my review?

The American Dream: A Grandfather’s Last Rodeo

I know what people are going to say. What is wrong with Mark these days watching sloppy films such as The Last Rodeo? I thought he was cool.

Don’t worry everybody, I’m still cool. It was just the strange mood I was in. But I have to say, this is a really good film. If I had something other than stone for a heart, I might even have got teary eyed at times.

I’d argue that the central theme of this film is intergenerational love. A grandfather’s love for his grandson and the love of a father for his daughter. The first few scenes establish the warmth in the grandfather (Neal McDonough) grandson (Mykelti Williamson) relationship. Things turn a bit more frosty when the daughter/mother shows up. She doesn’t want the young lad to become a rodeo, it seems she has the only brain cells in the family.

Things take a dark turn when it’s discovered that the grandson has a brain tumor that requires an immediate operation costing a lot of dosh. So much dosh, it will bankrupt the family. And no, European, the solution is not universal healthcare.

The grandfather needs to rodeo again, and win, of course!

It’s the American dream! Despite his old age and infirmity, it’s a go!

What follows is lovely, heartwarming story about love, and the will to win. Except, he comes second. I think they knew they could only get people to suspend realism so much. It’s okay, the rodeo competitors all chip in and the boy is saved.

This film gets four stars out of five for me.

Review of Night Call (film)

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to discuss an excellent film I saw yesterday. One of the great things about the modern era is that you get to appreciate great art from around the world. This is a French-language film I watched on Sky Cinema.

The scenes flow naturally from one scene to another. It doesn’t feel contrived but like something that could happen to an unfortunate soul. From Wikipedia –

Night Call (La nuit se traîne) is a 2024 action thriller film directed by Michiel Blanchart in his feature directorial debut from a screenplay he co-wrote with Gilles Marchand. Set over the course of a night amid a Black Lives Matter protest in Belgium, a young locksmith is called for nocturnal assignment that plunges him into danger. It stars Jonathan Feltre, Natacha Krief, Jonas Bloquet, Thomas Mustin and Romain Duris. The film is an international co-production between Belgium and France.

Jonathon Feltre gives a superb performance as the locksmith. The fact that he is black is generally not referred to (2024 film, after all), but it plays an unmentioned role towards the end.

There are some great and unexpected action scenes. I especially liked the car chase towards the end. There is quite a lot of violence and the threat of more. All good. It is unconventional, and you are unsure how it will conclude.

I give it four stars out of five.

Distant Love (Part 29)

Maeve glances at the digital clock over the door. It’s been two hours since she met Derek.

What did he say, 40 minutes? Talk about being overly optimistic.

She is sitting in an interrogation room. The walls are a cold, blue color; there is a table and two chairs at the centre.

Talk about having a strange day.

She is walking around the room, waiting for the next person to come in and ask questions.

The door opens. A petite woman dressed in a formal black suit enters. Her straight, long black hair reaches her shoulders. “Miss Maeve Garcia, my name is Atlanta Echez from the Moon Core Security. Please take a seat.

Maeve can feel her muscles tense. “I have already spent over two hours answering questions. Can you not talk to your colleagues?”

Atlanta sat down and put her hands on the table, “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation you are in.

“You have been involved in an emergency crash landing that endangered not only the lives of the people on your vessel but also thousands of lives on the lunar surface.” She leans forward with her eyes wide open. “This is a very serious matter. And not only that, the ship had not been receiving the required maintenance, and there is the small issue of tax owed to the Earth authorities.”

Maeve sits down opposite her, her hand shaking. “Mom looks after that stuff.”

Distant Love (Part 28)

And then she gone. Derek could feel a buzz going through every fiber of his body. She was beautiful and had not recoiled in horror at his disability. No, she had embraced him warmly. He thought of her long red hair up touching against his ear.

I am on top of the world.

And yet the world around him continued on as if nothing had happened. People continued walking back and forth, the station continued to rotate. Nothing had changed, and yet everything was irrevocably different. His life now seemed full of hope and possibilities.

But what next? Where should they meet when she makes contact? Ah Hartans.

Hartans was almost certainly the best place to go. The best hotdogs on the moon. True, the competition was somewhat sparse but they were delicious. And it was one of the places to go on a date, or even just have a meet-up. Derek had grown up hearing how his friend Mikey had taken girls there. Now it was his turn.

Derek began to roll towards the elevator. At no point, did the large grin fade from his face. She’d be a while so no harm him having relaxation. And maybe some computer games in case she had the audacity to challenge him later.

Distant Love (Part 27)

Maeve takes off her helmet and hears the hustle of the space station. A crowd gathers around her and her companions. Women stare and whisper to each other about what happened with her ship and how it landed.

“Maeve!” A familiar voice comes from behind her. Elated, she turns to face Derek.

And there he is with hazel eyes and short-cropped, black hair, sitting in a wheelchair.

That is what the comment was about.

She walks forward and throws her arms around him. As their faces meet, there is a pleasant smell of deodorant. “Thank you, Derek. Without you, a safe landing would have been impossible. You saved me and my family.”

She stood back up. He was smiling now. “I have to go do some sort of debrief?”

Derek’s eyes flittered. “Standard procedure after an emergency landing. It’s nothing to be worried about; it should take forty minutes or so.”

Maeve pursed her lips. “How do I contact you later?”

“Oh, now you’re on the moon, that’s really simple. You will be given a communications device that you wear over your ear. Just instruct it to contact C2222. It will put you straight through to me.”

“Ok, chat again real soon.”

Distant Love (Part 26)

Derek goes down the lift to the ground level and makes his way to the entry area. He looks out to see them getting closer with every rotation. Their entry is now imminent. He is waiting for the hatch to turn.

He goes over to the left, not wanting his chair to be the first thing she sees.

His heart is pumping now, and he reminisces about their first virtual meeting. It was in the game Swords of War about three years ago. Her army had seemed to come from nowhere and had cut a swathe through his. Then, the taunting had begun. Not what he had expected from a young woman on so many levels. Of course, a rematch was inevitable, and they grew close. Well, close for people thousands of kilometres apart. Meeting virtually was perfect. He could put his best foot forward. Not show his frailties. This was something else entirely.

Six foot, broad-shouldered, with strong athletic legs. That is what his avatars looked like. Five feet seven, with a thin frame, is the reality. And the chair, of course.

The hatch turns, and a crowd spills out into the atrium. He spots her long, red hair, which she had told him about, draped down the back of a uniform.

Distant Love (Part 25)

Maeve looks at the giant dome that is the moon station Sector C. It is a large, translucent dome with multiple levels inside, under a star-laden sky. She sees dots moving. Looking down at the grey regolith, she hopes to join them.

Thank God for Derek; everybody made it back safely. She shudders at the thought of what would have happened without him.

Feeling sweaty in the spacesuit, she wonders if he will find her attractive.

I hope so.

One of the rescuers had made a strange comment, though. When she had relayed the story of what had happened, she stated that Derek probably would have been there himself if not for the rocky surface.

What was that supposed to mean?

Her Mom talks over the communications. “Don’t forget to thank that, Derek. And thank you, Maeve. The two of you saved the ship and everybody on board.”

“I will, Mom.” Even after a near-death experience, Mom just keeps being Mom.

Another crater to traverse.

Just as well, I can hop over all these obstacles in the low gravity.

They are getting closer now, and she can see that the station is internally spinning to create artificial gravity close to that of Earth.

Distant Love (Part 24)

Back in his room, a million thoughts run through Derek’s head. He has just heard over the communications line that Maeve is alive. She is being brought to Moon Sector C right now. He is both thrilled that she is okay and terrified at the thought of meeting her.

He looks at the mirror. Combs his hair to the left, then back to the right.

“You can do this, Derek!”

Talking to myself. Has it really come to this?

Derek swirls his wheelchair to the left, then back to the right.

I look good, apart from the chair, that is.

He frowns, then looks up at the ceiling.

I promised I’d meet her; there’s no turning back.

Derek wheels out of the room, then down the lift, to the ground level, and over to entry point B. Looking out at the gray, cratered lunar surface, he ponders what is going through Maeve’s head. Some of the debris from the landing is still making its way back to the surface. It reminds him of a video he had seen of it snowing on Earth.

Bodies appear over the top of one of the craters. Then still more.

What should I say? Good to see you. Think, Derek, think!

The Electric State: Billie Bobby Brown Shines Pity Chris Pratt

Hello dear readers, I do hope you are all enjoying the last gasp of summer. This time, I’m writing about an interesting film I watched on Netflix last night – The Electric State. It’s based on a novel, yay for writers everywhere.

From Wikipedia –

In an alternate 1990, a war between humans and robots has left the world in disarray. With the help of Sentre CEO Ethan Skate, who developed Neurocaster technology that allowed humans to upload their minds into drone robots, humanity managed to win the war, while robots were banished to the Exclusion Zone. However, the success of this technology meant many people opted to live their virtual lives in a semi-vegetative state while drones did most of the work.

In 1994, teenager Michelle lives with her deadbeat foster dad Ted. Years earlier, she was involved in a car crash along with her family, in which her parents and brother reportedly perished, and has since lived with a succession of foster families. Michelle is also having trouble at school due to her refusal to use Neurocaster technology to participate in virtual classes.

One day, the sentient robot Cosmo – a robot character of the cartoon of the same name which Michelle’s declared-deceased younger brother Christopher, who was a child prodigy, watched – finds Michelle. He is only able to communicate using gestures and a limited set of pre-recorded words, but manages to convince her that he is controlled by Christopher. Michelle and Cosmo set out across a dystopian landscape to find him by first finding Dr. Clark Amherst, the doctor who confirmed Christopher’s death.

The film has a good cast. Chris Pratt plays Christopher, and the indefatigable Billie Bobby Brown, of Stranger Things fame, plays Michelle. There is little chemistry between them. Like most modern films, it is no longer socially acceptable for any on-screen age gap romance to develop. If this were made during the actual 1990s, that would have been a central plank of the film. Down with that sort of thing! She is clearly a child, at just 21 years of age.

The relationship between Michelle and her brother is warm and authentic. The robots move naturally, and I liked the action scenes. Things get dark at times but not much more than your average Disney film.

So, when you’re sitting on your couch later, maybe give it a try. It gets four stars out of five from me.