F1: Joseph Kosinski's first big screen venture since Top Gun: Maverick transformed his career is an easy movie to like. Kosinski uses the same dedication to immersive realism that made the aerial action in Maverick pop by using car-mounted camera rigs and insanely loud, detailed sound design to craft exhilarating race sequences that put the viewer right in the middle of the action, the four leading actors (Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem) bring the magnetism to their roles you'd expect from performers of their caliber and Ehren Kruger's script executes the expected underdog sports movie, cocky young buck vs. cocky seasoned pro beats in rousing fashion. Everything was set up for an easy win... until disaster struck out of nowhere. For the lack of a better phrase, F1 starts to really spin its tires in the final act. Whether it or got derailed by adding an unnecessary contrivance or two in an effort to further up the stakes at the last minute or just simply overstayed its welcome is up for debate, but I do know that I had more than enough of watching the movie by the time the climactic race rolls around and that's not exactly ideal for a movie that belongs to a genre where the final bout is supposed to feel like life or death. Shaving 20-30 minutes off the runtime would've probably done wonders and hopefully if a sequel materializes, Kosinski will tighten things up because the movie was really humming until it careened into the wall on the last lap.
Grade: B
M3GAN 2.0: Reinventing the titular sentient AI killer robot as an action hero for her second trip to the big screen was the right call. Having M3GAN get revived in order to get revenge on her creator (Allison Williams) would've been a very easy direction to go in for the sequel. It also would've almost certainly been an inferior rehash of the original. Despite boasting such a strong, refreshing hook for a sequel, M3GAN 2.0 ends up falling short of its predecessor anyways due to its struggles to get where it wants to go as a B-action movie.
Even in practice, there are plenty of moments where the vision for M3GAN 2.0 fully materializes. M3GAN drops some great one-liners that are befitting of her new action hero status, the fight scenes are a thoughtful, campy homage to an action star of yesteryear that is directly namechecked multiple times (often in hilarious fashion) and AMELIA (Ivanna Sakhno) is a solid, stoic antagonist that opposes the campiness surrounding her in a natural fashion. Where M3GAN 2.0 goes astray is in its bewilderingly strong commitment to its increasingly convoluted plot. Having the movie basically pause for an exposition dump every 15-20 minutes does a real number on the energy level, particularly in the third act when you find out who is pulling out AMELIA's strings (spoiler alert: you probably won't be shocked at all!) and they spend what at least feels like the next 10 minutes explaining their actions. Returning writer/director Gerard Johnstone being behind this ill-advised creative choice makes it even more head-scratching. This seems like a classic case of overthinking derailing a good idea and one has to wonder how much Johnstone would've cooked here if he had just allowed the camp elements of the film run wild.
Grade: B-
Jurassic World Rebirth: Not as gleefully idiotic as the previous three Jurassic World movies nor the "back to basics" ode to the masterful original that the creatives behind claimed it would be, Jurassic World Rebirth is instead just a movie that ushers in yet another planned Jurassic trilogy in the most inoffensive, competent manner imaginable. Quite frankly, your enthusiasm level towards Rebirth will likely be determined by how excited you are to see dinosaurs on the big screen again and the three actors (Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey) tasked with leading a doomed expedition to a remote island somewhere around the Equator to tango with a bunch of inbred, mutated dinosaurs that were too gnarly to make the trek over to John Hammond's theme park. For me, the leads were a notable enough improvement from the Chris Pratt/Bryce Dallas Howard duo we got from 2015-22 and the dino action was good enough for me to enjoy my time in the theater watching Rebirth. Let's do this again in 3 years, shall we?
Grade: B
Heads of State: Here's some fun propaganda for streaming Evangelists: Heads of State is a more entertaining, better constructed movie than its fellow July 2nd release Jurassic World Rebirth. While it's still not quite good enough to be considered a great movie, it's a knowingly silly romp that has no problem remaining breezy throughout thanks to making great use of the combative chemistry that Idris Elba and John Cena established in The Suicide Squad as they play the presidents of their respective real life home nations (UK/US) who are forced to overlook their disdain for each other in order to remain alive after narrowly surviving an attack onboard Air Force One in route to a NATO conference in Italy that is believed to have been carried out by someone in one of their inner circles and delivering a half dozen or so of the kinetic, manic action sequences that have become the calling card of director Ilya Nilhauser (Hardcore Henry, Nobody). Even the last second mid-credit scene sequel tease doesn't dampen the consistent fun that preceded it. In terms of turn your brain off home watches meant for (trying) to escape from the blistering heat of summer, Heads of State is pretty much perfect, and that's really all it needed to be to be deemed a success.
Grade: B
