Prime Time: Heads Of State (2025)

Although it is supposed to be an action comedy, I can honestly say that I never laughed once at Heads Of State. Seriously. I actually laughed more during a recent rewatch of Witness, the Harrison Ford thriller from 1985 that absolutely isn't a comedy (although there are a few deliberate lighter moments here and there).

John Cena plays Will Derringer, an action movie star who has managed to become the U.S. President. Idris Elba plays Sam Clarke, an ex-military man who has spent years serving as the British Prime Minister. The two of them are targeted by deadly killers, meaning they have to work together in order to survive. Just typing out this paragraph has made me sad.

It took three people to write this screenplay. Josh Appelbaum, André Nemec, and Harrison Query. All three should hang their heads in shame. There are a couple of decent flourishes in the action beats, but not one laugh. I like both of the leads, but I loathed both by the time I got to the end of this. Director Ilya Naishuller has helmed some good stuff in the past. This shows him to be lacking any knack for handling straightforward comedy though.

Aside from Elba and Cena, who are both at their absolute worst, the cast includes Priyanka Chopra Jones (equally ill-served), Paddy Considine (meant to be a Russian villain, but not sure what accent, if any, he was told to try), Carla Gugino (wasted), Stephen Root (wasted), Sarah Niles and Richard Coyle (both wasted), and Jack Quaid (who is one of the few highlights). There are others, mainly playing bland baddies to be despatched in one of the many fight sequences that blur together.

Everything about this is lazy and ugly. It's another streaming release that feels exactly like "content", put together by an algorithm with no way to insert a spark of proper life or humanity. Even some of the main locations have a familiarity to them, as if they're the same places used by Amazon for a few of their other big-budget projects.

I have watched, and will continue to watch, a lot of rubbish. Some of it is rubbish that I have a soft spot for. Some of it is rubbish that I enjoy as something to have on while I don't need to overthink or worry about (when I want familiarity, predictability, and a happy ending). This rubbish is the worst kind of rubbish. It's a film that many will settle for, considering how it does have that familiarity, predictability, and expected final scenes, but it treats viewers without an ounce of care or respect. The main premise is silly enough, but it's then made less bearable by the film-makers trying to keep the whole thing grounded in some kind of reality one step away from our own. 

2/10

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F1 (2025)

What I know about Formula One racing, AKA F1, could be written on the back of a matchbox, and you would still have room to add what I know about NASCAR, the Isle Of Man TT, and the prestigious 24-hour races held at Le Mans. Despite my ignorance, I knew I wanted to see F1 as soon as the first trailer for it dropped. It looked slick, it looked predictable and cheesy, and it looked like the kind of big blockbuster that knows viewers will be happy to overlook a number of weaknesses as long as the star power shines brightly enough and the car sequences are shot well. Let me say right now that F1 more than delivers on those two main fronts.

Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a broken older man who loves to race cars, and is very good at racing cars. He doesn't have any celebrated career though, having (literally) crashed out of F1 years ago in an accident that changed his entire life. He's invited back by an old friend though, and that old friend (Ruben Cervantes, played by Javier Bardem) needs his racing team to score some points. Even just one point. It's halfway through the third season, and if no points are won then Cervantes will lose his team, and he's sunk far too much money into it to survive that embarrassment. The car isn't good enough to win races, but Hayes knows how they can gain some tactical advantages. He just has to convince young Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) that he knows what he's talking about. And he needs the rest of the team to back him up, whether they end up working to tweak the design of the car or co-operating on some unusual tyre tactics.

Written by Ehren Kruger, with input from director Joseph Kosinski, F1 is just about as by-the-numbers as you can get. It's what you should expect when you hear that a Brad Pitt movie about F1 is being guided to completion by the steady hand of producer Jerry Bruckheimer. Many people have referred to this as simply a F1 riff on some previous Bruckheimer productions, but I think that's being a bit unfair. It's also not entirely untrue, but the entire world of F1, and the tactics we see used here to desperately grab for just some of the points available, is enough of a new landscape, cinematically speaking, to make this feel a bit more fresh than it otherwise would. Okay, we've also recently had Gran Turismo (also fun), but there are still enough differences to make this feel like a far superior film.

Everything is as good as can be on the audio and visual front. The soundtrack has a pulsating energy running throughout, whether in many of the songs used or in the score from Hans Zimmer, and the camerawork that puts viewers as close as possible to the driving action is absolutely incredible. Remember how you felt when watching actors in fast planes in Top Gun: Maverick? Kosinski repeats that sensation here, and it's somehow just as thrilling, despite our leads all being much closer to ground level. 

It's okay to view the car as the star here, and anyone who loves racing cars will enjoy the footage displayed here, but it's hard to deny that there's also a handful of people cast perfectly in roles that absolutely lift the whole movie. Pitt is a great damaged hero, and still allowed to learn a lesson or two during his onscreen journey (although that journey is more literal, this is not a film looking to take him on some astonishing character arc). Bardem hovers around the edges of every scene just enough to maintain the required extra suave quotient, something he does effortlessly. Idris has to portray talented and cocky, which he does, until he finally starts to learn from those who have more experience under their belts, which he also does. Kerry Condon and Kim Bodnia are equally good as two very different, but invaluable, members of the team, with the former actually turning out to be the real hope for a team needing to claw at every opportunity to gain a fraction more speed on every lap. Tobias Menzies is a smug exec, Sarah Niles is the concerned mother of the character played by Idris, and Simon Kunz is enjoyably irritating as the reporter/pundit who keeps underlining just how bad things look for any team relying on Sonny Hayes to help them find some consistent winning form.

You will see better movies this year. There are better movies starring Brad Pitt. And Javier Bardem. AND Kerry Condon. But you won't be thinking of any of those movies when this film starts to work its magic. You'll be enjoying the roar of the engines, the thrill of the race, and the fun interplay between all of the main characters. I was enjoying myself so much that it was only after the credits rolled that I made a long-overdue pun about the races being won by . . . Pitt stops.

8/10

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This Is Christmas (2022)

Director Chris Foggin is at the helm of this Christmas movie, another in a line of modern British rom-coms that add all of the festive trimmings, lots of familiar faces, and the kind of busy city life that keeps hustling and bustling without being anywhere near the misery of commuting and working in non-movieland Britain. Writer Alastair Galbraith may not have a lengthy selection of screenplay credits, but he knows how to work his premise around a great central cast.

Alfred Enoch plays Adam, a young man who holds on to the strange belief that commuters might just find their day improved if they chat to one another and communicate about their talents and lives. In fact, he believes that this applies to all people. We'd all have better lives if we just made more connections. And he's willing to throw a Christmas party for his fellow commuters to prove his point. He is helped by Emma (Kaya Scodelario), but everyone has something to bring to the occasion, whether it's a particular skill or a particular story to reveal as the third act plays out.

Although it may seem completely implausible to anyone who has experienced a long train ride through parts of London, Christmas is a time of miracles. That allows This Is Christmas to be an enjoyable and diverting piece of work. It's a complete fantasy, and that much is clear from the very beginning. Commuters DON'T want to make accidental eye contact with one another, let alone start conversing and forging meaningful connections. 

Enoch is a likeable lead, all good manners and good intentions. Scodelario is very good opposite him, feeling like a natural pairing even while both leads have partners who need to be moved out of the picture before everything can be fully consummated (not in THAT way, this is still a Christmas movie, after all). Timothy Spall handles a Liverpudlian accent well enough, and his story pairs him with young Jack Donoghue, both doing much better in the scenes they share than the few moments they go solo, and Joanna Scanlan, Ben Miller, Sarah Niles, and Clinton Liberty do good work when they get to add to the intertwining story strands. There's also a welcome, if far too small, role for Steve Oram, playing a conductor who helps the commuters initially band together against "a common enemy".

It may be a bit overlong at 111 minutes, and some of the more bitter moments feel a bit too spiky for this kind of thing, but This Is Christmas is, overall, a safe and enjoyable bit of winter warmth to enjoy on a cold evening. It won't necessarily make it into the annual rotation for anyone planning their viewing schedule, but it's worth a watch. Once.

6/10

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