June Movies Part 3: Karate Kid: Legends & F1

What better way to end the month than with some sports movies? If you want to stand up and cheer for the underdog, have I got the films for you!

Karate Kid: Legends: This movie really scratched an itch I did not know I had. As someone who watched Cobra Kai all the way through to the end, I guess I was already invested in the Karate Kid universe, but then they came up with this movie that has a ridiculously great cast and is all set in New York, which we all know is my absolute catnip. 

Directed by Jonathan Entwhistle and written by Rob Lieber, in this installment, we follow teenager Li Fong (the wonderfully charismatic Ben Wang who was last starring in American Born Chinese), who was studying kung fu with his uncle Han Sifu (played by Jackie Chan!) in Beijing but then has his life upended when his single mom (played by Ming-Na Wen!) decides they need to move to New York.

Once they get to the Big City, Li strikes up a friendship with a girl named Mia (Sadie Stanley) who works at a local pizza parlor owned by her father, Victor (played by Joshua Jackson!) who used to be a fighter but is all washed up now...but not for long. And obviously Mia's ex, Conor Day (Aramis Knight) is a nasty bully who is ready to pick fights with Li. This movie features a lot of karate, a lot of callbacks to Mr. Miyagi and his legacy, and a lot of well-choreographed fights in locations all around the city. The soundtrack was banging and I had a supremely great time from start to finish. This movie was a perfect piece of popcorn entertainment, and I happily scarfed it all down.

F1: Directed by Joseph Kosinski and written by Ehren Kruger, this is a movie that is sure to delight all fans of Formula One racing. I do not know anything about F1, but I still enjoyed this film. It's a classic sports movie that hits many familiar beats, but the actual race sequences are wonderful, the music is always pounding away in your ears, and the cast is charming AF, even if I am Team Jolie and must state outright that while I liked this movie, that does not mean I support the continued whitewashing of Brad Pitt's reputation. Particularly with this movie's inclusion of a thoroughly unnecessary romantic subplot that feels like it came straight out of an 80s movie.

Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, an excellent driver who doesn't like to commit to one thing for long and has some sort of tragic past in F1 racing. His friend Ruben (Javier Barden) now owns an F1 team that is dead last in the rankings and he begs Sonny to join his team as a driver and win them some points. Sonny joins, but there are instant clashes with the team's young rookie driver, Joshua (the excellent Damson Idris), who is desperate to improve his career prospects and has been continually hampered by this failing team. Kerry Condon plays Kate, the first female technical director in F1, who is responsible for designing the cars that they will drive. Like Joshua, she is also annoyed by Sunny's demands and unconventional behavior. But of course, the cocky American has many schemes and stratagems up his sleeve and eventually wins over all these disbelieving Europeans with his racing tactics. 

This film feels very old school and could have certainly used some judicious editing at the end. But Lewis Hamilton serves as a producer and did a great job of helping the filmmakers make the racing scenes feel immersive and electric: most of the time, I felt like I was sitting in the car and whooshing down the racetrack. Based on the way the camera lingered in some scenes, I believe there are lots of cameos from actual F1 legends in this movie, but apart from Lewis Hamilton, I didn't recognize a soul. So, if you've binged all of Drive to Survive, this movie is definitely going to provide excellent fan service. Full speed ahead!

June Comedy Binges: Adults & #1 Happy Family USA

Need to delve into some comedy for a bit? Depending on whether you're interested in Gen Z or Muslim families, I've got you covered!

Adults: All the marketing basically posits that this is Friends for Gen Z. Which, fine? As a millennial, I have never felt more like a boomer than when watching this show and shaking my head at how incomprehensibly silly these twentysomethings seem to be. But as with all comedies, the show managed to win me over by Episode 3. There was a line of dialogue that struck me as being so brilliant and hilarious, that I instantly knew the show had found its groove. And once you love the writing on a comedy, you can forgive any number of flaws.

Created by Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold, the show follows a group of five friends (played by Malik Elassal, Lucy Freyer, Jack Innanen, Amita Rao, and Owen Thiele) who live in Queens (very exciting for me, as I also live in Queens, though it was quickly apparent that this show was shot in Toronto, because the subways looked different, booooo). They all live in Samir's (Elassal) childhood home while his parents are off traveling, which is convenient as none of them seem to have jobs that would enable them to really live in NYC otherwise, except for Billie (Freyer) who loses said job pretty quickly. Over the course of eight episodes, the series follows the usual story arcs - there are work anxieties, sexual anxieties, romantic anxieties, and just the general anxiety of being a Gen Zer. The overall impression you get is that being a twentysomething is always the same, where you're perpetually struggling with your career or your love life, and the only thing that makes this Gen Z is that everyone's a little bit queer and everyone's deeply unprofessional. Give this show a chance - I was all set to cross my arms and declare that I was too old for this show, but it really won me over in the end. 

#1 Happy Family USA: Well, we're back to having another war in the Middle East, so I guess watching this show would be pretty timely? Created by Pam Brady and Ramy Youseff, who also voices the main character, this is an adult animated show about a 12-year-old Egyptian boy named Rumi Hussein who lives in New Jersey with his parents and older sister, Mona. The show begins on September 10, 2001, and we get a glimpse into Rumi's life and ordinary teenage struggles with school and family life. Adolescence is painful enough, but then, September 11 happens. And now Rumi's life is upended by the fact that he is a Muslim teenage boy.

The show is very funny but also very astute. In particular, I love how it deals with the ways in which Rumi's parents deal with the aftermath of 9/11. His mother decides she wants to don the hijab and embrace her religion and Muslim community, while his father is desperate to prove that he loves America...to the point of going on Fox News to prove he's "one of the good ones." If that made you groan and then chuckle, welcome to the vibe of this entire show. It's incisive and wonderful, a dark comedy about one of the most painful moments in America's history and the immigrants who suffered because of it. Which sadly is all too relevant today.

June Movies Part 2: Materialists and Lilo & Stich

Do you want a family-friendly live-action remake of a classic animated movie? Or a grown-up romcom about the perils of dating in the big city and having to choose between money or love? If the answer is both, keep reading!

Materialists: Writer-director Celine Song is back with another love triangle, this time between Lucy (Dakota Johnson), a matchmaker in New York City, her ex-boyfriend, John (Chris Evans), a struggling actor/cater-waiter still waiting for his big break in his late thirties, and Harry (Pedro Pascal), a handsome, rich man who meets Lucy at his brother's wedding, which Lucy is responsible for as she was his brother's matchmaker. Talk about a meet cute.

Lucy and John broke up years ago because they were always broke and fighting about money. So naturally Lucy is intrigued by Harry, a man who seems to be a "unicorn" in the NYC dating world and has everything she thought she wanted in a partner. But as the movie progresses, it's clear that while financially, Harry may have everything to offer, emotionally, John is the person she turns to. Who will she choose in the end?! That's for you to watch and discover.

While Song's previous film, Past Lives, was my #1 movie of 2023, this movie is not as polished and the story beats and dialogue oftentimes have a feeling of black box theater. I love this cast, I obviously love anything set in NYC, and the score by Daniel Pemberton is lovely. But this screenplay is throwing too much at the wall and nothing quite sticks. You'll probably learn a lot about yourself in terms of your reaction to Lucy's final choice of partner, so that's a fun introspective exercise. But there's a side-plot involving one of Lucy's clients that a lot of people are up in arms about because it comes out of nowhere and then is dealt with in a rather messy fashion that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Ultimately, I enjoyed this movie as a parable about the horrors of dating in NYC in your thirties - there are some great montages when Lucy is interviewing her clients and cataloguing their increasingly insane demands. All of that stuff makes for great comedy, but ultimately, I was not sold on the romance.

Lilo & Stitch: My husband loves the original 2002 animated film, and we even went to Kauai for our honeymoon and took a picture next to the Lilo & Stitch mural in Hanapepe. If you're that kind of fan, this movie will certainly delight you. As a more ambivalent fan, I still found reasons to enjoy this movie, particularly the excellent choices made by the casting director. 

Maia Kealoha, who plays Lilo, a young Hawaiian girl who finds the alien Stitch and adopts him as her dog, is deliciously charming, though over the course of two hours, hearing her scream out loud did remind me of why I don't want to have children. And Sydney Elizebeth Agudong, who plays Lilo's older sister and guardian Nani, who is struggling to take care of the bills and provide for her sister after the untimely death of their parents, is simply wonderful, a stoic, loving presence in the face of much insanity. But my favorite casting choice was Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen as the two aliens sent to Earth to capture Stitch. Magnussen in particular is always excellent at goofy physical comedy and I couldn't help but grin every time he was on screen.

Of course, one is always forced to ask when reviewing a live-action remake, does this movie need to exist? My answer is mostly, no. But there are a few intriguing deviations from the original script, and again, this cast is so charming that they make it worth it your while. Despite the title of this film, the only character I truly empathize with in this story is Nani, a woman who is trying so hard to be a responsible and good person but keeps getting thwarted by her sister and her "dog." So, I was glad to see how this film dealt with her character and ultimately let her be the hero of the story. Justice for Nani!

June Movies Part 1: On Becoming a Guinea Fowl, The Phoenician Scheme, The Penguin Lessons, Mountainhead

I have a long list of movies I have yet to see this month, but I've still managed to watch a lot of other random ones. Eclectic mix of reviews incoming...

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl: Written and directed by Rungano Nyoni, this is a Zambian movie about a woman named Shula (Susan Chardy) who discovers the dead body of her uncle lying on the road when she's driving home from a party one night. She seems strangely unfazed by this and goes through the motions of calling up her family and the police, navigating all the bureaucracy of getting this matter sorted out. What follows are the various funeral arrangements, involving Shula's mother and many aunties, aka the sisters of this dead man. Everyone is insisting that Shula grieve and show more emotion, but she seems to just be going through the motions, alongside her cousins, Nsansa (Elizabeth Chisela), who seems to be perpetually drunk, and Bupe (Esther Singini), who is suicidal.

If you haven't pieced it together yet, the nieces are not mourning dead Uncle Fred because of...reasons. And yet this movie is a very dark comedy, an insight into the patriarchy, and the many ways in which older generations of women will still try to protect men, while the younger generation are trying to break a vicious cycle. It's a very vibey film, but I had never seen any movie set in Zambia before, so it was extremely engaging, along with its many parallels to my experiences with Indian funereal customs...and the patriarchy, of course. Give it a shot if you want to immerse yourself in something completely unique and strange, but obviously, trigger warnings abound.

The Phoenician Scheme: Written and directed by Wes Anderson, this movie is exactly what you would expect (or at least, it's what I expected). I find it increasingly hard to talk about Anderson's films because they just all seem to blend together into one big twee art project featuring a lot of famous actors delivering nonsensical dialogue or running around like they're in a Benny Hill sketch.

In this one, Benicio del Toro stars as Zsa-Zsa Korda, a rich man in 1950 who decides to name his daughter, Liesl (Mia Threapleton), who is a nun, as his sole heir. Together, they must travel the world and meet various investors to help fund Korda's morally dubious Phoenician scheme. And of course, along the way, maybe this estranged pair will build a proper familial bond. It's all very weird, it's a string of silly vignettes, and I didn't much care for it. But I must stress, I am entirely too jaded to properly review Anderson's movies anymore - my husband thought this movie was wonderful and a return to form. So, if you're a fan, perhaps this movie will perfectly scratch an itch for you. But if you're too tired of "auteurs" like I am, give it a miss.

The Penguin Lessons: Written by Jeff Pope, based on the memoir by Tom Michell, and directed by Peter Cattaneo, this movie stars Steve Coogan as Michell, an English teacher who decided to teach at a boy's boarding school in Argentina in 1976 when they were in the midst of a coup d'etat. During a holiday in Uruguay, he rescues a penguin who was caught up in an oil slick on the beach, and then proceeds to smuggle it back to Argentina. What follows is a heartwarming story about how a grumpy old Englishman learns to become more empathetic as he is forced to engage with this penguin. And also learns to maybe stop being politically neutral while the Argentinians around him are being abducted and tortured by their government? 

The tone of this film is all over the place, but it's certainly charming enough to stream over an afternoon, particularly if you're into cute penguins. But there's something decidedly colonial about the proceedings, with a classic "white people are shocked to learn how the rest of the world operates" aesthetic. Coogan delivers a good performance, and the movie is certainly intriguing since it is based on a true story, but beyond that, it lacks any real substance.

Mountainhead: Written and directed by Jesse Armstrong (aka creator of Succession and Peep Show - talk about range!), this is a bleak movie about four tech billionaires (well one of them only has millions), who convene in a snowy mansion in Utah to talk about how they might take over the world. Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith, and Jason Schwartzman star as four Silicon Valley dudes modelled after the likes of Thiel, Musk, and Zuckerberg, who are of course convinced of their own inherent genius, and blithely ignore all the chaos their technologies have wreaked upon the world. At the moment they're meeting, the world is particularly rife with misinformation and anarchy, all spurred on by the fake videos and messages being circulated on a social media platform one of them owns, and what follows is a hodgepodge of tech speak and insanity.

This is probably a good movie for those of you who are massively online. But depending on your politics, you will love this movie for very different reasons. As you can imagine, I did NOT enjoy this movie, as it depicts the very reasons why I am not massively online and do not care for tech bros. It's the darkest of comedies, and practically a horror film. It does a brilliant job of capturing that painful Silicon Valley tech speak and how these men want to optimize their lives and think that they are the only ones who know how to run the world. It's the epitome of Move Fast and Break Things, and after you watch this movie, you'll certainly feel like your brain got broken!