Best Picture Binge - Warner Bros.' F1

Let's ride.

F1 is a 2025 sports drama film directed by Joseph Kosinski, written by Ehren Kruger, produced by Apple Studios, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, Plan B Entertainment, Monolith Pictures, and Dawn Apollo Films, and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures and Apple Original Films. It stars Brad Pitt and Damson Idris. It was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound.

"They're saying that Sonny Hayes isn't a has-been. He's a never-was." - Kate McKenna

Plot

Veteran F1 racer Sonny Hayes is given a chance at redemption when he is recruited to race alongside Joshua Pearce, an up-and-coming rookie who is taking the F1 world by storm.

The Sweet

F1 is one of these movies that I'm so glad got a Best Picture nomination.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend like this is one of the best movies I've ever seen, but F1 is the amalgamation of what I love about a summer blockbuster. It's a crowd-pleasing story with exciting sequences, great performances, and charming characters. This feels like a classic movie that you would've seen released in the heyday of the summer blockbuster, when original stories would dominate the box office. This isn't a sequel or a remake or based on some former IP. Sure, Formula 1 is a recognizable brand, but that isn't what drew people into this movie.

What drew people in is how effortlessly fun this film is. You've got the movie star charisma in Brad Pitt. It's directed by Joseph Kosinski, who basically brought the summer blockbuster back to life after COVID with Top Gun: Maverick. This movie is designed to make you love the characters and cheer for this out of touch racer who needs redemption. This is the escapism of cinema: just a fun two and a half hours that you can throw on and have a great time with.

The racing sequences here are really the thing to admire. As I said already, Joseph Kosinski directed Top Gun: Maverick, which was innovative in the way that it filmed it's flying stunts and action sequences. Kosinski brings that same skill set to F1 through beautifully shot racing sequences that put you on the track and in the car with Sonny Hayes. I don't know how they shot some of these scenes, with cameras attached the cars and moving at incredible speeds, but they did, and it looks awesome.

The biggest snub in the 2026 Oscars is, in my opinion, Hans Zimmer for F1. Every few years, it feels like we get a new classic score. The 2020s have gifted us with Oppenheimer and Dune and The Batman, and F1 should be added to that list...and it wasn't nominated for Best Original Score. The music matches the intensity and the fun of a racing movie, with an exciting, pulse-pounding main theme that feels worthy of the awesomeness and exhiliration of the racetrack.

I don't have much else to say. I can give props to the acting and the characters and the story, because they're all solid. Is this some of the best acting and character work and plot of the year? No, but it's some of the most fun. This is absolutely a "dad" movie in every way, but sometimes, it's refreshing to have a dad movie as a Best Picture nominee. It shows that the Academy doesn't want to just nominate ten different Hamnet-esc movies. Sometimes, being mainstream and classic is a good thing.

The Sour

I don't want to spend a ton of time nitpicking all the classic things to nitpick in F1, because it's not a perfect movie, but it was one of the most fun theatrical experiences I had this past year. However, there are a few things that definitely hold it back.

First of all (and I said this in my original review), this movie is definitely too long. It clocks in at nearly two hours and forty minutes, and that's simply unnecessary. Movies nowadays are too long. I don't think that's a hot take, and I think this is an example of a movie that is just too comfortable with its length. Realistically, there's probably a two hours and ten minutes of a movie here. You've got plenty of racing sequences that, while awesome, could probably be trimmed down. The movie is a pretty simple, straightforward plot, but it sometimes struggles to just get to the point. Oftentimes, it will just take it's sweet time getting to the next beat, and that can be frustrating.

I also think (and this goes along with its length) this movie gets a bit repetitive sometimes. Like, as cool as the racing sequences are, there are a lot of them, and they don't really get that different. With Maverick, each flying sequence had a different tension and a different set of characters with different goals. Here, it's kind of all the same thing. Sonny is training. Sonny is training with Joshua. Sonny is racing. Joshua is racing. Like, there's not enough to differentiate each of them and make them feel necessary.

And, finally, this movie is just predictable. It's a sports movie. It's a feel-good, classic sports movie that is aiming to entertain as much as possible. But...that means its inherently easy to see where the movie is going. It's very difficult to make a sports film not predictable, because there's always one of two outcomes: the main character wins or loses. And, either way it goes, it feels like it was telegraphed earlier in the film. But that doesn't really bother me. Once again, this movie isn't trying to be something new and different that you haven't seen before. In fact, it's the opposite. It is trying to get back to the classic summer blockbuster feeling, and that's a good thing.

Does This Movie Deserve Its Best Picture Nomination?

Honestly, this is probably the most controversial Best Picture nominee, but I'm going to say yes. If Bugonia deserves its nomination for being this irreverant, weird movie that tries to make the audience think and make them uncomfortable, F1 deserves its nomination for being the precise opposite. It's simply trying to give the audience the most fun they can have at a movie theater, and it succeeds at that beautifully. Therefore, it absolutely deserves a Best Picture nomination.

Final Thoughts and Score

F1 is a classic, crowd-pleasing blockbuster with awesome racing sequences, charming characters, and a heart-warming story at the center that I hope we get more of in the future.

I am going Sweet here. Age range is 9+.

SWEET N' SOUR SCALE

Sweet (Great) Savory (Good)

Sour (Bad)

Moldy (Terrible)

"F1"

Directed by Joseph Kosinski

Rated PG-13 for language, suggestive material, thematic elements

Released on June 27, 2025

2 hours and 35 minutes

Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes

Damson Idris as Joshua Pearce

Kerry Condon as Kate McKenna

Javier Bardem as Rubén Cervantes

Tobias Menzies as Peter Banning