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Heads of State (2025) has the necessary elements to be an outstanding comedic action/adventure buddy road-trip film, including talented leads with action film credentials in John Cena and Idris Elba, decent fight choreography, car chases, pyrotechnics, and foreign locations.

However, it lacks one element which has been essential in the success and popularity of many buddy road-trip films: credible conflict between the leads. Consider Rain Man starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman; 48 Hours starring Nick Nolte and Eddie Murphy; Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) starring Steve Martin and John Candy; and Midnight Run starring Robert DeNiro and Carles Grodin.

In each of these films, two flawed characters must make journeys of self-discovery partnered with somebody whom they dislike fairly intensely and become better persons through the experience.

In Heads of State, U. S. President Derringer (Cena) and U. K. Prime Minister Clarke (Elba) find one another a bit annoying and don't respect each other's styles, but it's not a fundamental hatred.

The film could be highly relevant to current geopolitical conflicts. The United Kingdom and United States have much in common, but are at odds over the war in Ukraine, the war in Gaza, and globalist policies. But rather than exploring relevant ideological differences, the filmmakers make both men politically liberal, minimizing the potential for drama and conflict.

The film starts strong with an intricate scene set in a massive food fight with overripe tomatoes featuring Priyanka Chopra Jonas. There is also an over-the-top scene starring Jack Quaid at a C. I. A. Safehouse. Overall, the film scores high marks for its action scenes and production values, but the script seems weak and often derivative of films like Safe House with Ryan Reynolds and Denzel Washington; and London Has Fallen with Aaron Eckhart, Gerald Butler, and Morgan Freeman.

Honey Don't! (2025), starring Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, Chris Evans, and Charlie Day, is a neo-noir dark comedy detective film collaboration between Ethan Coen and longtime Coen brothers editor Tricia Cooke. It is the second film in their lesbian B-movie trilogy, after Drive-Away Dolls (2024).

The Coen brothers have written, directed, and produced several outstanding contemporary noir films, including Blood Simple, Miller's Crossing, Fargo, and No Country for Old Men. Honey Don't! Shares their trademark Byzantine plot with several characters pursuing goals that conflict with one another with deadly consequences.

With an intentional B-movie vibe, Honey Don't! Lacks the stylish finesse of Miller's Crossing or Hail, Caesar! It is set around the early 2010s, but feels like a 1970s film, except with cell phones which seem thrown in in later scenes to patch plot holes.

The film invests significant time and effort developing background stories for several characters. We spend several minutes with a young Mexican teen and his grandmother, which gives the characters depth, but they are minor characters with little impact on the main plot. Honey (Qualley) spends a longish scene with her sister's dysfunctional family, which adds credibility to a character's actions, but a scene in which a different character talks about prior life experiences seems more effective and credible. Conversely, the ending seems a bit rushed. Several significant actions occur offscreen and several loose threads aren't tied up satisfactorily. Instead, we get an unconventional denouement which might have been much more impactful if positioned earlier in the film.

Chris Evans does as well as can be expected in a part that seems underwritten. He plays a sleazy evangelist who delivers a sermon comparing the Biblical Philistines to macaroni, which seems less authentic than Mike Myers hamming it up as Guru Pitka in The Love Guru, an unfairly underrated film. Margaret Qualley seems more credible in her graphic lesbian scenes than in her detective scenes, although she definitely ups her game in the climatic showdown.

Honey Don't! Is unlikely to make anybody's top ten list of Coen brothers films or contemporary neo-noir comedic mystery films. It seems a bit like Quentin Tarantino's Grindhouse productions: a talented artist toying with a paean to an unfamiliar genre. Interesting to watch, but disappointing to realize the filmmakers could have done so much better.

Prior to 2018, F1 teams had teams of grid girls, models typically dressed in body-flattering outfits incorporating the team's colors and logo who performed dance routines during opening ceremonies. However, in 2018, the teams inexplicably pandered to woke groups that disparage internal combustion engines and dispensed with grid girls, much like the useful idiots on college campuses who protest in favor of Palestinian terrorists who would gladly enslave or murder them for not being Moslem.

Banning sexy models seems strangely emblematic of the problems with F1: The Movie (2025), starring Brad Pitt as veteran driver Sonny Hayes and Javier Bardem as team owner Ruben Cervantes. F1 is a thoroughly macho male-dominated sport. Since its inception in 1950, there have been only five female drivers who collectively scored half a point, and no female drivers at all since 1992. One would expect these macho drivers earning huge salaries and traveling to exotic locations would attract throngs of beautiful female fans.

And yet, the filmmakers seem to have been determined to make the film as sexless as possible. None of the other drivers, including protégé Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris) seems to have a girlfriend or any love interest. Sonny's love interest is a divorcée techno geek whose love scene and wardrobe would likely pass scrutiny of a Taliban movie censor. At one point, Sonny asks a waitress a question intended to establish motivation. Max Bialystock would recognize this bit part as ideal for the girlfriend of a producer, but instead they cast a middle-aged world-weary working-mother type.

The filmmakers seem to sacrifice drama for social awareness in numerous other details. The chief design engineer is a female trying to establish herself in a male-dominated world by being an expert in race-car aerodynamics without ever actually driving one. In its seventy-five-year history, F1 has had only one black driver, so the team's protégé is naturally black. A wealthy corporate owner is a disreputable sort with ulterior motives.

There is great energy between Pitt and Bardem, but most of the characters, including Sonny, seem shallow. Racing is depicted as a team effort, with half a dozen people monitoring hundreds of sensors in the car and on the track. Plot points often revolve around obscure rules and their consequences. We don't see much of drivers from other teams and the races seem technical challenges rather than personal competitions. Sonny's driving is a compulsion, not a passion. Cervantes is $350 million in the red and in danger of losing his team, but seems unconcerned when Sonny and Joshua crash several $20-million cars.

The film offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes view of F1 racing and seems very authentic, but dispassionate to the point of seeming antiseptic.