Why F1 the Movie should win the best picture Oscar

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It may not be in pole position, but Brad Pitt and director Joseph Kosinski’s sleek, technically inventive ode to motor racing definitely qualifies for the Academy podium Could, should, would F1 the Movie win the best picture Oscar? Well, we have to be realistic here: F1 is currently a massive outsider, at 200-1 along with The Secret Agent , which has no chance either but for very different reasons. It’s not hard to see why: this is a swaggeringly mainstream film, where tech and branding dwarf the human input, with the film itself acting as a front-end battering ram for a sports organisation desperate to break into the promised land of the US auto racing circuit. (I mean it’s right there in the title.) So even the most reactionary, conservative Academy voter is going to find it hard to mark F1 with their tick. So no, I don’t think it could win. That’s not to say F1 doesn’t have quite a bit going for it. The Oscars, as we know, have historically had a problem with so-called “popular” ...
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Chuck Chuck Baby review – whimsy and realism combine in big-hearted romance

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Louise Brealey is put-upon Helen, a chicken factory worker who gets a second chance at love, in Pugh’s generous and gritty film

Here’s a rousing empowerment-anthem of a movie that’s not afraid to paint its romance plotline in big, bold brushstrokes; occasionally it overdoes things but the rush of emotion carries everything along in its path, helped by the deployment of radio-friendly standards by Neil Diamond and the like that turns the film into an impromptu musical and allows writer-director Janis Pugh to stage (relatively) elaborate dance sequences and big emotional scenes.

The central figure is put-upon chicken-processing factory worker Helen (played by Louise Brealey) who has a complicated domestic situation: she lives in the same crummy terrace as her oafish husband Gary, from whom she is separated but seemingly not actually divorced, and shares the place with his new, much younger, girlfriend Amy (Emily Fairn) and their newly arrived baby. Also on the premises is Gary’s terminally ill mother Gwen (Sorcha Cusack), for whom Helen acts a carer but is the quasi-maternal figure that Helen appears to long for. There’s also a rowdy Greek chorus of Helen’s fellow factory workers who are perhaps designed as a counterpoint to Helen’s introverted, clenched unhappiness, at least at first.

Chuck Chuck Baby screened at the Edinburgh film festival

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