Ferrari (2023)

We expected to like this story of the Italian auto designer more than we did. It has great action sequences on the race courses, magnificent vintage cars, gorgeous locations, and beautiful cinematography indoors and out, but is overly melodramatic elsewhere. Adam Driver tries his best as Enzo Ferrari but is hampered by the pacing and emotional script. Penelope Cruz got a number of nominations as his impassioned wife and Shailene Woodley doesn't have enough to do as his mistress. Actor Patrick Dempsey, in real life a racecar driver and owner of a motorsport company, plays driver Piero Taruffi. Some of Dempsey's signature full head of hair actually fell out later after the combination of hair bleach and tight helmets. One can assume that his subsequent buzzcat has grown out by now.

Director Michael Mann worked on getting this made for thirty years. The script is credited to Troy Kennedy Martin (1932-2009) with additional literary material by Mann and David Rayfiel (according to the Writers Guild, not the credits), adapted from automobile journalist Brock Yates' (1933-2016) 1991 biography Enzo Ferrari: The Man, the Cars, the Races, the Machine. Yates' 2004 book Against Death and Time, about the Mille Miglia race, is also cited as inspiration.

Daniel Pemberton's score can be streamed from Apple Music, and Erik Messerschmidt's glorious photography was shot entirely in Italy.

Thanks to Production Designer Maria Djurkovic's work, the movie's 1957 setting earned it a nomination for Best Time Capsule Award in this year's AARP Movies for Grownups Awards. Maestro won that award and the other nominees were Oppenheimer, Priscilla, and Rustin.

I like numbers. And sometimes the numbers of producers get so high that I acknowledge them. This is the new leader of the Producers Plethora Prize, speeding past the previous winner's 43 with a staggering total of 53 producers.

Driver was last blogged for White Noise, Cruz for Official Competition, Woodley for Snowden, Mann for Public Enemies, Pemberton for Amsterdam, and Messerschmidt for Mank. Dempsey is best known for his 247 episodes of Grey's Anatomy as Derek Shepherd AKA McDreamy, but has had dozens and dozens of other roles.

Kennedy Martin's credits include the screenplay for a 1969 version of The Italian Job, which was the basis of the 2003 iteration (with the Mini Coopers). Yates founded the actual Cannonball Run race and then wrote the script for the 1981 movie.

Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences aren't racing to see this, with averages of 72 and 74%, despite Richard Brody of the New Yorker picking this as one of last year's best (here's his spoiler-filled review, which I read today--I never read reviews in advance, especially in the New Yorker). We rented it on February 22 on Apple TV.