Buzz Blog

F1 ***1/2
See feature review. Available June 27 in theaters. (PG-13)

M3GAN 2.0 ***
When faced with a potential franchise where the A.I. “villain” of the first movie is clearly the most charismatic and interesting part, a filmmaker really only has one logical choice based on cinema history: Follow the Terminator model. And so we get this follow-up where the robotic doll (voiced by Jenna Davis) that terrorized toy-creating engineer Gemma (Allison Williams) and her orphaned niece Cady (Violent McGraw) has stayed alive in the wiring of their smart-home, and attempts to help stop a military A.I. robot (Ivanna Sakhno) based on M3GAN's programming that has gone rogue. Returning director Gerard Johnstone also takes on the screenwriting duties this time around, and he doesn’t have quite the gift for a twisted scenario that original screenwriter Akela Cooper does, nor the interest in preventing any possible subtext about parenting or the perils of unchecked technology from becoming text. Fortunately, this is less an attempt to duplicate 2023's M3GAN than to go much bigger; it’s practically an espionage thriller that happens to have the pixie-voiced homicidal doll as its James Bond. Allowing M3GAN to (in wrestling parlance) take a babyface turn might allow the movie to dabble in ideas about learning to be better, but mostly this is just about the goofy fun that you can find when you let the character loose not just to be a mercenary-killing badass, but to sing a plaintive version of Kate Bush’s “This Woman’s Work.” Available June 27 in theaters. (PG-13)

My Mom Jayne **1/2
Actress Mariska Hargitay doesn’t exactly hide the fact that her documentary directing debut—centered on her mother, actress/sex symbol Jayne Mansfield, who died in a car accident when Hargitay was 3 years old, surviving the same accident—is going to be as much about her and her quest for closure as it is about Mansfield herself. And that naked emotionalism is effective almost as often as it’s distracting. Hargitay looks for answers about the mother she barely remembers by talking to her older siblings, her stepmother, Mansfield’s press secretary and others, sharing along the way the rough outlines of Mansfield’s life as a teenage single mother coming to Hollywood, dealing with stardom, career downturns and multiple tempestuous relationships. The movie is often an attempt to rehabilitate Mansfield’s “dumb blonde” persona, emphasizing the breathy public voice as a kind of long-form performance hiding the five-language-speaking trained pianist and violin player she was in private, as well as addressing the embarrassment Hargitay feels about that legacy. Yet is also takes a turn into the revelation about Hargitay’s biological father, which definitely foregrounds the filmmaker as the central character to an almost uncomfortable degree. The extent to which a viewer finds the experience worthwhile depends a lot on whether you’re less interested in what you learn about Jayne Mansfield that in what Mariska Hargitay learns about herself. Available June 27 via HBO and MAX. (NR)