“F1: The Academy” (Netflix)
Baek Seunghye: F1 Academy is a formula racing competition established in 2023 to promote women racing drivers in the sport. The similarly named Netflix docuseries “F1: The Academy” brings the electrifying races of the 2024 season right to your home while telling the stories of 15 drivers competing in it. The series pulls back the curtain on the lesser-known realities of the motorsports world that drivers face beyond what spectators see on the track. Bianca Bustamante, who juggles TV appearances and her work as a social media influencer to cover her racing expenses, struggles to strike a balance between her life online and her life as an athlete. Abbi Pulling, the 2024 season champion, keeps her racing career afloat by designing and selling her own merchandise to raise additional funds. It’s clear from the passion on the track just how much effort these athletes pour into their careers, sparing nothing in the face of the harsh reality of their chosen path. As Bustamante says, “Everything I’m doing is just to help me become that racing driver.”
Winning comes down to exactly one thing: The fastest woman on the track takes all. Ease up on the gas a hair, and you could fall behind—add the slightest pressure, and you might spin right off the track. Every driver faces the same challenges—vehicle regulations, bad weather, the psychological pressure to secure the pole position*—but each of the 15 women vying for the championship has their own reason for being there. That might be to make their families happy, repay their parents’ sacrifices by living up to their expectations, follow in the tread marks of a talented rally driver father, or overcome a past traumatic injury and push themselves to their limit. Despite such diverse backgrounds, these drivers race on the same track toward the same goal. Watching these women break through barriers is so exhilarating, you can’t help but root all throughout their intense races.
*Pole position: The frontmost starting position in a motorsport race, awarded to the driver with the best lap time during the qualifying sessions held before an official race.
Drivers are limited to two years in F1 Academy, pushing them to prove themselves and advance upward before time’s up. According to Managing Director Susie Wolff, the aim is to facilitate drivers reaching higher leagues and to gradually carve out more space for women in the formula series. That means that, for drivers, the only path and their sole goal is to keep moving forward—and they’re willing to bet everything on it. At the same time, the women spend plenty of time together, traveling to a new city for every race and sharing the same worries. They might be competitors on the track, but they also laugh as they spray each other with champagne on the podium before taking the celebration to a party. And all the heated competition, the warm camaraderie, and personal growth of these women is on full thrilling display in “F1: The Academy.”
“28 Years Later”
Bae Dongmi (“CINE21” Reporter): The 2003 film “28 Days Later” took the world by storm with its fresh twist on the zombie genre by giving them the power to run. Now, 20 years after that film, the third installment in the same universe, “28 Years Later,” opens on an isolated Britain long after the zombie virus outbreak. Diplomatic relations between Britain and the rest of the world are effectively severed, and anyone who dares land on the island is taking their survival into their own hands. European patrols monitor the British Isles, while rescue missions are strictly prohibited. And yet, life in Britain goes on. Those uninfected by zombies have created small settlements on unaffected islands to live in, occasionally venturing to the mainland to scavenge for useful supplies. Internet? Cell phones? All down. They’re completely foreign concepts to Spike (Alfie Williams), a 12-year-old boy who’s only ever known a world where the mainland’s teeming with zombies and his island provides a safe haven. “28 Years Later” presents a dystopia entirely alien to us humans, but can we really say it’s dystopian from other perspectives? With human industry halted, nature healed, painting the world green and leaving wild animals like deer to roam free.
Spike, who fills the role of protagonist, goes on his first expedition to the mainland with his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). He’s awestruck by the beautiful nature all around him but also kills a Slow-Low, a kind of crawling zombie. Nature is breathtaking but brutal. While hordes of running zombies attack the duo, the most terrifying threat is an Alpha—a massive zombie that rips its prey apart with its monstrous strength. After narrowly escaping death and returning to his village, Spike is nonetheless determined to take his mother, Isla (Jodie Comer), to the mainland, where it’s said the “insane” Doctor Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) can be found. With no doctor in the village to diagnose her illness, Isla is dying, and Spike is desperate to reignite his mother’s fading spark.
“28 Years Later” is both a zombie film and one boy’s coming-of-age story, and reflects a world where humanity is forced to slow the pace of its progress. Scenes of Spike and the survivors repurposing the discarded things they recover echo our real-world situation where we need to pump the brakes on excessive production and reconsider what we already have. To that end, director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland took something of a turn and filled this latest film in the series with thematic images of nature and life. They show the audience that all life—even if it’s zombies—is equal, and put it on equal footing with death. Though the overwhelming music in some scenes can make it feel like the zombies serve no other purpose than to be hunted, after a few adrenaline-fueled action sequences, the movie ultimately steers back to its profound story about the sanctity of life.
2005 Chaeyeon: remembering who we were 20 years ago (YouTube)
Baek Seolhui (Writer, Columnist): The concept: Chaeyeon, who saw immense fame as a singer in 2005, awakens in the year 2025. Only the occasional video has been uploaded now and then over the past two months since first appearing in April. Perhaps to capture the vibe of an earlier time, the upload schedule is sparse and the storyline is simple and light. The videos are also fairly long, typically ranging between 10 and 20 minutes. But it’s a perfect fit.
Of course, there are concerns the concept could lead to the channel becoming nothing more than an avenue to praise Chaeyeon for her looks—remarkably unchanged even after 20 years thanks to her exceptional personal care routine. The fact that the series makes heavy use of music from the movie “The Substance” is no doubt symbolic. Not to mention the first product placement coming from Professor Heewon Jung of “slow aging” fame for Rice Plan instant rice …
And yet, there’s a moment when Chaeyeon, fully made up to recreate what she looked like 20 years earlier, looks into a mirror and says, “But it’s not exactly the same. Honestly, it’s not 100% the same as before … I thought it’d be really funny, you know? I really thought it’d be hilarious, but the moment I saw myself, I felt this lump in my throat,” she says, tearing up. There’s another scene where the producer asks her, “Do you think flowers know they’re beautiful?” And Chaeyeon genuinely lets out a sigh, saying, “Wow … Flowers … Could they really know …? Probably not …? I guess they don’t …” In moments like these, we can’t help but feel a sense of nostalgia welling up from deep within our hearts.
The Chaeyeon of 2025—or rather, 2005—shows us things we forgot ever existed. Carefully packing homemade kimbap into a three-tier purple lunchbox and sharing it with people. Reciting poetry on the spot while watching cherry blossoms flutter and fall. Chatting with the attendant in the booth as you buy your movie ticket. The channel’s videos capture moments like these that we clearly once valued but that we started to mock as being entirely the realm of posers trying to act cool. Here, Chaeyeon sends us a clear reminder: “You need to write down how you feel from time to time so you can remember it, don’t you? And to let others understand how you feel. How is that embarrassing? It was completely normal to write everything down, and share it, and talk about it together.” Did we drift too far from what should be “completely normal” at some point? This series is a great opportunity to reflect on that while also rediscovering the singer.