Tag: Sean Penn

One Battle After Another

Director – Paul Thomas Anderson – 2025 – US – Cert. 12A – 161m

*****

Over a decade after they disappeared into a safe town with new identities, a father and now-teenage daughter are tracked down by their army officer nemesis… – one of the most extraordinary Warner Bros. action movies you’ve ever seen is out in UK cinemas on Friday, September 26th

Radical, black revolutionary Perfidia Beverley Hills (Teyana Taylor) is on the verge of leading the forces of underground far-left organisation the French 75 in an attack on a Californian immigration centre to free those imprisoned when a bedraggled man pulling a trailer, looking to all intents and purposes like a refugee, turns up. Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio) tells Perfidia he has all the explosives she could possibly need, and sets about using them with her blessing, putting on an impressive show of pyrotechnics to prove his credentials. Inside the centre, Perfidia locates its commanding officer Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) to sexually humiliate him at gunpoint. Surprisingly, this personal violation only serves to turn the white soldier on.

With Pat and the pregnant Perfidia now a couple, she carries on her high octane, physically demanding revolutionary activities, belly fully swollen, as if there were no child.… Read the rest

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Features Live Action Movies

Flag Day

Director – Sean Penn – 2021 – US – Cert. 15 – 109m

****

A woman struggles to come to terms with her father who is a criminal and a pathological liar – out in cinemas on Friday, January 28th

This at once follows a linear narrative trajectory and doesn’t. On the one level, Jennifer grows into a woman, argues with her parents (with good reason) and attempts to find herself and make her way in the world. On the other level, images and sequences move effortlessly between Jennifer aged six (Addison Tymec), Jennifer as a young teenager (Jadyn Rylee) and the adult Jennifer (Dylan Penn). Sometimes it feels like the adult Jennifer having a flashback, sometimes it seems like we’re one of her younger selves, all very vivid and real. Sometimes it’s memory, sometimes it’s experience.

It’s based on the real life memoir of Jennifer Vogel, who apparently wrote the book trying to sort out her feelings about her unorthodox upbringing.

It starts and (more or less) ends with a line of cop cars pursuing suspect John Vogel (Sean Penn) wanted for counterfeiting. As the images roll over us, there’s a lot of adult Jennifer voice over in the first ten or so minutes (and elsewhere at odd moments in the film).… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Licorice Pizza

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 1 January 2022
No Comments on Licorice Pizza
Sticky post

Director – Paul Thomas Anderson – 2021 – US – Cert. 15 – 133m

****

Boy meets girl in San Fernando Valley, 1973, a bizarre, meandering tale constantly firing off in new directions – out in cinemas on Saturday, January 1st

Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) is walking along an outdoor school corridor when he sees Alona Kane (Alona Haim), contriving to run into her. She’s much older than him (she’s actually there helping out with individual pupil photos) and pours scorn on his attempts to ask her out for a date. But he’s persistent and possessed of a way with words, talking her into turning up at the restaurant should she feel like it, which she duly does.

When he proclaims himself an actor with some films and TV series to his credit, she assumes he’s joking around, but, no, it’s true. Needing a chaperone for a new your gig he’d otherwise be unable to attend, he gives her the job. He also has his own PR company whose clients include a Japanese restaurant, has a good head for business, and is constantly chasing the latest coming trend as a means to make a fast buck.

To attempt more of a synopsis is difficult because the whole thing feels like scenes from a much longer script where lot of other scenes have been either edited out in the cutting room or possibly not even shot in the first place.… Read the rest