references Archives - Jeremy C. Processing

Director – Steven Caple Jr. – 2022 – US – Cert. 12a – 127m

A giant, planet-eating entity comes to earth in search of a mysterious key which the Transformers must prevent him from obtaining – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, June 8th

The posters for this latest Transformers instalment promised something a little different: a group of animal robots made up, like the original Transformers, of disparate parts. What was their purpose? Would they transform into vehicles? Well, the answer is, no, they just run around like big robotic animals and never transform into cars or anything else. Why bother?, you might ask. According to the press handouts, they convert from less conspicuous animals, but if that occurred in the film, I must have missed it.

These robotic animals, who include the gorilla Optimal Prime (voice: Ron Perlman), whose name echoes that of series regular Transformer Optimus Prime (Peter Cullen, who has voiced this character through all the movies and the original TV series), the eagle Airazor (voice: Michelle Yeoh) and the cheetah Cheetor (voice: Tongayi Chirisa)…

…belong to a race whose planet is threatened by the villain of the piece, a larger than planet-sized Transformer villain named Unicron (voice: Colman Domingo) – does he transform into anything?… Read the rest

Flag Day

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

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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