The awakening of the Transformers, Virginia Raffaele’s shark, Binoche the truck driver and 7 other films to watch at the cinema and in streaming

Why do you like the Transformers saga so much? Because we’ve been chasing for six years (and seven episodes, including the spin off Bumblebee) the adventures of alien puppets born as shelf toys and become modular stars like kitchens and divi vroom vroom like the characters from Fast & Furious? According to current cinematic mythology, the badass warrior Optimus Prime and the Autobots have been captives of the Earth for hundreds of years for magical combinations, cumbersome and generous, ready to break down and rearrange themselves like super-fast cars, idealistic and a little snobbish, fish out of water in the terrestrial pond, with homesickness stronger than that of ET
Why, then do they like them so much? why 1) represent the typical example of blockbuster harp, without narrative distractions, dynamic, hardly ironic and schematic in the succession millenarian prologue / development with human touch / battle explosion. why 2) the tutelary deities of the serial are Michael Bay, a cinema muscle, and Steven Spielberg, the most flexible and shrewd of the twenty-first century filmmakers, with a director like Steven Caple Jr, 35 years old from Clevelandwhich was appreciated thanks to Creed II. Or again 3) because the saga is a summa of quotations (which are made up, broken down, wrapped up just like the characters in the film). A chaotic cartoon that includes monsters, creatures of the dark or of the sky, gifted in crisis. In no particular order: Joker, Alien, King Kong, Batman and Robin, the Avengers and the Justice League, Jumanji and singing company.
Clear signs of a necessary renewal that is reflected in the cast, with the new entry Anthony Ramos, Hispanic TV series star, and Dominique Fishback, brilliant colored actress. But not in the structure, which remains the well-known one. The setting is dynamic-touristic: we pass from New York in 1994 to Per of llamas, snow-capped peaks and ponchos. Also on trend is the figure of the young Noah, a talented unemployed man who was repeatedly stopped from job interviews because he was unfit to form a group, with a sick but strong-tempered little brother. As well as her female counterpart, Helena, a young researcher at the Ellis Island archaeological museum who finds a magical statuette in her hands.
The fetish hides a secret: a sign of power, it opens the gates of paradise but wage war between the Autobots and the Decepticons with the support of the Maximals, et cetera et cetera. Like it or not, Noah and Helena, two precarious workers in a crisis of self-esteem, become super heroes. They become aware of their strength, complete the process of entering the ultra-competitive society. In short, they become adults. The final word is never said: a new installment of the saga is ready. The sensation remains That Transformers: The Awakening adds little to the splendor of the serial and that it is now an object closer to TV series than to cinema-cinema, less futuristic in its kind of Super Mario Bros. The Movie And Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The two boys skid in a magazine of barrels, iron fists, somersaults face to face with well-endowed gentlemen, ready for a fight, as tall as a three-story house. The original matrix of the digital bumper car is only valid at the beginning. The psychologies have little space and do not emerge, the monsters tremble and even get moved, the big effects boom but leave the time they find.

TRANSFORMERS: THE AWAKENING by Steven Caple Jr.
(USA, 2023, duration 120′)
with Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback
Rating: ** out of 5
In the halls