SECONDSCREEN
arch-rival Megatron remains in hiding on Earth, generally stirring things up. As for Cade Yeager (Wahlberg), one of the few humans to see the good in the Transformers, he’s holed up in a scrapyard with his robotic friends, a car-crunching dinosaur and a feisty, spanner-wielding orphan he’s picked up along the way.
Into this already heady mix, I have to add England in the Dark Ages, King Arthur, Merlin, an all-powerful staff and a power-mad Transformers goddess Quintessa (a floaty, swirly visual effect voiced by Gemma Chan). And I haven’t even got to the sexy Oxford historian (Laura Haddock), the eccentric aristocrat who’s the only man who really knows what’s going on (Anthony Hopkins) or the genius of casting Jim Carter – Carson the butler in Downton
Abbey – as the voice of Sir Edmund’s sulky robotic valet, Cogman.
Amazingly, it all works, with Wahlberg bringing his laid-back presence and watchability, the excellent Haddock providing wit as well as beauty, and Hopkins raising his familiar game sufficiently to provide as much gravitas as humour. The visual effects are great too, although given recent events, a high-speed car chase through London could have done with re-editing. Another week, another film about a gifted child, although unlike Gifted, The Book Of Henry (12A) HH turns out to be odder than odd and heading somewhere that is borderline ridiculous. The Henry of the title is a precocious 11year-old who looks after his videogame-playing, wine-swilling single mum (Naomi Watts) and his bullied younger brother, and keeps an eye out for the pretty classmate who lives next door. And then something awful happens to Henry and something equally awful happens to this film.
Right now, there doesn’t seem much goodness in the world so do try to catch
Summer In The Forest (PG) HHHH, an affectionate and joyously uplifting portrait of Jean Vanier, a philosopher and former Canadian Navy officer who appears as close to a living saint as you can imagine. Vanier, who is now 88, has been working with mentally disadvantaged adults since the early Sixties and his pioneering approach – based on kindness, individuality and remarkable care – has been replicated all over the world through his L’Arche foundation.
If the individual interviews don’t get you (the life of one contributor, Michel, was brutally limited by a bungled spinal injection he received as a child), then the idyllic-looking summer picnic in the forest that surrounds his original community near Paris will.
The costs for such care must be high but the sheer humanity – of the man, his staff and his appreciative but quietly liberated charges – absolutely shines through. Viewing should be compulsory.