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Flag Day Review — Flag Day (2021) Film Review, a movie directed by Sean Penn and starring Sean Penn, Dylan Penn, Josh Brolin, Regina King, Tom Anniko, Addison Tymec, Katheryn Winnick, Cole Flynn, Beckam Crawford, Jadyn Rylee, Rick Skene, Bailey Noble, James Russo, Dale Dickey, Hopper Penn and Norbert Leo Butz. Sean Penn has given [...]

Continue reading: Film Review: Flag Day (2021): Sean Penn Delivers a Powerful Family Drama...

Sean Penn’s upcoming film “Flag Day” has released its first trailer, featuring Penn and his children, Dylan Frances Penn and Hopper Jack Penn, as the dysfunctional Vogel family.

Sean Penn serves as both star and director for the movie, which is based on Jenifer Vogel’s 2004 memoir recounting her fractured relationship with her father, criminal and con-man John Vogel. The film stays true to the memoir, offering up the troubled relationship between John (Sean Penn), a grandiose deadbeat-narcissist, and Jennifer (Dylan Frances Penn), an aspiring journalist. Katheryn Winnick plays John’s wife, Patty, and Hopper Jack Penn portrays their adrift son, Nick. “Flag Day” marks Dylan Frances Penn’s debut leading role.

The trailer shows that though John has a demented way of parenting — and mess up his relationships again and again — he truly loves his children. So in order to prove to his daughter that she can rely on him,...

Not to be outdone by Matt Damon, Sean Penn looked like he was about to cry at the Saturday night premiere of “Flag Day.”

The drama earned a four-minute standing ovation broken up by remarks from Penn, praising his daughter, Dylan Frances Penn, for her debut lead role in a movie.

Penn takes on double duties in the film, as both director and actor, playing John Vogel, a real life bank robber and con artist. The character’s birthday falls on June 14, thus inspiring the film’s title.

Dylan plays his daughter Jennifer, an aspiring journalist who struggles with her fractured relationship with her family.

“To this cast, this crew, this audience and, in particular, this daughter — thank you,” Penn said.

“Flag Day” is based on Jennifer Vogel’s 2004 memoir. The film is a family affair for Penn. Dylan’s younger brother Hopper plays her character’s adrift sibling onscreen.

Stars: Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Skarsgård, James Badge Dale, Beckam Crawford, Riley Keough, Michael Tayles, Julian Black Antelope, Conor Boru | Written by Macon Blair | Directed by Jeremy Saulnier

In the grim Alaskan winter, a naturalist hunts for wolves blamed for killing a local boy, but he soon finds himself swept into a chilling mystery.

Jeremy Saulnier returns with his fourth feature with the Netflix exclusive Hold the Dark. After a string of critically acclaimed features in the indie market in the likes of Blue Ruin and Green Room. Two incredibly glib, morbid and frightful thrillers that question the limits of individual heroism and morality.

Hold the Dark has been described by director Saulnier as containing his highest body count to date on screen. Fans of nihilistic tendencies rejoice but if that’s the only thing what Hold the Dark offers it’s a fair assessment that Saulnier doesn’t understand or...

“Hold the Dark” is a perfectly adequate film made by an especially talented director, Jeremy Saulnier. Alternately pulse-racing and somnambulant, it’s a thriller that starts strong before running out of gas.

It begins in the Alaskan wilderness, where three children have recently been killed. The locals suspect the culprit is a pack of vicious wolves. Medora Slone (Riley Keough) has a similar hunch after the disappearance of her son, Bailey (Beckam Crawford).

Enraged and scared, she enlists author Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright) to fly cross-country and help track down her missing child. Russell has experience with locating (and terminating) wolves. His acclaimed book details his grisly entanglements.

Also Read: HBO Greenlights 'True Detective' Season 3 With Mahershala Ali and Director Jeremy Saulnier

There’s more: Once Russell arrives in Alaska, Medora explains her situation: That she and her boy were left alone while her husband Vernon (Alexander Skarsgård) fought in the Middle East.

Jeremy Saulnier’s 2016 breakthrough, “Green Room,” depicted a traveling punk band held captive by a gang of white supremacists in a remote corner of Oregon. For his fourth and most ambitious film, “Hold the Dark,” the director returns again to sinister goings-on within secluded, rural communities, only this time the evil at hand is much more Judge Holden than David Duke. Boasting the sort of shocking brutality and unnerving menace that has become Saulnier’s signature, “Hold the Dark” is also a strangely seductive film, and one that understands the difference between simple plot resolution and catharsis, leading us on a journey into Alaska’s frigid heart of darkness that poses more questions than it answers.

“Hold the Dark” is unflinchingly violent, at times almost excessively so, and yet its starkest act of savagery occurs in the first few minutes, and is all the more haunting for its ambiguity. In...

You know you're in the hands of a born filmmaker from the first scene of Hold the Dark, director Jeremy Saulnier's follow-up to Green Room (2015). A wide establishing shot of a desolate Alaskan village packs a lot of noirish punch, and it soon becomes clear — as a young child (Beckam Crawford) vanishes, seemingly abducted by wolves — that that title is a plea which the gods, if there are any, will roundly ignore. By the time our ostensible hero, lupine-obsessive author Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright), is introduced shuffling along the weather-beaten sidewalk outside his apartment,...

You know you're in the hands of a born filmmaker from the first scene of Hold the Dark, director Jeremy Saulnier's follow-up to Green Room (2015). A wide establishing shot of a desolate Alaskan village packs a lot of noirish punch, and it soon becomes clear — as a young child (Beckam Crawford) vanishes, seemingly abducted by wolves — that that title is a plea which the gods, if there are any, will roundly ignore. By the time our ostensible hero, lupine-obsessive author Russell Core (Jeffrey Wright), is introduced shuffling along the weather-beaten sidewalk outside his apartment,...