“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is a different kind of blockbuster. It has all the elements of the usual summer fare— it’s a sequel, things blow up and, if that wasn’t enough, also features an ape on horseback —but it takes more risks than Optimus Prime could shake Michael Bay at. About half of it is done in ape sign language (with subtitles) and it’s not chock-a-block with action. Instead it takes time building characters and motivations so when the wild ape-on-human action begins it feels earned and it feels epic.
Set ten years after Rise of the Planet of the Apes saw Caesar (Andy Serkis) break free from a San Fransisco primate sanctuary and start an ape uprising, the middle-aged chimpanzee is the leader of a large population of genetically evolved apes. Most of humankind was wiped out by a pandemic of ALZ-113—a “simian flu” virus that speeds up the rebuilding of brain cells in apes but is deadly to humans—but when a small band of humans scout a water source near the ape camp a monkey wrench is thrown into the fragile peace between homo sapiens and simians is threatened. “Apes do not want war,” says Caesar, but a battle—gorilla warfare?—for control is inevitable.
To riff off of the old Superman tagline, “You will believe an ape can speak.” The special effects are amazing, but beyond the pixel manipulation that brings Caesar and company to vivid life, there are remarkable performances that, for lack of a better phrase, humanize the apes. These aren’t the erudite apes of the Roddy McDowell era, with vocabularies that would impress even Conrad Black, but simian characters that behave somewhere midway between pure instinct and higher intelligence.
Gary Oldman, as a human protectionist, Jason Clarke as the human who reaches out to Caesar in the spirit of friendship and cooperation and Keri Russell as his resourceful wife are all terrific, but I went bananas for these apes.
Beyond the flashy special effects and Serkis’s understated but powerful performance—this is the kind of performance that could convince the Academy to consider “motion capture” acting for inclusion in the Oscar acting categories—is a smart movie about race, gun usage and xenophobia. Its masked in allegory and, well, a story about talking apes, but it doesn’t shy away from big ideas and that is the thing that transforms it from a run-of-the-mill air conditioner flick to a thought provoking night and exciting at the movies.
SYNOPSIS: Set ten years after Rise of the Planet of the Apes saw Caesar (Andy Serkis) break free from a San Fransisco primate sanctuary and start an ape uprising, the middle-aged chimpanzee is the leader of a large population of genetically evolved apes. Most of humankind was wiped out by a pandemic of ALZ-113—a “simian flu” virus that speeds up the rebuilding of brain cells in apes but is deadly to humans—but when a small band of humans scout a water source near the ape camp a monkey wrench is thrown into the fragile peace between homo sapiens and simians is threatened. “Apes do not want war,” says Caesar, but a battle—gorilla warfare?—for control is inevitable.
STAR RATINGS:
Richard: 4 ½ Stars
Mark: 4 Stars
Richard: Mark, to riff off of the old Superman tagline, “You will believe an ape can speak.” The special effects are amazing, but beyond the pixel manipulation that brings Caesar and company to vivid life, there are remarkable performances that, for lack of a better phrase, humanize the apes. These aren’t the erudite apes of the Roddy McDowell era, with vocabularies that would impress even Conrad Black, but simian characters that behave somewhere midway between pure instinct and higher intelligence. I went bananas for the apes. You?
Mark: The apes may have limited vocabularies but they’re a lot more interesting than the humans in the picture. This is a very sophisticated blockbuster that deals with our queasy relationship to the animal world and also acts as a metaphor for our need for civilized diplomacy. The post-apocalyptic world of a verdant but decaying San Francisco is visually plausible, and there are plot points worthy of a Greek tragedy. But enough about that. The apes are rad, man!
RC: It sure is a different kind of blockbuster. It has all the elements of the usual summer fare—it’s a sequel, things blow up and, if that wasn’t enough, also features an ape —but it takes risks. About half of it is done in ape sign language (with subtitles) and it’s not chock-a-block with action. Instead it takes time building characters and motivations so when the wild ape-on-human action begins it feels earned and it feels epic.
MB: Ape-on-human? What about the fabulous ape-on-ape action? Havent seen this kind of gritty action since the Bumfight videos of the Nineties. When these apes go at each other, it’s feral and primitive. WWF, take note! And the ape sign language forces them to act with their eyes, which reminded me of the power of old silent films. I didn’t need a bunch of clunky dialogue to know what these gorillas were thinking.
RC: I agree. I think this is the kind of performance that could convince the Academy to consider “motion capture” acting for inclusion in the Oscar acting categories. Beyond the performances though, is a thought-provoking movie about race, gun usage and xenophobia. Its masked in allegory and, well, a story about talking apes, but it touches on those hot button topics in an interesting way.
MB: What is missing from the movie is James Franco, who brought some lightness and offhand charm to the last Apes movie. The apes are so strong in these films that the movie needs some star charisma to balance it out. Nevertheless, we’ve come a long way away from Bedtime for Bonzo.
When the Chordettes sang, “Mister Sandman, send me a dream,” in their 1954 hit song, it’s doubtful they imagined the kind of dreams—nightmares, really—the Sandman would bring little innocent Sammy in the sci fi thriller “Dark Skies.”
The Barett’s, mom Lacy (Keri Russell), dad Daniel (Josh Hamilton) and kids Jesse (Dakota Goyo) and Sammy (Kadan Rockett), are a typical suburban family until strange things start happening around the house. Sammy has weird dreams about the Sandman, all the family pictures disappear form their frames, sleepwalking becomes a nightly occurrence and someone—or something—builds a sculpture in the kitchen that looks like “a mathematician’s idea of a geometry joke.”
As the odd incidents continue Lacy and Daniel have conversations about what to do. “That is so weird,” he says. “It’s more than weird,” she replies, wide eyed.
Weird, yes. After hundreds of birds crash land into their house, Lacy tries to get to the bottom of their problems by googling a list of their problems. The search leads her to a site called Skywatcher report.com, run by ET expert Edwin Pollard (J.K. Simmons). He explains that aliens are here—they are a fact of life, “like death and taxes. They study us, do experiments on us.” The best you can do, he says, is try to fight them off.
“Dark Skies” is the “Anti-War of the Worlds.” There’s no mass little green man hysteria, just the concentrated horror of one family tormented by visitors from outer space.
The alien quotient is low. You really only see them in shadows or in “Paranormal Activity” style surveillance footage. Instead of rampant aliens the movie is a slow burn look at the breakdown of a family, troubled by forces they cannot control.
That part of the movie is effective, as is a shot of Jesse, flushed with the excitement of his first kiss riding his bicycle home with a giant grin plastered on his freshly smooched lips. Those moments work well, but as usual in a movie that tries to marry real family situations with the supernatural or alien happenings, I never completely buy in at how fast characters ditch rational thought and jump on board with the most outlandish answer possible to their problems.
When the doctor who examines Jesse after one of his incidents says there’s no neurological damage, so the Internet conspiracy nut must be right, right? “Could it be the government testing some new, secret weapon,” suggests Lacy before adding, “or could it be something not from here?”
I know irrational times occasionally lead to irrational thought—just ask the guy who tried to sell the Hulk Hogan sex tape—but I had a hard time believing that this family would take advise from an apartment-bound UFO nut before consulting with medical and government officials.
But that’s just me. If you want to get past the leaps of logic y0u’ll be left with a competently made thriller with some scares and loads of good atmosphere.
The Food Network has a corner on small screen cuisine. Bobby Flay and Paula Dean simmer, sauté and sizzle twenty-four hours a day, bringing restaurant style cooking to the home chef.
Food plays a role on the big screen as well. Who could forget The Godfather’s “leave the gun, take the cannoli” scene or Annie Hall’s clumsy attempt to cook a lobster? But there’s food in movies and then there’s movies — like this weekend’s Julie & Julia — that make you want to eat something more delicious than a bucket of buttery popcorn from the concession stand.
Jane Austen was on to something when she wrote, “Good apple pies are a considerable part of our domestic happiness.” Everybody loves pie and never have baked goods been as appetizing as they are in Waitress, the last film from director Adrienne Shelly.
Keri Russell plays Jenna, a world weary, pregnant waitress in the Deep South.
She’s also a “pie genius” with a knack for creating imaginative pastries. Mix in a handsome stranger, some gorgeous shots of the pies and you have all the fixin’s for a mouth watering romantic comedy.
On the more savoury side is Tampopo, a film advertised as “the first Japanese noodle western.”
In short (its plot splinters into many directions) the movie is about Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto) a widowed noodle chef, who, along with truck driver Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki) searches for noodle perfection.
Many films, like Babette’s Feast and Like Water for Chocolate, feature food as a metaphoric central theme but none are as loving or as loopy as the singular vision of Tampopo.
The greatest food movie of all time, however, stars Stanley Tucci and Tony Shalhoub as brothers and failing restaurateurs who pin their hopes of success on one special customer who will get them the notice they so deserve.
Big Night is pitch perfect from its portrayal of kitchen life to the very real relationship between the two brothers, but it is the presentation of the food that is so appetizing.
One critic said the movie’s food photography “is so good it’s hard to resist the temptation to reach into the screen and grab a mouthful.” Amen to that. One glimpse of the movie’s amazing Timpano di Maccheroni al Ragu and you’ll want to run, not walk to the closest Italian restaurant.
To paraphrase the legendary chef Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep in Julie& Julia), “Bon appetit and happy movie watching!”
We’ve finally reached the tipping point where casting Robin Williams has officially become a liability. A case in point: August Rush is a perfectly acceptable modern fairy tale about an orphaned young boy (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s Freddie Highmore) who feels that his love of music will reunite him with his parents one day. It is a sweet idea, and Highmore with his sad eyes and apparent vulnerability is perfectly cast. If you buy into the idea that this neo-Oliver Twist could truly believe this airy-fairy idea about the magical power of music, then August Rush will work for you. Work for you, that is, until Robin Williams comes along with his Bono-wannabe hat and all his usual bluster and completely throws the movie off the rails.
Keri Russell and Jonathan Rhys Meyers play Lyla and Louis, musicians from two different worlds. He’s a poor rock singer, she a rich cello prodigy. They meet on a rooftop overlooking NYC’s Washington Square Park, spend the night together and conceive a child. Her overbearing father conspires to keep them apart, and following a tragic car accident tells Lyla that the child was killed, while, in fact, secretly putting it up for adoption.
Eleven years later Lyla and Louis have moved on. She’s now a music teacher, unaware that her son is still alive; disillusioned he’s given up music completely. The child, convinced he can locate his parents, escapes the orphanage where he has grown up and makes off for the big city. He comes under the spell of a “musical Fagin” named Wizard (Robin Williams) who imparts new agey wisdom like “music is the harmonic connection between all living beings” and teaches the boy how to play the music that may eventually reunite him with his parents.
You have to have a strong willingness to suspend your disbelief to buy into August Rush’s storyline, but if you can you’ll find lots here to like. Highmore is a charmer on screen, Russell and Meyers are the very definition of star-crossed and director Kirsten Sheridan gives the proceedings an agreeable fairy tale feel, but whenever Williams hits the screen it’s as though this fable’s Ogre has awoken to chew the scenery and destroy any of the good will the movie had already accrued. He’s so annoying, and in the later half of the movie, so unnecessary to the plot, that the term “over-the-top” scarcely does him justice.
August Rush is a well-meaning but clichéd film with a nice message and decent music, but is almost done in by its casting.
“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is a different kind of blockbuster. It has all the elements of the usual summer fare— it’s a sequel, things blow up and, if that wasn’t enough, also features an ape on horseback —but it takes more risks than Optimus Prime could shake Michael Bay at. About half of it is done in ape sign language (with subtitles) and it’s not chock-a-block with action. Instead it takes time building characters and motivations so when the wild ape-on-human action begins it feels earned and it feels epic.
