Hail Caesar!

Yeah, it’s been almost two weeks since I viddied this, o’ my brothers, but I’ve been busy.  Get off my BACK, Maria!

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes: Awesome, Awesome, Awesome.

OK, so, it needs to be said:  I’m not a Planet Of The Apes guy.  I’ve seen the original in its entirety… I think it was sometime in the late 90’s (1996 – 2002 are mostly a blur for me)… and don’t remember much about it beyond the very basics that everyone knows (planet ruled by apes, mankind are mute animals, turns out it’s future Earth, “take your stinking paws off me, you damn, dirty ape!”).  I have vague memories of watching Beneath The POTA on TV as a kid on a lazy Sunday afternoon, but all I really remember about that are the “fleshy-headed mutants in the forbidden zone” (to quote a certain Canadian masterpiece, you knob) worshipping a big bomb underground.  And, yeah, I saw that Tim Burton remake in all its bipolar glory (fantastic makeup effects, dumb-as-a-bag-of-guppies script).  But I do feel like I know what I need to know about the entire mythology, mostly through internet osmosis and the few Apes diehards in my life that have described it to me throughout the years.*

That said, let’s talk Rise.

An experiment in curing Alzheimer’s disease goes awry, turning a chimpanzee test subject into a hyper-intelligent ape.  Unbeknownst to the scientists, the chimp is pregnant and passes the “side effect” on to its offspring, “Caesar” (Andy Serkis & WETA Digital).  Raised by the project’s head, Will Rodman (James Franco) and his Alzheimer’s-afflicted father, Charles (John Lithgow), Caesar learns what it is to be human, through ape eyes… until a violent moment of emotion lands him in a sub-standard facility for primates.  There, Caesar learns the cruel side of human nature, what it is to be a captive, and the awkward place he holds among his own kind.  Determined to make things right, Caesar plans a jailbreak with the aid of his oppressed brothers, as well as a certain brain-enhancing formula…

…and they go ape shit.

…and they go bananas.

…and crazy monkey-shines ensue.

[insert deranged, “Muttley” laugh here]

OK.  Sorry.  I just can’t help myself sometimes.  “Dad humor” is genetic, apparently.  Anyway…

I can’t stress enough how great this movie is.

It’s an oddity on many levels.  It’s an effects-heavy summer blockbuster with heart and soul.  It is both an original, standalone piece and prequel/reboot hybrid that pays homage to its roots without pandering to them.  It’s noticeably CGI-tastic, yet completely realistic.    It’s both intellectually and viscerally satisfying.  It’s a humble, yet bombastic ride.  It’s a movie that’s not afraid to “go there,” but never at the expense of good, old-fashioned, emotional storytelling.

It’s everything Transformers isn’t.

No, it ain’t perfect.  Screw perfect.  Perfect is for film school students to write papers about.  Perfect is boring.  No, Rise is the evolution of film, in action.  Rise is what happens when you take a relatively untested director (Rupert Wyatt) and give him a sizeable, yet still humble (by today’s bloated Hollywood standards) sandbox to play in.  Rise is what happens when you get some of the best digital-effects minds in the business and challenge them to visually impress an audience without showing off.   Rise is what happens when you get (mostly) quality actors and tell them to sit back and relax, man, because they’re not actually the stars of the film.  Rise is what happens when you get two (and only two, thank the friggin’ maker) writers to pen a screenplay heavy on character development and emotional journey.  Rise is what happens when you edit a film is such a way that it never slows down and never repeats itself, yet never leaves an audience member behind.  Rise is what happens when you compose a score (Patrick Doyle) that compliments the visuals so well that it elicits an emotional response, yet doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is what happens when you take a chance on something different for a change, Hollywood.

And different it is.  As I said before, the star of this film is Caesar.  It is his journey from helpless baby chimp, through frustrated adolescence, to the harsh realities of adulthood, mirroring that of a human being (with aid from the Alzheimer’s virus MacGuffin) that we follow.  And we care so very much about him, thanks to the amazing work of WETA Digital and their motion-capturing of the great Andy Serkis (the man with the coolest movie career, ever).   The raw emotions on Caesar’s face are genius.  They did such a great job of projecting how a chimp’s facial structure would handle human-like mannerisms.  It’s both logical and seriously off-putting, the latter mostly because of the former.  I mean, we knew WETA Digital/Serkis had it in them after seeing what they did with Gollum, but it’s been eight years since Return Of The King (whoa.  REALLY?), and it’s quite obvious nobody has spent the interim sitting on their hands down there in Wellington, NZ.**  Seriously, I challenge anyone to watch this film and not be moved by Caesar’s first moments in captivity.  Hell, the entire sequence in the Ape compound, which deftly lays out for us the moments of moral awakening and subsequent rage for our hero, is an emotional thrill ride, culminating in a satisfying mass emancipation and revolution, setting up the exhilarating climax of the film on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Can you tell I dug this movie?

I want to be clear about something here.  Just because the movie’s main character is a bunch of pixels doesn’t mean the actual humans aren’t noteworthy.  “Understated” is not a bad thing when it comes to performance.  Now, I like James Franco.  I think the negativity that some people feel for him is just plain dumb.  Sure, he was a goofball at the Oscars this year, but I’ll take that over ass-kissing and uncomfortable aggrandizing any day of the week.  Besides, what does that have to do with acting ability?  Be whoever you are in life, as long as you give me a good performance, yo.  These are actors, not saints.  Sorry.  Tangent.  Performances.  Yeah, they’re good, and I think it’s especially because they (mostly) all seem to be playing it straight.  This ape uprising is born of mankind’s complacency in the face of its own cruelty, so seeing these people go through their normal, everyday lives normally allows the film to peak and valley around its simian star.  I mean, if everybody was giving a scenery-chewing go at it I’d have tuned out by the 30-minute mark.  But, again, this is part of what a good director brings to the table- the ability to reign in a cast of performers that are highly capable of munching the décor if left unchecked.  Subtle nuance goes a long way in a flick like this.

And it’s not just Franco.  Brian Cox (ape facility head, “John Landon”), Freida Pinto (Will Rodman’s squeeze, “Caroline Aranha”), David Oyelowo (Rodman’s corporate boss, “Steven Jacobs”), and Tyler Labine (company ape-handler, “Robert Franklin”) all bring their understated A-Games to the proceedings.  Lithgow’s performance is probably the most dynamic, but he’s suffering from Alzheimer’s, so it makes sense on both practical and narrative levels.  “Practical” because that disease is anything but subtle and “narrative” because Alzheimer’s is the link between man and ape here, so if any human should be as dynamic as Ceasar, it’s Charles.  The only other, uh, “dynamic” performance here is Draco Malfoy Tom Felton’s cruel, ape-hating primate facility worker, “Dodge Landon”… but most of that has to do with the fact that he’s simply a bad actor.  Thankfully they figured out a way to offset this through editing.  Doubly-thankfully, his delivery of the seminal line, “take your stinking paws off me, you damn, dirty ape,” while not great, by any stretch, isn’t a complete loss.  Also, being a subpar performer works in his favor, because not only do we dislike Dodge, we can’t wait for that fucker to “get his.”

So, yeah.  There’s a couple of iffy things happening here, namely special effects (again, awesome, but still noticeable, at times), an overlong title (Rise Of The Planet Of The Rise Of The Apes Of The Planet Of The Apes) and Tom Felton, but they’re so very outweighed by all of the truly magnificent things going on that they serve more to keep us grounded than to take away from the movie.

Early in the film, Caroline says something to the effect of, “I love apes and they frighten me.”  It’s a perfect summation of this movie.  As we get to know and care for Caesar we are lulled into a false sense of security.  We want to see him escape his captivity.  We want to see him free his brothers.  We want to see them all evolve into beings as intelligent as we are.  But not until that happens do we, as an audience, realize how completely frightening that concept is.  These animals are physically stronger than humans, and they’ve got many more centuries invested in basic survival than we do.  So, what would happen if they were instantly given the level of self-awareness that we take for granted every day?  The big Golden Gate Bridge action climax walks that line between exciting and frightening.  The apes are using their newfound intelligence and superior physicality to best the humans, and I was rooting for them.  Then a huge gorilla was knocking a riot-cop down, bellowing a hate-filled (and saliva-filled) roar into his visor, and I felt a primal fear pump through me (it helps that I saw this at the gloriously audio-riffic ETX screen on 42^nd Street- the only reason to go near Times Square).  Luckily for the cop, Caesar was close by to reinforce his no-kill views, but you get the sense that he’s aware of the can of worms he opened by accelerating his companions’ intelligence, and will only be able to hold them back for so long.  Especially if one-eyed ape, “Koba” has anything to say about it (and I’m sure he will- Hollywood loves its sequels…).  Through his actions Caesar is forced to learn that whole power/responsibility thing, although it may already be too late…

If you haven’t done so already, go see this movie.  You owe it to yourself to experience something this cool on a nice, big screen.  Of course you might not like it as much as I did (favorite movie of the year, so far), but please, please take my word for it- unless you hate it outright you won’t be able to deny its originality and emotional resonance.  I can’t speak for the die-hard Planet Of The Apes fans out there (although I’m hearing mostly positive things from that camp), but I think it’s everything a discerning moviegoer hopes for when they plunk down their hard-earned cash at the ticket window- an exciting, thought-provoking, scary, happy and sad, visually stunning, realistic two-hour thrill ride.

Then again, The Hangover Part II and Transformers 3 have made a half a billion & a billion dollars worldwide, respectively, so what the fuck do I know.

10 out of 10 Apes With Green Eyes

*I don’t mean to sound flippant here.  The Planet Of The Apes franchise is one of those things that’s been jostling about near the top of my mental queue for quite some time.  I will say this:  I’m very, very glad I went in to ROTPOTA with only the basics in my noggin, but now I’m so very ready to dive in and swim the ape-infested waters.  Wait, can apes swim?

**For the record, the gold standard for on-screen digital characters is still Davy Jones from the Pirates Of The Caribbean flicks, in my humble opining.  Completely seamless.  However, ILM has 20 years of effects work over WETA Digital, and the leaps the latter has made in the past 10 are pretty astounding, so the future- she looks bright, y’all.

Uninteresting Filmed Occurrences

Cowboys & Aliens: Um…

It’s 1873.  Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the desert with a case of amnesia and an intricate-looking metal device clamped to his arm.  He makes his way into town, has a brief exchange with a mysterious woman named Ella (Olivia Wilde) who may or may not know who he is, and is recognized by the townfolk and locked up as a wanted man.  Just as big boss cow-herder Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) arrives, demanding custody of Lonergan, UFOs attack the town and begin abducting its citizens… until the mysterious device on Lonergan’s arm comes to life and takes out one of the spacecraft with a big energy missile.  A posse is formed and our titular cowboys set out to find their abducted loved ones and quell the titular alien threat.  Crazy sci-fi/western mashup coolness…

…doesn’t commence.

What in tarnation went wrong here?  It was like taking an interesting concept, a fun director, an ensemble of mostly great actors, some above-average special effects, two tried-and-true genres, throwing them all in a blender, straining it… then putting the flavorful broth to the side and serving the tasteless chunks instead.

I don’t think it was the acting- you’ve got some top-notch performers doing their thing here.  James Bond, Indiana Jones, The Kurgan, that chick from House… but somehow caring for their characters wasn’t an option.  Seriously, you know you’ve got a lame duck movie on your hands when you manage to make Daniel Craig uninteresting to watch.  I mean, even when that guy’s silent his face is like a roadmap of raw emotion and wisdom, so it’s a feat of herculean proportions to make you simply not care.  Harrison Ford fared a little better- he did a great, uncharacteristic (for him) job of chewing up the scenery… but the scenery was so bland that it didn’t matter.  Olivia Wilde literally stood around and stared at things for ¾ of the movie.  I figured maybe she sucked really bad, so they edited most of her dialogue out of the flick… so imagine my surprise when, about halfway through, she suddenly had a whole paragraph to say, and it was actually really good.  Then she shut up again for the remainder of her screen time.  What the hell?  My boy Clancy Brown was really the only guy whose character I gave half a toss about… but he’s out of the picture pretty early on, so… boo.  There was one truly bad performance by Paul Dano as Dolarhyde’s son, Percy, but he gets abducted right away, so we don’t have to suffer through it for long.  Also, I think Sam Rockwell was in this movie… but I can’t be sure, because surely no one would hire him and then give him next-to-nothing to do for two hours, right?  RIGHT?

I suppose it could have been the writers, even with Damon Lindelof credited as one of them.  Actually, “one of them” is a pretty telling statement here.  There’s no less than SEVEN writers credited (Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, Damon Lindelof, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Steve Oedekerk, and Scott Mitchell Rosenberg), which makes me wonder how many uncredited scribes had their fingers in this one.  Maybe it’s a case of “too many chefs”?

I want to say something about the music, since a score can sometimes make or break a film… but I literally don’t remember there being any.  Someone’s credited (Harry Gregson-Williams), so I guess it was there.  Could that have been it?

Cinematography?  Well, it was a desert… it was dry and windy, and washed-out, and all.  Nothing special.  There were some fleeting moments of coolness involving Lonergan’s memories of his abduction and escape flashing into his head, randomly, all shot with grainy, green and blue lighting… very dark, creepy, and atmospheric.  But this literally comprises about five minutes, total, of the movie, so… wasted.

OK.  It kills me to even consider saying it, but I think I have to place the lion’s share of the fault on the direction.  Now, I dig Jon Favreau- I think he’s got a lot of heart, and it’s in the right place.  It was his touch that made the Iron Mans so good, Zathura is Jumanji done right, and Elf might just be the best holiday movie this side of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.  I think he went into this thing with all the best intentions, but got overwhelmed somewhere down the line.  I have no knowledge to back this up, just a feeling based on what I saw.  I’m sure on paper there’s conflict, character arc, three acts, and scenes of sci-fi mayhem, but on screen none of it seemed to matter.  Maybe Favreau thought, “well, I’ve got all these great actors, a cool-concept, a script touched by the hand of Lindelof, a comic book to base it all on… this thing practically directs itself!” and then sat back, lazily, and let it all unfold.  I dunno.  I’m not going to pontificate further, mostly because I lack the skillz to get to the bottom of what went so wrong with Cowboys & Aliens, but since it’s ultimately the director’s job to take all of the parts and make an engaging whole… I gots to assume the problem lies with Jonnie Favs, yo.

Anyway, if you’re anything like me, you’ll find it… just there. Not particularly good or bad. Maybe the most average movie I’ve seen in years. I saw stuff blowing up, horses & riders charging the enemy, sci-fi-ish guns & aliens, actors doing their thing… but none of it was all that interesting or exciting.  Sort of like seeing a made-for-TV flick with a summer movie budget.  And not much stuck with me.  I forgot most of the movie once it was over.  Actually, I forgot most of the movie during the movie.

I can’t even muster up the strength to say it sucked. That would require an emotional response… and C&A failed at invoking one in me, either positive or negative. Like I said to my companions as we walked out of the theater- “Well, that was a movie. With people in it.”

Oh, well.

5 out of 10 Scenes That Just Sort Of Happened.