Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Review

One of 2011's big summer movies was Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and it was absolutely amazing. Like most blockbusters it left a big opening for a sequel, and this year it finally arrived. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) did more of what made the first one so good and was a logical progression in the storyline while paying homage to the original classic.

Ten years after his escape from captivity Caesar (Andy Serkis) heads a vast colony of apes and chimps living a self-sufficient life in the woods outside San Francisco. In the city itself, a depleted group of Simian Flu survivors struggle to exist; their best hope being to revitalize a hydro-electric dam which will restore their power. However, to reach it they must pass through Caesar's domain. Group leader Malcolm (Jason Clarke) and Caesar have a mutual respect which allows the restoration to take place. But Caesar's embittered lieutenant Koba (Toby Kebbell), a victim of animal experimentation, has no faith in humans and usurps Caesar, plotting a full-scale attack on the city, most of whose inhabitants regard the apes as savages responsible for wiping out most of the human species. It is down to Caesar and Malcolm to join as voices of reason and re-establish peace to benefit both camps.

The story here is more complex and engaging than what the synopsis above suggests. The movie, at first, looks predictable, and you think you know where the story is going to go. But then it goes in a different direction, and by the time you think you know how it's going to unfold, it goes in another direction. It takes us in logical directions and remains interesting, but you don't see the plot twists coming which keeps the story fresh and positively engrossing. There are so many fascinating plot developments that by the end of the movie you truly have no idea how it's going to end, who will win, who to root for, or indeed if the complicated conflict can be resolved at all. While Rise and Dawn are essentially independent of the rest of the Planet of the Apes movies, this is the bleakest of the Planet of the Apes movies, but it's so compelling!

Andy Serkis was praised in Rise for his acting and portrayal of Caesar. He's been lauded as the best motion capture actor there is, and with good reason. In Dawn he's only one of several actors portraying apes, and while they all do a great job, Serkis is a cut above the rest. There are several major ape characters and they all have distinct features that set them apart from the others. There are a few shots of extreme close-ups of the ape characters. These are so detailed and intricately animated, that you'd never guess it wasn't a real ape. Even when there are apes riding horses (a quintessential image of the classic Planet of the Apes movies) the apes are still proportioned and move like actual primates. Great as the human actors are, Serkis again steals the show, even though he's never seen on camera.

My favorite part of Dawn is the complex themes. War and peace are mulled over a lot in this movie. We are shown that when two sides really want to fight, it's very difficult to stop them. At the same time we are constantly shown how a populace's opinion can be swayed by its leader, for good or for ill. We are also shown that a conflict is never as simple as "us versus them." There are individuals in an ordinarily peaceful society who want to fight and will go to great lengths to persuade others to their cause, and there are also societies that have smaller groups of people who want peace and are not represented by the larger society. There's a lot of ingroup/outgroup social psychology going on in this movie. War includes many people, but it's never as simple as it appears at face value. Each individual is fighting for what they believe is right and just. The complexity of war is so beautifully captivated here; it depicts war in a negative light naturally, but shows us there's more to it than we probably assume. 

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was truly an outstanding movie. There's evident patience and intelligence to the filmmaking as well as exploring genuine ideas about diplomacy, deterrence, law and leadership. There's an intelligence and emotional resonance in the story that I'm sure anyone could relate to. The visual effects are absolutely incredible, and will have you sold on this imaginary world the movie creates. I genuinely loved this movie and I recommend seeing it; it's well worth the price of movie tickets, and certainly worth owning on blu-ray when it becomes available. Just make sure you've seen Rise of the Planet of the Apes first.

IGN did a neat featurette about acting as an ape and using motion capture in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes for more info about the amazing ape characters:

What is your favorite movie that has used motion capture technology? Comment below and let me know!

The Adventures of Tintin Movie Review

Tintin is one of the most popular European comics of the 20th Century with publication dates ranging from 1929 to 1976. Since they were originally written in French, the comics were recommended to me to help me learn the language. I really didn't get into them as a kid so I wasn't excited when The Adventures of Tintin (2011) was announced. Now that I've seen it, I'm mad that I missed it in theaters!

After buying a model ship off a market stall, young journalist Tintin (Jamie Bell) is initially puzzled that the sinister Mr. Sakharine (Daniel Craig) should be so eager to buy it from him, even to the point of murder and kidnapping Tintin to join his gang as they sail to Morocco in on an old cargo ship. Sakharine has bribed the crew to revolt against the ship's captain, the drunken Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis). Tintin, his pet dog Snowy, Haddock, and a couple of bumbling twin Interpol detectives (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost) travel from Europe to the Sahara and Morocco in pursuit of a pickpocket, a model-ship collectors, and a long lost treasure.

Starting out, I didn't realize how many big names were in this movie. It's directed by Steven Spielberg, who is famous for countless cinema icons. It's produced by Peter Jackson, who is famous for The Lord of the Rings trilogy and others. The screenplay was written by Steven Moffat who is known for writing and directed smash hit BBC series Doctor Who and Sherlock. It stars Andy Serkis, who is best known for playing Gollum in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit; Daniel Craig, the current James Bond; And Simon Pegg and Nick Frost who appear in many British comedy movies together. There's even a musical score by John Williams who did the music for Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Jaws, and Harry Potter. Could this cast and crew get any better!?

Speaking of Indiana Jones, The Adventures of Tintin resembles a kid-friendly Indiana Jones movie. There is a lot of action and a complex mystery to solve that begins with a couple of innocuous and seemingly unrelated events that all snowball into a large globetrotting adventure. What's really excellent is they give you enough hints to be able to solve the mystery along with Tintin. That means there are competent writers behind this script; everything is suitably well developed and the plot unfolds at a very agreeable pace.

The film is animated, and uses motion capture for the characters. The actors put on suits with sensors to capture the motion of the actors so the animated characters will move the same way. There have been a couple other movies which have done this, and some of them don't look so good; if the actors aren't physically expressive enough, the animated characters end up looking ridged and out of place in the animated world. That wasn't the case here. The movement of the characters was well captured and utilized, while also having some silly cartoony stunts that helped keep the animated movie looking like it was actually animated.

There is so much fine detail in The Adventures of Tintin! The detail in the characters is particularly astounding. Close-ups of the characters show some highly detailed skin; freckles, tiny blemishes, even finger prints. If not for slightly exaggerated features (like unusually large noses) to make the characters resemble the source illustrations, you'd swear they were real people.

One of the best scenes was a chase scene near the end. Our heroes and the villains are all after the same thing which stays more or less in the center of the screen as it is moved through and around buildings and cars. Everyone moves and jumps on and off screen trying to catch their target as the camera changes directions and angles in one long sweeping shot. It just boggles the mind how much work that one scene would have taken to pull off effectively. And it was beautifully done! That scene, and others, could easily have been motion sick-inducing but the pace is smooth and the action is well choreographed. 

The Adventures of Tintin was really quite good. It was much more intelligent and ambitious than any other 3-D family film I've seen so far. It was filmed in 3-D, so I imagine the 3-D is exceptional. I ended up seeing it in 2-D on Netflix Instant Play. There's an outstanding cast and crew, some solid characters, some good laughs, excellent action, and some incredible animation. The only thing I could see as being a red flag to parents is Captain Haddock's constant drinking; it's depicted as being a funny thing that is only somewhat discouraged. I don't think it's a good enough reason not to watch it as a family, but drinking should probably be discussed afterwards. I recommend seeing The Adventures of Tintin. It's a solid enough movie that I think it's worth the price to own a copy of, probably a 3-D version if you own or have access to a 3-D television. There's a good reason this is Nickelodeon's highest grossing movie.

Check out the trailer to see the amazing animation:

Do you have a favorite 3-D family movie? Which one is it and why did you like it so much? Comment below and tell me why!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Movie Review

I'm sure most of us could tell some stories about rallying up friends to see the memorable Lord of the Rings movies. I hosted several all-day events where all three of the extended Lord of the Rings movies were watched in one day. They were great journeys that we, as movie goers, took to Middle-Earth. Finally we all get to make a whole new journey to Middle-Earth in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012), and it was well worth it!

Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is swept into a quest to reclaim the Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor from the fearsome dragon Smaug. Approached by the wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage). Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, and Sorcerers. Although their goal lies to the East in wastelands of the Lonely Mountain, they must first escape the goblin tunnels where Bilbo meets the creature that will change his life forever ... Gollum (Andy Serkis). Here, alone with Gollum on the shores of an underground lake, the unassuming Bilbo Baggins not only discovers depths of guile and courage that surprise even himself, but he also gains possession of Gollum's "precious" ring that holds unexpected and useful qualities.

As a long time fan of Tolkien's stories and of The Lord of the Rings, I was chomping at the bit to see The Hobbit. Peter Jackson returned to direct this movie with every bit as much love and detail as The Lord of the Rings. It really felt like we were taking a new journey to Middle-Earth, and it was just as captivating as it was before. We revisit some key locations that we had seen in the previous films, and they looked just as detailed and beautiful as they did before. We saw familiar and new rooms in both Bagend (Bilbo's home) and Rivendell. We get to see familiar characters as they were before Lord of the Rings, which included some unexpected cameos, and plenty of new characters.

One of the most endearing things about Lord of the Rings is that they were perfectly spot on to how we imagined them from reading the books. The Hobbit does this, too, especially the scene where Bilbo is confronted by Gollum. If you've ever seen a movie based on a book that did such a perfect job depicting the story you read, you'll know what kind of a euphoric feeling it is to see it depicted just right on the screen. The Hobbit has several moments like this.

On the other hand, it's also got several scenes that were completely new to me. Peter Jackson obtained the rights to film material that only existed as J.R.R. Tolkien's notes. This expanded the story quite a lot, and made us aware of The Dark Lord Sauron's presence in this story and how events in The Hobbit set into motion events that lead up to The Lord of the Rings. It makes The Hobbit much more meaningful as part of a much bigger epic. However, I think this is also a weak point. I think the peripheral story points sometimes felt like red herrings that drew us away from the main story which gave the movie a kind of uneven and sometimes vaguely confusing quality. But "All good stories," as Gandalf intones, "deserve embellishment." These odd back stories were usually pertinent to the overall story; they weren't simply thrown in to pad the length of the movie. I still feel like some were unnecessary, but I have faith that as more of the story unfolds in future instalments, their purpose will become more clear.

The characters were spot on. Bilbo was a lovable, scared, and very reserved character that we got to see grow and become a hero. He's far from the stuff of legend yet, but he's getting there. Gandalf is still the wise sage with meaningful advice that even I took to heart. Gollum is just as wacky, bizarre, creepy, funny, and tragic as he was before. Thorin Oakenshield was an amazing character who had a strong presence and some interesting personality flaws with which he struggles. Nevertheless, he was an outstanding character whom I would follow on epic adventures given the chance.

I think part of what made The Lord of the Rings so memorable was the music. When a certain melody begins, who can help but think of the quaint and peaceful Shire where the Hobbits live? Or the ominous string instruments that permeate scenes where characters are tempted by The One Ring? We get a whole new set of music in The Hobbit, and it is gorgeous and feels as iconic and memorable as the music from The Lord of the Rings. Right from the opening credits I couldn't help but think that this is what Middle-Earth sounds like. The Dwarven company sings songs of their lost kingdom with great reverence that sounds like ancient hymns that would have been sung by druids of old; it sounds beautiful.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was a really good first course in a whole new trilogy. The characters were great, the script was good, the sets were beautiful, and the special effects where fantastic! The pacing is a bit slow at the beginning, but picks up as soon as they leave The Shire. This is a really good adventure story that features some great characters who develop and grow. It ends on a positive note, but we absolutely get the feeling that bigger and greater things lie ahead for our new heroes. I'm anxiously looking forward to the next installment of The Hobbit trilogy. I highly recommend catching this in theaters while you can. I have a feeling this will be as big a cinema event as The Lord of the Rings trilogy was; you shouldn't miss out on it. It will be worth buying on Blu-Ray, but I recommend holding out for the extended edition. I enjoyed this so much, I want to get a copy of the soundtrack in addition to the extended edition Blu-Ray!

What scenes are you particularly looking forward to in the next two Hobbit movies? Comment below and tell me all about it!

Inkheart Movie Review

There are several movies that glorify the power of reading. Some of these movies do a good job of praising books and the power of reading. I think that is what Iain Softley was trying to achieve in the 2008 movie, Inkheart, but it didn’t really make me want to race off to the library once it was over.

Mortimer “Mo” Folchart (Brendan Fraser) discovers he has a rare ability to liberate fictional characters into the real world when he reads books aloud. He discovers this power as he reads to his young family one evening. The catch to this ability is that people from the real world become trapped in the book in place of missing characters. When he accidently freed the villain named Capricorn (Andy Serkis) from a fantasy book entitled “Inkheart,” Mo’s wife became trapped in the book. Twelve years later, Mo travels around with his daughter, Meggie (Eliza Bennett), still searching for another copy of Inkheart so that he can read his wife out again. Meanwhile, Capricorn has become a powerful figure in the real world. Knowing Mo’s ability, Capricorn has one of his henchmen, Dustfinger (Paul Bettany), hunting down Mo. Capricorn seeks to take over the real world by letting loose an evil entity called The Shadow, and needs Mo to release it from the book.

As a bibliophile, I appreciate movies and stories that celebrate reading and the power of books. All of the characters in Inkheart have a profound love and respect for books. One of my favorite scenes has Mo browsing the shelves of a used bookstore looking for a copy of Inkheart and hears faint chatter of fictional characters calling to him. This is just about the only moment in the movie that really makes books seem magical. The ideas of reality and fiction have already been explored better elsewhere. The Neverending Story comes to mind. Inkheart starts off well, but quickly degenerates into a basic good guy versus bad guy story with little to set it apart from other movies of its kind.

The biggest problem with Inkheart was that it was confusing. Do all copies of a book change when a character is removed from it? Probably so; Mo is looking for another copy of Inkheart to free his wife. Does a story change drastically if its major characters are missing? Can the same character be “read out” from different parts of a book? It’s hard to say since this isn’t developed in the movie, and there never seems to be consequences for taking a character from a book. Granted, this is a movie targeted towards children who probably wouldn’t grasp such consequences, but that’s not an excuse for sloppy writing.

Brendan Fraser acts very subdued and bored in this role. Andy Serkis is a better actor than the character he portrays here deserves. Yet Paul Bettany does an amazing job! His portrayal of Dustfinger is full of complex subtleties that bring the character to life. You really get a feel for this character and his motives. Dustfinger doesn’t want to keep working for Capricorn, and simply wants to get Mo to return him to his book so he can be with his beloved wife again. We’re not quite sure where his loyalties lie as it seems to change depending on the situation as he tries to advance his personal quest to return to his family. It’s also the only Paul Bettany film I’ve seen to date where he isn’t butt naked on camera.

Inkheart is creative, but seems to lack heart. In one scene, Mo and company are attempting to flee Capricorn’s castle and conjures up the twister from The Wizard of Oz by reading a passage. There’s a chase scene amidst strong winds and debris which concludes when Dorothy’s house lands in the road, blocking the bad guys. It was kind of a neat scene, but doesn’t feel meaningful. Conjuring a twister wasn’t necessary; any kind of distraction would have sufficed. It’s as if the next step in the story simply required that “they escape,” and the twister acted as nothing more than a convoluted, contrived, and convenient means of doing so that allowed them to showcase some special effects.

Inkheart wasn’t that great. It was fun if you don’t try to follow the story, and therefore a perfect movie to watch with young kids. It does a pretty poor job of convincing viewers to pick up a book and read, though you may want to do so anyway to figure out what was happening in the movie. In the end, Inkheart is an “okay” family film, but probably not worth owning a copy of unless your kids somehow fall head over heels in love with it.

If you could bring any character out of a book, who would it be and why? Comment below and let me know!

Movie Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

We don’t seem to be getting a lot of original stories as of late. A lot of films seem to be based off of books, based off of comic books, based off an older movie, and even a few based off of TV shows. These are given labels like remake, reboot, and the nebulous label of “reimagining.” Batman was rebooted with Batman Begins(2005) and was such a success that it will be a long time before we accept a non-Christopher Nolan Batman. There was a recent 2010 remake of a 1981 fantasy movie, Clash of the Titans, by the same title. Director Tim Burton attempted to remake the 1968 sci-fi classic Planet of the Apes in 2001, which had a pretty negative critical reception. There were five original Planet of the Apes movies, followed by a live-action television series and an animated series. This was later followed by the Tim Burton monstrosity. Realistically, the first Planet of the Apesmovie starring Charlton Heston was the only good one of the lot, but the franchise has made a significant cultural impact. We seem to revere the original Planet of the Apeswith some degree of reverence and respect. This is why, when 20^th Century Fox produced yet another reboot entitled Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) directed by Rupert Wyatt, some of us cringed.

Will Rodman (James Franco) has a personal stake for developing a cure for Alzheimer’s disease; his afflicted father Charles (John Lithgow). When a chimpanzee shows remarkable progress with the latest strain of the cure, Will presents his findings to his boss, Jacobs (David Oyelowo), to show that the drug is ready for human trials. During the presentation, the chimp goes on a rampage and the Board of Directors pulls the plug on the program. It’s not until after the other test chimps were put down that they realized the rampaging chimp was protecting her infant. Unwilling to put down an infant chimp, Will takes it home to keep it safe. Charles has taken to reciting Shakespeare and incidentally names the infant Cesar. As Cesar grows up, it becomes evident that he has inherited the enhanced intelligence from his mother. Cesar reaches an unprecedented level of cognition and intelligence, and begins to question his own identity, wondering whether or not he is a pet. Will uses the cure he developed on his father, who ends up making a remarkable, but temporary, recovery. Will shows Jacobs the results and research begins again. Charles’ condition worsens and Cesar attacks a neighbor who is angry at Charles for attempting to drive the neighbor’s car. Cesar is sent to a primate facility by court order. Here he interacts with other apes for the first time in his life, and suffers some animal abuse by Dodge Landon (Tom Felton), one of the facility's workers. The abuse that Cesar endures causes him to resent some humans; he ends up leading a mass exodus and revolution against the humans.

If you look at any movie poster or website about Rise of the Planet of the Apes you see “Starring James Franco” plastered all over the place. Whoever did that can’t possibly have seen the movie. James Franco is really more of a supporting character. The main character is without a doubt Cesar. The motion capture for Cesar is done by none other than Andy Serkis; a phenomenal actor who played Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Kong in Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. Cesar’s character is actually quite complex and interesting. You can really empathize with what Cesar is going through, and relate to him when he’s finally had enough and chooses to revolt. Cesar isn’t out to kill the humans; he’s fighting for his freedom. He stops some of this fellow apes from killing some of the innocent bystanders, and he still has a relationship with Will. Cesar has to be one of the more interesting movie characters this summer. This is Cesar’s story, not Will Rodman’s.

It seems to me that the central theme in Rise of the Planet of the Apes is one of loss and abandonment. There is the often overused “man playing God” kind of theme where humans try to control the forces of nature and it blows up in their faces. Frankenstein (1931) and Jurassic Park (1993) are both examples of that theme. There’s also the premise of using potentially dangerous animals to try to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease; that is exactly the same premise in Deep Blue Sea (1999 where sharks are used instead of apes. In Rise of the Planet of the Apes Will is trying to prevent the loss of his father, in addition to trying to fight the government so he doesn’t have to abandon Cesar. Cesar on the other hand lost his mother at birth, he’s abandoned by Will, and he loses some friends during his revolution. Loss, abandonment, and not having someone to comfort you when you are subjected to cruelty are causes of emotional hurt that strikes a chord with the audience. I think that is what makes Cesar such an interesting and relatable character. Under the same circumstances, would we not feel sad, lonely, or angry enough to retaliate ourselves?

If you are a fan of the original Planet of the Apes movie, you’ll notice a few throwback references in this new adaptation. You’ll see Charlton Heston briefly appear on a TV, Cesar’s mother is called “bright eyes,” and Cesar is constructing a model of the Statue of Liberty in one scene. Tom Felton’s character, Dodge, gets the honor or delivering two of Heston’s most memorable lines from the 1968 film: “It’s a madhouse! A madhouse!” and “Take your stinkin’ paw off me you damn dirty ape!” I’m not so sure Tom Felton has earned an exalted enough status to speak such sacred lines on camera, but to his credit he delivers them well and the scenes in which they were spoken were very dramatic and powerful and even left me stunned for a moment. Generally a remade movie will make some references to the original movie that they are (in most cases) destroying. There are plenty of them here, but unlike some remakes, this one doesn’t beat you over the head with them. Other references are really subtle. The orangutan at the primate facility who befriends Cesar is named Maurice, a nod to the actor, Maurice Evans, who plays the orangutan, Dr. Zaius, in the original film. If you haven’t seen the original film, you won’t be missing anything important in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes was indeed a good movie. It was worthy of having the words “Planet of the Apes” in its title. It has interesting characters, a good storyline, great effects, and some nostalgic references in it. There is a big set up for a sequel, and I would welcome it; I left the theater wanting to know what would happen next to Cesar and his newly formed community of intelligent apes. I enjoyed this enough that I want to get a copy on Blu-Ray when it becomes available. If Tim Burton put you off of ever watching another Planet of the Apes movie, do your best to block it from your mind and go see Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Batman and Robin (1997) did precede Batman Begins, after all; a rebooted movie can do better than its predecessor.

So, did you see Rise of the Planet of the Apes? Did you like it? Did you not like it? Tell me why. What is your favorite ape movie you’ve ever seen? Comment below!