KWIF: Challengers (+2)

KWIF is Kent's Week in Film where each week Kent has a spotlight movie in which he writes a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else he watched that week, he just does a "quick" (*cough*) little summary of his thoughts. 

This Week:
Challengers (2024, d. Luca Guadagnino - in theatre)
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024, d. Wes Ball - in theatre)
The City of Lost Children (La Cité des Enfants Perdus - 1995, Jean-Pierre Jeunet & Marc Caro - the binder) 

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What I knew about Challengers prior to seeing the film could be summed up in two words: tennis, threesome. I guess beyond that I knew it was the new film from Luca Guadagnino -- the director of Call Me By Your Name who has become a favourite director of the Millennial cineaste set -- and starring Zendaya, the mononymous star of Euphoria who has seemingly become a figurehead leading lady of the Millennial culture critic set.

I haven't seen any other Guadagnino film, so I have no expectations of his work. Outside of the tentpole Spider-Man and Dune pictures, I haven't seen any of Zendaya's other works, but I have a generally favourable opinion of her as a likeable and capable performer. I also like tennis a fair bit, but threesomes just seem awkward. So I assumed this would be a drama exploring the awkward emotional dynamics of polyamorous tennis players, and I was not really that enthused.

But wow! Challengers not at all that, except that it's exactly that.

The film takes place in multiple time periods, jumping back and forth between 2019 and then 2006 or 2009 or earlier in the week in 2019. Tashi and Art Donaldson are a power couple in the world of tennis. Tashi is a Art's manager, but also has a head for marketing, promotion and branding. She was, we learn, the women's junior champion at the 2006 US Open but had suffered a career-ending injury, we learn, before her professional career really got started. 

She met Art and his carefree, confident best friend Patrick Zweig at the same US Open Juniors tournament in 2006. Art and Patrick won the junior men's  doubles, and were set to face each other in the junior men's final. Both Patrick and Art fancy Tashi, and upon making it known to her, Tashi is intrigued. This leads to a three-way make-out session which, despite how truly three-way it gets, doesn't seem to get all that dramatic. Tashi lays down a challenge, she will date the winner of the final. 

And from there the dynamics get complicated as Tashi and Art go to school, playing the college circuit and Patrick goes pro, but doesn't have the discipline to carry him. He's too confident and carefree. The dating and friendship dynamics get pushed and pulled in many directions.

In 2019, we know Art and Tashi are married, but the dynamics seem off. She's clearly pulling all the strings, and Art seems almost ok with letting her, but there's something clearly unspoken between them. Art's career is lagging, and he doesn't seem to have the will. Tashi signs him up for a "Challenger" tournament in New Rochelle when it just so happens Patrick, estranged from both of them and on hard times, happens to be playing as well. Planned or coincidence? It doesn't matter, the results are explosive.

As the film juggles back and forth, unravelling the complicated dynamics of this trio, the big finale makes clear (without spelling it out) where each character's allegiances lay, and it basically recontextualizes everything.

If it all sounds a bit messy emotionally, strangely, the emotional side of Challengers seems almost a side effect of the storytelling. Guadagnino and his editor Marco Costa cut the film like it's an action movie, with big set pieces including various tennis matches where balls are being whipped at the camera, and a wind storm that is just the metaphorical hurricane that is Patrick on Art and Tashi's lives. Additionally it's a story that is packed around, almost behind, a thumping, grinding, hyper-energized soundtrack from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that oozes the sexuality of Renzor's Nine Inch Nails work of old without almost all (but not quite all) the sinister undertones. It's the best original banger of a soundtrack since Daft Punk's work on Tron Legacy. Marry those visceral, heart-pounding sounds with the vibrant blues and greens of the tennis court and the near cloudless skies, and the sun-soaked, sweat-drenched men that equate the one-on-one battle of swatting a ball back and forth with immense sexual tension and it all makes for a sublimely genreless head trip of a movie.

I find it impossible to classify Challengers,  but it was a wholly entertaining picture that left me completely energized afterwards.

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Of things I know I am a fan of, the Planet of the Apes franchise is one. Certainly the original series is what I enjoy far more than the modern, but I like the modern series as well.  The difference is I can keep going back to the pulpy, adventurous PotA movies, TV shows, and comics where the newer Andy Serkis-led films feel weighty in a way that makes them good movies, but less fun to watch (let's just forget about the Tim Burton one, ok?).

A continuation of the modern series isn't something I was averse to, at all, even though I really didn't see the need for it. Matt Reeves created a pretty tight duology out of Dawn of... and War for... that closed out the Caesar saga pretty well and left the humans and apes with the promise of a path forward.

This new chapter, from The Maze Runner series director Wes Ball, picks up "generations later". Caesar is gone, almost a distant memory but his teachings persist. In the falcon clan of apes, who respect nature and each other, and pair bond with their birds, the teachings of Caesar are the foundation of their society and laws, without Caesar's name ever being uttered.  But a human, an "echo", arrives, and causes a stir amidst that clan. Her arrival brings the Apes pursuing her, and they decimate the village, killing the strongest and taking the rest.

Noa, a chimp coming of age, survives the attack. He sets out in search of his stolen tribe and finds the echo, as well as a wise elder Orangutan named Raka who teaches Noa about the word of Caesar as well as the history of man.  The echo is May, a human who speaks, who deceives, who has her own agenda, which isn't revealed until the film's finale. 

They are found by the brutal apes and taken to an encampment by the ocean. May is placed with another talking human while Caesar reunites with his mother and friends. They are all under the jurisdiction of Proximus, who twists the words of Caesar to his own foul machinations. "Apes stronger together" he changes, with an arms high, knuckles together solute, repeated by the most loyal and fearful apes beneath him the pits. He dares to call himself, now, Caesar.

Proximus' goal is to break into a fallout shelter that's sealed tight. His goal is not the betterment of ape society, but rather the advancement of ape society under his rule. He knows what is locked in the vault is evolution, but only for those who wield the knowledge and power. 

The film provides an intriguing adventure into a distant post-apocalyptic future where apes are the dominant species, but they seem to be constantly under threat by humanity's past. I loved the cityscape overgrown with vegetation, and watching the apes swing through it all. I loved the peaceful cohabitation with nature, and the tranquility of it all... even though it's post apocalyptic, it felt hopeful... and then the humans arrive. 

May is a complicated character, who becomes more and more complicated the further the film goes on. She's so human, which compared to the apes, and even those with warped ideologies seem less scary than what May is capable of. Apes don't seem to have the ability to deceive each other, and that seems like such a noble way to exist.

I liked this movie, but it's pretty empty calories overall. It flirts with ideas of religion as a tool and a weapon, but never takes that idea anywhere. The old PotA films never flinched at extensive dialogue scenes that would find apes engaged in debate, so I'm not sure why this one never gets into one. There's monologuing but not any back and forth. The theology here really needed to be explored in depth, as opposed to just left adrift on the surface.

The ending is also underwhelming, proving this is an episode of a planned multi-part story. In this way it feels more in league with the older PotA series than the newer one. Director Ball comes from young adult fiction adaptations and this feels very much a young adult fiction interpretation of the franchise and setup for the series.

The effects are largely pretty good, with the apes faces being very expressive. And as for it feeling like a cartoon, strangely I never felt that the humans and apes were not sharing the same space (even though there were scaling issues with the ape characters throughout the film).

I'll certainly watch more of this.

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I had originally came across The City of Lost Children by way of the soundtrack by Angelo Badalamenti.  It was Badalamenti's works with David Lynch that drew me to the composer first and then I started expanding outward. I had listened to the soundtrack countless times over many years before ever seeing the film.

It would be almost a decade between acquiring the soundtrack and finally seeing the film, getting a used DVD copy of it at some local Toronto establishment in the aughts. By this time I would have already seen both Alien Resurrection and Amelie, so I would have had some familiarity with Jeunet's work, as well, I would have been steeped in Guillermo del Toro's respect for Ron Perlman so the film was an assured winner.

But I couldn't anticipate exactly what the film would be despite all this exterior familiarity (pretty much the opposite of the Challengers experience). I know I watched it. I loved it. I filed it away in The Binder and it would be almost two decades later before I returned to it.

Watching it again this past week there was the weird experience of having the music carry be back to a very nostalgic place, but the visuals of the film recalling only the faintest hint familiarity.

Where Jeunet and Caro's Delicatessen is, in a way, a delightful dark fairy tale for adults, The City of Lost Children is more a delightful storybook nightmare for adults. These sort of children's stories but not for children seem to the the resting place for Jeunet and Caro's ouevre. 

It's a gorgeous and visually intricate film with massive sets above, on, and below the water, with building exteriors and interiors that just wow and stun with their many details. Costuming comes from Jean Paul Gaultier who really felt the vibe and worked with it. Everything is complimentary. The colour palette is rust red and fluorescent green, which are pretty stark contrasts with each other. There's a retro aesthetic to the scene, with Perlman's strongman's outfit or the Dr. Frankenstein-type lab setup that feels sort of a 1920's vibe and yet outside of time, or some alternate reality to ours. 

The film find Perlman's strongman, named "One", on the hunt for his stolen little brother. Along the way he encounters pickpocket Miette, who works for the Octopus, conjoined twins who run the local crime racket. One sort of adopts Miette as his little sister and the pair work through the tangle of crime that leads them to the water tower hideout of Krank, a malicious man unable to dream. He's the ultimate recipient of the stolen children, and experiments upon them to share, or steal, or consume their dreams and ultimately their youth. 

The film reminds me of a halfway point between Brazil and Edward Scissorhands without ever cribbing off of either. They all just feel of a type, and yet singular objects. Last year's Poor Things is sort of the evolution of these dark fairy tales for adults.  

There are digital effects in the film (a CGI flea primarily, as well as some use of classic face morphing technology and also many, many Dominique Pinons seamlessly integrated into single shots) that somehow don't feel exceptionally dated. The film is so stylized as to feel surreal that surreal-looking special effects don't seem so out of place. Of course, it is an old DVD copy so maybe a higher resolution transfer would make the differences more glaring.

There really aren't many of these types of films out there, and I really tend to love them when I see them, it's just a wonder why I don't engage with them more often.

Go-Go-Godzilla #34: Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire

Director: Adam Wingard
Year: 2024
Length: 115 minutes

The Gist:
Kong is living his new life in the Hollow Earth. He has a treaty with Godzilla. Godzilla gets the surface world, Kong gets the underground. Monarch watches all. To what end is never really established. They're under pressure from external governments to destroy the Titans rather than just watch them. But Monarch know's we've been knocked down a peg on the food chain.

Kong is battered after fight with a pack of Hollow Earth ... wolf-ish-things. He has a toothache and returns to the surface so Monarch can take care of it. He seems to understand they're there to help him. Trapper (Dan Stevens) is the free-spirited "vet" that takes care of it.

Meanwhile, Jia (Kaylee Hottle), the sole survivor of the Iwi tribe of Skull Island is having a hard time adjusting to day-to-day life at the Monarch schools (it annoys me that we get hints of this Monarch-centric world but there's no exploration of it) but she's also receiving visions and falling into fugue states. She worries about her mental health.  Her adoptive mother, Dr. Ilene Andrews (Rebecca Hall), worries too, only to discover that the pattern Jia draws in her fugue states resembles the seismic readings she's been getting from Hollow Earth.  She goes to Titan conspiracy podcaster Bernie Hayes (Brian Tyree Henry) for help because the rest of Monarch just shrugs it off as coincidence.  His condition for helping is a trip to Hollow Earth.

So when he discovers that both the image Jia is drawing and the seismic readings are a distress call from Hollow Earth, a small team (consisting of Ilene, Trapper, Jia, Bernie and their redshirt pilot) go to investigate.

Meanwhile Kong has encountered other giant apes for the first time and they attack him. But he is Kong and they are not. The larger ones flee, but the child ape Kong hangs onto, and forces the child (a pesky little runt) to take him to the rest of the apes.

As Kong encounters what remains of the society he is descended from, a community of apes enslaved by the Scar King as they search for an escape to the surface (doesn't seem that hard, mind) the humans (less their redshift) discover a whole other tribe of Hollow Earth Iwi. They tell of the war the Skar King led against Godzilla, and his desire to rule the surface. Jia is the prophesied last of Skull Island who will come and awaken Mothra, who will help Godzilla in defeating this threat against the planet.

Kong fights the Skar King, and his slave masters, and the giant ice-breathing lizard he has power over. Kong loses and flees only with his life. His hand is mangled, but Monarch has, conveniently, a power glove from an abandoned mech suit ready for Kong to help him both heal and fight better.

Meanwhile, Godzilla, barely in the picture, has absorbed the nuclear radiation of a French power station, and has gone up against the dragon Tiamat and stolen its home in the antarctic where the solar radiation is most strongest.

Kong goes to the surface and with Mothra's intervention, enlists Godzilla into helping defeat the Skar King. Middle Earth fight. Our heroic trio prevails. Godzilla returns to his nest in the Colosseum in Rome for a catnap, Kong has the family he's been searching for, and I guess the humans are going to just leave the Iwi in peace and never speak of it again (Bernie's been taking video this whole time, but Trapper gives him a warning of sharing it...there's not even a concluding moment of Bernie destroying his recordings or anything.).

Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
Friend

The Samesies:

Like the Godzilla films of old, there's a human story here that matters less and less and less as the story goes on, and, frankly, doesn't really matter a whole lot to begin with. But that's also typical of Godzilla films. The human story is often time-biding padding until we get to the monster fights.  

The difference here from old Godzilla is, well, the samesies as Godzilla vs Kong, where the film's main character is Kong, and we do spend a lot of time with.  We follow Kong around as he traverses the Hollow Earth and its dangers. Like the previous Kong movies in this Monsterverse series, he is such a soulful character and it's hard not to be emotionally invested in him.

Godzilla films have, a number of times now, given Godzilla a junior version for him to adopt into his life. For the first time, Kong is the recipient of a junior giant ape to dote over... or to grab by the leg and swing around like a cudgel(!).  If you thought from the trailer that this little doe-eyed red-furred ape would be a totes dorbs aww-meme generator, Wingard instead makes him a little shitheel scamp that betrays Kong a number of times over. But we learn the kid is traumatized from the environment he grew up in, and Kong showing him a kindness or two does eventually sway the brat.

In my watchings of the Godzillas these past few months, Mothra has emerged as perhaps my favourite kaiju, if not necessarily the creature herself, but for all the trappings around her. Her native worshippers, the fariy twin Shobijin, the glorious Masura song they sing, the way they set up Mothra as protector of the Earth only for her to basically be defeated by almost any threat and explode into stardust... but to have larval offspring also called Mothra. There's a whole twisted world to her that I really enjoy.  And by dovetailing Kong's native tribe, the Iwi, into Mothra's, it's a blending I like. But pageantry around Mothra this time is not up to standards. There's no song, nor larvae (that was already done in King of the Monsters, so I get it), and Mothra doesn't explode for a change. So, some losses, but a win.

It's not a net positive, but the surface fights between the Titans, in various cities, feels much like the Toho Godzilla films, where the world feels constructed for the purpose of being torn down. It doesn't feel like the real world even with the occasional composited shot of people fleeing. We're such a long way now from Gareth Edwards' mastery of feeling the awe of monsters fighting overhead. But the brawls do feel like the CGI version of the suitmation fights.  They're a lot more elaborate in their physicality and camera angles, the the sensation is just the same.

The Differences:
It's weird to say, but Hollow Earth as an environment, is just setting. It's no longer treated with much majesty and as such it loses so much of its "wow" factor. We got a lot of "wow" factor out of GvK and even Monarch:Legacy of Monsters but we don't get much of that here. Bernie has a few bulging eye moments but that's about it.  In observing this film largely through Kong as our POV character, we lose the sense of scale. Likewise, leaving the surface for much of the film, there's no structures in Hollow Earth for us to get scale comparisons to.

The Legendary Monsterverse has spent four films and a 10-episode TV series building up Monarch, only for it to be relegated very much into the background of this story. I guess they're just leaving any intrigue around the organization, or the politics of its existence to the TV show, should it return. Which is a shame because it's really what this Monsterverse is built around, and it should be our guide through this. I don't dislike that Wingard and the writing team have fleshed Kong out over two movies the way they have...these two pictures really do fit nicely together as a duology. But the title of these films isn't Kong: Homecoming and Kong: No Way Home, but Godzilla vs/x Kong, and the other half of that title has such little presence and purpose other than force of nature.  In a way it's fitting as we often only get a 15 minutes of Godzilla in any given film, but when we do the focus is squarely on the King, and here, he's a sideshow.

Anyone worth caring about?
Ilene and Jia are the two essential holdovers from the prior film. It's a good choice. Rebecca Hall has such a way of drawing the audience into her performance. She's able to trigger a sympathetic nerve like few other actors can, without ever being cloying about it. Part of that comes from her relationship with Jia. Having a deaf daughter means the communication is largely silent and expression conveys so much more. And Kaylee Hottle, for these two films comprising the bulk of her acting career, has been great in both of them. An absolutely endearing performer who is able to convey depths with just expression.

This film is so deep into quiet communication... Ilene and Jia, the telepathic Iwa people, the apes, Jia and Kong, Kong and Godzilla, Mothra and everyone. It's all very quietly emotive, which is what makes the dialogue so hard to digest. Like Trapper isn't really *that* annoying a character, except everyone else is saying so much without saying anything that his ballyhoo cries are just... a lot. And then there's Bernie.

I've loved or liked every Brian Tyree Henry performance I've seen. Except this one. Bernie is a conspiracy nut who is pretty much correct about most of what he's gone nutty over, but he's a caricature in these two films. He doesn't seem like a real person. And as "comic relief" in this film in particular, almost every jokey line falls incredibly flat. Plus, his character, beyond the initial discovery of the call for help, is useless.  Much like the previous film, Bernie contributes one thing, then just takes up oxygen in the film.  And it drove me nuts that Bernie, an established podcaster, kept going on and on about his blog.

The Message:
erm...home is where the heart is? I dunno. It's not that kind of movie.

Rating (out of 5 Zs): ZZz
I would say I enjoyed this as much as I enjoyed GvK and yet, the more I think about it, the less impressed I get.  I'm not deep in the weeds on it, but I'm annoyed that I can't seem to reconcile the Hollow Earth of King of the Monsters, GvK, Monarch:LoM and this film.  That may be on me, but I don't think so. I just don't think the writers/producers care enough about continuity/consistency. 

The diminished role of both Godzilla and Monarch are definitely detractors for me, but, and I need to be clear, I love the ape stuff. Absolutely love it. Is it what I wanted to see out a a Kaiju movie? Not really. Or at all. We already have a Planet of the Apes movie coming out this year from the same studio. Why did we need another one, just plus-sized?

If these Legendary Monsterverse films do continue, the next time better be space aliens, Gigan and Megalon, with Godzilla in front, recruiting Kong on the back-side.

I did want to call out that I really enjoyed the Godzilla/Kong fights in Egypt. But they couldn't have worked the pyramids into Titan lore somehow? Through the Iwi at least? Sigh.

Sleepytime Factor:
None actually. I had a pretty good time.

 

Go-Go-Godzilla #33: Godzilla vs Kong

Director: Adam Wingard
Year: 2021
Length: 113 minutes

The Gist:
I guess because of the understanding of how the Titans communicate and sense each others' presences, Monarch is protecting Kong on Skull Island within a gigantic dome from alpha Titan Godzilla. Kong isn't stupid though, and he knows his fortress is actually a prison. Dr. Ilene Andrews is Monarch's chief Kong-ologist, and her deaf adopted daughter, Jia, seems to have a special bond with Kong. She's taught him some sign language, but they keep that between them.

Walter Simmons is the megalomaniac head of Apex Cybernetics, a very powerful tech organization. He recruits ex-Monarch researcher and Hollow Earth theorist Dr. Nathan Lind after telling him he's created a  vehicle for safe entry into the centre of the planet but what they need is a Titan to lead them to the gateway.

Using his connections they manage to get to Skull Island and convince Ilene that this mission is a good idea. On the way to the gateway, Godzilla attacks a drugged, dazed, and seemingly depressed Kong. Kong fights valiantly, enough to ward Godzilla off, but it's no victory. To continue on the path they've chose would risk another attack. But tracking Godzilla, they discover a gateway, and airlift Kong there.

They make passage into middle earth where they discover Kong's home territory, seemingly abandoned, but just laced with stones full of a new form of energy.  Unknown to Doctors Andrews and Lind, this is what Walter Simmons was really after. Apex Cybernetics created a giant remote controlled Mecha-Godzilla that uses a hybrid cybernetic mind link between a human host and one of Ghidora's skulls from the previous film to control it, but it needs the raw power of the Hollow Earth to power it.

Godzilla knows that Kong has found a hotbed of power and, from Hong Kong big G revs up his atomic blast and opens up a hole right to Kong's homestead (that's 6000+ KM for reference). Armed with a super-charged axe, Kong makes his way to the surface to battle Godzilla (basically hopping up the tunnel Godzilla just bore into the Earth...all 6000+ KM), and once again finds he's just not a match. Godzilla nearly kills him.

Meanwhile, Simmons is out to prove man is the Apex Predator once more and sets MechaGodzilla out into the wild. It's a brawl, and Godzilla's about to lose, but Nathan uses the HEAV as a defibrillator and revives Kong. Jia explains to resurrected Kong that Godzilla doesn't have to be his enemy, and that he needs help. Kong steps in, and the two decimate Mecha-G in a pretty nice tag-team (Godzilla charging Kong's axe with his atomic breath was just aces). They reach an uneasy truce, an understanding of cohabitation, and go their separate ways.

Oh yeah, Mark and Madison Russell from the last film are in this as well. Madison is obsessed with a Titan-focussed conspiracy podcast run by Bernie Hayes, who works for Apex Cybernetics. Along with Madison's friend Josh, they manage to meet up with Bernie and go on a fruitless and meaningless adventure which culminates in them dumping a flask of whiskey on a computer to give Mecha-Godzilla a moment's pause, which is just enough to make a difference it the big finale.

Godzilla, Friend or Foe:
He's the same Godzilla as previous, a massive force of nature, but we get the sense that he's not *just* a force of nature. That he can think a bit too, and even socialize with others.

The Samesies:
Just like the previous Godzilla eras, the continuity here ain't so tight between the films, especially when you add Monarch: Legacy of Monsters to the mix, it's not easy to fit all the pieces together of what humanity knows about the habits and behaviours of the Titans and Hollow Earth, and when they knew about it.  I'm sure it's all fudge-able, in the same way one has to fudge Star Wars continuity to make it make sense, but it's not all there on the screen.

Like many Godzilla films past, the technology available to mankind has gotten really advanced. There's some heavy investment into "super science" and research infrastructure, even way beyond the previous film. King of the Monsters toes the sci-fi waters, where GvK just jumps right in. It's pretty unapologetic about it, too, which I like a lot.  

Mechagodzilla having a connection to Ghidorah is right out of the Heisei era Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II, as is the idea of Ghidorah taking over the robot from its human controllers.

Like King Kong vs Godzilla, there's lore introduced here that suggests the two beasts have an ancient rivalry. This film goes into it a lot more than the 60's film did, though. 

The Differences:

The Hollow Earth was teased in the previous film and even visited via an underwater portal (which I guess explains why there wasn't all the topsy-turvey-ness others have reported. The reason they don't go back to that gateway is, well, because they blew it up with a nuke.  Anyway, the visit to the Hollow Earth here is very adventuresome and exploratory. It's vibrantly realized and I really dug this sequence.

The HEAV (Hollow Earth Aerial Vehicle?) is not too far off from the Super-X hovering tanks of Toho films past, although these are strictly transportation meant to accommodate the flippidy-doo journey into Hollow Earth. I like the Tron-like light trails it leaves behind in its wake.

I haven't been re-watching Kong films, but doesn't Kong usually have something of a connection with young women? I think this is the first time he's really had a relationship with a child, and maybe the first time he's shown an aptitude for communicating with sign language.

This is the first Godzilla movie to feature a podcaster, and dive into conspiracy theories as they apply to the Monsterverse. Of course, this is the annoying thing where we know more than Bernie does.

Anyone worth caring about?
Oh, so much more to care about than in the previous film. Rebecca Hall as Ilene and Alexander Skarsgard as Nathan are both immediately and infinitely more appealing and likeable than Vera Farmiga and Kyle Chandler. Chandler is still in this film but really tossed into the background, where he should be. Hall, Skarsgard, and Kaylee Hottle (Jia), as well as the Apex and Monarch crews, are all basically team Kong, while Millie Bobbie Brown (returning as Madison), Brian Tyree Henry as Bernie, and Julian Denison as Josh are the largely useless and purposeless team Godzilla but quite likeable. I'm happy to see some of this crew are back in one of two "Empire" movies this March of 2024 in Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (see also Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire).

But, really, the best character in the film is Kong. He's so expressive. He's a big, homesick, lonely boy, with such soulful eyes, and every moment he has with Jia made me just a little, teensy bit weepy.

The Message:
Uh, it's possible to make peace with even your longest-standing enemy? *ahem*

Rating (out of 5 Zs): ZZZ
This isn't a super-smart movie, and it's sense of scale goes all out-of-whack, but boy does it know how to have fun. If there's a big difference between this and King of the Monsters it is exactly that point. The characters in this film are going on a big old ride and despite the peril they may be in, the performers seem to be having fun. It's contagious. 

The Kong v Godzilla fights are very well orchestrated with a LOT of fun little nuances you could never accomplish in suitmation. That's not a dig on the fun of suitmation, but just part of the comparison. CGI frees the filmmakers up to create more expressive creatures, and have more nuanced fights. Not sure the physics always work out in its favour but who cares!? Big dumb fun is supposed to be exactly that.

I just wish Skarsgaard was playing Tarzan in this.

Sleepytime Factor:
I did have a brief little headbob of a nod during the Ghidorah-head discovery or one of the team Godzilla scenes, but I never went right out.

Go-Go-Godzilla: #4 King Kong vs. Godzilla

My intention for this SBP series, especially with the original 50's through 70's era Godzilla is to watch them in their original edit and tongue, with subtitles. Unfortunately sometimes you're just stuck with what you have at hand, and what I have at hand is the Universal-released edit of KKvsG.  I know there are some major differences (7 minutes difference in the edit, the bulk of the score has been changed, scenes shifted, and a weird United Nations News framing sequence) so I will need to loop back on this one after all is said and done.

That all said, KKvsG is the first giant moster movie I can recall seeing. I was a young, young lad (possibly around 5 years old), and recall there being a screening at my local library. I have vague memories of the experience, but also the memories might not be truthful, as I remember it being black and white, which apparently it never was

Name: King Kong vs. Godzilla
Japanese Name: Kingu Kongu tai Gojira
Director: Ishirō Honda
Studio: Toho with Universal International
Year: 1963

The Story:
A cheap-ass United Nations news desk reports on some Chilean troubles and then some issues with Japanese shipping routes. A UN nuclear sub is on its way to help. The newsman reports on rare psychotropic berries that Japanese science crew has discovered on Ferro Island, a berry the local natives are defensive of, as they use its psychotropic effects to placate a giant beast that cohabitates on the island.

A pharmaceutical company is both after the berries, and saving the flogging rating of the nature TV show it sponsors. The executives plan a one-two-punch of going to the island to both get more berries and capture this giant monster on camera.

Meanwhile, back at the "UN newsroom", events transpire on the UN nuclear sub "Seahawk".  Unfortunately the ship gets wedged between shifting ice floes and its engines are destroyed.  The tube full of bad actors are trapped aboard the flooding ship, their deaths all but certain, especially as Godzilla awakens from the very same ice.  Smash cut back to the "UN newsroom" (because all of the footage, including the terror aboard the submarine, was "cut to" footage) to an entirely disaffected reporter, who tells of Godzilla's journey towards mainland Japan, where the army is there to fruitless meet him.

The conceit of cutting back to newsrooms is very annoying, crippling the narrative flow of the film. The reports of Godzilla terrorizing Japan sends the pharmaceutical exec into a rage... he wants his own monster (I guess big pharma people are always assholes).  His TV crew is on their way to Ferro Island, where we cut to the ... oh boy, Japanese actors in brownface playing tribal natives. The natives are unhappy about the visitors, but they curry their favour with a transistor radio playing pseudo-calypso music and cigarettes...even the children want a puff. "It's okay, they're all smoking." And then lightning cracks in the sky, signaling the arrival of their god.

News reports cut into the proceedings, to explain what Godzilla might be, as the creature approaches Hokaido. And then cut back to Ferro Island in the search for the tribal god. An errant gunshot triggers the ire of beast and a rockslide interrupts the hunting party. One of the Japanese men is injured, and the young smoking tribal boy is sent to get red berry juice to soothe him, but he's attacked by a giant octopus going after the berry juice supply.  The ruckus caused trying to fight the octopus rouses King Kong who faces off against the cephalopod, driving it away.  He then tucks into some red berry juice and gets pass-out blotto.  The pharmaceutical men abscond with Kong towing him from the island to Japan on a raft full of dynamite.  The government, though, tells the pharmacy team the creature is considered a menace, and must be returned to Ferro Island.

Meanwhile, Fumiko, a character we've barely met is on a train headed straight for Hokaido where the weather forecast predicts Godzilla will be.  Government officials discuss dropping an atomic bomb on him. The train light attracts Godzilla's attention so it stops and evacuates to waiting buses. Fumiko runs into the woods and then starts splashing in a stream. Somehow her boyfriend Fujita finds her, and the two hide from Godzilla's rampage.

Meanwhile, on the seas, Kong awakens, and is not happy. He's set free and heads towards Japan's mainland, where speculation is the two creatures are old sworn enemies and set for a titanic tussle.  The army dumps dozens of tankers worth of gas along the path Godzilla is taking luring him into pitfall laden with explosives. Godzilla survives. 

Kong attacks Tokyo, chomping on electrical wires. Tokyo is told to evacuate, but it's too late. Kong picks up a skyrail train and becomes transfixed by the screaming Fumiko dangling from it. He then climbs a modestly sized building while the army plans to fire rockets full of red berry juice to rain down on Kong to put him to sleep. Fumiko's brother and Fujita plays rhythmic drums to help lull the beast. Somehow in Kong's passing out process Fumiko is neither crushed nor in a similarly narcotic-induced sleep.

Kong is airlifted by balloon to intercept Godzilla, with the hope the two beasts will kill one another.  They don't. They fall into the ocean and Godzilla fucks of to god(zilla) knows where and Kong swims home. The end?

The Creatures:
Godzilla, explained by a boring white guy from a boring museum, classifies Godzilla as a possible cross between a T-rex and a stegasaurus, between 97 and 120 million years ago.  He thinks Godzilla considers Japan home, but postulates that "as a reptile" he might shy away from electricity.  Boring white guy thinks Godzilla's brain is the size of a marble.  The suit, in colour, looks like the familiar pear-shaped Godzilla form we're most used to.  The tail action on this version of the beast is wonderful.  I'm always surprised by Godzilla's tiny face.  This Godzilla doesn't like the high-tension electrical wires, and avoids them  were previous 'zillas didn't.  The whole purpose of this sudden aversion to electricity is obviously to set up that it's his weakness, and just so happens to be Kong's strength.

King Kong here is a giant ape with ratty, matted fur, heavy breasts, and the derpiest of faces. It's the poorly painted-on eyes.  Kong likes to shred the red. Boring museum guy thinks Kong is a big thinker because he would have a big ape brain.  The costume doesn't look like fur, it's ill fitting, lumpy and wrinkly, and generally looks awful. It looks even worse wet.  Apparently Kong draws strength from electric voltage, which makes no sense, but there you go. 

The Battle: 
Starts with Godzilla having the high ground. Kong throws boulders at godzilla. Godzilla responds with atomic breaths and taunts. Kong's fur is singed and he walks away, scratching his head. Not so titanic, this tussle. Kind of boring, actually

To start round two. Kong gets the higher ground but gives it up so he can get behind Godzilla and grab him by the tail. It doesn't work. Kong chucks more rocks, which a swing of Godzilla's tail sends it right back at him. Kong is hesitant to engage Godzilla's because of his atomic breath, but takes a few shots and gets in there. but he unfortunately brains himself on some rocks.  Kong gets no less than two concussions this fight. To add insult to injury, Godzilla hits him over the head with his tail repeatedly and Kong seems down for the count. But a fortunate twist of thunder and lightning supercharges Kong up which gives him static cling hands that Godzilla doesn't like one bit. Kong jams a tree down Godzilla's throat.  They grapple rolling down a cliffside into the ocean, causing an earthquake that splits the land.  Kong swims home, and Godzilla disappears.  It's pretty weak stuff.

The Humans:
There's two news reporters, one American, and one Japanese, as well as boring museum guy who get as much screen time as any of the original actors. I hate these news guys, passionately.

There's handsome manly Sakurai and total sub Furue who are our guides on Ferro Island, for what it's worth. Sakurai is Fumiko's boyfriend, and her brother, Fujita's best friend. Fujita invented a near-invisible threat that has the strength of a steel cable. This seems important as it's needed to lift Kong by balloon to fight Godzilla (but if you take miniature scaling into account the thread we actually see would be thick cable density in size, so not that remarkable...it's a weird super-science conceit the film asks for).

There's also Mr. Tako (great name), who is an utter man-child, prone to temper tantrums, but somehow very successful. He's the head of the big pharma company and the show producer that Sakurai and Furue work for.

None of these human characters are explored at all in this rendition beyond exceptionally basic beats. They're an unfortunate casualty of trying to re-edit to Americanize the story (and tell, more than show, as if there's something so complicated about this story) as much as possible.

Friend or Foe:
Godzilla could be picking up from Godzilla Rides Again, trapped in ice, but this American rendition seems to pretend like this is the first time we're ever seeing Godzilla, except everyone in Japan knows the creature is Godzilla. 
Kong's story is basically a truncated retelling of King Kong, only giving him a mortal enemy this time, and no meaningful entanglement with Fujita.

The Sounds:
The tribal chanting is very exotic sounding, a pastiche of the original chanting from King Kong.

Kong's roars sound like they're coming out of a Speak'n'Spell.
When he pounds his chest it sounds like banging on sheets of aluminum.

The Message:
Big Pharma sucks?
Apparently director Honda wanted to satirize the Japanese TV industry with this film, but it loses all of its intent in the butchering and insertion of the loathed UN newsdesk reporters.

Rating (out of 5 Z): 
Zz

Disney's Tarzan

Twenty-for-Seven #17 (Day7)
1999, d. Kevin Lima (Enchanted) and Chris Buck (Frozen) - Disney+

I wasn't into the Disney Renaissance era of movies.  I had just become a teenager when The Little Mermaid hit theatres in '89 and was far, far more interested in Tim Burton's Batman than a singing water princess.  By the time the Renaissance era closed, with Disney's Tarzan, I had only seen The Lion King and was highly disinterested in the animated-musical style and princess-centricness of these films...and the Matrix just came out.  Plus Pixar had changed the game completely in both animation and family-centric storytelling.  The standard Disney Animated offerings, even those Renaissance era ones, seemed like relics.

As the last two decades rolled on, I still haven't warmed to those renaissance era films.  Aladdin is okay, the Lion King is pretty good, the rest...I still don't care.  So why Tarzan? Why now?

Well, Tarzan, because it's on the list of unwatched movies in my All Superhero Movies Ranked post, so I guess I should have intention of watching it some day.  That day was New Years Day 2020 because I had another 4 films I needed to watch for my 20 films in 7 days challenge, and I was looking at things I needed a push to watch.  Oh, and I was feeling like I needed to get *SOMETHING* else out of Disney+ besides just watching The Mandalorian over and over.  (I would've been perfectly happy to spend the same amount of time rewatching The Mandalorian instead of all the 20-4-7 movies, but I need to push myself out of my nerd-dome once in a while).

To say I immediately regretted putting on Tarzan would not be inaccurate.  The film launches into a Phil Collins song and an extended montage of Tarzan's parents having a shipwreck, landing on an island, establishing a home, and then getting (inferred) killed by a tiger, all intercut with a montage of a gorilla losing her baby to the same tiger and being sad.  To be fair, Collins' song is actually very well timed with the imagery, a few pauses taken here and there, that by minute three some emotional resonance between song and imagery really comes through...but I don't really care for Phil Collins and I found the whole thing tedious and a bit painful.

The montage prologue leads to the gorilla mom (Glenn Close) rescuing the baby, adopting it as her own, naming it Tarzan, raising it to childhood where he is seen kind of as an outcast, but not really bullied as much as you would think.  The alpha gorilla (Lance Henricksen), ostensibly his foster father, doesn't care much for him.  He grows up again and becomes a very sturdy man with no body or facial hair for some reason (with the voice of Tony Goldwyn).  He's got a gift of mimicry (which for some reason doesn't really come into play as a useful skill) and an agility, dexterity and fearlessness that's above human but also somehow beyond ape.  He also does this sliding-along-branches thing that just drives me fucking nuts, because it makes no sense.  Tree branches are not slick and feet are not smooth...how on earth is he sliding so extensively throughout the forest?  It's such an aggravating conceit that's meant to just be a cool talent he has, lending nicely to tracking shots through the jungle.

Anyway, it's Tarzan.  Of course, Jane (Minnie Driver) and her dad (Nigel Hawthorne), animal researchers, show up with a trigger happy guide (Brian Blessed) leading them through the jungle.  Tarzan and Jane form a bond, but Tarzan's gorilla-dad is afraid of them... with reason.  His encounter with the humans eventually gets him killed, and it's all Tarzan's fault.  Way to go, Tarzan! But he eventually saves the day and Jane and her dad come to live with the apes in the jungle, all happily ever after like.

I didn't mention the sidekicks, Tarzan's gorilla BFF Terk (Rosie O'Donnell) and elephant sidekick Tantor (Wayne Night), because they are the useless Timon and Pumba side story comic relief here that serve no purpose in the main narrative.  They're inconsequential and the film spends way too much time with them.  They get a particularly tedious Stomp-like found-sound rhythmic number that I just fast forwarded through.

There is some very nice animation in the film (I particularly like the thoughtfulness in Tarzan's physicality), but I just had a hard time connecting with the material.  It's Tarzan.  I never cared for Tarzan.  The most interesting part of Tarzan should be his savageness but that's the part Disney diluted the most.  He's mostly plain whitebread here, a handsome prince for a lost princess in the jungle to find.  Ugh, that Disney Renaissance formula.

Somehow, even though I had never watched the film before, I knew the Phil Collins songs with extensive familiarity (perhaps not every word, but certainly I knew all the songs well enough to hum along were I so inspired [I was not]).  I don't hate it but it just reminds me about what I don't like about that era of Disney.

Saturday Sci-Fi Spectacular, vol 1

War for the Planet of the Apes
Upgrade
High-Rise
Alien:Covenant
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It's a rare occasion when I get an evening to myself, nevermind a full day, where I can just linger and do nothing.  A few Saturdays back I wound up in that very scenario, with the kids off visiting with grandparents, the wife out RPGing for the night... all I really had to do was walk the dogs and feed myself, which left me with many hours to fill in very much the way I would have filled a sleepy Saturday some 25 years ago: movie marathon.

But what to watch?  My ability to watch movies became very limited once children came along, not to mention competing forces of epic television, streaming services and a new revolution in comedy via podcast and standup.  What to watch?  Do I spend precious minutes that turn into dozens of minutes scrolling through feeds, or thinking about my sizeable, if aged, DVD/Blu-ray collection?  What to watch?  And how to program this mini home festival so that it feels like a cohesive whole?  I've missed so many films over the years that I still want to watch, but so many competing for attention I'm always at a loss on where to start.  What to watch?

I settled on watching science fiction movies from the past few years that I've been meaning to get to.  In a couple instances, they were the latest chapters in series that I've enjoyed or was invested in.  In another case it was picking back up a movie I started watching but didn't finish.  Just narrowing down to a genre and also a time frame made it so, so easy to just dive in and start watching.  I knew where I wanted to start, and where I wanted to end, which made the middle relatively self evident.

---

War for the Planet of the Apes (2017 - d. Matt Reeves - netflix) was the easiest choice.  I love the Planet of the Apes franchise.  The original pentalogy is always watchable and fascinating (save the last one, Battle for the Planet of the Apes which may well be worse than the Tim Burton/Mark Whalberg misfire), and this modern series reinvented the story brilliantly, from the traumatic animal abuse in Rise of the Planet of the Apes to the emotionally affecting Shakespearean drama Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, these are legitimately great films.  The fact that I didn't see War for the Planet of the Apes in the theatre and basically let it dangle on the vine for years after it's post-theatre release speaks ill of my devotion to the series, but I do love it.

This third installment opens with literal war.  A waning humanity desperately clawing at relevance by murdering apes with their guns, but apes are smart, and tactical and have the advantage of the war being on their turf, in the forest.  But Cesar (the brilliant Andy Serkis) sees the writing on the wall. The more desperate the humans become, the more dangerous, so their home is only protected, only safe for so long.  It's time to leave.  As the community of apes prepares to leave for new land, a strike force infiltrates the ape's forest home at night, in the process killing Cesar's mate and first born son.

The anger and rage towards humanity that Koba felt - and Cesar fought against - in the last installment starts to boil inside him.  He abandons his tribe for revenge, but without his leadership they are taken captive.  Cesar was blinded by his own grief and fury, and his society pays the price.

There's actually very little direct war, in War for the Planet of the Apes, as it's mainly a prison camp/prison break style movie with a lot of dramatic motivation.  Cesar and The Colonel (Woody Harrelson) are the main focus of the film, with Cesar desperate to get his society away from human influence, while the Colonel fights the inevitible (the plague that made apes smart across the globe are making humans mute and depreciating their intelligence) thinking that eradicating the apes will stop anything.  At the same time, he's preparing for war, not just with the apes, but an opposing human faction.

Certainly the messiest of this latest Planet of the Apes series, it's still a very engaging, gripping, entertaining 2 hours and 20 minutes of drama and adventure.  It's a literal technological marvel how seamless the CGI apes fit within their surroundings, how natural they feel to the environment.  You're not seeing a performer or special effects, it feels like you're watching actual apes who are amazing performers.  How can you not just adore Bad Ape (a bald chimpanzee played by Steve Zahn) or Maurice the wise orangutan (played by Karin Konoval)?  I want to hug them so badly.

If anything didn't work in the film, it was the tail end of the climax.  Without spoiling anything, it sets up a new threat for the apes, then immediately dispenses with it.  It's a very strange moment that is meant to be ironic, but not the comedic kind of irony that it pretty much is.

Based on where War for... ends, I don't know where the franchise goes from here.  This truly feels like closure.  Whether it attempts to reinvent the original (which was tried with the Tim Burton venture...a financial success but not a creative one) or if it has a new path it could forge in a futuristic ape society that would in any way appeal to a human audience, I don't know.  This trilogy was full of surprises and deeply resonant characters that show exactly the right way to reboot an older property for modern times... by telling a good story not rehashing an old one.

(I can't believe how terrible most of the posters were for this movie)
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My second movie for the evening was Upgrade, the 2018 action-thriller from Australian director Liegh Whannell.  I had heard about this movie via The Weekly Planet podcast shortly before it came out.  The hosts of The Weekly Planet were both rather taken with the style of the film, and how technically accomplished it was for its very small budget.

The story is set in a sort of 5-mintues-into-the-future type scenario, in a world where the technology we're just on the cusp of standardizing has become standard.  Fully integrated home systems with voice activation and AI response cues and self-driving cars are a the forefront in this film.  Our lead character, Grey (Logan Marshall-Green) is a luddite in this integrated world.  He likes to be disconnected and repairs vintage muscle cars for a living.  He's wary of technology, but not outright disdainful.

While he and his wife are traveling in her automated car, the vehicle goes haywire, taking the wrong course and putting them into the dangerous surroundings of the city.  There they are accosted by three men who execute them, or so it appears.  Grey survives and battles with full body paralysis, grief and depression... until one of his muscle car clients, a wealthy technology magnate, offers him an experimental trial implant that would cure his paralysis.

When Grey accepts he's surprised at how quickly he's able to move, but even more surprised to find an artificial intelligence speaking directly into his head.  The AI wants to aid him in his quest for justice/revenge and when Grey's physical limitations are met, the AI takes over.

The film's sensibilities are very 1980s without seeming dated (it may be a little cliche, but it's definitely playing into those cliches).  Whannell approaches the storytelling and design in a way that wouldn't be out of place in a vehicle starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, or Kurt Russell in their prime.  If anything it does a better job at modernizing the Robocop story than the 2014 version does.  At the same time, there's a synergy with Alex Garland's Ex Machina, where this feels like the action-oriented younger brother, a little less mature, a little less heady but similarly stylized.  Or maybe it's a next-generation tale in the world of Person of Interest.

Where this film feels innovative though is in the fight sequences.  Whannell and team have crafted a stunning new method for capturing dynamic and kinetic fights.  Whenever the AI takes over Grey's body the camera starts tracking Marshall-Green's movements precisely.  Every twist, tilt or punch has a corresponding camera move that just cranks us the momentum of these well orchestrated sequences.  It's rather ingenious.

I have to say I loved this movie.  It's an instant classic of action and sci-fi in my book.  I can't believe Toast hasn't written about it yet (though I'd be dismayed if he hasn't actually seen it).
---

I was super keen to see High-Rise in 2015 as I had just become acquainted with director Ben Wheatley's Kill List and was intrigued by his style and sensibilities.  The poster and the trailer for High-Rise seemed downright Cronenbergian in their tone and aesthetic (I'm most definitely thinking of Shivers as a big inspiration here) and I was in for it.  I intentionally kept myself in the dark about what it was really about, the few glimpses I caught was all I needed to see.

In my head I was also thinking this was some sort of Demon Seed situation, where the technology in a high rise tower goes haywire and starts manipulating its residents.  But it turns out, there's not a damn bit of science in this fiction, unless you consider architecture science.  Though, the tone here is once more 5-minutes-into-the-future, but it's five minutes into the future of 1975

Based off the book by J.G. Ballard (who wrote Crash, which Cronenberg adapted), the titular high-rise of the film is part of an experimental neighbourhood, the first finger in a hand formation.  The concept is of a microcosm of society with different classes of people living on different levels in the building.  Though work happens in town, not in the building, almost everyone's leisure time is spent in the cinder and concrete monstrosity they call home.  They all seem to be very enamored with it at first, but the class structures start to poke through and eventually decay any and all goodwill between men.

The first act introduces this place and a cross-section of the people in it, the second half chronicles the slow degradation of the relationships between them, and the third act is all madness and rioting and orgies abandoning all sense of self.  In the collapse of civilized society, everyone kind of winds up the same.  The inference is that perhaps the complex's designer, as played by Jeremy Irons, did use some forms of satanic symbolism in the overall design, and the concept of a hand reaching up from beneath the earth to pull everyone down.


It really does owe a lot to Shivers, but the same allegory of societal structures is at play here as the most-definitely-sci-fi film Snowpiercer but the two stories do play out quite differently.  Our focal character here is not underclass struggling for justice and truth like Chris Evans in Snowpiercer but rather a middle class/straddling upper class Tom Hiddleston, someone who from the middle can see the struggles on both sides, and doesn't know where he belongs (he doesn't really belong at the bottom nor the top).  It's an interesting film, to a point, but it doesn't really hold together fully as a narrative, and the characters exist to represent their class rather than have any real individualism or personality.  In the end I struggled to maintain interest, as the last act of debauchery is tedious and loses the plot, if there ever really was one.

(unlike War for the Planet of the Apes, the High-Rise posters are pretty great)
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And finally, the last film for the evening, because I wanted it dark, was the latest in Ridley Scott's exploration of the Alien franchise.  2017's  Alien: Covenant is a serves as prequel to his 1979 classic as well as sequel to his much-maligned-but-loved-by-me 2012 outing Prometheus [link to my take...Toast's take on Prometheus is here, we disagree!]


I know that Prometheus as the sum of its parts isn't a great movie, but there are so many of those parts that I just love that I can watch it over and over again without any voice nagging in the back of my head about the quality or plot holes or absurdity.  I just enjoy it.

The critical response to Covenant was even worse than Prometheus but I thought that maybe Scott was on the same track, that he was going to still be operating at a level of insane and awesome individual bits that don't coalesce as a whole.  But even the scant few Prometheus defenders I knew didn't have much good to say about Covenant, which wasn't a good sign.  As such I skipped it in theatre, and then avoided it on VOD, and even still kept passing it by on the streaming services.


I did still hold out hope that everyone was wrong, that I would find a movie in here that I could appreciate, like Prometheus.  But no.  This is trash.  It's a garbage film full of dumb characters doing dumb things, getting in stupid situations that make no sense, and having dumb conversations about which dumb thing they're going to do next.  It's awful. It's a Z-grade horror film with an A-grade budget that wants to provide world building and an origin story but in a most shoehorned fashion.

The opening scene takes us back to David's creation (David from Prometheus as played by Michael Fassbender), his education and his evolution. He's the malevolent force of the picture full of other malevolent forcest.  Following the end of Prometheus David has returned to the Engineers home in their own ship carrying a payload of bioengineered weapons which he's set loose and eradicated their society.  But David has left a homing beacon running, which brings a new crew of colonizers to this planet teeming with bad shit.  There are so many malevolent forces!  Too many.  Way too many.  It's stupid how many malevolent forces there are.  No human should be able to survive a minute on this hellscape planet David has created and yet we keep following the cast around as if there's some hope that any of this will turn out well.

This film is tragically unentertaining.  The characters, with the exception of David and Walter, are boring and thin.  David and Walter, however, are both artificial intelligences that are explored, but not explored very well.  The film should fully revolve around these two characters, but it gets distracted too often with its human cast (and killing them off) to the detriment of really getting into any sort of commentary about the nature of AI (as unnatural as it is).  There is some thinking about the nature of creation and evolution but even that seems rudimentary and not well crafted.

This is science fiction, but the science part of it feels left on the floor and repeatedly stepped on like a doormat.  I hated this movie.  What a waste of time and money (and I'm not even talking about my time or my money).

(Toast's take on Covenant is here, we disagree, in that I hated it so much more than he did)

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

2014, Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) -- in theatre

It was a pretty amazing summer for blockbuster movies.  Even if the box office didn't reflect it as being the best ever, I'm almost certain this summer's crop provided us with the best batch of movies week after week.  It started early in February with The Lego Movie and Captain America: The Winter Soldier in March, and went full steam ahead with X-Men Days of Future Past, Godzilla and onwards.  There were naturally a couple duds (Amazing Spider-Man 2, Transformers 4, and Ninja Turtles, all of which I avoided) there always are, but the caliber of the summers biggest films were so above par, not just in providing cool effects, but really strong directorial vision, thoroughly engaging and satisfying stories, and a measure of intelligence we're just not used to seeing in our popcorn entertainment.  While I'm still tardy on reviewing a few of these (Guardians of the Galaxy, Snowpiercer, How To Train Your Dragon 2), I had watched all the big movies that were worth watching this past season...save one: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

There's often a divide among cinephiles and nerds over what constitutes a "good" movie, but also a bridge of nerd cinephiles sitting right in the middle of that venn diagram who appreciate a masterful drama or well-crafted documentary and the biggest of explosions and best special effects money can buy in equal measure.  Most of these people do reviews on the internet (*AHEM*).  Of these hybrid "cinerdphiles", it seemed like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was quite often coming up as highlight of the summer.  It's not like I didn't want to see it.  I love the original Planet of the Apes series, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes was an emotionally devastating and utterly surprising reboot of the series.  David and I had planned to see it together, but with the crazy summer schedule it just never worked out...but I knew I needed to see it in theatre before it went for good.


Where Rise was a smaller story about family with a strong anti-animal testing message, Dawn goes much bigger into examining what brings societies to war.  The setting of the film is a decade after Rise, the anti-Alzheimer's drug that Jame Franco's character invented in the first film that caused Caesar to rapidly evolve in intelligence also mutated into a virus that turned lethal to humans.  Society as we know it quickly collapsed while the escaped apes who were experimented on have built an entirely new and quickly expanding ape society in the forests outside San Francisco.  Humanity has survived, but in very small numbers.  When we meet the apes they haven't seen a human in years, up until Caesar's son, Blue Eyes, and a friend encounter one in the woods, one who panics and shoot's Blue Eye's friend.  This sets of a very tense chain of events as the increasingly desperate surviving humans in San Francisco, running low on diesel-generated power, get set to reclaim the forest to get to the dam, led by nervous Dreyfus (Gary Oldman).

Malcolm (Jason Clarke), the sort of engineering leader of the humans, looks to establish a truce with the Apes, and ventures out to connect with Caesar in hopes of reaching an understanding.  Caesar is reluctant to engage with the humans, concerned the influence they will have on his new society, but agrees to help them restore their power if it means peace.   His right hand ape, Koba, not only doesn't trust the humans but hates them with a fervor, and continually advises Caesar against his diplomacy, but when it falls on deaf ears, he turns Blue Eyes against him.

The humans, by and large, are fearful of the apes, blaming them for the deadly virus, not the laboratory scientists that created it.  The fact that some of them can speak and ride horses and brandish weapons amplifies their terror.  The desire to destroy what they both fear and do not understand is an all too common trait, one which both Caesar and Koba know all too well. But what Caesar had experienced, and Koba never did, was compassion, love and guidance from a human hand, and he nostalgically believes there is still value to them.  Koba can't see past his hate and begins scheming to convince to his leader and his apes that they must attack and destroy them.  When his scheming doesn't work directly, he becomes downright insidious in his actions.

It's a potent analogy to real life, that there are good people trying to make the world and the lives of people within it the best they can be for everyone, which includes compromise and tolerance, and there are others out for their own agenda fueled by hate, fear, an greed.  Dreyfu is convinced that their means of survival is taking other's land by force, while it's Koba's blind hatred of another race that he's willing to sacrifice the lives of his own to exterminate theirs.  It operates on a much smaller, more simplified scale, dealing solely with terrain in and around San Francisco populated with only a few hundred people and apes, but in a small dramatic package it speaks to what drives cultures to war.

Of all of the summer films, Caesar may be the best realized and best performed character of the bunch (and it's a hybrid performance between the animators and Andy Serkis' motion capture acting).  Caesar is trying to establish a society that is built around a hybrid of apes of advanced intelligence and of normal ape intelligence.  He has to lead using his superior mind, but also through his brute primal nature in equal measure.  He's a family man, teaching his son about the world both as he once knew it and how it is now, with another son just born and a wife who is ill (women get the terrible short shrift in this film, it doesn't pass the Bechdel test in the least).  He is a warrior, a hunter, a diplomat, and whatever he needs to be to ensure his society doesn't collapse or get destroyed.  The face of Caesar, being digitally rendered, is afforded a level of animation that few human performers could achieve.  But beneath it all are some very real emotions, the eyes of Serkis conveying the weight it all has upon him.  The look of betrayal when Koba turns on him, or the expression of  his failure when his son turns to Koba after rejecting him are palpable.

But it's not just Caesar, all the main apes, Koba, Blue Eyes, and Maurice the Orangutan are so wonderfully rendered, they are the richest characters on screen.  The human characters pale before them, but arguably it's because they have the tougher job of acting against not a actual ape.  Keri Russell and Kodi Smit-McPhee share a nice bonding moment -- as Malcolm's girlfriend and son, respectively, she lost a lot in the collapse, and he's never known anything but suffering -- but it's brief, and the human struggle is of lesser interest overall.  Beyond just wanting to see the human race survive, and, well, be decent, the film gives you little incentive to invest in their plight, or care all that much about the characters.  But it's kind of like watching Jurassic Park from the point of view of the dinosaurs, the humans just aren't as important.

The film has its choppy moments, particularly the opening hunting scene in the beginning where there is way too much cgi fauna on screen.  The uncanny valley maxes out and it doesn't look great.  The scene with the bear was good, particularly Koba's assist, but the bear just didn't quite look right.  Perhaps on the small screen.  But beyond that the cgi apes seemed quite refined, the lead apes certainly having the most amount of effort invested in bringing them to life.  The soundtrack from Michael Giacchino is dangerously dull, television drama quality, threatening to take the viewer out of the film with every slow piano.  It's like Giacchino used up all his tricks on Lost, and I'm so familiar with his work from there, it doesn't easily get repurposed elsewhere.

Of all the summer movies, this is the heaviest, most intense.  I welled up with tears any number of times throughout it, director Reeves balancing the spectacle with the emotional drama, using his effects budget not to dazzle so much as present the weight of the characters and their actions.  It's an excellent continuation of the series, and it's tremendous success means more will definitely be on the way (although the reports from producers seem to indicate a remake of the original film is the ultimate destination point, which seems ill-advised, as it does hold up pretty damn well).

3 Short Paragraphs: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011, Rupert Wyatt -- download

Like Graig, I was somewhat surprised to find out this movie was being made.  I am sure it was sold to the studios as an attempt to wipe out Tim Burton's place in the film chronology with a reboot in mind. Reboots are in dontchaknow.  I am actually somewhat of a fan of the Burton piece but more as a standalone post-apocalypse movie with Tim Roth being as nutty as ever.  The 12 year old in me also loved he original movies and especially the series, which amused me even then by being shot in an area of California that also had dozens of other TV shows and movies being shot -- that BC was used for this movie, considering the province's place as backdrop currently, is strangely appropo.

The Rodman character, the scientist seeking a cure for Alzheimer's played by James Franco, bothered me even if it was all intentional. He knew he was creating a very very intelligent ape but his agenda was testing the cure for his dad's disease.  He knew he was saving the baby from being put down by taking him into his home.  But I don't think he knew he was also introducing Caesar into an emotionally intelligent state.  There were so many times I wished Rodman would have just explained to Caesar what was going on. Human beings can be quite shitty to each other as well.  It was all as if Rodman hadn't quite realized that uplifting an ape would create a person.

While the movie seems to have been advertised as a setup for the breakout, and thus the probably much more action oriented sequel, this one was really about the middle act.  This movie was about Caesar realizing exactly how shitty humans can be.  The fact that Rodman didn't know that the apes he used in research came from the same place he was dropping Caesar off at, just added to his willful ignorance.  But the whole section in the cages, the prison drama amongst his lesser brethren, is compelling and dramatic. I would have liked to see more scenes of Caesar wandering around between the conservatory and the lab, to establish he is seeing more than the three worlds he knew but it really did want to rush to great apes pushing buses and knocking helicopters out of the air.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2011, Rupert Wyatt

I have to say that, in general, I was more than a little astonished by the fact that they were making another Planet of the Apes movie. Let's face it, Tim Burton's 2001 "remake" was not great, taking a masterpiece of speculative SF and attempting to turn it into a big blockbuster franchise didn't work so well, and though they set up a sequel, thankfully it never came to fruition. The original series had five episodes to it, two derivative TV series (one animated, the other live action), and a number of comic books over the years. So the question then is this: where does Rise of the Planet of the Apes fit in? Is it part of the original series, or is it part of Tim Burton's series, or is it a fresh start?

Well, it's definitely not column B. I think the writers and director wanted to forget the Burton film existed. It's a little of column A, but mostly column C. The film paints a trajectory direct to the original film, even dropping some subtle notes in the background of Taylor and company's voyage into space in the background, and yet it doesn't fully jibe with the five films that comprise the original POTA series. In many respects it covers similar territory to the fourth film, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, specifically the ape uprising against humanity, but it does so in a drastically different way, so either "Rise" replaces "Conquest" in the sequence, or it's a quasi-reboot of the series.

As I said, I was astonished that they (meaning studios/producers) would even bother to make another POTA film, but I was even more astonished to find that the film was more in keeping with the original tone of the series, balancing a light social commentary with SF themes and injecting an actual dramatic arc that the series never had before. James Franco plays Will Rodman, a geneticist searching for a cure for the Alzheimer's disease affecting his father (John Lithgow). The cure involves injections which help the brain grow new connective paths, and Rodman's experiments on chimpanzees had yielded remarkable results. Unfortunately, when his prime subject, a female ape named Bright Eyes, literally goes ape-shit, the project is cancelled. Rodman discovers that Bright Eyes' outburst that led to her termination was protective defensiveness, as unbeknown to any of her handlers, she had given birth to a baby boy. Rodman takes Cesar, the young orphaned ape home and cares for it, quickly discovering it has inherited the modified genes of its mother, and is hyper-intelligent, though still somewhat a slave to its primal instincts.

Cesar intervenes in a conflict between Will's father and a neighbour which gets him scuttled off to an ape sanctuary (Lithgow's patriarch role is a heartbreaking one in the film, and his relationship with both Will and Cesar is exceptionally well portrayed). Amongst his kind for the first time, but routinely tormented by humans, Cesar learns the cruelty of man and the dire conditions of his simian brethren. Naturally the ape named Cesar will lead them to revolution. There's a lot more that goes on between these major story beats, but that is the general breakdown, and it's fantastic, especially considering the fact that it's Cesar, a digital creation performed by Andy Serkis, that is the lead of the film, not Franco's Rodman. By the third act, in fact, Rodman's become somewhat irrelevant to the story and his participation in the films climax is virtually unnecessary.

The second act of Rise takes place largely inside the Ape conservatory, playing out like a heady prison drama more than science fiction or a summer action movie, as Cesar adapts to life on the "inside", establishes his dominance over the alpha male, and befriends an orangutan who can communicate with him in sign language. As intriguing as Cesar's origins and development were in the first act, carried largely by Franco and Lithgow, it's the second act which gives over to Serkis' performance and the apes, a daring move that leaves the film largely dialogue-free for much of its run though never actually requiring, a feat rivaled only by WALL-E.

Rise is impressive, a wonderfully intelligent piece of entertainment that is refreshingly old-fashioned in it's style of storytelling, but undoubtedly modern in its execution. The CGI apes, which is to say all of them, are quite remarkable, though they trigger a slight uncanny valley effect from time to time. The interaction between the cgi characters and the real world setting are some of the best executed I've seen, and it would seem the film spent it's money on making these characters as believable as possible instead of huge action sequences, of which this film only contains one, and it's a spectacular smoke-laden sequence taking place on the Golden Gate Bridge as a massive conclave of apes take on the San Francisco Police Department.

As a big fan of the POTA series, I can honestly say that this is the best of the films since the original. It's success has been the surprise of the summer, but it can only mean a follow-up is in order. I just hope they're not forced to go the "blockbuster" route for the sequel. These films work best on a smaller scale.

(NB* check out IGN's neat-o "Cheat Sheet" on the series)