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).

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. [TWO YEARS LATER EDIT - I actually recalled that I saw the film at a festival screening in Thunder Bay and became obsessed with the soundtrack as a result. It was easier to find a copy of the soundtrack than the film though]

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.

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.

KWIF: The Last of Sheila (+4)

KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. It's been a busy couple of weeks so I missed doing a write-up last week and am trying to get ahead of it this week as another busy weekend is ahead. To be perfectly honest, my heart and mind aren't really in it to win it, but here we go anyway. 

This Week:
The Last of Sheila (1973, d. Herbert Ross - hollywoodsuite)
The Final Destination (2009, d. David R. Ellis - rental)
Starship Troopers (1997, d. Paul Verhoeven - netflix)
Hail, Caesar! (2015, d. Joel and Ethan Coen - blu-ray)
Christmas on Duty (2025, d. Jake Van Wagoner - hallmark)

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When Glass Onion, the sequel to Knives Out! came out in 2022, director Rian Johnson routinely cited The Last of Sheila as one of his key inspirations for the Benoit Blanc sequel. I, like a great many, was completely unaware of the existence of this film, whose biggest claim to fame would be that it was co-written by Psycho star Anthony Perkins and legendary Broadway musical composer Stephen Sondheim. I mean, yeah, what?

Turns out that Perkins and Sondheim are old friends and that for years they would stage grand-scale scavenger hunts and murder mystery parties for their pals (one of which was this film's director Herbert Ross). It wasn't a far stretch for them to take a few of their ideas and build a Hollywood-style narrative around it.

The result is The Last of Sheila, where millionaire movie mogul Clinton Greene (James Coburn) has invited a few of his Hollywood acquaintances from in front of and behind the screen to a weekend of games and adventure.  His six guests include aspiring screenwriter Tom Parkman (Richard Benjamin) and his wife with family money, Lee, horny and hungry star agent Christine (Dyan Cannon), over-the-hill director Philip Dexter (James Mason), superstar actress Alice Wood (Racquel Welch) and her latest husband Anthony (Ian McShane). They're all in different states of desperation as to not turn down Greene's invitation, but it seems like the only one that wants to be there is Christine.

Clinton promises fun and frivolity, but there's an air of something quite off. Clinton's beloved wife, Sheila, died, a victim of a hit-and-run about a year earlier, and Clinton hasn't been the same since. His game, and the plot thereof has sinister undertones, and it's not long before people start to suspect that Clinton is either toying with them, or planning something far more damning and dramatic. It seems the roleplaying he has each person playing is the secret of another player, and it's up to the players to figure out who's who.

Only trouble is, on the second day of the multi-day event, Clinton is murdered, and so the game becomes, well, just which one of them murdered him, and why.

The Last of Sheilah may not seem like much at first, and the first act, right up until Clinton's death, seems maybe a little frivolous, as if the whole affair is about Clinton trying to uncover, through is game, just which one of his guests was the driver that killed his wife. But it's nary so simple, and the twists just keep on twisting in rather delicious fashion throughout.

It's an exceptionally clever mystery that, like the best of them, isn't teasing the audience with clues as to its answer, because the mystery it's trying to solve isn't the mystery it's actually trying to solve, and even when the mystery is solved, there's still more to it. This film doesn't really relent until its last frame, and it ends in such a unique place that, somehow, still feels utterly unique.

The only part about The Last of Sheila that is maybe a little underwhelming is that its a cast of six, which doesn't seem like enough suspects when we can narrow them down and eliminate them pretty quickly. Of course, Ross is very clever with what he shows and doesn't show, and the script is very delicate in what it tells us and what it holds back.

I don't want to oversell it, but it's a really fun movie, and an absolute must for any fan of murder mysteries.

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It's been a roller-coaster ride already through The Final Destination franchise (and I'm not just talking about FD 3). I really liked the first film from X-Files veteran James Wong, and felt the second from David R. Ellis let go of the seriousness and went total bugnuts bonkers bananas instead, both in the wickedness of the deaths and in the ridiculousness of lengths it goes in trying to connect itself to the first film. I had really anticipated Wong's return to FD3 only to find I missed Ellis' batshittery, and that Wong's attempts to bring the tone back around to serious wasn't so fun (plus the deaths were somewhat underwhelming). 

And so, seeing that Ellis was back behind the helm for the fourth entry, doing that 2010s-era trope of using the first movie's name but with a definite article rather than a number to differentiate it, I was excited to see what absolute lunacy Ellis had cooked up.

Unfortunately what he cooked up was a cowpie served on horseshit. 

Wasting absolutely no time, The Final Destination opens on a quartet of 20-somethings (actually playing 20-somethings this time, and not teenagers as I first thought) at a racetrack. One of them has a vision of a brutal collision which dominoes into the stadium collapsing and many people dying. And so, like the other films, our protagonist has a freakout which winds up leading him and his friends and a few other interlopers outside the stadium when the accident occurs.

And then they all start dying in freak accidents.

We've seen it before, and it's all been done better.

At well under 90-minutes this is a film that takes no time getting to where its going and where it wants to go, killing off CW-quality actors in complicated fashions, while our protagonist and a few other believers follow the visions he's having to try and prevent the others' deaths.

This film doesn't care one lick about its characters. It doesn't even pretend. Any moment where two characters should be connecting with each other are quickly cut away from in favour of what narrowly constitutes this film's plot.

It wouldn't be nearly so bad if Ellis were up to his same tricks as FD 2, but the death scenarios have little of the panache that they did in his earlier movie, where he would set up innumerable potential means for a character to die, only to deke us out a number of times and blindside us to our uproarious delight. Here, he does it in half measures and it's not so exciting or entertaining.

Also there's a battle between the Wong and Ellis camps in how our protagonists learn to interrupt death's plan. Wong's films have the characters seeing signs, in shadows or scattered paperwork or splattered condiments or photographs. Ellis lazily has the protagonist see prophetic visions. I much prefer the former, because it's more clever and visually interesting, and it means that any of the film's characters can see the signs. In Ellis' films only one can have the visions.

The film is also extremely ugly. Shots are composed terribly, like sub-par Lifetime films, either a clear signifier of reduced budget, or a side effect of shooting a film for 2010's-era 3-D, or probably both. I was constantly taken aback by just how low-budget the film looked.

I had hoped FD3 was the low point of the series, but I was wrong. I know redemption is coming with Bloodlines but I'm hoping the fifth entry starts laying the path.

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I remember seeing Starship Troopers on opening weekend in 1997, and being blown away by how crazy good looking the aliens and the cgi and the costumes and weaponry and sets and gore and all of it looked. I also recall being blown away by the acting, and how goddamn awful it was. I revisited the film once more when it came out on video, and I really, really wanted to love the film, but it sat on the borderline of unwatchable for me, and I just set it aside.

In the nearly 30 years since, Starship Troopers has been re-evaluated by the critical community as a sly, subversive film that fits in perfectly with Paul Verhoeven's other sci-fi greats like Robocop and Total Recall. Except those films had good actors, acting good, while this film has a host of mediocre actors acting poorly. Oh, the bad acting is definitely intentional, I see that now, certainly in the direction Verhoeven was giving his cast if not actually a conscious effort on the parts of performers like Casper Van Dien and Denise Richards. It's evident Verhoeven was not a fan of the 90's trend of horny teen dramas starring late-20-somethings playing teenagers, and sending them into bloody combat and turning these beautiful white faces into tools of a fascist empire is entirely the point. 

But it's still a tough hang.

The action is incredible. The bug creatures are probably the best on-screen alien creation this side of the Xenomorph (they're so damn colourful), and the satire, when it rears its head, stings like a paper cut. But any time we need to spend with any of these characters is like having a root canal without any anaesthetic...so, so painful.

Just like in 1997, I really, really want to like this film, and I kind of do, but I hate it more than I like it.

I've never watched any of its direct to video sequels, as I can't imagine it being done on a lower budget with even lower tiered stars, and not with an auteur director and totally leaning into the fascistic glory of warfare rather than satirizing it...yeah, no thanks.

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In the Coen Brothers' filmography, there are certainly much tighter narratives, much more character-centric stories than Hail, Caesar! and it's hard for me not to say that No Country for Old Men or True Grit or A Serious Man or Inside Llewyn Davis are definitively better films than Hail, Caesar!, because they are. I just like Hail, Caesar! more.

 I can't help it. There's a chilliness to each of those other masterpieces of the Coens' career second half, but Hail, Caesar! is all warmth. 

Their comedies, especially post-2000, tend to have a bit to then, something a little cynical. It's all love here, a true love letter to the Hollywood studio system of old and the movies that they produced, while also being very keenly aware of the sexism, the shadiness, the manipulation, the darkness behind it all. The Coens aren't saying that the art was worth the sacrifice...or maybe they are. I actually don't know. They dive into communist and socialist thinking in a manner that seems both mocking and reverential, much in the same way that they poke sharply at the studio behind-the-scenes while also adoringly creating synchronized swimming or song-and-dance numbers that rival (and possibly outdo) the similar films of yesterday.

I already reviewed the film back in 2016, and most everything I said there still stands. It's just an unabashed delight to watch with it's star-studded cast (just more and more faces popping up in tiny parts) and big time set-pieces.  It wasn't the most warmly received movie at the time, but like most Coens films, people have come around on it and started embracing it. I've always been exceptionally fond of it.

The only thing I got wrong in my review was in my prediction of how big a star Alden Ehrenreich would become. I hadn't gauged how brutal the backlash would be to Solo (despite being a movie, that itself, has become a bit of an secret success in Star Wars circles), and Ehrenreich seemed to have taken the full brunt of that backlash. He's never become a big star, but revisiting Hail, Caesar! for the first time in a while, and I was blown away once again by just how damn charming, charismatic and multi-talented he is. He's just a magnificent performer and I enjoy seeing him in everything I've seen him in (hello Weapons).  Hopefully he finds *that* movie or *that* prestige TV series that finally connects him with the public.

Watching this film reminded me that I need to get AppleTV back and finish off The Studio which feels like it's time travelling kin to Hail, Caesar!

---

Oh, gawddammit, it's that time of year again isn't it. 

Even before Halloween was over, Hallmark had already started airing its slate of seasonal romance films for Christmas 2025.  They've slashed their roster practically in half from last year, likely in part because their leaning into episodic series and reality TV more this year, but also in part likely because of the cheddar prez who started slapping obtuse tariffs on productions made out of country, and the Hallmark movie churn is heavily dependent on crossing the Canadian border.

Anyway, I've already stockpiled a few Hallmarkies for the annual Toasty and Kent Advent Calendar, but this pile of doodoo isn't going to wait that long. I can't have its stink just wafting around for that long.

In Christmas On Duty, Parker Young of (Suburgatory and Enlisted in his Hallmark debut) costars with Janelle Parrish (Sugarplummed) in...ugh... a seasonal military-themed "romance". Usually the Hallmark military-themed productions are cloying wanna-be tearjerkers about a woman pining for her man serving overseas and how difficult life is without a man around or some shit. I dunno. I don't watch them, because they're pretty much what they say they are on the sleeve.

But this, at least, was stepping away from the tearful reunions, and instead was vying for an opposites-attract/road-trip engagement. It did try, and boy it failed spectacularly.

The story opens with Young and Parrish competing for a spot in the marine's infantry, and Parrish comes out on top. Their fathers have a long rivalry that has extended to them, if in a friendlier fashion. Six year later they're reunited at Quantico training where Parrish is looking for duty commander or something. I dunno, the movie care only marginally more about the rank-and-file-ness of the military than I do.

Their rivalry immediately rears its head and they get in trouble with their outgoing Colonel. Forced to serve watch duty together on Christmas Eve, the pair instead find themselves on a mission to rescue Christmas because the delivery truck can't make it's way through the storm to bring toys. Given an official mission, Young and Parrish put their difference aside and head out in an old 5-ton and go shopping for the kids, having a couple verrrry stupid detours and encountering some very contrived obstacles along the way.

Meanwhile.... nevermind. It's not worth getting into.

This movie not only has the talents of the usually quite charming Young and Parrish, but also the always solid Peter Jacobson (Colony) playing Parrish' Lt.Col.(ret) father. None of the military personnel in this film were convincing in the slightest, and the chemistry between Young and Parrish never really accelerated. The whole production feels like a trial run, a proof-of-concept rather than anything resembling refined product.

It's a story that wants to have the big road trip side-quests that lead to big comedic or romantic or dramatic set pieces, but none of the side-quests lead to anything resembling big comedy, romance or drama. The complication (and there's always a complication) is so under baked that when it cropped up I was left scratching my head why anyone thought there was a problem.

But there is real snow. Sometimes.

And there's Doug. At one side-quest Young and Parris encounter a hapless middle-aged stoner-coded store employee who has, accidentally, locked himself out of the store. Doug is the only bright spot in this otherwise kind of dull and sparkless movie, to the point that both Lady Kent and I were left asking "what's Doug up to?" multiple times after his appearance (did we spy him in the parade afterward?).

Also "Finding Mr. Christmas" Season 1 winner Ezra is in this, for about 5 lines and is out-acted by an 8-year-old. The man's an ex-marine AND won the Hallmark leading man competition and he relegated to a cameo!?! Don't expect to see him in any Hallmarkies next year. I honestly don't know what they were thinking (having seen the first two episodes of season 2 of Finding Mr. Christmas, at least it seems they can't do worse).

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

2024, Wes Ball (The Maze Runner) -- cinema

I am only now, almost a week later, realizing I don't have much to say about this movie beyond, "It was alright." I am not invested in these monkey movies, like Kent is. I guess my post about the previous one was eaten by That Year, but if i am honest, I barely recall it. All I remember is that it was supposed to bring the Caesar story to a close. But we still haven't reached a stage in this version of the franchise where an astronaut shows up confused as to why apes are riding horses and shooting guns, so at least one more series was required?

But a romp with Kent is more than a good excuse to see a movie in the cinema.

In watching the movie, it was an entirely enjoyable affair. It looks spectacular. The overgrown ruins of the city are entirely my po-ap jam. But if I think about the reaction I had past the moment, it all falls apart for me. It ends up striking me as a movie by assignment, lacking any true motivation beyond purple suits saying, "We have to kick off a new series in the franchise -- here are some notes on what to include. Go write a script and find a director able to handle 99% CG."

The movie picks up "generations later" -- as Kent pointed out, ape generations are probably shorter lived than human generations, so in theory even young humans could remember a world with technology and where they ruled? That doesn't really matter, as the movie is willing to dance all along the possible timeline to retain the rule of cool.

Anywayz, years later, we have an chimp community focused on the raising of eagles. Noa (Owen Teague, The Stand), Soona (Lydia Peckham, Cowboy Bebop) and Anaya (Travis Jeffrey, Before Dawn) are three coming-of-age chimps who climb the vine covered ruins to attain eggs, to bring back to Noa's father, the master of eagles. Insert the challenges of living up to an important father's expectations. But an "echo" is following them, a human from the forbidden valley beyond, and she cracks Noa's egg. He has no choice but to head back to the ruins for another egg, but as he travels he comes across outsider apes, riding horses, baring electrical weapons. They are hunting the human Noa bumped into. He rushes back to his village, finds it in flames, his people taken captive. He is unable to save anyone and his father dies.

Noa's Hero Journey is to find and free his people. Along the way he connects with Raka (Peter Macon, The Orville), a monk-like Orang who preaches the legacy of Caesar, in that apes together are stronger, and ape shall not kill ape. He is a compassionate ape and possibly the best depiction via motion capture and voice acting -- so naturally he is killed off. But not before they find out that the human they were pursuing / being pursued by is May (Freya Allen, The Witcher), an intelligent, speaking human (remember, the virus that uplifted the apes, also stole away human voices and other aspects of higher thinking) who despite her stinky, scruffy nature wears well tailored, nicely fitted, manufactured clothing.

Noa's village was captured by Proximus (Caesar) (Kevin Durand, The Strain) a ruthless leader who feels a need to bring all other ape communities into his Kingdom, by force if necessary. He also needs to get into the sealed military bunker, where we know there must be tanks, and guns, and much much worse. May is actually there to get into it as well, but for .... something else. Noa and May both know that Proximus cannot attain the weapons within or their entire worlds will change. So, she goes from being scruffy, hunted girl to resourceful action girl in the blink of an eye. With the help of Noa and his friends, they break into the vault, get what she wants, open the doors and flood the place and defeat a very angry Proximus.

Are we supposed to root for the humans? For May and her people who trying to Get Back On Top? And for apes, as long as they are peaceful and have no worries about the humans scrambling to get back ownership of the planet? May is duplicitous, she manipulates Noa to get what she came for, and is ready to shoot him down, should she need to. If anything, at least its a complicated character in a not very complicated movie.

I told Kent I felt like this was an episode, a required entry to setup other movies, which I assume they also want to be bigger in scope, more bombastic, more violent, more confrontational. And again, I have to say that despite all my misgivings as I write this, I did enjoy watching the movie and in some ways, isn't that the whole point?

Tenuous Ties: 22 Jump Street / Hail Caesar!

Welcome to "Tenuous Ties", where we take two completely disparate movies, and write about them together because of some small thread connecting the two.  We're just trying to stay awake here.

22 Jump Street -- 2015, d. Phil Lord and Chris Miller -- TMN On Demand
Hail Caeser -- 2016, d. Joel and Ethan Coen -- VOD


21 Jump Street was a film that, on paper, shouldn't have worked.  Two somewhat marginalized actors, often dismissed as dumb or one note, starring in a comedy reboot of a (ridiculously silly, in hindsight) 1980's undercover cop drama set in high school?  It had "nice try" written all over it.

The curious thing is, though, it did work, thanks in large part to directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller.  The duo wasn't very widely known at the time, but they had a small and loyal cult following from their delightfully absurd, and endlessly quotable high school-set animated comedy about clones of famous world leaders (eg. Ghandi, JFK, Cleopatra) in their teenage years in the modern day.  Clone High was a perfect set-up for 21 Jump Street, since it spoofed a lot of the tropes of teen dramas (and over an all-too-short single season, many other television cliches as well).  Lord and Miller's stock-in-trade is playing off the humour of cliches, of the expected.  They expect an audience to be savvy enough to know where a typical plots twists or where the usual melodrama manifests, and then exploit that knowledge by either playing into the twist or melodrama to surreal levels, or by veering drastically away from it.

The posters for this movie are kind of
terrible though.  The fake posters for the
fake sequels are much better.

In 22 Jump Street they continue to do both those things, but here they also do a lot of metatextual references to sequels and sequel production, but keeping it in-scene or in story, sometimes confounding logic for the sake of the joke.  This gag is wound up to the nth degree during the end credits where the cast and crew present a few dozen possible sequels (with one of the better gags being the replacement of Jonah Hill with Seth Rogen due to contract disputes).

If the story of 21 Jump Street was about the nerd and the jock finding common ground and a dependency on one another as a team, the story of 22 Jump Street pushes that dependency into the analogy of uncomfortable clinging in an unhealthy romantic relationship. Channing Tatum's Jenko and Hill's Schmidt are put back in undercover in a college to uncover the source of a new and dangerous drug that led to a girl's death on campus.  Along the way, Jenko gets recruited by the football team, reverting back to his jock mentality, while a rejected Schmidt retreats into the school's art scene.  There's no "gay panic" here, as would've probably played out in a 1980's interpretation of this kind of story, but there's a fantastic therapy session (with John Hodgman as the therapist) which tackle's the troubled relationship spin head on.

22 Jump Street is a warped delight.  Everyone seems game, in roles large and small.  Some gags Tatum absolutely goes for.  I completely underrated him as an actor for years when he emerged as the hunky new romantic leading man, but in the past four or so years, he proved he has dramatic, comedic, action and romantic chops.  Hill likewise has shed his foul-mouthed, abrasive Cartman-in-real-life image after a strong series of dramatic performances, and so he can be a bit softer, more likeable in a comedic role without being caustic.

The two, in fact, are able to balance both the dramatic and the comedic well enough that the Coen Brothers (no slouches in meting out comedy and drama in equal measure themselves) tapped them for their latest farce, Hail Caesar!  Hill and Tatum are not brought in as a comedy duo, but as players in the Coen's usual sprawling ensemble.

Hail Caesar! follows Josh Brolin's Eddie Mannix, a studio "fixer" in the 1950's who keeps the stars in line.  His studio is undergoing their most expensive and expansive endeavour, a sprawling historical/religious epic, but its star, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) has been kidnapped by Communists days before the film's conclusion.  Mannix must juggle this crisis with an unexpected pregnancy from Scarlett Johansson's Ethel Merman-esque synchronized swim-film star DeeAnna Moran, and a studio mandate to change the image of its crooning cowboy Hobie Doyle (Alden Ehrenreich) into an all-around leading man, much to the chagrin of the studio's main artiste director Laurence Laurentz (Ralph Feinnes).  Meanwhile, Mannix is entertaining an offer from Lockheed as an executive sales manager, but every incentive they offer seems less enticing.  He thrives under the pressure and believes in what he does.

The film sprawls around the studio, LA nightlife, film premiers and the oceanside home where the Communists are holding Baird.  There are many supporting players: the aforementioned Hill is featured as fall guy (the studio pays him to take the fall for a celebrity) as well as a certified accountant and all around professional; Tatum plays the studio's Fred Estaire-esque song and dance star (with a great cameo from Christopher Lambert as the director of his latest dancing sailor picture); Frances McDormand as the studio's tough-as-nails film editor; Tilda Swinton has dual roles as twin sisters writing gossip columns for competing papers; Dolph Lundgren as a Russian submarine captain; not to forget the gaggle of familiar faces as the group of communist screenwriters who've kidnapped Baird, and the counsel of religious elders the studio's called in to review the screenplay for their epic to ensure it's not going to offend anyone.

As much as the Coens may have had an actual story in mind for this, the real purpose seems to be giving the writer/directors the opportunity to shoot in earnest a synchronized swimming sequence, a singing cowboy by the moon, a song and dance number with sailors, and a huge 50's style epic that looks both fake and awe-inspiring equally all through the semi-ironic filter of looking at it all from the outside (the sequences are as real as anything from the era, but as viewers we're looking at them from Mannix's perspective, from "behind the scenes", which makes them humorously charming in their retro-ness, "oh the things that used to entertain us...").

There's a lot of star power here, but it's actually Ehrenreich that completely steals the picture.  He adopts the cocked smile and doe-eyed charm of Gene Autrey, with a thick southwestern twang that supposes naivety and dimness, but his simplistic speech betrays a rather smart and observant individual who basically saves the day for Mannix unexpectedly.  Given what's coming next, this is obviously his breakout role.  He manages that accent for both comedy, charm and sweetness, he sings, has a tough-yet-romantic charisma to appease the guys and the ladies (and vice versa), and even performs a number of stellar lassoing tricks that look effortless on his part.  It's is all part of an incredibly impressive, and noticeable performance.  After watching this movie, I honestly can see him as Han Solo.

And back to that tenuous tie (bet you thought it was Hill/Tatum, but no!), with Lord and Miller on board to direct the solo Han Solo Star Wars film and Ehrenreich in the title role (not to mention a script from Laurence Kasdan with some brush up from Lord and Miller) I've turned the corner from being completely against a solo Han Solo movie to being about 99% on board.  I'm always going to have some hesitation but I think they've absolutely cast the right actor and have found the exact right directors to make a funny, exciting, charming, romantic, swaggering, loveable nerf-herder of a movie.

And Ehrenreich has a distinctive mole under his lower lip, which, while not a scar on his chin, creates a defining characteristic that Han should have.  Just sayin', I think it works.

3 Paragraphs On: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes

1972, J Lee Thompson -- DVD

After watching "Rise of the..." I decided I needed to revisit its sister movie from the original Apes series.  With the exception of the final chapter ("Battle for the...") I'm actually quite fond of the series, genuinely appreciating how each film extended and built upon what had come before it, in a way that sequels today don't really do so well.  With diminishing budgets each subsequent film looks a little worse that the previous yet with the limitations in technical challenges, the films instead do what good SF is supposed to, build upon themes that reflect society at the time, whether it be socio-political issues or fears about bombs or genetic tampering.

"Conquest of the..." isn't a great movie, it's barely a good movie, but it's an interesting product of its times, in a heavy-handed way commenting on civil rights issues of the time by way of a talking ape, Caesar, the offspring of two ill-fated, backwards-time-traveling apes in the previous film, protected from civilization in a circus by Ricardo Montalban but then brought to the city for the first time where he witnesses the enslavement that's befallen his ape brethren in the wake of the sudden extinction of cats and dogs.  Caesar hides in plain sight, begins organizing an underground revolution, and conspiring against the very oppressors who fear their uprising.

The film's script is surprisingly keen and also surprisingly slight.  Its short run-time (88 minutes) is eaten into greatly by the revolt, an intense (if limited) half hour sequence of apes fighting humans.  It's not a big budget battle scene like "Rise of the..." had, but rather a very 70's melee of bodies hitting the ground.  The rest of the script largely consists of the stern use of "NO!" and "DO!".  Although it really feels like an excerpted episode of a television show, it's still engaging viewing, as much marveling at it's speculative-future 1991-setting (which has a lot of great monochromatic sets and some wonderful tunnels) as the story it actually tells.

I Saw This!! OK, Bloody OK

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our all-too regular feature wherein Graig or David attempt to write about a bunch of movies they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. Now they they have to strain to say anything meaningful lest they just not say anything at all. And they can't do that, can they?

Arthur Christmas, 2011, Sarah Smith, Barry Cook (Mulan) -- download
The Equalizer, 2014, Antoine Fuqua (Training Day, King Arthur) -- download
White House Down, 2013, Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day) -- download
The Boxtrolls, 2014, Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi -- download
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, 2014, Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) -- rental
Savages, 2012, Oliver Stone -- Netflix
Deliver Us From Evil, 2014, Scott Derrickson (Sinister) -- download

Its about time I cleaned out some of these, because I am again using it as an excuse to just not enjoy movies. Besides, I have to cover the movies seen recently, so I can blather on about some video games I recently finished on the xBox One.

That said, I am thinking of trying an experiment for one month. Watch all the movies I want, but only review the ones that strike me enough to actually say something about them. I can say something about any movie I see, even if it is only "yawn" but some I actually have something tangible to say. And some I just enjoy with little thought one way or the other. Those usually end up here.

Now that said, you would think, "Its your blog (yours and Kent's), why do you feel compelled to write about every movie? You make the rules don't ya?"  Yes, I do. But there is something productive in setting guidelines to follow. Hell, I have already re-written those guidelines by reducing most of my 'reviews' down to 3 (Not So) Short Paragraphs.  And then there is this format.

OK, that is said. Onto the actual post.

Arthur Christmas should be a proper X Days of Xmas post but again, we attempted, we failed, we only saw a couple. But this is a good Xmas movie! So it deserves some commentary. Also, see above. The movie is done by Aardman Animations, so I am rather surprised we didn't see it out of simple loyalty. We were huge fans of Wallace & Gromit. But honestly, we haven't been all that loyal if you check the catalog --- the only thing we had seen recently in the cinemas, was The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists which I have no clue as to why there is no post here on this blog. I loved it, I am kind of surprised I didn't write about it.

Arthur is one of Santa's sons. The whole Christmas Santa concept is represented as a family deal, a massive expedition done each year full of hundreds of support elves and high technology, currently run by the other son, the useful son Steve. His dad does the deliveries but Steve runs the night in the command centre at the North Pole. Its a precision exercise that compensates for his dad's doddering mistakes. Meanwhile Arthur is just assigned to answering the Letters to Santa.

Essentially, its a wonderful tale of saving Christmas, finding the real meaning of the commercialized version of the holiday (as opposed to the Christian one) and recognizing that Arthur is the best choice all along. Its hilarious, incredibly wonderfully animated and even visits Toronto for a misinterpreted flyby in an old broken down sled. Grandpa Santa has some issues. I might even add it to our repeat watching next year.

Next up, we have The Equalizer, a rather forgotten actioner from last year that was pretty much ignored in the cinemas but I still consider as rather enjoyable!

Full disclosure, I was a big big big fan of the TV show, The Equalizer. The idea of a retired CIA shadow man placing an ad in a local newspaper saying he can help with things that the police cannot was the perfect premise to my heroic Mary Sue mind. It was procedural, villain of the week and spy mystery wrapped up in one. I would easily compare Person of Interest to the feel I got from it then.

I was not part of the Outrage Culture cliq that our angry internet has devolved into, upon learning they chose to cast Robert McCall as a black man (Denzel Washington), which is weird considering they had cast the original man with a British actor, only later retconning it to explain why this obvious very British man was a top agent in the CIA. Fuck the morons who felt it was a wrong choice. I thought it was brilliant, as Denzel Washington is hitting that stage of his acting career where he is beginning to be defined by his age. Not quite yet a Liam Neeson, Washington shows a bit of aging around the gills and easily falls into the role of a quiet older man working a menial job, competently and unremarkably.

This rendition of the story has him working a local Home Depot analog, doing simple things, bonding with his coworkers and leading a simple life. He is kind of OCD, doing things repeatedly, placing his flatware and books very specifically for his every night visit to the diner to eat, and read and chat with the young prostitute who stops by on occasion. He is friendly but outside everyone's lives, until... he is dragged into it.

This is not the premise of the TV show, so if for any reason, this is why I was not sure I was going to enjoy their depiction. But it is so exquisite in those quiet first-and-a-bit acts. He is precise, as I mentioned, rather OCD. He is mysterious about his past but does not rebuff people. And that mood, that tone carries itself into the action, once it starts. The young prostitute is being abused by her pimps, the Russian mafia of this area of Boston. McCall attempts to buy her contract, assuming a few thousand dollars can cover it, not really knowing how much she is worth. He is mocked, threatened and makes to leave. But in a very precision ballet of violence, that John Wick reminded me of, McCall kills all the mafiosos.

Enter Martin Tsokas as a fixer for the Russian mob, who arrives in the US to find out what happened to his key pimp. Martin Tsokas is the best of the best when it comes to playing suave, scary, evil men. And this is a prime example. He and McCall come together as fixer plays investigator, putting the details together until he finds the man who works at the Home Depot but who must be much much more.  The latter acts of the movie sort of fall into a less enjoyable, familiar pattern of blowing things up and taking down bad guys. Creative use of the tool section.

But the ending of the movie gave me quite the grin. Robert has dismantled the Russian mob, saved the young prostitute but can never go back to his job at the Home Depot. We find him at his laptop filling out a Craig's List posting:

Got a problem?

Odds against you?

Call the Equalizer

Enter squee.  Sequel please.

White House Down. You already know I saw the other Attack the White House movie -- Olympus Has Fallen.  This was visibly the lighter of the two, comedic and with brighter stars in the leads: Channing Tatum as the hero and Jamie Fox as The President. Does anyone else matter? Not really, in a Roland Emmerich vehicle, where the trauma is the main star. But it was nice to see Lance Reddick, Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Woods in supporting roles.

Its all about the take over and rescue of America's centre of royalty - the White House and its President. They are rather a package deal in the mythology of the US. The hero worship around the American President has always fascinated me. We openly loathe our own Prime Minister, and while the current American public has their "Thanks Obama" meme, that doesn't reduce the reverence they have for the White House and the Presidential office. Its no joke they consider the job as their own version of a royal family. Both the movies play on the fear of reprisals on their own soil, harkening back to 2001, but amping up the trauma.

I saw Gerard Butler as a respectable, seasoned professional doing what experience had taught him. His President was pretty much a figure head to be rescued, no matter how much I enjoyed Aaron Eckhart in the role. Jamie Fox is better here, as much comedic (less so than I expected) as a competent leader. He represents a sobre but healthy respect for the job he represents, while Channing Tatum is just the right guy in the wrong place, shooting things and wise cracking. It was enjoyable, only because I enjoy the rah-rah American ideal presented by Roland Emmerich.

This is weird. I do these to quickly sum up what I wouldn't do in three normal paragraphs but often end up writing more.

The Boxtrolls was something I enjoyed a lot but wanted to enjoy even more.  The trolls in question, named so because they wear cardboard boxes as clothes (whatever the box is adorned with is their name, i.e. box that held shoes means he is Shoe), are little pesky thieves that live beneath the city of Cheeseburg. They "kidnap" a baby and raise him as one of their own, deep in their Rube Goldberg lair.

Meanwhile, topside an exterminator has promised to kill off all the trolls should he be given the white hat of station. He believes respectability, and access to the finest cheese in Cheeseburg, comes with just bearing the hat. He ignores the fact he is horribly allergic to cheese.

While the trolls themselves were charming and funny, the rest was run of the mill cute. I guess too many of these animations are cut from the same cheesecloth. Watching the trolls clap their boxes when happy made me giggle and the revolting nature of Snatcher's allergic reaction were definitely memorable, but overall the movie was just cute.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes was one of those movies that actually forced me to download a properly rented version.  Yes, I actually paid for it. OK, I did attempt to pirate it but my current setup of movie transferral does not easily allow for English movies with subtitles. You have to find the right subtitle file, which is generally not easy. And I wanted to see how the rent a download on the Sony Store, was going these days, so I tossed some funds into my wallet and rented the movie.  8 gigabytes and an overnight download later, I was able to actually watch.  Yeah, the concept of renting a decent quality movie and watching it on the same night is not possible unless you have the highest speed of fibre as your ISP.  And they wonder why people pirate 1 GB versions.

In case you are wondering, it is the apes that are subtitled, as the movies picks up from the first one years later, and they all share a sign language between them.

So, yeah, years later. Caesar and his ape buddies all escaped across the Golden Gate Bridge in the first movie into the woods beyond. I kind of suspect that there is more than a giant forest on the other side of the bridge, but it made a point. Meanwhile, the (further) genetically engineered virus that made Caesar smart jumps to humans with horrible consequences -- the Simian Flu. The opening sequence is straight out of the pandemic game Plague Inc.  -- quite literally. There was a partnership between the movie makers and the game makers. It shows the spread of the disease with overdubbed news dialogue about the end of the world.  Its now ten years laters with the few survivors of the world eking out an existence next door to the apes themselves.

Unfortunately, again, this felt more like an establishing movie. Origin story times two. The apes in the woods come into conflict with the humans in the city and only war will resolve it. We all know where it has to go, so they do their best to dramatically direct us to that ending/beginning. But its kind of limiting and really only lends itself to conflict, both emotionally and violently.

Jason Clarke is our male lead, who wants to reestablish use of a hydroelectric dam in ape territory. Its nice to see Clarke doing a non-badguy role, but all of the characters, including his, are pretty thin. I will chime in with the rest of the internet in saying the lack of female roles in this movie is pretty obvious. Keri Russell is there to just fill a quota.  Meanwhile Serkis (and CGI makeup) as Caesar carries this movie. Everyone else, ape and human alike, is divided between idealistic and self-serving asshole. Humans betray the apes, apes betray the humans and war breaks out. Insert the final movie which has a chance to do something original, in an even further future, ape controlled world.

Graig's review.

Savages really has nothing going for it but a bunch of pretty people and Oliver Stone's name. Its a crime sex drama with Blake Lively (Green Lantern), Taylor Kitsch (John Carter) and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Godzilla). On the bad guy side is John Travolta, Benicio Del Toro and Salma Hayek. The good guy bunch run their own naive marijuana cartel in southern California, practicing fair employment, chemical analysis and generally and a good vibe in all aspects of their selling of the MJ. They buy completely into their own hype. Meanwhile Salma runs the current blend of head-chopping nasty Mexican cartel who want to buy into the pretty boys business. Things don't go well, as we would expect.

The sex comes in the fact that the three are in a love triangle. Not the jealousy and hidden agendas kind but in the fact that she loves the boys both, equally, and they share her. Its an amiable relationship. It smacks of open relationships, bisexuality and just a little of how addled years of Mj use has made them. We don't quite trust their love & peace judgement.

Stone movies are usually intricate and compelling. This attempted at intricacy but it was all TV level of crime drama and the only thing that even remotely redeemed it was decent acting on the major's parts. But entirely forgettable. And Stone has got to drop the narrator thing he loves so much.

 End of Days (he was never convincing as a grizzled cop) and we have it again with Eric Bana as one who gets mixed up with a demon possessed soldier.

New York cops and Satanist agendas. We saw it in the Arnie movie

I like Bana in generic cop roles. He just has that weighed-down, tired persona well established. The movie plays into that having him balanced on screen against Joel McHale as his ToTheExtreme Redbull-slamming partner. McHale is hilarious, a little more buff than I can accept him as but great with the levity against Bana's growl. All New York cops have a growl in them.

This is your typical possession movie that really relies on a certain amount of acceptance of Judeo Christian mythos. Unlike Constantine and his constantly mixing of mythos and magic, this movie dabbles in older cultures but traces everything back to God and Demons. The movie draws upon a "real story" to base its plot but really, who cares. That won't help us accept or dismiss any of the drama.

It solid enough for these types of movies but nothing grand, and kind of disappointing considering how Derrickson's first foray into horror was pretty spectacular, even for revisiting the evil spirit genre.

There. Done.  Some cleaned out.

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Ranking the Coen Bros.

2018, d. Joel and Ethan Coen - Netflix
[Reposted from my letterboxd, typos and all, originally written Nov 16, 2018]

Anthologies are always a challenge for me. Movies, books, comics... I'm never left satisfied. There's too many stories, usually of different length, sometimes connected by theme or genre, sometimes only tenuously connected, often not really connected at all. They usually vary in length and tone, often by different creatives, and invariably you have to compare one story against the rest, and even in the best cases there's always a dud, or one that overshadows all the others. It's never a satisfying experience.

I think the only place where the anthology can really work is television. We're talking The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Black Mirror, but also the idea of season-length anthologies like Fargo, True Detective, or American Horror Story. With the former, the episode by episode format of anthology gives separation, but also structure. Not every episode will be equal but the separation between stories (talking about old school weekly viewing, but also the separation provided by opening title and end credits sequences) provides a buffer to immediate juxtaposition. As individual episodes they're standalone, like short films, not treated as a necessary part of a whole package. The season length anthology is just more fulfilling, a mini-series that lives on it's own each year, all the benefits of regular television but with the satisfaction of both an intended story structure and closure.

Which brings us to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, an anthology feature from the Coen Brothers (Ethan Coen no stranger to anthology storytelling, having written more than a few collections of short stories). The early rumour was this exploration of the old West was intended as a tv anthology but it's six tales each run at wildly different lengths (from 10 to 40 minutes) which would make tv serialization impossible. [edit: the "series" rumour has been disproven]

The only real way to tackle reviewing an anthology is story by story, but that type of reviewing also exemplifies the fact that an anthology cannot really be viewed as a whole unit, rather only it's pieces.

The film takes its name from the opening story, following Tim Blake Nelson's singing gunslinger through a breif and violently whimsical journey (it makes me want a Shaolin Cowboy movie adaptation from the Wachowskis). I had incorrectly inferred that Buster Scruggs would be the film's Cryptkeeper, the connecting thread between stories, but no such luck. Just the turning of pages transitions us from one to the next.

James Franco robs a bank in the next story, but gets foiled by the teller played by Stephen Root. It's the shortest of the stories but tonally consistent with the previous, if a little less fantastical.

The third story follows a limbless orator as he travels the countryside with Liam Neeson as his caretaker making a meager living entertaining meager (and thrifty) crowds. Is this a friendship? A business partnership? Or an exploitative relationship? Ultimately, it's overlong, cast in such grey, and lacking the wit and charm of the previous entries, destroying the cohesiveness for the rest of the film.

The next story takes full advantage of Bruno Delbonnel's beautiful cinematography as Tom Waits panhandlers for gold. It's luscious color palette is in stark contrast to the four dankness of the previous story. It's just as deliberate a story as the last, really getting the sense of the time to spare on such endeavours people had way back when.

While the first two stories were rather pithy and energetic, these two slow things right down, peeling away the idealism of the old West, leading into the fifth story, a forty minute romantic tragedy on a wagon train to Oregon. Due to it's length it's easy to invest in the characters, and understanding the painstaking hardship of travel seems to be the point. The early romanticism of old West tropes have washed away, here there's bare practicality and excruciating nothingness, coupled with a gut blow of an ending.

The final story finds five heads in a carriage, talking, a spectre of darkness aptly surrounding them, but the Coen's see fit to return levity via the uncomfortable, forced interaction of strangers who would otherwise not associate with one another. It's an engaging dialogue but quite much to take after three tales of a more photographic quality and already nearly 2 hours deep. If anything, it serves as a reminder of how awesome Tyne Daly is, and she should be in more things.

As a whole, it's a Coen Brothers production so it's worth the time spent, but as a Coen Brothers production it's on the bottom end of their spectrum. I also wished the had better Native American representation than just as attacking war parties.

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I'm being lazy with Buster Scruggs i, not writing a brand new review because, well, I don't have a lot more to say about it, just as I didn't have much to say about it then. I did find it generally tedious to watch and frequently checked the timestamp to see how much was remaining. The Coens love a tight movie so whenever one goes over two hours, you feel it.

The Blank Check Podcast pointed out that the connecting thread of these stories is death, but it's tough for me to really think of it a theme of each of these stories. 

My ranking of the Buster Scruggs stories:

1. The Gal Who Got Rattled
2. All Gold Canyon
3. Near Algodones
4. The Mortal Remains
5. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
6. Meal Ticket

Now that I have rewatched all 18 of the Coens films together, here are my rankings, subject to change.

1. Fargo
2. The Big Lebowski
3. Hail, Caesar!
4. Inside Llewyn Davis
5. A Serious Man
6. No Country For Old Men
7. The Hudsucker Proxy
8. Blood Simple
9. Burn After Reading
10. Miller's Crossing
11. True Grit
12. Barton Fink
13. The Man Who Wasn't There
14. Intolerable Cruelty
15. Raising Arizona
16. O Brother, Where Art Thou
17. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
18. The Ladykillers

It's a difficult list to make because 60% of these films are flat out masterpieces, and most of the rest are troubled but still generally likeable. I mean, True Grit is an incredible, maybe even perfect film, and I have it out of the top 10, which is absurd.

My top 3 was my top 3 going into this rewatch and they remained relatively untested. LLewyn Davis and A Serious Man were both a lock for the top 5 and jockeyed back and forth, with Llewyn taking the edge because I couldn't stop thinking about it for days. The films in the 6-13 slots could probably be re-arranged any which way and I would still be happy with that ranking.

The only real surprise in making the list is that Raising Arizona jumped 3 spots from the bottom...and maybe that Burn After Reading made it into the top 10. It's probably the only non-masterpiece in the top ten, but it is so much fun. It's very possible that I may be finally warming to Raising Arizona but I just don't have the sentimentality towards it like so many others do. But sentimentality is why Fargo and Lebowski are my 1 and 2.

Of all these films, only the bottom three do I feel hesitant to watch again. In fact, I would probably watch The Ladykillers before O Brother or Buster Scruggs but it's pretty unanimous that The Ladykillers is absolutely their weakest film. For the record, if I were to add in Joel and Ethan's solo works, Honey, Don't would slot in between The Man Who Wasn't There and Intolerable Cruelty while Drive Away Dolls would slot in just after Raising Arizona. I don't even know where to put The Tragedie of Macbeth because it's nothing like the rest of their oeuvre. It sits on its own outside of it all...or it's last, I guess even though it's clearly a better film than The Ladykillers at least.

But what an unbelievable delight it is to have all these films in the world, and to revisit them in succession. It was a real effort to watch them week-to-week and not gorge myself on them. But, next time there will be a gorging.