Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the exhausting title to the seventh entry in the Planet of the Apes series and it serves as a sort of reboot, as well as a prequel.  I know how much you like prequels and reboots!  I was not looking forward to this one whatsoever, if only because the last effort to revitalize this franchise was a huge disappointment for me, and that movie had a much better cast and director.  This director had made only one other movie, and I had never even heard of it.  What would it take to make Rise even halfway decent? 

Hint: more than a tire swing

Well, a different focus, for starters.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes begins with brilliant scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) experimenting a new drug on chimpanzees.  You see, Will's father, Charles (John Lithgow), has Alzheimer's and Will is trying to find a cure.  In other words, his drug will repair the brain, or enchance the brain if no damage is present.  When Will finally finds a chimp that responds positively to the drug, he pleads with his boss (David Oyelowo) to approve human testing; boss-man agrees to give Will a chance to convince the Board of Trustees.  On the very day of Will's presentation, the super-chimp (dubbed "Bright Eyes") goes, um, bananas, attacking people and destroying property.  Obviously, the drug is bad and all the chimps must be killed.  But wait...!  Will and his monkey handler guy (Tyler Labine) discover a teeny, tiny baby chimp in Bright Eyes' cage --- Bright Eyes wasn't drug crazy, she was protecting her child!  Aww...!

Free shipping?  Why wouldn't you buy a monkey?

So, yeah, that was tragic.  Will won't let the baby monkey get all murderdeathkilled, though.  He does what any scientist in a similar situation would do --- he experiments on the monkey because its momma was taking some crazy drugs when it was in the womb sneaks it out of the building and takes it home with him.  This was going to just be a temporary solution, but Will's dad seemed to like the monkey, so it stuck around.  More than that, this monkey turned out to be super-smart.  In fact, little Caesar (motion-capture-acted by Andy Serkis) is brilliant enough to convince Will to steal some of his experimental drug and try it out on his dad, on the sly.

"Pizza!  Pizza!"

Everything seems to be coming up Will for a while, but eventually Caesar is discovered by the neighbors and Will is forced to give him up.  And this is where the movie gets interesting.  Up until this point, Rise of the Planet of the Apes has been about Will raising Caesar almost like a son.  From this point on, the film is about Caesar becoming a man.  Well, not literally.

The human actors in Rise of the Planet of the Apes are just okay.  I don't completely buy James Franco as a brilliant scientist, but I thought he handled his role fairly well.  Freida Pinto's character didn't add a whole lot to the story, but she was also fine.  John Lithgow was pretty good as Will's father, but I would have preferred seeing his character's big breakdown happen at night.  David Oyelowo was less impressive as the greedy and ruthless science boss; his character could have legitimately had a mustache-twirling scene where he counted his imaginary money.  Brian Cox plays a small supporting role and is decent, although I think he has played the same basic bastard character a few times over by now.  This is the first first big post-Harry Potter role for Tom Felton, and he is once again stuck playing a villain.  I really wanted to like Felton here, but I couldn't wait to see him die.

If only for his lame "It's a madhouse" line

As the primary chimp, Caesar, Andy Serkis was phenomenal.  It's too bad that his acting isn't considered legit by most big-time awards shows, because his motion-capture work is just astounding here.  Really, the emotional weight of the film depends on Serkis' physical acting and he does not disappoint.  Shifting the focus of the story onto a monkey --- without a human to narrate to the audience --- was risky and potentially hilarious (in the wrong way), but Andy Serkis absolutely made this film.

Now, kiss

Director Rupert Wyatt did an impressive job with the actors who were imitating monkeys; the rest of the film he could have handled better.  The second half of the movie, which focuses almost exclusively on Caesar's struggles, is pretty great.  Monkeys fighting each other, monkeys fighting Draco Malfoy, monkeys being monkeys...the only thing missing was poop throwing.  Not all directors can handle CGI directing, but Wyatt did not appear to have a problem with that.  The first half of the movie, though, occasionally veered into the realm of ridiculousness.  Not all of it is Wyatt's fault, but as director, he should have prevented some of this.

Let's start with the title/tag line.

Okay, that's a pretty cool bit of promo work, but it (and the movie's trailer) definitely imply a hell of a lot more fighting and, well, revolution than the final product provides.  There are only two definite ape-on-human deaths in this film, despite a swarm (a flock?  A pack?  A murder?) of apes fighting the police on the Golden Gate Bridge.  Those scenes were entertaining, but if you went into the movie hoping for a lot more action like that, you would be sorely disappointed.  Instead of there being a "revolution," SPOILER ALERT: the apes go into the redwood forest.  Humanity then apparently suffers a pandemic during the closing credits.  That's right, the deadliest part of this movie happens off-camera.  Really, that was the most disappointing realization I had with Rise of the Planet of the Apes; it wasn't so much a "rising" as it was winning by default.

Fact: apes love railings

That ending would have been a slight let down in the best of times, but when you combine that with a supposedly smart story doing many stupid things, things start to get ugly.  I won't dive into my first problem with Rise of the Planet of the Apes in depth, but I have to mention it.  This movie takes place over a span of eight years.  Eight years!  And the only character that has even a slight cosmetic change in all that time is Caesar.  I'm not saying that Freida Pinto needed a perm or that James Franco should have had a mullet, but every human character is static over those eight years --- they have the same appearance, the same jobs, live in the same homes, and apparently have the same opinions.  If anything argues that this movie is about the CGI monkeys, it is that indifference to character development.

Slightly attracted strangers, or longtime lovers?  This could be any scene in the movie.

My biggest problem had to do with the way Will's scientist gig worked.  I'm not a high-profile scientist tasked with the job of creating something new, safe, and ridiculously profitable, but I imagine security at places where that sort of thing happens would be fairly strict.  Not only is Will able to sneak out a baby chimp in a perforated shoebox on "Kill the Monkeys" day, but he steals what amounts to dozens of canisters of his super-secret brain drug.  At least they hid stuff inside shaving cream cans in Jurassic Park --- he just puts them in his pocket.  And does nobody take an interest in Will's life at work?  "Gee, Will, it sure sucks that the company wants you to stop researching the drug that might cure your dad's Alzheimer's...oh?  Your dad's much better now?  That...um...shouldn't happen, but...great!  Are we missing some of the brain drug canisters?"

There are moments of Rise of the Planet of the Apes that are truly entertaining.  Caesar's schemes were pretty cool and the CGI/motion-capture expressions were fantastic.  But this is a clumsy movie.  It has ham-fisted references to the original film (although the spacecraft bit was subtle and cool) and extremely shallow human characters running around in a plot with many convenient logic holes.  I can't overlook my utter surprise that this movie wound up entertaining me, but I was disappointed in the overall direction of the picture as well as its numerous moments of stupidity.  Given the same overall story and a less ridiculous script, I would probably give this movie eight stars.  But Rise of the Planet of the Apes sucks hard on the stupid lever, and I can't ignore that.

127 Hours

For many people, 127 Hours suffered from what I like to call "Titanic Syndrome."  Basically, just because you know the ending of a film based on a true story, you assume that the movie isn't worth watching.  For example, why watch Tom Cruise inevitably fail to assassinate Hitler in Valkyrie?  Where's the suspense when we all know that Hitler escaped Germany and lived out his days peacefully in the jungles of Brazil?  Even 127 Hours director Danny Boyle admitted (no spoiler alert) that everyone knows that this movie will end with the main character cutting his own arm off.  Hearing a director that I admire admit that convinced me not to watch this movie.  But then, I started hearing some reactions from people after the DVD hit stores, and they typically went something like, "I didn't think I would like it, but..."  So I decided to give it a shot, and I'm so glad I did.

The story begins with Aron Ralston (James Franco) preparing for a weekend of biking and hiking and climbing in Canyonlands National Park in Utah.  Going just about anywhere in Utah means that you're not going to see a lot of people, but this is a large park that is four hours away from Salt Lake City; if you want to get lost in Utah, there's probably not a better spot.  That's okay, though, because Aron is a hard core adventurer.  If the guide book says it should take two hours to get somewhere by the established trails, Aron's going to try and cut that time in half by trailblazing his own path.  The only thing that slows Aron down is a pair of lost, but attractive, lady hikers; he takes them where they need to go (and then convinces them to do some crazy stuff), but is soon back on track in his quest to reach Blue John Canyon.  Now, when you think of hiking, you probably imagine a person walking, except it's uphill.  Aron's version of hiking involves running and jumping off of rocks and canyon walls.  Surprisingly (to me, anyway), Aron does take some logical precautions as he hikes (he tests how much weight rocks and branches can bear, etc.), but it turns out that his forethought is not enough.  While descending a narrow chasm in the canyon, where the walls of solid rock are so close together that boulders are suspended in the air, Aron accidentally dislodges a large rock and tumbles down the chasm.  He lands safely enough, but the rock fell with him and landed on his arm.  The rock is too heavy to lift, and it's wedged in pretty tight.  With limited provisions and no rescue on the way --- he's hard core, so he didn't tell anyone where he was hiking --- Aron is left with one desperate choice.  Of course, it takes him about 127 hours to finally get around to it.

The working title for the film was "Well, shit...now what?"

Director Danny Boyle deserves major kudos for making a film where the main character is stuck in one spot for two-thirds of the entire movie.  That might sound like a recipe for a boring movie, but Boyle keeps things interesting with a lot of camera movement and styles, as well as a good use of flashbacks.  I've always been a big fan of Boyle, but the fact that he is able to make a visually interesting movie in such a claustrophobic space is nothing less than astounding to me.  And that's just the camera work!  Boyle got a genuinely great performance out of James Franco, an actor that is usually only fun to watch when he's playing a stoner, in a movie that relied entirely on his performance.  I'm impressed, Mr. Boyle.

Of course, James Franco deserves credit for his performance, too.  I'm not usually a Franco-phile, but he turns in a surprisingly good performance in an extremely difficult role.  This movie is all about his character, and he's in almost every second of the movie, and is the focal point of every scene.  I assumed that this would be one of those stereotypical Oscar-baiting roles, where an actor pretends to be handicapped, cries a lot, is Sean Penn, or all of the above.  Instead, Franco treats us to a character that, while kind of goofy, is extremely likable.  There is a supporting cast in the film, too, but they aren't around for much.  Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara are fine as the cute girls that Aron Ralston thrills early in the film.  Clemence Poesy (who you might remember from the Harry Potter series) is okay as Aron's lover that we see in flashbacks.  I'm not entirely sure how much acting was required of Treat Williams, Kate Burton, or Lizzy Caplan as they played largely dialogue-free parts in Aron's flashbacks and hallucinations.

What makes this a special movie is its tone.  It kind of reminds me of seeing the Flaming Lips live in concert; their music is kind of melancholy and sad, but is transformed in concert into a fantastic, life-affirming experience.

Confetti = Good times?  Yes, if you're not cleaning up.

This movie works in kind of the same way.  I had heard all kinds of horror stories about people leaving theaters because the arm cutting scene was too intense for them, and the idea of watching someone saw through himself for two hours was not terribly appealing to me.  But it's not like that at all.  Yes, the dude cuts his arm off, but that's only about four out of ninety minutes.  Yes, it will probably make you squirm a little, but it's not that gory.  It's not a super-sad movie, either.  The first fifteen minutes are pretty fun, and the flashbacks keep the mood from getting too depressing.  The rest of the time focuses on the struggles Aron has as he tries a variety of ways to save his arm.  Instead of focusing on the loss of an arm, this movie focuses on the story of a man saving his own life.

My criticisms for the film are pretty small, but they mean a lot to me.  As much as I enjoyed Danny Boyle's direction, I wish he had put more purpose or meaning behind his variety of camera angles.  It's a small gripe, I know, but it can make the difference between good and masterful direction.  Boyle is at the point in his career where every movie he makes is potentially a classic (in my mind, anyway), so to see him not put the extra effort into having different camera angles imply different emotions is disappointing for me.  My other "complaint" regards the climax of the film; yes, it's emotional, but I think they could have cranked it up a few more notches and still not have come anywhere near melodrama.  Like I said, they're small gripes, but I think they're valid points.

That doesn't change the fact that this is a very good movie with a surprisingly good performance by James Franco.  You don't often spend an entire movie watching one character barely move, but this is definitely worth a watch.