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.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

As I type this, my wife is counting down the minutes until we catch the final Harry Potter later tonight.  To prepare for the last installment, we re-watched (and I reviewed) the most recent entries in the series, including this film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.  Sadly, even with me paying close attention, I was unable to find any Prince in this film.

Half-Blood, Half-Funk, and All-Awesome.  And weird.

So, what happens in the sixth Harry Potter film?  Well, after Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) was vindicated at the end of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the wizarding world now accepts that the evil wizard Lord Voldemort is alive and well.  While the good guys are presumably hunting down the baddies, Harry and his friends return to Hogwarts school for another year that will inevitably feature Lord Voldemort trying to kill Harry, once again.  Or...maybe not...?  This time around, it seems that LoVo (as the tabloids call him, probably) has given Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) an important task; Draco has always been Potter's schoolmate nemesis, but this is the first time he is actually given the opportunity to be EEE-veel.

You can't wash off jerk, Draco

While Draco attempts to perform his nastiness (that somehow involves a cabinet), Harry is busy helping Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) learn about Lord Voldemort.  You see, LoVo is a powerful dark wizard, but even he should have died at least a few times already in this film series; it is up to Harry to gather the secret to LoVo's resilience.  While the two major plots develop, we get the usual look at magical school life, only this time with some teenage romances. 

Snogging: apparently British slang for sniffing each other

One of the reasons I enjoy The Half-Blood Prince is that it mixes things up a bit.  Instead of waiting a whole movie to see exactly how LoVo is going to attack Harry (and fail...again), both sides take the offensive.  Harry and Dumbledore are searching for knowledge, which will indicate a weakness in LoVo's proverbial armor.   We finally get to see a student do something that isn't good when Draco helps LoVo and his cronies, the Death Eaters.  We even get to see Professor Snape (Alan Rickman) acting as a double-agent for Dumbledore when he pretends to be a Death Eater --- or maybe he's a triple-agent that's pretending to be pretending!  Whatever the case, this is a much needed development for Snape in this series, because he has been the Harry Potter equivalent of Red Herring from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo for far too long.

Possibly not a screen-shot

The acting improvements in the series continue in The Half-Blood Prince.  Daniel Radcliffe adds a bit of subtlety to his performance this time around and his "magically lucky" scene performances are pretty amusing, even if he appears to just be really, really high.  Emma Watson continues to be the best young actor in the cast; I thought she did a good job with her romantic subplot.  Rupert Grint continues to be an ugly red head, but he appears to be more than willing to look silly on camera and his comic performances continue to improve here.  He's still not much of a dramatic actor, but that may just be because I hate looking at his face.

L-R: Daniel, Emma, Ugly, Tom, Alan

Tom Felton was pretty good as the nasty Draco, but his ineffective hoodlum role from the earlier movies contrasts sharply with his brooding/sulking in this film; I will admit that the face-stomping he delivers toward the start of the movie is the coolest thing Draco ever did.  Bonnie Wright emerged as Harry's love interest in this movie; she has had small parts in each of the other films, but this was her biggest role to date.  She was pretty decent with the adolescent awkwardness, but even her newly expanded role didn't give her much to do.

The adult cast is its solid self again.  Both Michael Gambon and Alan Rickman's characters get much more screen time in this film than ever before, and each one has a few very nice moments on screen.  The requisite new cast member is Jim Broadbent, who is always a treat to watch.  His character is a little weaselly, but Broadbent does a good job exuding a blend of ego and cowardice.  Helena Bonham Carter returns as the crazed villain, Bellatrix, and she cackles her way through the movie.  Ralph Fiennes, as the evil Lord Voldemort...is actually not in this movie at all.  Huh.  I had to double-check his IMDb page to verify that, but it's true.  The rest of the adult cast --- Maggie Smith, Robbie Coltrane, Julie Walters, David Thewlis, Warwick Davis, etc. --- are solid supporting actors, even if they only get a few minutes on camera.

"Give me an L...!"

There's nothing wrong with the look and feel of this movie, either.  David Yates directed another solid movie with excellent pacing, a nice balance of comedy and drama, and a great instinct on what subplots from the novel to not include in the film.  There are a few moments where I wondered why the wizards didn't have a magical work-around in a particular situation, but I generally liked what he did and the performances he got from the cast.

Wizards haven't figured out an umbrella spell yet?

I have to admit that I am not the biggest fan of this story, though.  Yes, it has a pretty sweet Empire Strikes Back ending, but it's not enough.  There isn't nearly enough build-up with the mystery of who the Half-Blood Prince was, so when his identity is revealed, there is no pay off.  It felt like the movie hadn't even mentioned the sub-titular character for about an hour when he steps forward and identifies himself; that's nice, buddy, but the movie stopped caring about your code-name a while ago.  The biggest flaw in the story (which caused my wife to hate this movie when we first watched it) involves the use to Draco's evil cabinet.  SPOILER ALERT: Using the cabinet to bring Death Eaters into Hogwarts is a pretty cool idea.  What do they do when they arrive, after two hours of waiting to see what they will do?  They heckle Draco, watch Dumbledore die, and break some dinnerware.  And that's it.  The most bloodthirsty, murdering witches and wizards on the planet have full reign of a school full of frightened children and only a handful of teachers --- most of whom are elderly --- and they leave them all unscathed.  They don't even try to wreck the school.  This is by far the most unnecessary subplot in the Harry Potter series, and the long build-up for it just makes it more frustrating.  I understand that Yates didn't want to include the wizard fights that are featured at the end of this book, since the final movie will have plenty o' wizard fights, but that's still pretty lame.  I was also less than thrilled that we were being subjected to the ridiculously scored wizard sport, quidditch, again.  On the bright side, it played a relatively small part of the film.  I'm still not certain why Ron is the only player I can recall in the series that wears an old-timey football helmet to play.

Ron waits for the short wizard-bus

Even with plot flaws, The Half-Blood Prince is still a pretty entertaining movie.  I think it has some of the best acting in the series, as well as some of the cooler visuals.  I was disappointed by the story, though, which downgrades it from "awesome" to "still pretty good."

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Quick, name your favorite third installment of a film franchise.  Yeah...it takes a little bit of thought, doesn't it?  Aside from Die Hard With a Vengeance and Army of Darkness, is there a great third movie in a series?  If you can think of another great #3, leave it in the comments (I can think of two others).  These movies usually end up putting the lid on the franchise coffin, instead of improving upon the established formula.  After two successful (but similar) movies about magical children, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban changes the tone a bit and delves into darker territory, with a tale about betrayal and murder.  That sounds about right for a family film, doesn't it?

Like the last two films, Azkaban covers an entire school year for Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his friends, Ron (Rupert Grint) and Hermione (Emma Watson).  Also like the last two films, the plot is split between the ongoing struggle between Harry and the forces of evil wizard extraordinaire, Lord Voldemort, and Harry's smaller-scale problems at school.  As Harry prepares to return to Hogwart's wizard boarding school, he notices wanted posters for a man named Sirius Black (Gary Oldman) everywhere he looks.  Black, a disciple of Voldemort, had just broken out of the super-secure wizard gulag, Azkaban; this is a big deal for the wizarding world because Black was the first-ever escapee of the prison and also because his crimes were especially heinous.  Not only did he blow up a fellow wizard, Peter Pettigrew (Timothy Spall), with only a finger escaping total incineration, but Sirius Black was the man who led Voldemort to Harry Potter's parents on the night they were murdered.  Out of prison, it just makes sense that his first move would be to kill Harry for his master.  When Harry learns Black's history, he welcomes the fight and declares his intention to kill Black.  Apparently, having evil wizards try to kill you every year can make thirteen-year-olds get a little aggressive.

The other plot line follows Harry's progressive immersion in the world of magic.  As a side effect of Black's escape, Azkaban guards (called Dementors) arrive, looking for Black.  Dementors are not people, but soul-sucking monsters that find Harry a particularly tasty morsel.  Harry takes lessons on how to deflect these creatures from his new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Remus Lupin (David Thewlis).  Like Harry's last two DADA teachers (villains in the last two films), Lupin has a secret that plays a part in the film's climax.  Also playing a part is the school groundskeeper, Hagrid (Robbie Coltrane), who earned a promotion to teacher.  He introduced a hippogriff (a magical half-horse and half-eagle creature) to some students and, despite it being very friendly to Harry, it injured a student, perennial Potter bully Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton).  As such, the animal receives an execution date.  I wonder...will these seemingly dissimilar plots ever coalesce in time for the film's end?

At the time of its publication, the book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was the longest in the series.  Since the last two films went over two hours to cover everything in the books, it became necessary to cut the novel into something more digestible in movie form.  As such, Azkaban is the first Harry Potter film to take liberties with the source text.  That's great news for someone like me, who liked the first two films, but felt that they could have done more to adapt to the film genre.  That means that this film is more plot-driven that the others.  The other big change is Alfonso Cuaron's assumption of the director's role; aside from making a very good cutting of the story (in my opinion) for the screenplay, Cuaron played with the film's color palette, opting for more blues and a general washed-out feel, which I thought matched the story's being-hunted-by-a-murderer plot.  The DVD special features also point out an instance of Cuaron's dealings with his teenage cast; he asked the three main actors to write an essay about their characters, and the responses he got were surprisingly in-line with the work the characters themselves would have done: Watson wrote a fifteen-page paper, Radcliffe wrote a few pages, and Grint didn't do his homework.  Well, I laughed, anyway.

The acting in this film is a marked improvement over The Chamber of Secrets.  Daniel Radcliffe not only looked the part, with the most Harry Potter-ish hair of any of the movies, but his casual acting skills showed a lot of growth.  He doesn't quite nail every emotion (anger seems a little out of his grasp), but it's still a big step.  Emma Watson is, once again, the most natural actor of the three, but this movie gives her less screen time and, thus, less to do.  Rupert Grint manages to make ugly faces whenever he's supposed to be frightened, which is often.  I wasn't terribly impressed with David Thewlis' Lupin, but that has more to do with the CGI used on his character and my own impression of the character from the book than any particular shortcoming in his performance; I thought he would be more...raggedy, I guess.  And I'm still not certain why his CGI-aided moments went with such a lanky character design instead of the more traditional bulk.  Gary Oldman, one of the great actors of the 90s, took this role to make some money, but his performance is still pretty good; I loved the design for his character, from the hair and tattoos to his emaciated body.  Much of Oldman's presence in the film comes from wanted posters, but they are pretty awesome, just the same.  Tom Felton's turn as Draco is far less sinister than in previous movies; here he is used as comic relief instead of a legitimate rival to Harry.  Michael Gambon replaced Richard Harris as Hogwarts headmaster Dumbledore, and his performance had the subtle mischief I felt was lacking in Harris' performances.  Emma Thompson and Timothy Spall make their Potter debuts here in limited performances and cast staples Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, and Robbie Coltrane all do fine work in their small supporting roles.

Personally, I think this third installment surpasses the first two Harry Potters easily.  The acting is better, the pace of the film is better, and several details are glossed over in favor of a more seamless narrative.  Not only were the individual acting performances better than in previous films, but I think the more casual scenes showing the kids goofing off and having fun felt natural an unforced, which was a huge departure from the I'm-waiting-for-you-to-stop-talking-so-I-can-deliver-my-lines performances from the last film.  This movie also helped build the budding romance between Hermione and Ron a bit, something the other films left on the cutting room floor.

Not every choice was well made, though.  The Jamaican shrunken head in the early stages of the film was just obnoxious, for starters.  There were a few instances where the token black student at Hogwarts makes some reference to Black (as in Sirius) being up to no good, or how he could be anywhere, or whatever --- I'm not a racist, but unintentional racism makes me giggle.  I mean, really?  You couldn't find any other actor to make negative comments about "Black"?  Those aren't major complaints, though.  The one thing holding this movie back is the source material.  There is a plot element that is revealed in the final third of the movie (to be fair, it is foreshadowed) that essentially acts as a deus ex machina.  As such, the final third of the movie can seem somewhat contrived, but that is what the book offered, so I guess the filmmakers were kind of stuck.  Still, even with the contrived ending, this is the best of the bunch so far.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

"Second verse / Same as the first / A little bit louder / And a little bit worse!"  Those lyrics belong to any number of children's songs, none of which I can recall right now, and I felt them oddly appropriate for the second installment in the Harry Potter franchise.  Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets follows Harry (Daniel Radcliffe), Hermione (Emma Watson), and that ginger kid (Rupert Grint) as they try to uncover the annual Bad Thing that is plaguing Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year.

It begins with a house elf, Dobby (CGI voiced by Toby Jones), trying to prevent Harry from going back to school.  Dobby's master is planning some mean stuff and Dobby wants to help Harry Potter; the only problem is that house elves cannot say bad things about their owners, so he cannot give Harry an explicit warning.  Thanks, Dobby, you're worthless.  And you remind me of Fergie.  Harry is eventually reunited with his friends and returns to school.  However, someone is doing weird stuff at Hogwarts.  Messages are being written on the walls with blood, claiming that the heir of Slytherin has returned and opened the Chamber of Secrets.  If that makes no sense to you, I suggest you read the book because I don't want to get into the history of Hogwarts right now.  Along with the messages on the wall, students, pets and ghosts are being found petrified, with no clues as to what could be the culprit.  I guess it's up to Harry and friends to solve the mystery of the haunted amusement park!  I mean, discover the Chamber of Secrets and the, um, secrets it holds.

So what does Harry Potter 2.0 have to offer?  Well, it gives the villainous Malfoy family more screen time.  Draco (Tom Felton) and his father, Lucius (Jasoc Isaacs), are suitably insufferable, and both are welcome foils to the do-gooding Potter crew.  Lucius, in particular, is nice and evil.  We meet the evil Voldemort again and learn some of his history.  We get to see more of Ginny Weasley (Bonnie Wright), who will be important in later movies; Wright's performance isn't great, but it's difficult to be hard on a ten year-old.  Well, it's really not, but it feels mean.  This film also introduces the Whomping Willow and polyjuice potion, both of which will be used in later movies.  And that's about it.  Huh.  I guess this movie just sets up later installments more than anything else.

Chris Columbus directs this movie, as he did the first, and the results are basically the same.  He succeeds with the film's biggest obstacle: child actors.  The kids have gotten a little better at acting, although Emma Watson is still clearly the best out of the bunch.  The supporting cast is again stellar, with Alan Rickman, Maggie Smith, Richard Harris and Robbie Coltrane all maintaining the same high quality they did the last time out.  The addition of Kenneth Branagh as an egotistical teacher was a wonderful idea, and he is perfect in the part.  The special effects look better this time around and the little details that were not captured in the first film are done right in this one.  Honestly, since this story is so similar to the first movie, it feels like they just smoothed out the rough edges and did the same thing as last time, but better.

That is the big problem, of course.  The Chamber of Secrets is handicapped by its similarity to The Sorcerer's Stone.  I think it is obvious that this is the better film; the acting is better, the threat is more frightening, the special effects are better, and we're not wasting time with an origin story.  However, the plot structure (Harry sees a problem, Harry gets educated on wizarding stuff, Harry fights Voldemort) is annoyingly similar to the first movie.  This is also true of the book, but I actually like the movie better because you can see the young cast's growth as actors.  Is it fair to criticize a movie for being similar to its prequel, when the source material has the same problem?  Yes, it is.  Nevertheless, this movie does a great job at capturing the wonder and possibility of a magical world, and doing so in a way that will appeal to children.  If the story was a little better (read: less similar to Volume 1), this would be a clear classic.  As it stands, though, it is still in good company.