Rise of the Planet of the Apes - Loads of Apes!

So I'm going to write this assuming that you know what happens at the end of the original planet of the Apes film. In fact, the premise of this film kind of gives away the 'big reveal' at the end of the original, so there's no point even trying to hide it as a spoiler. Which is a bit of a shame, although anyone who doesn't know that the Planet of the Apes is in fact Earth probably doesn't watch films, so probably isn't reading this.

'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' is a prequel to the classic Science Fiction movie 'Planet of the Apes'. The plot is that while developing a drug to cure mental illness, James Franco as an obsessed scientist tests his drug on some apes and ends up creating a super-intelligent baby ape. He takes the ape (Cesar - played by Andy Serkis) home and brings it up as part pet / part child. Cesar then gets sent to a kind of ape detention centre after attacking a neighbour in defence of James Franco's dad. There he turns against humanity and manages to get the apes to rebel...

The film is a triumph of CGI. The main character is a CGI ape, with whom the audience experiences the horrors of scientific experimentation on primates and the mistreatment by those who claim to 'care' for such animals. This is the central theme of the film, that unfettered scientific progress motivated by profit can only end in tragedy. Top marks for all this. 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' is an enjoyable flick with a good message at its core and a few well-placed references to the original. There are a couple of reservations I'd like to raise though.

Why does absolutely everything have to be explained in nauseating detail? If the original Planet of the Apes ending had been done by these guys Charlton Heston would have sat there explaining what the statue of Liberty meant. See how in the clip Heston explicitly doesn't say he's been on earth all along - making you think about what's happening hugely increases the power of the final lingering shot of the statue. In 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' there's a totally unnecessary post-credits scene that shines a huge spotlight on WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. Give the audience something to argue about in the pub afterwards!

The film is laughable in its abuse of the scientific method. This is hardly new for Holywood; some of the worst abuses here are a miracle cure for Alzheimers working overnight, a gas giving apes self-awareness in minutes, the usual array of 3D displays and over-engineered graphical interfaces plus - best of all - James Franco's interaction with his lab. The opening scene has Franco complete an experiment, jump with joy and immediately run off to his boss to proclaim eureka! In real life you'd have to retest, check your data, publish, be peer-reviewed, run out of funding, get more funding - et cetera until you get crushed by a mountain of paperwork. Obviously his boss is British (=EVIL). I do wish that Holywood would stop doing this, especially when the director's English!

But this is Holywood though, and you come to expect this sort of thing. It's just sad that many a member of the general population will have their view of science formed by watching films like this. I got over my reservations very quickly and was able to enjoy an absorbing tale in which humanity as a whole is painted as the bad guy. Even the usual array of gaping plot holes (expanded upon ably by my colleague Jonathan Sharpe) didn't bother me.

One last point - is the dude that played Malfoy in Harry Potter now destined to play dickheads for the rest of his life? Cos he's pretty good at it.

Burke & Hare

Trailered as something of a slapstick comedy, but billed and reviewed as a black comedy - Burke and Hare is definitely a comedy of some sort based loosely around the perpetrators of a series of murders in Edinburgh in the early 19th century. William Burke and William Hare killed people and sold their corpses to local surgeons studying anatomy. Burke was convicted and hanged, Hare testified against his accomplice and was let off for lack of evidence. Here, Simon Pegg plays Burke and Andy Serkis plays Hare. That's right, Andy Serkis doesn't just play CGI apes!

Why do film makers again and again pay so little heed to something as eminently-controllable as accents? When casting for roles do agents ever get a native speaker in as a consultant? I'm English, but while watching 'Burke & Hare' even I had difficulty listening to Isla Fisher - yep, her off Home and Away - add an Aussie twang to every 10th word of her 'Scottish' accent. Lord knows what viewers north of the border would think. Andy Serkis and Jessica Hynes weren't too bad with their Northern Irish accents (they're meant to be from Donegal, which isn't in Northern Ireland but is in the North of Ireland - if you see what I mean), while Simon Pegg had moments when he slipped. I think the cast of the film revealed what was really going on, the producers seemed to want to include as many of their mates as possible - accents be dammed. Of course I've no problem seeing Bill Bailey picking up a pay cheque and this has to be Michael Smiley's first acting job since he played cult club-tripper Tyres in Spaced - good luck to them both. But the least they could do is sort the accents out. As for Isla Fisher - all she contributes to the role here is being pretty and having red hair (both of which she does very well).

None of this would be a problem if there was a decent film to distract my attention. Sadly there's a bunch of slapstick humour and quite a lot of indifferent editing that undermines any momentum or arc. Also the script writers have subtly altered historical events to little benefit. For a start, Burke selflessly offers his own life to save Hare and his girlfriends' rather than Hare turning on him. Secondly, Burke and Hare are portrayed as loveable rogues rather than scummy murderers. That in itself would have been fine within the boundaries of a black comedy, but it's kind of ruined at the end when Simon Pegg & Bill Bailey remind us - to camera - that Burke was a really bad person who deserved what he got. The script writers seem to want their cake and eat it - they want to have all the laughs of blackly cheering a murderer on and at the same time shake their heads, wag their fingers and cheer when he's brought to justice.

Basically it's all over the place, and even coming in at 80 minutes long it's only just watchable.

Post script: So it turns out that Isla Fisher was actually born in Scotland but moved to Australia at a young age. The fact that she must have grown up with her parents' Scottish accents makes her inability to pull one off here even more disappointing.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I was tired of this film the first time I understood the premise. The idea is thus: imagine if you were born old and lived your life in reverse. So you emerge from the womb as a shrivelled and tiny old man, then grow progressively younger until 70 years time when you shrink to the size of a baby and drop dead. It's an idea that sounds interested as a science fiction short story, but a 160 minute Hollywood film? I'm not so sure.

Though heavily nominated at the Oscars, but winning in only the technical categories (deservedly so though for make up and special effects), watching the film didn't make me feel any better about it. It has no story, no plot and - weirdly for a film about someone's life - no real arc. If anything I think the point (and I'm assuming there's meant to be a point as this is a David Fincher film) is that you're only as old as you think you are. Or maybe that it's never too late to do what you want. Unless you break your leg; or get dementia that is. Maybe the point is that life is just life, and you never know what's going to happen. Some people get all the breaks, others don't and that's just the way of the world. Well I knew that already.

Despite some amazing make up effects and Cate Blanchett giving a top performance (as ever), I found little of interest in this film. The make up effects really are impressive though, Blanchett looked every bit a 16 year old girl or a 60 year old woman. I couldn't work out at what point in the film we were actually at the actress' real age. Not worth the 2.5 hour investment though.

Super 8

Trailers for J J Abrams' newest film have been floating around on the internet for a very long time now. The earliest ones made 'Super 8' look like a rip off of The Crazies (already a remake of course), though more recent versions seemed to focus on its young protagonists. It wasn't clear if we were in for a monster slasher or a rerun of the Goonies - or maybe a bit of both.

Some of that was cleared up by the Radio 5 review last Friday. Kermode's on holiday so they've got 'Boyd and Floyd' in for the summer weeks. One of Boyd or Floyd is from Ilford - big up. Sadly I can't tell them apart though. Their review made the film sound like a kids adventure, they even refused to talk about the monster-chasing elements as they said it'd be a spoiler. Obviously they'd never seen any trailers. Their review pointed out J J Abrams' obsession with lens flare, something I would never of thought of without them mentioning it - but annoying once you spot it every 5 minutes. They made a big deal of Abrams' self-confessed obsession with Super 8 film when he was a kid, and how he used to make his own films and even managed to get himself involved with Steven Spielberg's production company as a teenager. 'Super 8' is a film that clearly comes from the director's heart.

This is a throwback film to an age that I presumed never really was, but a world that J J Abrams grew up in (or maybe wished he did). It is 1979, the kids of a small Ohio town entertain themselves by making zombie movies on Super 8 film. When filming a crucial scene at an abandoned train station, they are involved in a huge train crash. Though they survive physically unscathed, the train was carrying something that the airforce don't want anyone to find. It's a massive monster.

It's the Goonies, the Famous Five and a bunch of Roald Dahl staples rolled into one. It's a world where children live lives unconstrained by the emotional baggage of adulthood. The children in the film live in a make believe world constructed under the noses of their parents. It's a world where everything is an adventure and where their imaginations - undulled by years of the strain of adulthood - help them accept the unreality of the fantastic situation going on in their town and work fearlessly to solve it.

I can imagine Abrams pitching this film to Steven Spielberg by getting him to imagine ET with a massive terrifying looking monster instead of a 3 foot gimp. It's a throwback film that romanticises the joy and innocence of youth, it's funny and jumpy in the right places and has a nice emotional kick that makes the young characters people to care about.

There's not much not to like about Super 8 - apart from that bloody lens flare. Also, there's a good end credits bonus that you should stick around in the cinema for. They show the full zombie movie that the kids were making, what I saw of it was pretty funny (missed the first bit).

South Park - Blame Canada!

South Park came out just as I was first going to university. Since that's almost 15 years ago now I am amazed to discover that it's still going. The other night though I was over at my sister's place and they were watching the new episodes. I had kind of assumed that it had gone off the boil ages ago, but I was informed that the opposite is true - South Park is still going as strong as ever.

South Park is on the surface about crudity, fart jokes and being as un-politically-correct as possible. Dig even slightly below the surface though and you quickly find it's a riotously funny satire. It still has crappily-drawn children doing fart and poo jokes though, which is of course quite a lot of its charm. We watched an episode on Friday that was ostensibly about laughing at people pissing in swimming pools. Beyond the crude hilarity of that though, the episode was a subtle satire on pseudoscience as well as poking fun at the elements of middle America who fear the ingress of 'minorities'.

Eric Cartman sings a song lamenting the minorities in 'his' swimming pool, a song that sent my mind back to South park's greatest achievement - south Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut. To you and me - South Park the movie. The plot of the film revolves around a smutty Canadian cartoon that gets blamed for encouraging children to swear and behave badly. The authorities and parents' groups overreact to the film, declare war on Canada and kick off Armageddon. It's a film that some might struggle to take seriously since it features Satan and Saddam Hussein as a cohabiting couple in hell - but it's satirical gold. The film cleverly lampoons its own potential critics and attitudes towards censorship. At the same time it's a musical - with musical numbers and songs that are pure Broadway. Not least of which is the fantastic 'Blame Canada':



"We must blame them and cause a fuss/before somebody thinks of blaming uuuuuuus" - great lyric. All the songs are on Youtube. In fact, all the episodes of South Park are freely available on the internet. Nice to see that Parker and Stone (the South Park creators) have stayed true to their anarchist roots and shunned the draw of big dollars. Maybe that's why they've retained their creative edge after all these years?

Brings back good memories all this. Has it really been that long since I first went to university?

Harry Potter part 7b - the end

So we finally come to the end of the Harry Potter series. With part 7b the story comes full circle as Harry and his chums return to Hogwarts to graduate by blowing up the school (a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer of course). Where part 7a was about hiding in the woods, part 7b is about explosions. Where part 7a was about character drama and angst, part 7b is about - well - more explosions I guess. That's right folks, you've sat through the prelude, you've endured Harry's teenage whining and Hermione & Ron's will-they-wont-they... now it's time for the payoff.

And what a payoff. Hardly any time is wasted before getting on with the big finish. Within minutes of the stylised Warner Brothers logo falling from the screen our trio of heroes are breaking into the Gringots vault in search of another part of Voldemort's soul. As soon as they escape that by riding a dragon over London they're immediately off to Hogwarts for the final confrontation. I didn't look at my watch in the cinema, but there's got to be a good hour of film all set on one night at Hogwarts - where the forces of good and evil finally collide in a climactic battle between Harry and Voldemort. Cue lots of very cool effects, running & chasing, firing off spells and soul-searching. Epic though all this is, I still thought the best scene was Harry's 'dream sequence' with Dumbledore in a ghostly apparition of Kings Cross station. It's here that the emotional heart of the story lies, even in a crash-bang finale like this.

The usual stellar array of British actors are in display as in the other films. It was particularly odd to see people like Jim Broadbent and Julie Walters reduced to little more than vessels for make-up and two lines of dialogue. One nice surprise was seeing Kelly MacDonald turn up for 5 minutes of mad nattering as a Hogwarts ghost, I guess there was at least 1 Brit left who hadn't appeared in this series yet. Her English accent is very good.

Basically this was a great finish to the series. Not as good as the book - although that probably wasn't possible - but essentially true to the source material and a fitting way to end it all. The final scene still grates a little on me though. I never liked it in the book and though I can understand Rowling's motivations for including it I think it's a little lazy. None of the young actors look in their late 30s no matter how much hairspray they put in Emma Watson's hair.

One tiny gripe, why didn't they fade to a 'THE END' logo at the end? Not too important but it would have been a nice way to round everything off. Also - minor point but important - do not attempt to watch this film if you're not seen the rest. Almost no attempt is made to cater to an audience requiring a 'previously on' recap.

A seminal moment for many, the final part of the Harry Potter series was for me the end of an enjoyable journey through a modern re-casting of many of the staples of fantasy fiction. Of the films, I think that HP3 was the best by a nose over HP5. Where the fifth had teen angst and Immelda Staunton hamming up the evil, the third had a big heart and freed the series from the clutches of the money men. Imagine what the series would have looked like if all 7 books had been filmed by Chris Columbus - Nightmare! As it is, the Potter series is an impressive achievement in modern fantasy. Though rarely groundbreaking and sometimes bogged down in maguffins and detailing the minutiae of its own world (what fantasy isn't though?), the series' main driving force was always the characters, their relationships and emotions. It's been an enjoyable decade.

And I watched it in 2D thank you very much.

The Last Supper

Now here's a weird premise for a black comedy: a bunch of liberal postgrad students have a redneck over for dinner and accidentally kill him during an argument about politics. They decide that it'd be a good idea to invite more right-wingers over and - if they fail to be convinced to liberalise their views - kill them too. Such is the premise for 'The Last Supper'.

Apart from the obvious black comedy here, the film has a nice theme running through it about the dangers of taking political dogma too far - be it from the left or the right. Indeed the film takes these positions too far through its characters, do overt racist nutters like that played by Bill Paxton really exist? Perhaps; I'm off to Texas later this year so there's a good chance I could meet some. I remember being a liberal postgrad, but no-one I knew was ever as wet and intellectually superior as these guys. Well - maybe one or too were. But we never lived in a mansion cooking massive 3-course meals for each other and having randoms over for an intellectual discussion between wine courses.

The film gets a bit in-your-face at the end when Ron Pearlman gives a speech from the pulpit of righteousness about how everyone should throw aside their preconceptions and learn to live and let live, but overall it just about hits the right mark.

Watching it made me feel as if I was sitting through a feature length TV episode rather than a film. Stacy Title (a female director - yay!) has done little else, perhaps not a surprise as the camera-work didn't feel right throughout. 'Last Supper' is notable for being an early Cameron Diaz film. With a release year of 1995 it came out just after Diaz's big break 'The Mask', but I assume this was filmed shortly before she broke it through to the big time. Also there's a brief appearance by Elizabeth Moss as the missing girl (she only appears as a photo on a 'missing' poster - so blink and you'll miss her).

It's a funny film that's interesting and has enough laughs to remind you that it's not meant to be taken entirely seriously. Don't expect any major political revelation though, its view of left v right and the US culture wars is far too simplistic for that.