Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Spoilers for both Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes are included in this review.

Reboots are now often met with dismissive comments and decidedly low expectations, the amount decreasing and increasing depending on the property or films it is kicking to the curb, or slate it is wiping clean. Not many franchises have been rebooted twice though, only the Batman film series springs to mind immediately when considering the big properties. But now, the Planet of the Apes series has joined that pantheon of beloved series that people just want to keep on having a crack at.

The original Charlton Heston starring series, which began with the classic Planet of the Apes and then spawned 4 films and I think a TV series, was then rebooted by Tim Burton and giving us a version of the story that certainly divided opinion and delivered one of the most bizarre endings in a main stream film. Then in 2011, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a film that nobody really wanted, proved to be a runaway success, putting the focus as much as on the people as on the apes, Caesar in particular and giving us a scenario that fits with how we could probably see our world turning into a ravaged mess, ruled by apes.

The basic plot for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (I'll refer to it just as Dawn from here on in), is one of two mirroring communities, the apes who are going from strength to strength, presided over by Caesar and the humans, a rapidly weakening outpost in San Francisco, which desperately need to find a new power source as the run down the last of the resources.

Carrying on from Rise, the central protagonist of Dawn is Caesar, an ape who was experimented on and as a result his mental capacity was increased exponentially. Portrayed through motion capture by Andy Serkis and a team of effects artists, we get an even more nuanced and weighty performance. The emotions are real, we see the fatigue and cost of his position at the top of the ape society. He understands that he can't afford to look weak, but also has to risk his status by making difficult decisions that the other apes may not understand.

His past is unique amongst the apes, he doesn't see the humans as being inherently evil, no doubt due to his largely positive experiences during Rise. This comes up against the viciously treated Koba, who is quick to judge the humans and considering his past, it is entirely understandable.

While my knowledge of Shakespeare is by no means vast, the few I have read, came across here as a clear influence. Koba, played superbly by Toby Kebbel, feels like a character worthy of sharing company with Iago or Claudius. The story, specifically the apes, has a grand feel to it, a story of tragedy. We all know something is going to go bad, it's just a case of watching it unfold in devastating beauty.

One thing that may catch out some people is that the human stories and characters take a back seat to the ape storyline and characters. Considering the quality of the actors involved it does come as a bit of shame that someone like Gary Oldman is only given a small supporting role, especially given his prominence within the community, so much that his part in the climax feels a little underdeveloped considering the magnitude of what he is trying to do.

But by no means are they two dimensional characters, Jason Clarke's Malcolm, whose family and storyline mirrors Caesar's own. Malcolm's struggle is to try and ensure his family's survival by convincing the apes to let them work in their territory and control the rampant hatred for apes amongst his team. His relationship is one of the high points of the high film and is hopefully something that will build into the rest of the franchise.

The best franchises all feature an element of natural escalation, something goes wrong, it gets worse and that it gets even worse and then just maybe you get a glimmer of hope at the end. Dawn does this really well and it hints at what is to come next is brilliant. So much so that all the characters don't even seem to try and fight the inevitable outcome. War.

One of the great triumphs of modern blockbuster filmmaking and undoubtedly the highlight of this year's summer movie schedule.

Director: Matt Reeves

Writers: Mark Bomback and Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and Pierre Boule (novel).

Edge of Tomorrow

I’ll be honest when I first saw the trailer for the Edge of Tomorrow, there was nothing that really reached out and grabbed me. It looked visually interesting, but the way the story was introduced, really didn’t give you anything particularly interesting.  The main plot point of the film is omitted, not in itself a bad thing, but without it, the trailer made the film look like a standard military sci-fi invasion film.

The basic plot of Edge of Tomorrow at first follows William Cage (Cruise) a PR man who has helped to sign up hundreds of thousands of men and women for a kind of D-Day style beach landing. Unbeknownst to him, he is going to the beach as well, to fight with the people he convinced to go there.

The landing goes terribly, thousands are killed, but by killing one of the aliens and being drenched in its blood, Cage inherits its species’ ability to control time and is taken back twenty four hours. Every time he is sent to the beach, he dies. Every time he dies, he wakes up twenty-four hours earlier.

This is a relatively new kind of role for Cruise, here he is definitely a man who is so far out of his depth, for the first half an hour, he looks completely lost and is just meat to get torn up and sent back. His confidence and charm does return towards the end of the film though, as his skills increase. It is in the first half of the film that his best work is done, he is vulnerable, scared and desperate to somehow get rid of this mind destroying curse.

Without going into spoilers, the beach landing is one of the most intense and visceral big budget action sequences in years. It would be a horrific place to be, and the carnage and loss of lives certainly reached my expectations for what a conflict like that would look like.

The film in general has a washed out look, akin to Saving Private Ryan, even though the similarities are few and far between. What it brings to the film is a tone of fatalism, there is very little to be joyous about or even much call for hope, especially for our two heroes.

Emily Blunt’s performance as war hero Rita, is probably one of the best performances by anyone in a blockbuster, having to pile on the mental strain that she has already undergone to get where she is, whilst also being an effective warrior, but above all else, a believable character. Something that big budget films often push to the side with female characters, instead choosing to put all the emotional weight behind the male characters. Here though, Blunt holds her own as she fights the urge to allow Cage to get to know her, through each time reset, knowing how difficult it can be to watch the same people die again and again.

The film at times does, through its time travel premise, touch on elements of fate and how predetermined everything is. With each beach landing, everything is precisely as it was the time before, there is no variation, but what Cage and Rita do, learning as they go. But a bigger indicator on this films idea of fate comes later on, near the climax of the film, which mimics events that happen on each beach landing, where the helicopter (a loose term for what it is) is hit by anti-air defences, the same happens later and in a similar way, events play out in a smaller, but near identical way on the ground.  This suggests that, in this world, no matter where this particular battle takes place for Cage and Rita, events and moments will repeat themselves.

Edge of Tomorrow is a prime example of a good film being derailed by a pretty sub-par trailer.

The best big sci-fi film of the year so far and with more wit and brains than you would probably think it had.

Director: Doug Liman

Writers: Christopher McQuarrie (screenplay) and Jez Butterworth (screenplay) & John-Henry Butterworth (screenplay) and Hiroshi Sakurazaka (novel).

X-Men: Days of Future Past

Contains spoilers for X-Men: The Last Stand.

Note before: I am yet to see The Wolverine.

The X-Men franchise (including the Wolverine films) is now seven films long, the longest running continuous comic book world. But with that there have been several up and downs, X3 andWolverine: Origins were the undoubted low points, whereas X2 is considered one of the genre's best.

Following on from the enjoyable First Class, but wary of being burned before, I went into Days of Future Past with fairly average expectations. The cast was superb, arguably one of the best ever assembled in the genre, but still there was a nagging feeling about what could go wrong.

The set up for DOFP starts in the far future, where mutants have been hunted and almost completely wiped out, only a few remain, pursued by an army of Sentinels (robots that can adapt to any mutants powers).

 

Professor X (Sir Patrick Stewart) comes up with an idea to send himself back to when the Sentinels were first conceived and to change the past. But unable to go himself as the journey would kill him, Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) who can regenerate and heal quickly, offers to go and is charged with altering the future by changing the events in 1973.

As I touched on earlier, the cast for this is filled with some of the best out there. But as with all of team X-Men films, a few characters are given precedence over the others and their decisions and arc is the main journey the film takes. In this the journey that is the most interesting and affects the story the most is Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) a shape shifter, who can mimic anyone and who also happens to be a highly trained assassin. It is, or was, her decisions in the past that are crucial ones to altering the future.

Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, Magneto and Professor X respectively, continue to give us interesting interpretations of the characters played by Sir Ian McKellen and Stewart. But far from making them just younger clones of these characters, we are given almost completely different people, although McAvoy’s portrayal is somewhat closer to his older partner's than Fassbender. Fassbender gives us an angrier and possibly, a more short sighted version than McKellen, but what the two men do together, is hint at the journey that Magneto has in front of him.

As with all time travel films there is an inherent risk of a plot developing so big that if it’s focused on, it could tear the whole plot apart. However, that is never really a big problem with the DOFP, as it doesn’t give the audience the chance to dwell on it to much, and by just sending back the consciousness of Wolverine, it restricts and puts up barriers for Wolverine to overcome.

But perhaps the biggest problems for the story was the glossing over, or maybe I just missed it, but the apparent ressurrection of Professor X, who died at the end of X3, but if this, at the start follows on from that world, as the deaths of other X-Men in that film are mentioned, then surely Professor X should still be dead, or at least inhabiting the body he transferred into.

If anyone can answer this I would greatly appreciate it.

As well as this film is directed by Bryan Singer, it is certainly a return to form for him. This film is a triumph for the writers, mainly screenwriter Simon Kinberg, who seems to be in charge of X-Men franchise when it comes to telling its stories. While the past certainly takes precedence of the future time line, he always manages to keep us aware of the stakes in both worlds and has linking events to really cement their connectivity.

Arguably the best X-Men film since X2, this is a much needed return to form for the franchise, which is set to go into full on disaster mode with the already announced X-Men: Apocalypse coming in two years.

Yes the continuity between the series is hanging by a thread, but it is such a mess that you really just have to go with it. But I’ll let it all go if we get a Mystique spin-off.

Director: Bryan Singer

Writers: Simon Kinberg (story and screenplay), Jane Goldman (story) and Matthew Vaughn (story.

Godzilla

The original is back. After many pretenders to the throne, including Cloverfield and Pacific Rim, which saw different takes on the idea of a monster film, either in how it was shot or in adding the idea of giant robots to fight the giant monsters. All have had varying degrees of success with these ideas, but ultimately it all comes back to a huge monster tearing through cities and us trying to stop and no one does it better than Godzilla.

Rebooting after the previous Roland Emmerich directed 1998 version, this version plays around with the origins of Godzilla, while tying in the post World War 2 nuclear testing that is synonymous with the creature and his previous films.

I’ll avoid spoilers as best I can, but here is basic idea of the opening. After the discovery of a skeleton belonging to a prehistoric creature is found, a dormant parasite living inside awakens and heads off towards the nearest food source it can find, killing thousands as it does. Years later, a scientist who survived the destruction is still looking for answers and trying to expose a cover up in the place his wife died.

The cast of the film is filled up of a mix of very accomplished and well known actors who make the most of the their parts and bring a real weight to them, and a few younger, less recognisable actors who make the core of the more intimate human story. The first half an hour is dominated brilliantly by the borderline manic Bryan Cranston as the scientist searching for the truth as he argues with anyone he can, in order to expose the truth.

Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen, play a young couple who a torn apart at the beginning of the film and who spend the rest of the film, trying to get back together. They have a believable connection in the film, even though they only have a few scenes to establish a key relationship with the film.

When talking about the look of the film, we really have to start with Godzilla himself, he has a more traditional look than the last film, where he or she had a more velociraptor feel to it, and was more athletic and harder to hit. Here there is a genuine sense of weight and power as it smashes through cities, the destruction comes as a result of not just its actions, but the weight and subsequent stress that is put on the city.

The film’s two biggest strengths are its tone and its restraint. Its tone is very real world (or Nolanized by some people), as it tries to portray a realistic reaction to a massive creature tearing through cities and slaughtering thousands.

There isn’t a lot of time of humour, because quite frankly there wouldn’t be. What’s funny about the situation? Some may argue that the film isn’t as fun, similar to what happened with Man of Steel, but to force humour or anything into a film, because you think it’s what the audience needs, not what the film needs is a mistake.

During my trip to the cinema I did hear some groans of frustration and utters of “this is gay” from some impatient imbeciles behind me, when the film held back on showing you all of Godzilla. They clearly just came for the mindless destruction, something you can’t sustain for two hours. Any criticism for this restraint is quite frankly wrong, it chooses to focus on the people caught up in this catastrophe ahead of the carnage. What use are characters if you aren’t invested in them. There are only so many times you can show Godzilla before you start to diminish his grandeur and the spectacle he brings with him.

One scene that stuck out to me, it was actually the scene shown in the teaser trailer, was the HALO drop into San Fransisco. This a scene where every part of it is working in perfect harmony, I can’t think of a more chilling sequence in a blockbuster. The music belongs in a horror film, adding to the terror as the soldiers get closer to the ground, as Godzilla moves through the smoke, ash and flames of the destruction on the ground.

While I thoroughly enjoyed Godzilla, it’s probably my favourite film of the summer so far, there was one part of decision that I would have done differently. But as it happens at the end of the film I’ll put out a spoiler warning.

The next paragraph features spoilers.

At the end of the final battle, Godzilla collapses, victorious, but wounded onto the streets of San Fransisco, where he lies for a few minutes in our time, but hours in terms of what the characters are going through. Before he gets up and triumphantly walks back into the ocean. Even getting a positive headline on a TV news station.

I’d have simply had him collapse into the bay and disappear beneath the waves which would have left us with a sense of ambiguity for the eventual sequel that will follow.

Spoilers end.

The king of monsters is so far the king of the summer. This isn’t a mindless spectacle, if you want that then prepare to be disappointed, they’ve tried to make a real film here and have definitely succeeded.

Director: Gareth Edwards.

Writer: Max Borenstein (screenplay) and David Callaham (story).

The Amazing Spiderman 2

With the recent rush to mimic Marvel’s shared universe, the studios that own comic book properties are busy trying to put together a plan, any plan that will give them multiple films all in the same world. The appeal seems to be that it guarantees that people will go and see each of these films, so that they can stay abreast of what is happening in the ongoing larger story.

Unfortunately Sony only own the rights to Spiderman’s world, so they are apparently going with numerous spin offs and team ups of villains and ambiguous characters like Venom.

The plot for TAS2 is hard to explain as it never really settles in on one particular narrative thread for long enough, nor does it focus on a particular villain long enough to get to know him or hate him. For Peter, the main focus again is Gwen Stacey, but this time in coming to terms with what the promise he made to her father at the end of the first film and also realising that he and Gwen may be on different paths.

As with the first film, the biggest strength is the relationship between Peter and Gwen (Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, who are a real couple), it is what the series and these films should have been anchored on, but instead we are short changed in the moments they spend together. Yes, there has to be more to a comic book film than a relationship, but when it is this believable, it needs to be capitalized on.

Garfield is a more vocal Spiderman and does seem to enjoy being him, in a similar way to how Downey Jr plays Tony Stark, which some people don’t like. But Peter Parker isn’t Bruce Wayne. Garfield also does the best with what is a muddled story that at time retreads a lot of similar scenes to the first film and is filled with cheesy jokes which, credit to him, he manages to pull off.

When the first film came out, a lot of people saw a similarity tonally and visually with Batman Begins, not a bad thing from my point of view, but some weren’t happy with what it would mean for Spiderman, it was different from what they had seen in the Sam Raimi trilogy. But because of the cast and how well their characters were written with the well plotted story, it worked well.

But now the series seems to have moved into a mix between The Dark Knight Trilogy and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Unfortunately it doesn’t work. Serious moments are undermined by underwritten characters, evil corporations and unexplained motivations. This particular aspect of the film was a major step back for me.

As with any comic book film, there is a risk of over populating the film with the villains, some do it well, some don’t. Spiderman 3 is often criticised for having to many and not focusing on Peter and Mary Jane (here it is Gwen Stacey) or a coherent story.

For me, that film is nowhere near as culpable as TAS2 because at least there was an attempt to flesh out their villains. Here, barring Harry Osborn (Dane DeHaan) whose motivation is very understandable, but his arc rushed, they just don’t make sense and as a result aren’t interesting characters to watch.

There are some fun action sequences and good moments between Peter and Gwen, but also a lot of wasted potential here. Chris Cooper, Jamie Foxx, Dane DeHaan and Paul Giamatti are all wasted in tiny roles or clichéd villain parts.

This film has, for me, damaged this series as well as questioning the need for a Spiderman universe, he’s easily in the top three comic book characters of all time and doesn’t need gimmicks or spin offs, he just needs fantastic story telling.

A disappointment, much more Iron Man 2 than The Dark Knight.

Director: Marc Webb

Writers Roberto Orci (script and story), Alex Kurtzman (script and story), Jeff Pinkner (script and story) and James Vanderbilt (story).

Transcendence

When I heard that Wally Pfister, renowned cinematographer and DoP on films such as The Dark Knight trilogy and Inception, was directing his first feature length film, I was delighted.  I have always been a huge fan of his cinematic style and I knew that whatever the film was, be it good or bad, at least it would look damned good. 

I wouldn’t say I was totally disappointed by Pfister’s first attempt, but I was certainly underwhelmed by it. 

To summarise the story in a nutshell without spoilers, this film is about a scientist whose consciousness is uploaded into a supercomputer, and the consequences to his family and the world in general of this feat.   

Startng with the good points, the casting was great.  It was novel to see Johnny Depp in a role where, for a significant portion of the film, he is physically absent from the screen, albeit he was vocally present.  Rebecca Hall and Paul Bettany gave solid performances as Depp’s wife, and co-worker/friend, respectively. 

Morgan Freeman, as always, was great, but I would have liked to have seen more of him, particularly in relation to his work with the FBI agent, played by Cillian Murphy, as this was somewhat glossed over in favour of the Depp storyline.   Kate Mara was good as the ‘terrorist’ although, in some scenes, appeared to lack empathy with her own cause as well as others. 

Visually, I was not disappointed by the way the film looked.  As a firm supporter of the tripod and steadi-cam, I was pleased to see that shaking shots, were avoided, even in the action sequences, and I was easily able to follow the film in its entirety. 

If I was to nit-pick, I would say that the numerous close ups and slow motion shots of water droplets dripping onto flowers was somewhat overdone and did not always seems to have a purpose. 

This, unfortunately, is where my enthusiasm for the film ends. 

I was underwhelmed by the story line in principle.  I generally take the view that AI films of this sort have largely had their day.  As we move closer to the time of AI becoming part of our lives generally, I prefer it when directors and writers look further ahead and use a bit more imagination about an industrial AI age, or a world post-AI might look like, rather than a somewhat transparent examination of what our world is likely to be like in the next 5-10 years. 

Whilst I applaud a film that is able to introduce the concept of man’s consciousness being inputted into a machine and avoid looking like The Matrix, I found the examination of that concept to be superficial at best.  The film introduces a fascinating concept of self-awareness and yet fails to examine in any depth that concept within the film, which for me, meant it lacked authenticity.  Not once did I feel the film was asking the audience to question their own self-awareness and humanity. 

I don’t always want to watch a film which is heavy on self-examination and conceptual but I think the least a film can do is be true to the concepts it introduces and not leave them hanging.

Overall, the film is worth a watch and is certainly not lacking in acting and behind the camera talent.  For me, where it falls short, is the story itself, which I felt in parts, was let down by the enormity of the task of exploring both AI and then attempting to make a judgment call about the use and extent to which it should be progressed by humans.  This meant it fell short of being either an action film, or a conceptual film, and falls uneasily somewhere between the two. 

I won’t be telling people to avoid it, but I certainly won’t be counting down the days until it is released on DVD.

Director: Wally Pfister

Writer: Jack Paglen

Noah

I have no great knowledge of the bible, so I can’t speak to the accuracy of the events in Noah, but I can imagine some things, were embellished, heightened or just plain added into make this one of the most interesting biblical epics in a long time.

I realise, that Noah has come under some flack in a variety of circles, mainly religious groups, either because of depiction, story or that they show Noah himself, a prophet. Something that certain religions take offence to. Before going to see it, you really need to push all of this out of your mind and take the film on its own merits and adaptation of the story. As essentially it is an adaptation, yes of a sacred tale, but this is Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handels (co-writer) take on this most memorable story.

Noah is Aronosky’s sixth feature film and bar 2006’s The Fountain his most ambitious and visually arresting. It follows more in the vein of The Fountain, than his other works, which have been more grounded and intimate stories such as Pi or The Wrestler, in that it is a story told on a grand scale, befitting the original story.

The film follows Noah and his family, after he receives a message in a dream where the Creator tells him that there is going to be a great flood to wash away all of the wicked and evil people in the world. Most of us will have heard the story, or at least be familiar enough with it, but Aronofsky does offer up a few surprises along the way.

Russell Crowe is kind of the go to man for historical epics as he is able to bring a weight and believability to the role and considering how well known this man/character is, the film needed a actor to invest in. The Noah we are given here, is very much a man suffering under the weight of the task given to him as well as the apparent contradictions that come with it. All of this is slowly and brilliantly portrayed by Crowe as Noah’s beliefs and understanding are constantly under attack, leading him to make a terrible promise to his son, Shem and his wife, Ela.

Noah looks stunning from first shot to last shot. While some of the big ark scenes are completely computer generated, they still hold up next to the rest of the cinematography by Matthew Libatique. The Watchers (fallen angels appearing as rock creatures) and especially the growth of a river sequence is probably my favourite in the film.

The siege of the ark sequence, which comes around half way through, is up there with the great modern action scenes of its kind, a much shorter Helm’s Deep. It feels dirty and frantic as the rest of the world (seemingly) battles to get onto the ark as the rain begins to fall.

Artistic licence has undoubtedly been taken with original story, the rock giants and Cain’s people I believe, aren’t mentioned in it. But to me at least, they bring more to the film than they take away. It adds a grand scale to the story and also a more personal/idea edge to it.

If I were to have a complaint about the film, it would be that it could have done with being five to ten minutes shorter. But while there is no one sequence or scene that stands out, towards the end some people in the cinema, most notably the man next to me, were starting to huff and puff and move about in his seat.

You will have heard bad things about it the film, but don’t believe them. I heard one radio personality refer to the rock creatures as Transformers, a statement so laughable I looked down my car radio in disbelief.

While it may not adhere strictly to the bible story itself, it is no doubt a sweeping, entertaining and engaging cinematic experience. It needs to be seen on the big screen.

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Writers: Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel.