"Having modeled the expressions of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, Serkis is primed to take a primate to the next evolutionary level, and his thoughts are beautifully articulated. His Caesar rises up, sniffs, takes the measure of the space, and calculates his options in a way that makes you see just how new his neural pathways are. Victimized by the prison’s dominant ape, Caesar concocts a strategy that’s part Chimp 101, part Sun Tzu. And the other apes — orangutans, gorillas — follow him avidly.... It’s Down with People, Up with Apes." - David Edelstein, New York Magazine
What a stunner. Rise of the Planet Of the Apes arrives in cinemas with zero expectations — yet another franchise reboot, starring a listless James Franco, from an English director nobody has heard of — and yet, against all odds, it's the best film of the year so far: majestically-imagined science fiction of genuine moral force. Franco appears not to have any idea of the quality of the film taking shape around him (he appears to be doing his homework in his head) and Freida Pinto registers like melted ice-cream, but the apes — and Andy Serkis's Caesar in particular — are wonderfully realised presences: heavy, mangy, calloused, soulful. Director Rupert Wyatt inverts the sneaky racism of the original films to produce a rousing liberation saga — a primate Spartacus. For once the intimations of Events To Come — the hoses, the horses — carry exactly the right mixture of excitement and dread. You get the chills and urge the apes on at every turn. The film ellicits both full species-awe and a pure, sportsmanlike delight in being outplayed by one's opponents. Magnificent. A-
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The Rise of the Planet of the Apes was an amazing movie, really sharing with us the birth a new civilization, stemmed from abuse and oppression of intelligence (which is not such a far off call of what humans themselves have suffered at the hands of the greedy and weak minded.)
ReplyDeleteThis movie touched on so much: family, health, discovery, disappointment, sadness, protection, anger, violence, love, leadership, hope, revolutionary war battle tactics, and the birth of a civilization, as an other one subsides by a single strain by someone with much accessibility.
It was like I could feel the air of the beautiful John Muir Woods as Caesar became one with it. I feel that way myself there, only wish I could climb the trees in quite the same style. :)
This movie is for anyone who can imagine "other possibilities" and runs very close to the original as far as powerful and thought evoking.
Thank you so much for the rebirth of a masterpiece with amazing actors and style. Bravo! Bravo!
I'm really glad you liked this movie, as i just read owen gleiberman's review and boy did he miss it by a mile. Beyond the major points that you make, I liked the thinking that went into a lot of the small decisions -- the pg rating that made the violence secondary to the emotional conflict, a father with alzheimer's as opposed to a mother, the muddle-headed primate center attendant, and the fact it was an action packed big movie that clocked in under two hours. As buffoonish as the big-pharma aspect was, that felt accurate to me, except that most new drugs are discovered via unexpected
ReplyDeleteside effects. I didn't mind James Franco, who registers as a Keanu Reeve with lighter hair. Perhaps there's a sexuality-chemical substance basis to their similarity?