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Planet of the Apes (1968)
From here to eternity with the planet of the apes.
Taste is such a hard thing to define. I want to say that taste is not only likes and dislikes, but how those likes and dislikes measure both individually and with groups through time. This film has both helped define my taste in film, and on some soulful level defined me. I've tried to give it consideration through many years and even though many other films have cultural and personal significance, Planet of the Apes is part of me.
I can say that because I remember from when I first saw it, on CBS when it premiered all those years ago it caught me like on of the humans hunted by the gorillas in the cornfield. I remember the perfection of the shock as Taylor and his comrades ran for their respective lives. I've watched the film more times than I can remember, and I still marvel at the total and complete transition that happened in those few minutes film.
The whole work is sublime. The opening with Taylor talking to computer making a record of hopes before he goes of to join his crew mates in suspended animation really doesn't get the credit it deserves for transporting the viewer into a different world. I understand the equally high praise that I've heard over the years for how outer space sequence with the colorful light imagery is more clever than effects that many other films have tried to capture with greater grandeur and less impact. I say foul, because most of the competition lacked Jerry Goldsmith's brilliant score. As the opening credits roll, I feel transformed from being a boy under ten in a room with family watching this for the first time to an adult who has seen so much. I still need to come back.
After the credits we do another transition.
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017)
Forgive me Lawgiver, they have sinned.
Lots of drama. Internal ape conflict. Human ape conflict. Brutal, but not interesting. I still want to like this movie, but I can't make the leap. Humanity has been whittled away by some super virus, yet look at what remains. I could have taken some of it, but the final battle was too much. You had helicopters, tanks, missiles and helicopters. You probably had a force larger than what I thought the surviving population of the earth was. Forget it, I really can't get over it. Sorry.
Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
Saw it for completeness...never forgot it.
In the forty years since it was made, I understand myself a lot better; and I know why I like this film.
John Huston as the Lawgiver is priceless.
More than that the Lawgiver has woven into psyche of even the casual Ape fan. Taylor was told about the Lawgiver. The mutants evoked his image in a failed attempt to drive off a gorilla army. Cornelius testedified about him to a Presidential committee. They could have done worse.
Battle for the Planet of the Apes is an essay on the craft of making an Apes film.
Talent is needed. Roddy Mcdowell never looked better. Claude Akins is a suitable bully.
"Now fight like Apes!" works.
I realize it is easy to dismiss the movie, but I believe it actually has a lot more merit than other tales out there. As mere essays go it gets a pass.
Hard to do five of anything.
Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)
Bullet point review.
1) Consistent with JJTrekVerse. Very good.
A) Lots of follow up from 09 movie.
1 Lens flare is the future.
2 Enterprise has a built in water treatment plant that belongs in a warehouse.
3 Earth is kind of boring. More like a commercial or magazine add.
4 Hard to swallow what a mess Star Fleet must be. Liked the flow in 09.
5 Caps and headgear have to go.
6 Relys on running around and broad acting to make for plot issues.
a kind of like that they take some dangerous stuff away from ship.
b some of the dash actually engaged me and really works well.
c also liked cell phones in space aspect.
7 Could watch Old Slick forever.
B Actors really delivered. Glad for what they gave, wish they had more to do.
1 Real issue that too many new characters messed up focus of the film.
2 I suspect they could have used Peter Weller as Adm Marcus just fine.
3 Drop Ben C as Khan. Have him as a rogue Captain loyal to Robo-Admiral.
4 High hopes for next film.
2) Really messed with Wrath of Kahn
A Could not swing the feeling that they messed with the best.
B WOK was a result of carefully strewing over Star Trek.
1 The team that did WOK watched the original series and made the best.
2 This team faced a deadline and gave us a Return of the Jedi.
3 I got the feeling they made it to make it resulting in hack.
4 Its watchable. I beloved calling it the worst Star Trek is a ploy to make people see it.
Pacific Rim (2013)
Love Money and Box Office
Just a couple things I have been pondering.
1) The Godzilla films that inspired this were a lot cheaper to make. This movie is gold plated. It is a wonder to behold but even the grit looked expensive.
2) The cast was credible. The world was real enough. I admired the art.
3) Some of the themes of team work and uniting were uplifting.
4) The little girl hiding from the monsters was worth the price of admission.
5) It is a classic worthy of repeated viewings.
6) Behold what was bizarre cheap thrills has transcended the genre and become art.
7) What may be dismissed today as a flop will stand the test of time as testament of vision.
Super 8 (2011)
Love ain't enough
You can really do everything well, but still blight a picture with one poor choice. 70's feel loved, kids at risk, loved it, a real sense of yearning done with flare, loved it...computer generated monster that destroyed the movie. I've seen worse effects, but it just basically flushed the movie. Super 8 could have had it all, but I picture somebody having to show this to J.J. and him being willing to go along with it. He loved everything else, thought he could swallow the cgi. I couldn't and didn't. The 70's feel was right on, it said early Spielberg like Close Encounters and Jaws. The cast worked the script. Super 8 could say quite a bit about how to make a fun film. I loved the disappearing leaders, and government shutdown. Three Mile Island. An invisible alien may have improved it.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
Careful how much you rewrite WWII
Loved the beginning, lots of fun. It may be one of Tommy Lee Jones most strained performances. I believe he was in a limited role trying to command the uncommandable, but the crew could have done something beside hope for the best with him. They did not get it. Dude from the Matrix, Hugo Weaving playing the Red Devil was about par for the course. I remember somewhere in the middle of the raids on Europe thinking that if Captain America and company could do this to Hydra, why didn't they just knock out Hitler instead. Anybody able to raid over Nazi Europe with these guys wild abandon could have kidnapped Hitler.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011)
Worthy of the title
Planet of the Apes has been a part of me since the seventies. I've found the themes of alienation, prejudice, conflict, and what it means to be human engaging. The first five films set the ground for the thought that something bad was gonna happen in the future. As I grew up I felt the echo again and again. I grew up in a cold war, watched the rise of HIV, saw World Trade Towers come down, and watched our global markets freeze and heave. The apes were always waiting. So Rise of the Planet of the Apes comes along. The world of man is going to fall again, and this time we are in on the ground floor right away. This film has its critics, and what film doesn't, but I suspect its a case of not really getting it. I loved the idea that we seed our own destruction because we forgot that someone else might be up for the job. Caeser is the driver of this movie, it's clear from when he comes out to the box that will ever be the same once he hits the scene. When I first saw the Apes movie I was child, then I sided with the apes because I thought they were doing a better job than my parents at running the world. Now, as a parent, I can see how the order I once thought existed is always ready to be challenged by simply wishing I can make the world a better place. Watch this movie if you grew up close to the Planet of the Apes, but want to see something with a hipper outlook. Oh yeah, we are gonna fall, but it will be cool because we were hoping for something better. Peace.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse (1991)
Just want to see another documentary with this much depth
It can not be touched. A documentary about the making of a film the actually elevates the film. I was drained and to an extent bored my Apocalypse Now. Long, overwrought, pretentious, if Vietnam was like this no one would have left, everyone would have been sound asleep. I mean that negatively because I don't think Francis knew diddly about war movies, or Vietnam. (I do wonder about the screenplay he wrote for Patton, which was brilliant.) He had talent, but ended up with more of a cartoon than cinema.
Now for Hearts of Darkness. Seems that the wife had incredible talent in picking and choosing.
She not only bought the film making process alive she bought the film to life. I could follow the plot and appreciate some to the choices that Francis was confronted with, he had a beast and he had to tame it.
By seeing what was rejected, I could appreciate what was left in.
1)Some the story boards with lines about soldiers who felt like gods, suddenly made I love the smell of napalm in the morning seem subtle and understated.
2)Clearly the difficulties with Martin Sheen's heart attack, and the walking disasters that were Dennis Hopper and Marlon Brando.
I mean I suddenly found myself wanting to see it again, not because of a yearning to see a jumbled mess about the jumbled mess of Vietnam, but because if you want to see an unquenchable thirst to tell a tale, and how fine a balance that is...and the interesting tale about the tale, this is unmatchable. It's truly like being there.
The Boys in Company C (1978)
You have brain damage.
You have to have brain damage if you didn't like this film. As much as I like the first half of Full Metal Jacket, and parts of Apocalypse Now; this movie did so much more. It didn't try for high flying art ideas that panned out because a wall of money can resolve a lot of miserible writing, and pretension. This movie showed how a combat platoon is formed, and how combat changes it. Maybe it melted down a little in the end, but wouldn't one of the first serious stabs at a B grade Vietnam flick have to suffer in the end. I know this is a great film, enjoyable through and through, seemed to made at time when you could say that something could be said about Vietnam without a lot of baggage.
Apocalypse Now (1979)
What happens if you break the egg.
Apocalypse Now still leaves me with the feeling I've just had a dream that I can't remember. That feeling that something special happened, but I have no idea what. Here are a couple case in points. The air assualt on the VC village, the Playboy Bunny dancers, and the river boats cruising past the downed B-52. I remember the plot, but something about the pacing seemed like it was part indulgence, part burden. Writing this doesn't clear up what I'm thinking. My problem may be that Conrad's, "Heart of Darkness" is a moody work, and the moods in this film seem to have blunted what Vietnam was reported and recorded as for mass consumption. An artificial construct like Apocalypse Now requires more nimble story telling. The character study of Kilgore was great, the surfing inane and perfect. The image of the helicopter carrying the cow in a net doesn't get any weirder, but it was like looking a paint pallet. The story needed to be blended better. It's tough to say how, and maybe Apocalypse Now is a true product of it's time. As developed a film about could be 1979, but still too imersed in the culture of the time to get past itself and on with the story.
Underworld (2003)
like a cat biting a power cord, you have to watch, but feel sorry
Writing about dreck is easy. I may review the Matrix one day, but figure I'll sharpen my fangs on this load first. How do I hate it, let me count the ways. If a movie can have a hot actress in black latex squatting, preening, glowering, and firing machine pistols in a manner that would puts Trinity to shame, why do I hate this film? If the plot can take a double helix turning spin, land on its feet, and prove very deft, why do I hate this film? If the acting is credible, effects are superior, and sets very credible, why do I hate this film? If I can love a good yarn about vampires and about werewolves, why do I hate this film? I think it because I knew I could watch it, and I knew that I was being marketed at, with all the warmth of a Roman Emporer giving the thumbs down at gladitorial combat. I'm on what's good about this film, although the makers wanted to sew clichés together to cover what is really a very minor story. I shouldn't mind so much, I did watch it from beginning to end, but I think that the film had next to no challenge to watch. Because it had no challenge, no engagement, I had no stake in it, I hated it. I want to know that something can entertain, enlighten, uplift. This film can only spin boredom into something that should have been half of every thing that it ultimately became. I am a little tired of what made a good made for TV movie in 1973 being elevated like this movie has been. Slick, overinflated, garbage.
Hair (1979)
Timeless
I first saw this film in the early 80's on cable. It was unique as a statement about the sixties, culture, war, music, race, and a bunch of things I'm certain I missed. However about a year ago it came back into my life as I started enjoying it with my son. He's a little young (9) for a lot of the themes in it, but he understands dancing hippies are fun to watch, and he gets the idea that end is ironic. While I can't think of other films in this genre, it does have a stand alone genius I love. It also does a unique justice to Central Park. Most musicals are lost on me, one way or another. "Tommy" was over the top and heavy handed in direction, "Oliver" seemed like crowd control on the silver screen, "The Wall" was so much abstract self important and indulgent dribble, but listening to "Failure of the Flesh" from Hair sounds right for our times today, as it did in the eighties, as it must have in the sixties...truly Timeless.