Things That Go Bump in the Night: "Paranormal Activity"

Paranormal Activity was made in 2007 by first time director Oren Peli, who also wrote the outline for what would happen in the film. He filmed it in his own house over a week with actors Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat. The film centers on a couple played by Featherston and Sloat, with the same first names; Katie has been haunted by some kind of entity since she was a child and believes it has followed her to her and Micah's new house. Micah, who is much more excited than Katie is, plans to record their bedroom everynight in order to catch sight of whatever is haunting Katie. Here's something else important: Paranormal Actvity is a "found footage" film, shot with a hand held camera to make it seem as if its real footage Micah shot.

"You had to be there" may be the perfect phrase to attach to a film like Paranormal Activity. I feel there are certain films, which no matter how much you appreciate or like them, had to be experienced at a certain place in a certain time. When people were seeing this for the first time in 2007 or in 2009, when DreamWorks gave it a larger release, and had no idea what they were really in for, there was probably a sense of mystery and a "could it be..." quality to the film. When it started to become more well known and the actors started to publicity, and of course when Hollywood decided to start to make sequels every year, the mystique starts to fade, and all we're left with is just the movie. And that's probably the best way to truly judge a movie.

For me, Paranormal Activity is one of the most interesting experiments in filmmaking in some time. While it owes something to The Blair Witch Project (which I admittedly have only caught fragments of on TV), it has its own conceit, which is the static camera in Katie and Micah's room everynight, which their bed in their center of the frame, and their door to the left of the frame. It's this conceity which is probably the deal breaker for most perople. Certain hardcore horror fans may be bored, while others will genuinely be kept in suspense. For me, it worked. I loved the idea of looking in to that hallway full of darkness, not knowing what was out there and if it was possible to catch a glimpse.

While the hand held camera technique does set a certain mood that makes us feel we're in the real world, it does limit what Peli can do visually. When we think of haunted house movies, we not only think of the ghosts but of the house itself, like the Outlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining or Hill House in what I think is my favourite horror film, Robert Wise's The Haunting. While the bedroom in Paranormal Activity is certainly memorable, I couldn't help but think what Peli could have done with this house if he took a more traditional film route. I'm thinking of angles and tracking shots which could have added more creepiness to the film. Peli could still have used some hand held camera work as well as keep the static camera in the bedroom. Of course, Peli probably wanted to take a route distant from Hollywood, and I respect that. I also like when Micah investigates the hallway after disturbances in the bedroom. The way the camera swishes around made me afraid about what could come in to the frame.

It's easy to get a little frustrated when we never see the demon. You want that glimpse of something sinister after so much set up. Fortunately, the final few seconds are a great pay off. Featherston and Sloat are solid actors, convincing as a young couple slowly falling apart.

I think all effective horror movies are relatable to human psychology in some way or another. Paranormal Activity is all about fear, how people cope with it, how it becomes escapable when there is no reasonable doubt that something otherworldly is happening; it's also about how we as an audience react to these kinds of films, particularly when they're presented without any Hollywood gloss.

Paranormal Activity also relates to the feeling of being in your bed at night, hearing something going bump in the night. You tell yourself it's just your imagination. The scariest thing about Paranormal Activity is that is it it tells you it isn't just your imagination.  

"The Adjustment Bureau" Review

Sometimes with thrillers or dramas with romantic intrigue, we tend to feel they’re tacked on. In the case of The Adjustment Bureau, in a way it’s the opposite; it’s a romance with a thriller plot, a sci-fi one at that, tacked on; except in this case, the romantic plot and the sci-fi plot complement each other quite well. The romance grounds the more other worldly aspects of the film’s universe while the sci-fi elements raise the stakes for the romance as well as make it more poignant.

The story begins with Congressman David Norris (Matt Damon), who is running for governor of New York. Just as he seems set for victory, an unbecoming photo from the night he was elected congressman gets released. As he is practicing his concession speech in a bathroom, he meets a dancer named Elise (Emily Blunt). Within minutes of meeting they’re already making out! The next day David meets Elise again on the bus. She gives him her number. It’s like love at first sight for David, as well as a chance for a new beginning. The kicker is there are some people who don’t want them together. They’re called the Adjustment Bureau. They’re angels of sorts who work for the “Chairman.” “You know him by other names,” one of the angels, Harry (Anthony Mackie) tells David. Their job is make sure things go according to plan, which includes David and Elise not being together.

 While David and Elise do seem to be attracted to each other almost too automatically, Damon and Blunt sell you on their relationship. They have an easy going chemistry while at the same time suggesting a deep attraction. I also liked Damon’s scenes with Mackie. Mackie, who also gave supporting turns in Half Nelson and The Hurt Locker, does a good job of suggesting someone otherworldly yet still capable of compassion. Harry is the only one in the Adjustment Bureau who genuinely wants to help David.  John Slattery from Mad Men plays Richardson, another member of the Adjustment Bureau, and his understated and dry humour works for the cold and distance character he plays.

 I like how it’s not revealed right away why these two people cannot be together. Unfortunately, when we get a little more insight in to the reason why, it’s a little too abstract, not rooted enough in anything definitive. I would have liked George Nolfi, the writer and director of the film, to have kept the reason abstract or, as one IMDber suggested, devised a really dynamic twist and kept it as a trump card for near the end. Ultimately, the film isn’t about the reason behind why David and Elise can’t be together so much as it about them being drawn together by faith, an ironic contrast to what the Adjustment Bureau are trying to do.

I think The Adjustment Bureau’s biggest fault comes with its ending. It’s a decent ending but it seems to come to easy and diminishes the ominousness of the Adjustment Bureau. It reminded me of the episode of The Simpsons where George H. Bush has to apologize to Homer for spanking Bart, thus eliminating his power.   

The Adjustment Bureau calls attention to how much we take free will for granted and asks how far we’d go to actually fight for it if we realized how fragile it was. I wished the film dug a little deeper in to its religious undertones because I feel the thematic heart of the film lies with questions of God and how much control a God would have over our lives. Despite a few things I didn’t find as strong about The Adjustment Bureau, this is still a refreshingly original romantic thriller. I feel it genuinely makes us think about our notions of free will, how much we actually, have, and most importantly, how we use it.

On Christopher Nolan, Condescension, Shallowness, and Jim Emerson



I once told a girl my favourite director was Alfred Hitchcock. I remember her telling me that she thought his films "were clever, but..." That "but" of course signified the emptiness she probably sound in Hitchcock's work. This relates to a problem I have with some film criticism today, which is the tendenacy for some critics to act with condescension towards films and filmmakers that are clever in how they are plotted. We accept that films can be multiple things at a time. We can accept a film as funny and dramatic, epic and intimate, romantic and funny, but it seems that cleverness and thematic depth or resonance are mutually exclusive for some people. I think Hitchcock, despite his status as a great filmmaker, still faces this problem. I also feel another, contemporary, filmmaker suffers from this kind of condescension: Christopher Nolan.

Nolan of course is the director of Memento, the last two Batman films, and most recently Inception. He's a director who has achieved both commercial as well as critical success, even being compared to Stanley Kubrick. This type of success almost always leads to some kind of backlash for filmmakers, and unfortunately it has happened to Nolan. I think the backlash started some time after The Dark Knight opened in the summer 2008. The Dark Knight was the sequel to Nolan's first Batman film Batman Begins, and while Batman Begins was well recieved, the hype for The Dark Knight was extraordinary, particularly due to the excitement over Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, a role which would turn out to be the actor's final complete performance. I was swept up in the hype and definitelty taken in by The Dark Knight's immersive Gotham landscape as well as haunting ending.

Jim Emerson on the other hand, who is the editor of rogerebert.com and runner of the blog scanners, was not taken in by The Dark Knight, and in the months following The Dark Knight's release, wrote numerous blog entries on the film. Many of them were critical of the film, particularly its formal aspects. Emerson is a die hard formalist. As a filmmaker, the way to his heart is to make each shot, perfect, and make the shots last long. Emerson criticized the way Nolan shot the bus escape at the end of the bank heist which opens the film, dedicating quite a few posts to the topic.

I feel I'm digressing a little bit. While I have some issues with Emerson's formalist critisms of Nolan's work, I think my main problem with Emerson's criticisms of Nolan is his condescension towards Nolan. My god, the condescension. The Dark Knight hasn't been the only Nolan film Emerson has targeted. Inception has also gone under Emerson's microscope. Emerson has been critical of that film's literal mindedness in terms of how Nolan presents the dream worlds. In his first post on the film, Inception: Has Christopher Nolan Forgotten to Dream? he concluded with this statement:

"Nolan makes crafty little puzzle boxes (and sometimes big ones), but they never quite get beyond merely clever. Like "Sleuth" or "The Usual Suspects," they're not about characters or emotions or ideas or human experience at all; they're just self-contained gadgets, amusing but mechanical."

This statement reeks of condescension. I know, I know, I use that word too much, but its central to this entire post, so bare with me. I think its okay for Emerson not to connect to Inception, or any of Nolan's films, and he could have said that, but what Emerson does here is basically look at a man's work and say there's hardly any worth to it. Now, to be fair, Emerson has said he enjoyed Memento and Following,  and even elements of The Dark Knight, but I don't think that's strong enough of a defence when you begin saying things like this. I mean, it's a little insulting and even lazy to say there's absolutely, no ideas, no characters, emotions, or ideas in any of Nolan's work. It generalizes Nolan as a fillmaker and I think that goes against what film criticism should. More on this later.

I want to look at some of Emerson's word choices. First, "mechanical." This is one of Emerson's buzz words that he's used often when describing certain kinds of films. I believe what he means by mechanical refers to the feeling he gets when a movie is driven too much by plot mechanics, and not enough by human emotion. It's think its interesting that Emerson's favourite film of the last decade was the Coen Bros's No Country For Old Men, which can be argued to be a cold and mechanical film itself, a film more concerned with formal perfection than human experience. Aren't the Josh Brolin and Woody Harrrelson characters as much chess pieces as some of the characters in Inception? How do any of the thriller elements in the film relate to what it means to be human? Critics Michael Phillips and A.O Scott, when they discussed the Coen Bros's work, actually dismissed No Country for Old Men as nothing more than a good serial killer film. Emerson, when the film was first released, wrote a post about how certain critics couldn't approach No Country For Old Men's formal elements and content as a single entity. I think Emerson's problem was that by seperating, the film's form and content, critics could praise the formal aspects of the film, without really going in to the film's deeper meanings. In another entry on the film, he says just praising the formal elements without any connection to what they represent, was meaningless.

Again, I'm digressing. I was playing devil advocate's earlier when I was talking about No County For Old Men. I do have a problem with Scott's dismissal of the film and do feel that beneath its thriller exterior, No Country For Old Men is quite a haunting film about an old man asking himself if he can confront indescriable evil. The point I want to make is that it's strange how one of Emerson's favourite films could be praised by some critics for it's plot and formal mechanics and fall under the same type of criticism he directs at Nolan's work, the "nothing more" criticism. I think Emerson probably understands the frustration of having a film or filmmaker you admire dismissed so flippantly.

Ironically, I think Emerson does with Nolan's work what he criticizes other critics for doing with No Country For Old Men, seperating Nolan's form from his content. It is true that several of Nolan's films do have a puzzle like structure but I think separating the puzzle structure from the films' deeper meanings misrepresents Nolan as a filmmaker. One has to look at the puzzle structure and see what its doing thematically or emotionally. How does the fractured narratives of Memento and the Prestige affect the way we watch the events on screen? How does their structures reflect what the films are about? One can say by moving backwards, Memento puts us in the same mindset of its amnesiac main character Leonard Shelby, not knowing how we got to a specific or why we're there. The structure of The Prestige can be argued to reflect the structure of a magic trick. One can also Nolan wants to create a more impressionistic story than a straightforward plot, though plot is alway important in Nolan's work. I see the dream-within-a-dream structure of Inception, as well as the whole film, as a reflection of how movies can be like dreams, with their shifting perspectives internal logic. Inception is also about having to go deeper in to the subconscious in order to confront one's demons, which does happen to the main character Cobb in the film.

Is there a mechanical quality to Nolan's films? Yes. But there's also a fludity to the way the narrative moves in The Prestige and there is genuine sense of epicness to Inception. To me, mechanical strikes me as more of a descriptive term than a term that's either positive or negative. Emerson certainly uses in the negative sense. For me, it depends on the mechanics. Nolan's films have plots that go in different directions so even if the mechanics can sometimes override the human elements of the films, I'm grateful Nolan is not interested in reguritating the same old plots. I believe he genuinely likes to surprise the audience and wants to them to keep us guessing.

Emerson's use of the word "self-contained" is the one that really gets me. Aren't movies by definition self-contained? Don't certain directors like Jean-Luc Godard, Hitchcock, David Lynch, and yes, the Coens, create self-contained universes in their films. How does The Big Lebowski relate to the real world? I'm sorry, now I'm picking on the Coen Bros! Certainly, Nolan's films aren't slice of life dramas; they often take place in a heightened reality and can be very maze like. This doesn't mean they can't relate to the real world. The point is to look underneath the clockwork of Nolan's films and find the actual heart at their center. When one puts aside the backwards structure Memento, it's a film about the uncertainity of memory and trying to create meaning in a life that's been disrupted. The Prestige is about the obsession that goes in to being an artist. It's a Faustian tale which only completely reveals its Faustiness near the end. Nolan's arguably most epic and personal film Inception is a story about a man letting go of the memory of his deceased wife, as well as his guilt about being responsible for her death. And The Dark Knight? Wow, arguably more than any super hero film to date, that movie is just dense with ideas about the political and soical landscape of America.

I'm not out to bas Emerson. He's an intelligent critic and I've quite a bit from him. I just feel he's been a little too harsh on Nolan. Hopefully Emerson will eventually make peace with Nolan's filmmaking as Nolan develops as a filmmaker. I think the ''nothing more" should be banned from every critic's vocabularly. As a critic, you should always be willing to enagage a work on its deeper levels. The statement from Emerson which I've quoted strikes me as contrary to how a critic tells us why a film is great, good, bad, or somewhere in the middle. Emerson just tells us there's nothing there and ends his post with that. To be fair, he has gone in to detail about what he doesn't like about Nolan's work but I still feel he's too dismissive of Nolan as a filmmaker. As I said, I hope Emerson can come around to Nolan eventually. It's unfortunate that as critics we sometimes hate the people who try to entertain and move us.              

"Drive" Review



I'm still wrestling with my feelings about Drive, or at least, I'm a little bit in suspended animation, feeling I  need to see the film again, and eager to, yet still afraid of its more violent moments. This is the first film I've seen from director Nicolas Winding Refn, whose work also includes Bronsan, starring Tom Hardy from Inception and the upcoming The Dark Knight Rises, and I'm always intrigued to see a film from a director I'm not familiar with.

Watching Drive, I can tell Refn is a real movie lover, and that Drive is a movie for people who love movies as well. Refin, working from a script adapted by Hossein Amini by a novel from James Sallis, creates a universe where both old school and neo-noir exist in the same breath, and where Gosling plays the archetypal "strong, silent type." Comparisons have already been made to the work of Michael Mann, director of Heat and Collateral, as well as to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Both comparisons are apt. The photography immerses the audience in the nightime L.A landscape, similar to Mann's work. Also, like Mann, it's an examination of a professional who deals in criminal activity. In this case it's the character known as Driver (Gosling), a L.A stuntman by day and getaway driver by night. He has a set of rules he follows when he's on a job:

"If I drive for you, you give me a time and a place. I give you a five-minute window, anything happens in that five minutes and I'm yours no matter what. I don't sit in while you're running it down; I don't carry a gun... I drive"

In the opening scene we see him on the phone, telling his clients the rules and it's a wonderful set up to the character. It gives us a interesting and contradictory sense of loyalty but also everyman for himself, making the prospect of these jobs very tense. We see Driver get a car from his boss Shannon (Bryan Cranston) as well as helping his clients getaway from their robbery. This opening robbery is effective in how it creates suspense out of a robbery we don't see happening. We just see Driver waiting, strapping a watch to the wheel, a nice detail, and chewing a tooth pick. The sequence ends with Driver leaving the robbers in a garage while he disappears in to the streets. It's all a very economic and exciting way to establish the character's universe, or at least his nightime universe.

The Taxi Driver comparison is also appropriate, particularly when we see the opening title sequence with Driver travelling the L.A streets. Driver is also like Travis Bickle in that he lives a life of loneliness, without many human connections, aside from Shannon. This changes when he meets Irene (Carey Mulligan), his neighbour in his apartment. Irene's husband Standard (Oscar Isaac) is in jail and they have a son named Benicio. Driver begins to connect with Irene and Benicio, and the three of them become a family of sorts. There's a nice sequence when Driver takes Irene and Benicio on a drive through the LA river, with the song "A Real Human Being" playing in the background. It's very sweet and captures, simply in visual terms, the blossoming affection between the two, the sense of companionship each desires.

Standard is eventually released from prison and needs Driver's help in paying back someone from prison. This is where the who-know-what hits the fan, if you know what I mean. In it's last half hour or so, Drive becomes a very violent film. The violent, gruesome in itself, is even more jarring because much of the movie had been very reserved and without much violence. I think this was Refn and Amini's intent, create a slow burn of a film, only to shift tone so fast we feel we're going in the wrong direction on the highway. I started to not like the film as much when it became this violent. I've seen plently of violent films but I just can't but feel Drive could have focused more on Driver's intelligence in the last act, showing him play the villains off of one another. While some have criticized Drive for being too slow,  I feel the last act of Drive seems to go by too fast. This is where the film needed the most time to breath in its lead up to the final confrontation between Driver and gangster Bernie Rose (Albert Brooks).

The role of Driver requires Gosling to just hold the screen without talking, which is a hard thing for any actor, even a very good one, to do. Gosling is able to pull this feat off, making us interested in who this guy is and what his backstory is. As in many film noirs, the main character is in a way fully formed by the time he enters the film. Driver is the same way, even if he does go through development via his relationship with Irene. I think it's hard for Mulligan to not be sweet, which makes her perfect for Irene. We believe Driver would risk everything to protect her. I like Gosling's take that Driver has seen too many movies, believing he is a character in a movie. This opens the door to intriguing psychological readings of the character. It also makes Driver's actions in the final act even more disturbing. It also suits the style of the film, which is embedded in films of the past. The film can't escape it's own universe and neither can Driver.

I love A.O Scott's appreciation of Albert Brooks' performance in the film:

In his self-authored comic roles, Mr. Brooks often exudes a passive-aggressive hostility, a latent capacity for violence held in check by neurosis and cowardice. He lets you assume the same in “Drive” until the moment he stabs someone in the eye with a fork. It’s a shocking and oddly glorious moment — something a lot of us, without quite knowing it or being able to explain just why, have been waiting 30 years to see.

While Brooks does committ some pretty violent acts late in the film, what makes the performance is the way, as Scott suggests, Brooks uses his ability to hold back, suggesting the ability for brutality just under the surface.

Despite my mixed feelings about the final act, I still think Drive is good film. Its deliberately artful direction, slow pace, and fine performances, suck you in to its visual texture, wanting to explore what's in the frame and in its silences. Like numerous film noirs, It's a film ultimately about enevitability. The hero cannot escape the violence of his existence and he must leave romance in his rear view mirror.     

    

"Planet of the Apes" Review

Warning- Spoilers Ahead

It's always interesting reviewing a film like Planet of the Apes, a film which has extended beyond a singular film in to a pop culture staple as well as an on going franchise, with  Rise of the Planet of the Apes recently being released. You have to be able to step back and review the film as it stands, while at the same time acknowledging its iconic status and its place in film history. Planet of the Apes also a contradictory film; it's at once dated yet completely relevant to society, its star performance can be very hammy yet makes the film work, it's stagey while still havinng iconic imagery, and its overt in its social commentary yet still not preachy.

The film, based on a 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle, who also wrote the novel The Bridge on the River Kwai, and which became an Oscar winning film by David Lean, deals with three astronauts, George Taylor (Charlton Heston), Dodge (Jeff Burton), and Landon (Robert Gunner), who after time spent in hypersleep land on a mysterious planet ruled by apes who imprison humans. Dodge is killed and Landon and Taylor are captured. Taylor is shot in the throat and cannot speak, making him blend in with the other humans, who by nature cannot talk. I like how the film builds tension by having the audience know Taylor can talk but the apes not knowing. It gets the audience involved by really wanting Taylor to talk and show he's intelligent. Doctor Zira (Kim Hunter) believes he is intelligent and when he writes on a notepad "My name is Taylor," it makes Zira bring Taylor to the attention of her fiance Cornelius (Roddy McDowall), who has made expeditions to the "Forbidden Zone", where Taylor and crew crashed, and which we will later learn holds the secrets to the planet's past. Cornelius is skeptical that Taylor was able to survive in the Forbidden Zone and. the orangutan Dr. Zaius (Maurice Evans) wants to give Taylor an labotomy because he is afraid of Taylor's intelligence. When Taylor regains his speech, a trial takes place where Zaius tries to prove Taylor is some kind of mutant created by Zira. Ultimately it all leads to the Forbidden Zone where the real orgins of the planet of the apes is revealed.

Planet of the Apes can sometimes be a stagey film, particularly since quite a bit of the film takes place in cages or in a court room. Nevertheless director Franklin J. Schaffner does bring a cinematic quality to the proceedings. The hunt sequence, which introduces us to the bizarre world that is the planet of the apes, is still frightening and intense after all these years. It also gains effectiveness by being preceeded by a buildup where the three astronauts try to find some form of life. Without the title Planet of the Apes, we wouldn't know what was going to happen until we saw the apes. Even so, the buildup to the apes makes their eventual appearance more exciting. Taylor's attempted escape from the ape compound is also well executed and suspenseful, particularly when it captures the dizzying effect of being surrounded by apes.

Heston can be very hammy here, particulary with lines like "Take you stinking paws off me, you damn drty ape" and "You tore out his brain you bloody baboon" but there's something about Heston's performance which makes the film more fun to watch and suits the insanity of the world Taylor has found himself in. If any one line encapsulates this film its Taylor's "It's a Madhouse! A madhouse!" McDowall and Hunter are really good as the most compassionate apes Taylor meets. Evans conveys Zaius' fear of what Taylor represents as well as the power Zaius himself represents.

The reason why the film holds up, apart from its famous twist ending, is that The Planet of the Apes provides intriguing social commentary which is still relevant today. Watching the film again recently I picked up on the how the film comments on faith and religion. Taylor is proposed to be the missing link in an evolutionary chain, which is decried as scientific haresy by Zaius and the other orangutans. Science is allowed in this world but not if it implies something came before apes. Taylor calls the planet of the apes an "upside down civilization," and certainly film turns our society upside down. The apes treat the humans the way we treat apes, as less intelligent beings. We're the ones being hunted and being put in cages. As an audience, seeing ourselves in cages shows us cruel we as humans can be when we don't allow certain animals to be free.

Arguably the most important comment the film makes has to do with the character of Taylor. Throughtout the early part of the film we learn Taylor has given up on mankind.When he is narrating a message to Earth on the ship at the beginning he asks whether men still fight wars. He asks this because by Earth time its over a hundred years since the ship left Earth, even though the ship time is only a few months. On the planet he tells Landon he went on this mission because there was nothing keeping him on Earth and that he feels there must be something out there better than man. One gathers he's a bit of a misanthrope. I would argue he never finds something better than man because the apes are just as bad as men. He does seem to discover an appreciation, however, for mankind. When a talking human doll is found in the Forbidden Zone he tells Zaius something was here before the apes, and it was better than apes. Moreover, at the end of the film he discovers the top of the statue of liberty on the beach. He has been home all along and never did get away from Earth. He is devastated because he truly realizes all he has known is gone, and not for the better.

Taylor's arc, his eventual realization he is home, is very Twilight Zone-esque, which is appropriate considering Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling shares screenwriting credit with Michael Wilson and reportedly came up with the twist ending.  I don't know how much of the script is Wilson's and how much is Serling's, aside from the ending, but the film never feels like it has two writers, the script works as a whole.

The original novel, which I read a number of years ago, actually had a different ending. The planet of the apes was not earth in the novel but when the astronaut Ulysse gets back to Earth he realizes it has been taken over by apes. This ending is similar to Tim Burton's 2001 reimagining of the series, which ended with Mark Wahlberg's character Leo Davidson landing in Washington only to find Abraham Lincolin's statue with the face of Tim Roth's General Thade. I think I prefer the film's ending, which pulls together the social commentary of the film and making a grand statement about our ability to destroy one another.

Planet of the Apes was followed by four sequels and they took the franchise in to fascinating directions, such as mutant humans underground who worship a doomsday device, Zira and Cornelius time travelling to Earth's past and their son Caesar becoming the leader of an ape revolutionary; but I think this film, with its simplicity yet penertrating social commentary, memorable performances, and of course its ending, which makes it the definitive journey to the planet of the apes.



"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" Review

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the latest film in the long running franchise which began in 1968's Planet of the Apes, with Charlton Heston demanding "Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape" and realizing he was on Earth all along. The original film, with its concept of an upside down civilization where apes rule over men, as well as its twist ending, concocted by Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, has become such a huge part of our pop culture, it's sometimes hard to step back from it and analyze its subtext or to understand how this upside down civilization began, as Heston's character asks in the original film.

Director Rupert Wyatt's new film is an attempt to step back and do these very things. It's an origin story in the most minimalist of ways, hinting at the origins of the planet of the apes rather than having the apes take over the planet completely in one film. The film centers on scientist Will Rodman (James Franco), a San Francisco scientist who is trying to find a cure for Alzheimer's (his father suffers from the disease) by testing a retrovirus on chimpanzees. When one chimpanzee goes on a rampage and is killed, Will's boss Steven Jacobs orders the other chimpanzees to be put down. Will discovers the chimpanzee who was killed had become angry because she thought her baby was being threatened. The baby is taken home by Will and Will realizes the baby has inherited his mother's unique intelligence.

I liked seeing Caesar, as he is named, evolve over time. The film is an origin story and I think the film has a good understanding of what entails an origin story, particularly one which is supposed to lead to an already established universe. An origin story is really about evolution, leading to characterization of people and universes which remind viewers of established universes they know before watching the film. Moreover, Rise of the Planet of the Apes effectively uses Caesar's origin story to serve the larger origin of the universe of the planet of the apes. There is a supposedly long gap between this film and what we interpret as the planet of the apes and while the film doesn't bridge that gap, it uses that gap to create a chilling foreshadowing of what is to come. The apes create mayhem in San Fransico but they do not take over. The fact we see only one instance of the apes uprising against man is powerful because we know much worst is to come.

Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and the title character in Jackson's follow up to the trilogy, King Kong, both with the use of motion capture, plays Caesar similarly, and he's terrific, giving a genuine performance, conveying the humanity of Caesar and his anger towards the humans who treat him terribly. Caesar is the most fascinating character in the film because of Serkis' performance as well as his evolution from a baby to a highly evolved chimpanzee, to a revolutionary. Franco gives a solid performance as Will and I liked his relationship with his father Charles (John Lithgow, also very good), though I feel the apes are the more compelling characters in the film. Freida Pinto from Slumdog Millionaire is wasted in the role of Will's girlfriend Caroline and Tom Felton, who plays Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, seems destined to be typecast as weasly villains. As Dodge Landon, Felton doesn't get much of a character to play, being that Dodge is just the obligatory cruel human working at his father John's (Brian Cox) primate institute. There were a few perks to Felton's job though; he gets to say two of Heston's iconic lines. His "Get your stinking paws off me..." leads to one of the film's most epic moments.

The film truly becomes an epic of sorts when Caesar and his ape allies attack San Francisco. The action sequence on the Golden Gate Bridge shows Wyatt's ability to stage an action sequence which is both chaotic yet still easy to follow, as well as finding a half way point between the absurd and the epic. We have fun watching the apes fight the humans but at the same time we can take it seriously as a dramatic conflict. I wish there was little more development of the relationship between Will and Caesar though you do see Will come to care about Will as well as Caesar seperating himself from Will, particularly when he tells Will "Caesar is home" in the forest at the end of the film. Unfortunately, when the film ends, I was ready to see the sequel, but when a summer blockbuster based on a long running franchise can make you want to see what happend next, it must be doing something right...damn dirty filmmakers.

Oscar Nominations: 2012

It's almost September which means we're coming to my favourite time of the year: Oscar Season! Well, maybe's it not that time yet but certainly once we get in to the fall, the studios unleash their big guns, the films which they feel have the best chance at claiming Oscar Gold. I'm going to talk about some of the films coming out in the fall, along with films released earlier this year, in no particular order, and theorize about their Oscar chances.




J. Edgar- Clint Eastwood's biopic about the infamous head of the F.B.I, J. Edgar Hoover, is one of those films which has all the markings of an Oscar contender. It has the prestigious director, Eastwood, the leading man, Leonardo DiCaprio, diving in to the role of a real person. It's also written by the Oscar winning writer of Milk, Dustin Lance Black. I felt DiCaprio should have been nominated for Shutter Island last year and I feel he has a pretty good chance of taking the gold this year, possibly being the one to beat. Arnie Hammer, who broke out last year as th Winklevoss twins in The Social Network, plays the assistant director of the F.B.I. and rumoured lover of Hoover. I don't how much the film will delve in to Hoover's supposed homosexuality but I think Hammer will get some plum scenes with DiCaprio and may have a good chance of receiving a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Naomi Watts also stars as Hoover's secretary, Helen Gandy. Like Hammer, she's probably has ample screen time with DiCaprio and if the Best Supporting Actress race doesn't get too croweded, I can definitely see her getting a nomination. It'll be interesting to see if this is Eastwood's Oscar comeback. While Changeling and Invictus scored nominations for its actors, an Eastwood has received a Best Picture or Best Director nomination since 2006's Letters From Iwo Jima. I feel his time away from the Best Director category was a good thing, for this film at least, and a nomination this year for both him and the film, for now at least, seems like a good bet. Black also seems to have a good chance of getting a screenwriting nomination.



The Help- Controversy will get you noticed in the Oscar race but it can also hurt your chances. The Help seems like the type of film the academy loves. It deals with an important social issue, which is the treatment of black maids in 1960s Mississippi and the plight of two maids, played by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, as well as a young white woman named Skeeter, played by Emma Stone, to reveal the truth about these conditions in a book. It's a period piece, and from the reviews it sounds like an acting showcase, and by a nearly all female cast to boot. Unfortunately, the film has been criticized for distorting historical fact as well as falling prey to the "white saviour" model of storytelling, where a story about African Americans is told through the perspective of  a white character who ultimately saves the black characters. On the other hand, I've also read things which say it is the story of the black maids more than it is about Skeeter. The controversy could hurt the film but I think it's main problem will be retaining momentum through the fall season. From the praise Davis has been getting, I think she may be close to a lock for a Best Supporting Actress nomination, or as some have been saying, a Best Actress nomination. It all depends on the campaigning. Spencer's performance has also been praised and I can both her and Davis in the Best Supporting Actress category. Stone's chances seem up in the air at the moment. She's Hollywood's new "It Girl" and seems well liked in the community, which could definitely push her in to the Best Actress category. Again, it all depends on campaigning. Some have even suggested her for the Best Supporting Actress category, where she could compete with Spencer. Davis could take a Best Actress slot. Hey, let's go even further and put Davis and Spencer both in the Best Actress race and have Stone compete with Bryce Dallas Howard or Jessica Chastain. Sorry, that's getting pretty complicated. I do have a feeling Spencer will be supporting either way. Also, in a reply tweet from Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger, he told me the academy would probably focus more on Davis and Spencer than Stone. Maybe not getting a nomination will be the best thing for Stone since she's already been a little bit too overexposed. Tate Taylor, close friend of Kathryn Stockett, the author of the novel on which the novel is based, may not be a name people know well enough to get a best director nomination; most of the praise has been going to the actresses. A lack of a best director nomination could also hurt it's chances at a nomination for Best Picture. Again, I think it needs to keep its momentum through the season.



The Tree of Life- The film that caused a 100 walkouts, thanks to some dinosaurs and the creation of the universe. The Tree of Life's buzz seems to have died down but I think a film like this, once seen, is hard ro forget. If it gets a campaign push when it comes to DVD and Blu-Ray, I think this film, due largely to its ambition, as well the the legendary status of director Terrence Malick can get a Best Picture nomination. Winning is another matter. The Tree of Life, which juxtaposes the life a 1950s family with a sequence where we see the creation of the universe, is an impressionistic film, one which abandons a linear narrative structure and a clear cut ending. The film is a divider and that hurt its chances winning Best Picture. I think Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain are terrific as Mr. and Mrs. O'Brien but due to the impressionistic style of the film, their performances may be overlooked. The cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezski and original score by a Alexandre Desplat who was just nominated for The King's Speech also have solid chances of getting nominations. I also feel the editing, which is the core of the film's aesthetic, also has a good chance of being noticed.



Midnight in Paris- Director Woody Allen's ode to romantic nostaligia has been called his best film in ages. I really liked the film but I feel it's too small a film to get a Best Picture nomination. It's best chance is probably in the Best Original Screenplay category where they may even decide to honour him for the film. Owen Wilson gives what may be his best performance here but I don't think it's the kind of role which can lead to a nomination.




Drive- Ryan Gosling, who some feel was snubbed for last year's Blue Valentine, which resulted in a Best Actress nomination for Michelle Williams, has gotten some serious buzz for his performance as a Hollywood stuntman who moonlights as a wheelman. The film is supposed to be excellent and it'll be interesting to see if the academy warms to it.





The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo- Already being marketed as "The Feel Bad Movie of Christmas," David Fincher's take on the international bestseller will rise and fall, I think on the performance of Rooney Mara as computer hacker Lisbeth Salander. Mara played Mark Zuckerberg's girlfriend in Fincher's last film The Social Network and he clearly saw something in her while they were filming and during the audition process which led Fincher to pick her over more established actresses. If Mara hits it out of the park, I think she'll have a great chance at securing a nomination. I don't know if Daniel Craig's role, despite being the lead, will be baity enough to get a nomination but only time will tell. Those who've read the novel know this is dark and gruesome material and fortunately the academy can embrace movies like this, with Black Swan being nominated this year and The Silence of the Lambs winning Best Picture nearly twenty years ago. Many feel Fincher was robbed this year for The Social Network so there is the possibility he may recieve a make-up Oscar this year.




Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close- Based on a novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, this film chronicles the story of nine year old Oskar, whose father died two years earlier on 9/11. He discovers a key which belonged to his father and proceeds to journey around New York to find information about the key. The film will concede with the 10 Anniversary of the attacks, which add to its emotional poignance. The academy also seems to love its director, Stephen Daldry, so I can see this possibly being a contender if its subject matter, which from what I gather exists in heightened reality, can work on film. It's been a while since Tom Hanks was nominated for an Oscar but I don't know if his role as Oskar's father will be his return to the race. It all depends on how the film is received and whether the role is fleshed out enough.




The Ides of March- George Clooney received a Best Director Nomination for his work on Good Night, and Good Luck  and I can see him getting another Best Director nomination for this political drama about a staffer (Ryan Gosling), learning about politics while on the campaign trail for a presidential candidate, played by Clooney. If the role is meaty enough, Clooney could also score a nomination or either Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor. It depends how Clooney is campaigned. I wonder if Gosling will be pushed for this film instead of Drive. I sense that Gosling is the lead and Clooney is supporting. Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti could also score nominations if their roles are big enough, though it'll probably be Clooney who gets the push.




My Week With Marilyn- Michelle Williams could score two consecutive Best Actress nominations if she's nominated for playing Marilyn Monroe in this film. It seems like the kind of role Oscar would love to nominate. Kenneth Branagh plays Laurence Olivier but I feel much of the attention will go to Williams. Emma Watson also stars but I believe her role is small so while it's not hard to see Watson getting a nomination some time down the road, it probably won't be for this film.

That's all for now. Certainly there are quite a few more films to talk about but I just wanted to touch on a few possible contenders. Hopefully the race this year will have some actual suspense and excitement.