Rise of the Planet of the Apes

  Since I have never seen for the original run of Apes movies, I only have the clips I've seen of Charlton Heston hanging upside down in a rope snare issuing his famous warning.  Oh, and I've also seen the 2001 Tim Burton remake of the original that stars Mark Wahlberg as the spaceman, but I think hardcore fans of the franchise would rather if that one were not mentioned.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes is the seventh movie in this franchise and, if you exclude the 2001 remake, the first since 1973.  It tells the story of how genetically-altered apes rebel against the humans who hold them captive in zoos, laboratories, etc.  The film's timeline presumably takes place prior to the narrative of the 1968 film, and focuses on how a highly-intelligent, genetically-modified ape named Caesar ascends to alpha status and leads a rebellion.  James Franco, who I didn't really like in this film, plays scientist Will Rodman who works for a company that is on the leading edge of developing cures for human diseases, primarily Alzheimer's.  We are introduced to a chimpanzee named Bright Eyes, who is undergoing gene therapy treatments by Rodman to see if the Alzheimer cure is viable.  The test has drastic side-effects that cause the chimp to develop extreme levels of intelligence.  At one point, Bright Eyes believes that her baby is being threatened by lab technicians and breaks out of her cage and runs rampant through the laboratories, effectively cutting off funding on the project.  After her death, we find out that she passed her intelligent genes onto her newborn offspring.  Rather than see the baby chimp be euthanized, Rodman takes Caesar in and raises him in secrecy for years.
   Eight years later, Caesar is a full-grown, incredibly intelligent chimpanzee who lives in Rodman's attic, constantly looking out his window with curiosity and fascination of what the outside world is all about.  This is where the movie really hits its stride.  Caesar, with sign-language, asks his "dad" who he is and why he looks so different from him.  He also wonders if he is a pet, like any other dog on a leash.  At this point, the motion-capture performance of Andy Serkis needs to be lauded.  Serkis plays Caesar with impressive emotional range.  It is fascinating to see how Caesar is brought to life with a real actor making real movements and real facial nuances.  Like in King Kong and Lord of the Rings, Serkis dons his high-tech suit of colorful spheres and fluorescent receptors and puts on a remarkable show.  But the camera technology has come along far enough since a film like Avatar that they can now put the actor in the actual scene with the other actors, whereas before they were in a studio in front of a green screen.  I've heard that Serkis deserves award recognition for his performance and I can not disagree.  I don't think that he should merely be recognized in a special effects category, I think his performance is worthy of being lumped in with the other "real" performances of the year.  Serkis has the talent to show the tiniest facial movements that we all know to convey emotions of frustration, curiosity, envy, rage, glee, and every gray area in between.  Caesar's face is reason enough to see this film. 
   In an attempt to protect Rodman's father from what he perceives is a dangerous situation, Caesar attacks a man and is soon placed in the custody of the state.  As you can imagine from the title of the film (and the trailer), Caesar is the leader of a group of oppressed apes who begin to fight back, not to necessarily punish or hurt the humans (although this happens in at least two memorable moments) who imprisoned them, but rather to seek freedom from life in a cage.  Caesar notices that his fellow cage-mates are not as smart as he is, and is discouraged by their primal instincts and basic desires.  He acquires enough of the gene-altering formula to treat all of the other apes around him and soon discovers that the rebellion is ready to begin.  There is an amazing set of action sequences on the Golden Gate Bridge that is visually spectacular.
  There are obvious metaphors between the oppression of the apes and the oppression that many groups of humans have gone through in history.  We have a knack for destroying ourselves.    
  This movie wouldn't be as great as it is without the captivating performance of Andy Serkis.  He brings the main character to life and gives him a high level of believability and earnestness.
  Leading up to this week, I have heard and read a lot of great things about this movie, which is one that I wouldn't ordinarily see in a million years.  I decided to give it a shot and must say that I was on board the whole time and look forward to the next film in the series. 
  

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

  David Fincher, thankfully, puts his familiar style into this story written by the late Swedish writer Stieg Larsson.  Fincher has directed some of the slickest thrillers in recent years, ranging from Seven to Zodiac to Fight Club.  He also directed last year's The Social Network, which you'll be reminded of if you see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.  Both films have a similar look, feel and sound.  Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross scored both movies with their usual genius mix of electronics, piano and percussion.  While this score isn't as catchy and uptempo as The Social Network's, I do think it served the film very well.  It helps give the movie a driving backbeat and goes along with the title character's techno-ubiquity.  Rooney Mara plays Lisbeth Salander, the girl with the tattoo, with a dark intensity that will make her both impossible to dislike and difficult to forget.  Her computer hacking abilities are as frightening as they are impressive - I would not want her investigating me.  I've read that the producers and studio executives needed six months of convincing before casting Mara for this iconic role - they felt that she didn't have the right look and/or ability to convey the level of strength of Lisbeth Salander.  Good lord, were they wrong.  Mara is literally the perfect actress for this role.
   Daniel Craig plays Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist who is hired by a wealthy family patriarch to figure out the circumstances surrounding a mysterious disappearance nearly 40 years earlier.   Craig is good in this role, although he isn't given much room to show off his dramatic range.  He instantly becomes more intriguing when he and Salander join forces on screen. 
   While I have never read any of the three books by Larsson, I have seen all three Swedish films that came out in 2009, and feel confidently equipped to say that Fincher's version blows the originals so far out of the water, it hardly seems a fair fight.  Both actors who play the Swedish versions of Salander and Blomkvist are awkward and uninteresting compared to Mara and Craig.  I liked Mara's Salander far better than Rapace's - and there are plenty of differences, believe it or not.  Salander in the American version is far more feminine and attractive, yet also far more childish (often seen eating Ramen noodles and Happy Meals).  It's clear that Hollywood had a hand in making Salander more appealing for American audiences.
   I liked this film, especially since I had absolutely no idea where the story was going.  If I had seen the Swedish version or read the novel prior to seeing this film, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it quite as much.  Much of the fun of it was the anticipation of what was coming next - trying to unravel the mystery on my own was thrilling and suspenseful.  Being introduced to such a unique and damaged character like Lisbeth Salander was really amazing.  It is hard to take your eyes off of Rooney Mara in this role.  She inexplicably shows the many layers of sadness and anger, strength and stoicism, arrogance and sexuality, brilliance and rage.  How can she pull off being vulnerable and invincible at the same time?
   In terms of the plot coverage of both the Swedish version and the Fincher version, there were significant differences.  I won't get into them in this post, but I will say that the final scene in Fincher's version was absolutely amazing.  I did not see it coming a mile away and it was a perfect way to end the film.  The Swedish version suffered greatly for not having this as the ending. 
   Solid turns from Christopher Plummer, Robin Wright and Stellan Skarsgard help to round out the cast.
   Fincher wraps it all together quite well and I was pleased to hear that, despite a poor box-office performance, he will be directing the second and third films in the series.  Without his dedication to style and Mara's riveting performance, it would merely be just another thriller, like its Swedish predecessor.

(As I am typing this, Rooney Mara just lost the Golden Globe for best actress to some woman named Meryl Streep)

Hugo

   
  Hugo is the latest film from director Martin Scorsese.  It is the story of a young orphan named Hugo who lives in the walls of a Parisian train station and has assumed the job of maintaining all of the station's clocks.  He meets a filmmaker named Georges Melies, played by Ben Kingsley, and together they spend the movie figuring out how they can help one another.  This is the first movie I've seen in 3-D since the 1980s and I will say that it was visually captivating.  I don't have anything really negative to say about this movie.  It was a good story that was well acted and well directed.  Scorsese uses this film as a way of teaching us about an important time in film history and I must say that I enjoyed the lesson.  
  While I can't say anything negative about the film, I also can't say that I truly loved it either.  I saw it last week and I haven't thought about it once since sitting down to write about it now.  The 3-D was cool, especially in the main clock tower sequence near the end of the film.  I don't traditionally like kids movies, with a few exceptions (Wall-E being one of them).
  A lot of times, when I am trying to quantify how much I liked a film, I think about how badly I want to see it again.  I would say that I liked this movie for what it was and would certainly recommend it to anyone who loves good, safe storytelling that the whole family can enjoy together.  I have no desire, however, to see it again.

No Strings Attached

   I am embarrassed to have even seen this movie.  It is streaming on Netflix and I turned it on to help me fall asleep the other night and ended up watching the whole thing.  Three hour evening naps will tend to keep you up late - or early, as it were.  No Strings Attached stars Ashton Kutcher and Natalie Portman as "friends with benefits" who end up developing feelings for one another.  This film, if you can even call it that, is formulaic and boring.  One of the reasons I kept watching was because I really like Jake Johnson in the TV show The New Girl.  He is playing the same character here, and I continued to find him funny and likeable.  Kevin Kline also plays a part in this movie, which I was excited about, but his performance isn't worth a comment.  Bit parts from Ludacris, Cary Elwes and Mindy Kaling also contribute to the unforgettable nature of this film. 
  It is never a good thing when you can predict the last two thirds of a movie.  The plot was on autopilot the whole time.  This movie was just bad.  Director Ivan Reitman should stick to the development of Ghostbusters III.

The Fighter vs. Warrior

   It's sort of fun to go back and watch movies that you've seen before to see if they still hold up.  It's also fun to have a positive opinion of a movie, then see a new film that totally changes your opinion of the one you originally that was good.  That pretty much sums up my experiences with The Fighter and Warrior.  When I saw The Fighter, I didn't think it was great, but I thought it was really good.  I felt that the dramatic narrative was riveting enough to sustain the film until the fight scenes occurred.  I originally liked the performances of Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale and Melissa Leo.  The fight scenes themselves seemed well done and were certainly accurate to the bouts in real life (you can see a lot of Micky Ward's fights on YouTube).   But then I saw Warrior and in it I found a film that totally changed my opinion of the previous one.  Warrior's story is more interesting to me, its fight scenes make The Fighter's look so Hollywood, the performances of Hardy, Edgerton and Nolte are way more believable than those in The Fighter.  I went back and watched the performances of the main three characters in The Fighter and it was like I was watching a totally different movie.  I was not buying what Wahlberg, Bale and Leo were selling.   And I don't think it has to do with one being a true story and one being a fictionalized drama - Warrior is just the better movie.  There is way more at stake for the fighters in Warrior than there is for the Ward/Ecklund family.  The suspense leading up to the final fight in Warrior had me really invested and now I notice that The Fighter doesn't have any of these same elements.  We never really get a good idea of how big a fight Ward had with Shea Neary, and what it meant for his career.
   I found this an interesting change - one that I don't recall happening to me very often.  It makes me wonder what other films I would dislike and be able to pick apart upon a rewatch.


(note: I just rewatched Moneyball and Midnight in Paris and loved them both more than I did the first time)

Warrior

   Warrior is another movie from 2011 that I never got a chance to catch up with until last weekend.  It's a violent and fresh take on a fairly familiar story.  Hollywood loves producing boxing movies.  I think I read somewhere that boxing far surpasses any other sport seen on film.  This movie isn't about boxing, it is about mixed martial arts (MMA).  Tom Hardy (Bronson, Inception, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) plays Tommy, a hardened war veteran and former high-school wrestling star who has been estranged from his brother and father for years.  Joel Edgerton (Animal Kingdom) plays Brendan, Tommy's older brother, who is a school teacher and former MMA fighter struggling to pay the bills and is about 3 months away from losing his house to foreclosure.  Both men have aspects of their lives that need reparation. And both men have a fractured relationship with their father, played with tremendous believability by Nick Nolte, who is a recovering alcoholic trying to regain the trust of his family that he has lost through his addiction.  I'm not giving anything away by telling you that both brothers enter a $5 million MMA tournament and end up in the final fight against one another.  What I won't tell you is who wins the fight (I will say that it doesn't end in a tie).  I literally had no idea which brother was going to win in the end and part of me was rooting for each of them to come out on top.
   Hardy brings a character to the screen that is downright terrifying.  He doesn't accept sponsors, doesn't have walk-out music, won't look opponents in the eye before the opening bell, wins matches with a single punch, then immediately flings open the gate and walks back into the locker room before the referee can finish the 10-count.   Brendan, on the other hand, is a washed-up submission style fighter who is purely in it to get money to save his family from losing their home.  He does not have the muscle of his brother but he has a litany of submission holds that he puts opponents in and gets them to tap out in defeat.  Two totally different styles of fighters come together in a suspenseful and devastating final sequence.  The physicality of these fighting performances is unlike anything I've ever seen in cinema before.
   Nolte is as senescent as they come.  Age has weathered his face and strained his vocal chords, which makes his performance that much more believable and honest.  You know this isn't just another fighting movie when the opening scene drops you right in the middle of a sarcastic and accusatory dialogue between Tommy and his father.  We find out that Tommy has been away for quite a long time and he asks his father whether he has a woman in his life or not.  His father says that he does not, prompting Tommy to reply, "it must be hard to find a woman who can take a punch nowadays."  Nolte has a few scenes like this with Hardy that are quite spectacular, most notably one they have in front of slot machine.  Hardy says things to his father that no man should ever have to hear from his son - but we get the feeling that he deserves every bit of it.
   Warrior worked for me on every level.  The fight scenes are as real and violent as they come, with no glitz or glamor to take you out of the moment.  The announcers are even good, especially when they stop announcing for much of the final fight.  We are left to provide the fight commentary on our own.  Hardy's an animal, Edgerton's a force, Nolte's back in old form.  Warrior is the ultimate story of redemption; of how certain peripheral events can heal the wounds of a broken family.

Top Ten of 2011

1) Drive
2) The Tree of Life
3) Midnight in Paris
4) The Interrupters
5) I Saw the Devil
6) Moneyball
7) Another Earth
8) Certified Copy
9) Buck
10) Hanna
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(1 - 4) Drive, The Tree of Life, Midnight in Paris, The Interrupters - See the previous posts for my expanded thoughts on these movies. 

5) I Saw The Devil -  I know of at least one film critic who has said recently that the most exciting movies of late are consistently coming out of Korea.  While I can't make that generalization, I can say with certainty that this movie has great style and deep substance.  It's a gripping revenge plot in which a young federal agent is making his fiance's killer pay for what he has done.  This, however, is not your typical revenge narrative.  The agent's name is Kim Soo-hyeon, played by Byung-hun Lee, and he uses his seemingly-unlimited occupational resources not only to locate his wife's killer but to harass, stalk and torture him over and over again.  Kim finds the man, beats him unconscious then lets him go free so he could track him down with the tracking device he forced down his throat and do it all again.  He clearly wants to give the killer a taste of his own medicine - to know what it feels like to be pursued by a relentless savage.  I found the age-old plot outline new and exciting.  Kim is looking for a kind of revenge that I've never seen before.  He does the unthinkable to the monster that took everything from him.  In the end, I wondered if Kim is just as sick and evil as the man he was after.  (currently streaming on Netflix instant)

6) Moneyball - When I saw this in the theater a few months back, I didn't think that it would end up on my top-ten list at the end of the year but it turned out to be one of those movies that I just couldn't shake.  I felt that the on-screen chemistry between Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill was great.  Aaron Sorkin's razor-sharp, machine-gun dialogue fits Hill's humor perfectly.  I do, however, think Philip Seymour-Hoffman was horribly miscast as A's manager Art Howe.  I have a few reasons for this opinion, but most simply, he looks absolutely nothing like Art Howe.  Hoffman looks more like a bowling coach than a baseball coach.  He was totally unbelievable in a baseball uniform.  This was a movie that served its source material quite well - the book by Michael Lewis is a must read for anyone remotely interested in business efficiency, baseball or anything in between.  (Moneyball is out on DVD/Blu-Ray as of the first week of January)

7) Another Earth - This film is riveting and suspenseful tale of redemption with a science-fiction underlay.  A combination I have rarely seen in the movies.  Brit Marling plays Rhoda, an ambitious high school girl who has just been accepted into MIT's engineering program when the movie opens.  After a night of celebration, Rhoda makes a horrible decision to get behind the wheel of her car and drive home.  She barrels into a car, killing a pregnant mother, her young son and leaving the father in a coma.  Adding to her intoxication was the fact that she was staring out the window at a new planet that was just discovered remarkably close to Earth.  Scientists have said that the conditions are perfect to sustain human life.  Fast forward four years to a scene of Rhoda getting out of prison, a shell of the vibrant girl she once was.  She quickly takes a job as a janitor and hears on the radio that the United States is finally sending people to this new planet (four years later...what took us so long?).  To repent for what she has done, she decides to seek out the man who survived the car crash and formally apologize.  When she gets to his house, she is unable to say anything about the accident and instead poses as a sales representative for a house cleaning service. The man does not know that Rhoda is the one who was driving the car that fateful night and allows her to come in and clean his house.  This is where the suspense sets in because as an audience member, we know the secret but what we don't know is if or, more interestingly, how Rhoda is going to eventually tell the man who she is and what she has done.  Another Earth offers this dramatic storyline against the backdrop of a few bigger questions.  We find out that this new planet is not merely suitable to sustain human life, but it is actually inhabited by us - in other words, there is another you out there with the same name, same face, same body, etc.  So the first question is: what would the conversation be like if you were to meet a different version of yourself?  Secondly, and more interestingly, would the other you have turned out differently if she hadn't made such a life-altering mistake?  I was completely and fully invested in this movie from start to finish.  Marling pulls off devastation like few can.  I also loved how rookie filmmaker Mike Cahill didn't give us too much scientific exposition - he reeled out just enough for it to fit together without bogging us down, because this isn't a story of science, it is a story of a sorrowful young woman who is desperate to make things right again.  Looking back on it, by writing about it, I think I may have just convinced myself to move this higher up on my list.  If it weren't for a pretty poor performance by William Mapother (who played Ethan in Lost), I would definitely have this in my top 5. 

8) Certified Copy (Copie Conforme) - Juliette Binoche and William Shimmel play either a married couple, or two former lovers or two strangers having coffee for the first time - we really don't know.  This foreign film bobs and weaves its twisted and mysterious story in and out of at least three different languages.   It takes place over the course of an afternoon in and around Tuscany, where Shimmel's character James Miller meets up with Elle (played by Binoche) after a press conference to promote his new book called Copie Conforme.  The book is about how there really shouldn't be that big of a difference in value between an original work of art and a reproduction.  The film contains nothing more than two hours of spinning dialogue that is as confusing as it is mesmerizing.  You never really know if these two are unhappily married or merely putting on an elaborately sick play for people whom they encounter at museums, cafes and restaurants.  While James steps out to take a call on his cell phone, there is a fantastic conversation between Elle and a wise, old woman who runs a coffee shop.  She gives Elle a lifetime's worth of relationship advice in about five minutes.  If they are actually married, then this story is a depressing one indeed.  If they are strangers who just met a few hours earlier, then this story is an odd one indeed.  There are clues that would support both different scenarios and trying to unravel the mystery is a heck of a lot of fun (actually, there are at least three possible scenarios).  I liked this movie a lot, but with nothing but conversations for two hours, it is not for the impatient film-goer.  (streaming now on Netflix instant)

9) Buck - The second documentary to appear on my Top Ten, Buck is the story of the real-life horse whisperer who inspired the movie that starred Robert Redford.  Buck Brannaman travels the nation putting on horse training clinics for horse owners who are struggling with their horses, much the same way that parents go to therapists or professionals for help with their unruly children.  Buck grew up with an extremely abusive father and he uses his past emotional scars to connect with every horse that he is called in to train.  I am not a horse guy by any means, in fact, I think they're terrifying animals (yet majestically beautiful at the same time) but this documentary absolutely floored me.  Buck doesn't  believe in breaking horses, he believes in communicating with horses in order to get them to be the best animals they can be.  There is one segment in the film in which Buck is unable to help a woman with her violently dangerous horse.  After the worst is over, Buck has an impromptu therapy session with the woman about how she needs to get herself right before she can expect to get her horses right.  This is where the film really made an impression on me.  As we follow Buck to more and more horse clinics, we see how he bridges the gap between the way our horses behave and the way we view ourselves.  The parallels that he makes between humans and animals bring clarity to a lot of peoples' lives.  Being a teacher, it is clear to me on a day to day basis that 99% of how a child carries him/herself is a product of the quality of parenting that has taken place.  Evidently, this is true of horses and their owners too. Brannaman's opening line boils it all down, "Instead of helping people with horse problems, I'm helping horses with people problems." (currently streaming on Netflix instant)

10) Hanna - This one sort of took me off guard.  It came out way back in April and I didn't see it until just after Christmas.  It is the story of a young girl named Hanna, played by Saoirse Ronan, who has spent her entire life being trained to be a spy by her father (Eric Bana) in the isolation of a snowy wilderness.  These first moments in the film are pretty spectacular.  Hanna knows several different languages, has memorized world geography, knows how to hunt, fight and hide.  She is a machine built to take on the world, mentally and physically.  Soon she is called to action and has to manage on her own, which, due to new stimuli like television, phones, electricity, can get very overwhelming.  In her travels, she tries to become more normal by befriending a girl her own age.  This movie has a driving score by The Chemical Brothers, which lent itself well to the slick storytelling.  Even with a so-so performance by Cate Blanchett, I found this film to be exciting and different.  To be honest, it could have been replaced on this list by a number of movies (which I will list below).
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Honorable Mentions (in this order): 50-50, The Descendants, Warrior, Pearl Jam 20, The Arbor, Win Win, Super 8, The Ides of March

Movies from 2011 that I want to see ASAP: Into The Abyss, Melancholia, Take Shelter, A Separation, Warhorse, The Skin I Live In, Martha Marcy May Marlene, We Need to Talk About Kevin, Attack The Block, Shame, Contagion, Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol, Rise of The Planet of The Apes, Project Nim

Biggest Disappointments: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Paranormal Activity 3

Movie that I acknowledge is very well made but wasn't engaging enough for me to become invested in the story or its characters: Meek's Cutoff (maybe I need to watch it again)