'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' review:

Coming as something of a big, pleasant surprise from left-field, 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' is one of the stand-out films of the year so far and looks set to become a sizable box office hit. In fact, if Fox run a smart enough campaign, it could even stand a chance at winning some Oscars next year - perhaps even managing that acting nomination for a motion captured performance that Andy Serkis (the film's real star) so craves. But what knocked me for six wasn't the phenomenal quality of the CGI apes rendered by WETA Digital, the ingenious use of San Francisco locations, or the emotional journey told almost entirely from the point of view of an animal (Serkis as chimp Caesar). It was rather the fact that the whole ridiculous "monkeys take over the world" concept had been handled in such a plausible, intelligent and entertaining way.

The original Charlton Heston 'Planet of the Apes' of 1968 saves the reveal - that the planet ruled by the chimps is our own futuristic Earth - until just before the end credits. It doesn't have to trouble itself with the irksome minutiae of how this simian revolution was possible. The implied cause was nuclear war, which killed off human civilization and gave birth to an ape-led society, but how this actually transpired is left up to individuals in the audience to imagine. The problem inherent in a "here's how it happened" prequel is that you have to make this event believable. You have to show it. This is an even bigger problem when the old "threat of nuclear war" angle is no longer considered relevant and the idea of "atomic mutation" as a cause for anything other than cancer is simply laughable. The solution for the 21st century? Animal experimentation accidentally gives apes increased intelligence and these smart animals wage revolution. But how can you pull that off on camera?



After seeing the trailer I had a basic cynical problem with the premise of 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes'. I don't care how smart apes get - as long as we've got the guns and tanks they aren't going to take over the world. Yet British director Rupert Wyatt has made this idea work. Before the film is done we are invited to see a pitched battle between the San Francisco Police Department and a gang of organised chimps, gorillas and orangutans, and by the end you'll believe these animals could take the city apart brick by brick if they wanted to. The animals seem powerful, fast and agile - capable of feats usually saved for superhero characters - but none of it feels impossible so long as you accept the idea that the apes are now capable of reason and able to work together as a group.

It also helps that we aren't being sold 'Rise' as the big moment where apes take over the world, but as just the first big step on that journey, which means Wyatt doesn't yet have to show them besting the US Army or firing guns. This is basically a prison break out movie: escaped convicts versus the law. It isn't an epic tale of global conflict just yet (though the introduction of an airborne virus fills in the gaps about what happens next to some extent). An even bigger factor in why all this madness seems to make sense is that the first two thirds of the film are all about building up the character of Caesar and showing us his troubled relationship with humanity and his own crisis of identity. By the time the action really starts, we are already invested in the chimpanzee as a fully-formed character and no longer even see his actions as those of an animal.



More so than any other blockbuster of the year, 'Rise' is a dramatic story first and an action film second and this all comes courtesy of Serkis and WETA. It is a combination of a skilled character actor and tremendous animators that creates such a compelling and credible character in Caesar. A chimp adopted by James Franco's scientist after his mother is killed in the lab, he is the focus of the entire film and we follow him from newborn to energetic teenager, before he is brutalised and locked away. Caesar then (perhaps reluctantly) takes up the mantle of revolutionary leader to free apes from their human oppressors, grappling with moral and existential concerns along the way. What nuance the film has is in this journey, as key moments include subtle looks in the ape's eyes as we see his worldview change wordlessly.

By contrast the human characters could certainly be dismissed as shallow ciphers, with Tom Felton and Brian Cox playing snarling animal handlers, John Lithgow hamming it up as a confused, yet kindly, old man with Alzheimer's, and the ever-wooden Freida Pinto appearing as a smiling vet with few lines of dialogue and almost no narrative purpose beyond that of perfunctory love interest. As the live action star, James Franco is watchable but also lacking in depth, playing the committed scientist who goes to far trying to cure his father's brain illness before ultimately and inadvertently unleashing chimpgeddon on humanity. He is possibly supposed to be a conflicted, morally dubious genius in the mould of Jeff Goldblum's character in 'The Fly' or the original Dr. Frankenstein, but Franco always comes across as basically quite nice, the upshot being you never really question his motives or methods.



It's also true that compared to the theme rich original (which used its science fiction setting to explore then taboo subjects such as racism, the Vietnam War, potential nuclear holocaust and religious dogma) this prequel is pretty simple, with the basic moral being that we should treat animals better. Which is fair enough, but also not an idea that really challenges the audience (it'd be an odd person that objects to a "don't electrocute monkeys for fun" message). I suppose the revolutionary theme could be read more broadly as something about how an underclass will rise against an oppressive state, but oddly - for a film selling itself on the iconography of revolution - there is nothing revolutionary about its vaguely anti-science social agenda.

That said, 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' is as good a time as it's possible to have at the movies this time of year and (my great enjoyment of 'Captain America' and the final 'Harry Potter' notwithstanding) has to be viewed as the pick of the multiplex for summer 2011. From its emotional opening moments to the mesmeric doomsday scenario offered over the closing credits, Wyatt's prequel/remake is far better than it has any right to be.

'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' is out in the UK today and is rated '12A' by the BBFC.

Andy Serkis and Rupert Wyatt: 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' interviews!

You'll have to wait until later for my review of 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes', but I've written a couple of article on What Culture based on interviews I conducted the other day.

First up, I posted a write-up of my chat with the film's CGI-enhanced star Andy Serkis, in which he talks about his interest in video games as the future of storytelling.

I also published a conversation with the director Rupert Wyatt and WETA effects man Dan Lemmon, in which they spoke about the benefits of using CG apes as well as the moral concerns with past use of live animals. Wyatt also gave a little bit of insight into his plans for the inevitable sequel(s).

'Cowboys and Aliens' Review + 'Submarine' DVD

'Iron Man' director John Favreau's genre mash-up 'Cowboys and Aliens' is out on the 17th in the UK and I've reviewed it already over on What Culture. The short version: I found it incredibly boring. It left me in little wonder that the big budgeted Harrison Ford/Daniel Craig movie failed to beat 'The Smurfs' to the top spot at the US box office on its opening weekend. Why did I find it so dull? Read the review.

I've also had another DVD review published in the pages of the Daily Telegraph last weekend, as I appraised Richard Ayoade's brilliant directorial debut 'Submarine' - which you can also read online now that Saturday's more tangible issue is lining hamster cages.

Also, check back in the next couple of days for my review of 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes', which comes out on Friday over here. I'll say already that it's really good and a probable Oscar contender: an intelligent and exciting film which will reignite enthusiasm for the franchise overnight. British director Rupert Wyatt and motion capture performance advocate Andy Serkis (the film's real star as Caesar the ape) have every reason to celebrate a fine piece of work.

'Super 8' review:

Directed by 'Lost' creator and 'Cloverfield' producer JJ Abrams, 'Super 8' is an affectionate homage to the films of Steven Spielberg. Though in this case "homage" seems like too generous a description of a film which is closer in spirit to a greatest hits mixtape and, with Spielberg acting as a producer to oversee his own canonisation, it must surely rank as one of the cinema's greatest acts of narcissism. Not only is every shot, every sound effect and every character archetype stolen wholesale from the Spielberg oeuvre, but Abrams also borrows all his themes and even major plot details - the result being a film that feels wholly derivative and more than a little redundant.

In stitching together 'Super 8', Abrams combines the town meeting scene from 'Jaws', the nocturnal tree-rustling eeriness of 'Jurassic Park' and the absent father business from 'Hook' and 'The Lost World', alongside huge chunks of 'E.T.' and 'Close Encounters'. Whilst the young cast seem modelled, almost like-for-like, on the kids from Richard Donner's Spielberg-produced 'The Goonies'. Aside from his overuse of distracting lens flares, the director's own dubious stamp is only really felt in the familiar brand of mystery, as he withholds information and establishes lots of (eventually meaningless) threads, with the requisite unsatisfying pay-off. In fact, without spoiling the film, all I can say is that the climax of Abrams' story is not only underwhelming, but also wholly baffling as we are asked not to care about all the death and destruction that has come before during a cloying, metaphor-heavy finale that tries desperately to be heart warming and truly fails.



Set in the 1980s for some reason (allowing for tired references to the Cold War and walkmans), the story itself revolves around the meek and kindly Joe (Joel Courtney), a young boy who spends his summer holidays making super 8mm films with his friends: the fat one, the explosives expert one, the nervous one etc. Joe's mother has recently died and his well-meaning, hard-working father (Kyle Chandler), the town's Deputy Sheriff, spends little time with him. This leads him to strike up a forbidden friendship with Alice (Elle Fanning), a rebellious, young teen who agrees to star in the boys' movie. However, things take a turn for the strange when the gang's filmmaking places them at the scene of a spectacular train crash - with the film's big action set-piece out of the way after the first half hour.

Soon the army are on the scene to wage stock military conspiracy against the town and the boys are warned by a kindly old teacher not to tell anyone about what they have seen for their own safety. However, unexplained things start happening in town and, after the Sheriff goes missing, Joe's dad mounts his own investigation into the oddness (which proves ultimately irrelevant). Like the Amblin Entertainment produced family movies of the 1980s, such as 'Gremlins' and the aforementioned 'The Goonies', 'Super 8' pushes hard at the boundaries of its age-rating, with some bloody kills and a bit of swearing as Abrams refuses to patronise the potential young audience members who've been upgraded from 'Mr. Popper's Penguins'.



Yet whist the film definitely counts as something of an upgrade for the oft-abused family crowd, the film's only other audience is the nascent 1980s nostalgia demographic who are being played as cynically as they are ever likely to be. The "spot the Spielberg" nature of the movie will be a lot of fun for this portion of the crowd, but you have to wonder if it wouldn't be a better use of time to re-watch the superior Spielberg originals themselves and give this hollow imitation a miss. Compelling performances from the young cast aside (Fanning and Courtney are brilliant), 'Super 8' is a strange contradiction: seen by some as a beacon of hope amidst the comic book adaptations, sequels and remakes, the summer's only original property lacks a single original idea.

'Super 8' is out now in the UK and is rated '12A' the the BBFC.

'Sarah's Key' review:

A shrewd example of counter-programming, French holocaust movie 'Sarah's Key' has been unleashed on a UK box office with little else to offer a mature audience. Right now most multiplexes are screening the last entry in the 'Harry Potter' series, the third 'Transformers' movie and the more recent releases of 'Cars 2', 'Mr. Popper's Penguins' and 'Captain America'. It's a time of year when Hollywood, as far away from either end of award season as it's possible to be, caters only for teenagers and families, with the elderly ignored most of all. Yet, based on an acclaimed novel, set during the Second World War and starring Kristen Scott-Thomas, 'Sarah's Key' is seemingly purpose built for those with no interest in wizards, penguins and superheroes.

Scott-Thomas plays Julia, an American investigative journalist living in present day Paris who is researching a story on Vel' d'Hiv Roundup - a shameful event in French history which saw over 13,000 Parisian Jews arrested by local police and eventually condemned to Nazi concentration camps - when she discovers her new apartment in the Marais once belonged the family of a 10 year-old Jewish girl named Sarah (Mélusine Mayance) of whom there are no records. Her family perished in the camps, but Sarah seems to have disappeared soon after her transfer to the camp at Beaune-la-Rolande. As Julia tries to uncover the past, chasing leads around the globe and talking to distant relatives, we are also shown flashbacks of Sarah's traumatic young life and of a particularly tragic event which relates to the titular key.



It's all admirable enough, with the worthy intention of reminding the French people of this horrendous episode and keeping the memory of those killed alive, yet it's a tale that is blandly told. The film lacks anything like flair for the cinematic, with the 2009 sections of the film especially boring as Julia contends with the guilt of owning Sarah's apartment, and the whole thing feels like an overlong TV movie. The scenes which see Julia working at her magazine office are full of clumsy expository lessons in history, whilst the actors playing her young colleagues don't convince as journalists - reduced as they are to representing the ignorance of youth and those of us who need educating by the film.

In the end the tear-jerking, emotional element of the film (and it certainly has one) has much more to do with history than filmmaking as we are forced to imagine some of the pain people really went through in living memory - with children ripped from the arms of mothers, shrieking their goodbyes amidst a cacophony of wailing. The fate of Sarah's young brother is also hard to stomach. But none of this has an ounce to do with Gilles Paquet-Brenner's tepid direction or Scott-Thomas' earnest, mournful portrayal of Julia. English-speaking sections are especially poor with cliche dialogue ("my whole life has been a lie!") and little-known actors out of their depth, as the producers desperately try to ensure the film has a marketing future outside of France (it's got one of those cheeky trailers that pretends it isn't a foreign language film).



Aforementioned middle-class elderly audiences, so neglected by the summer blockbuster scene, will find the earnest, historically-conscious 'Sarah's Key' a welcome and emotionally affecting trip to the pictures. And that's a good thing, make no mistake. But those less allergic to frivolous fun will understand that there is much more interesting and even (in some cases) intellectually nourishing fare at the multiplex right now for anyone prepared to use their imagination. I'd never usually direct people from the arthouse and into the Odeon, but it's summer and, like it or not, that's where it's happening.

'Sarah's Key' is out now in the UK and rated '12A' by the BBFC.

'Mr. Popper's Penguins' review:

Promising a return to Jim Carey's rubber-faced and anarchic persona that it never quite delivers, 'Mr. Popper's Penguins' is a rote, inoffensive family comedy in which the title character (a slick-haired, shark of a businessman) learns all about the importance of love and family via six adorable penguins. The animals unexpectedly arrive at a swanky New York apartment as Popper's inheritance following the death of his father, an explorer, whose lifelong absence has given the character considerable daddy issues. The knock-on effect of which accounts for the character's failed marriage (to Carla Gugino) and relationship with his teenage kids, who he rarely has time for.

It's a tale familiar to anyone who's ever been patronised by Spielberg's 'Hook' or Carey's own 'Liar Liar', in which wealthy Hollywood types castigate working fathers for not attending enough baseball games/dance recitals, whilst espousing the eternal virtue of the nuclear family (Carey and Gugino must reconcile in the kids' movie tradition of 'The Parent Trap'). It goes without saying that along the way Carey must decide not to cheat a nice elderly lady (Angela Lansbury) out of her property, at the expense of earning a partnership at his firm, thus becoming a better man.



As with other recent live-action human/CGI animal buddy movies, such as 'Alvin and the Chipmunks' and 'Hop', a lot of the humour here revolves around fecal matter, with 'Mean Girls' director Mark Waters never missing an opportunity to show CGI bird poop streaming out of his CGI marine birds - to the audible delight of the child audience. Otherwise it's a succession of pratfalls amidst convoluted animal mayhem as the birds flood Popper's apartment, cause chaos at an arts benefit and stage a last-gasp zoo breakout in the name of madcap wackiness.

With this goofy premise in mind it seems odd that Carey himself, the gurning, limb-waving loon of 'The Mask' and 'Ace Ventura', gives such a restrained performance. There are isolated bits of daft, exaggerated comic business, but otherwise the actor seems to be continuing his decade long apology for having once been a comedian as he invests a lot of heartfelt sincerity into Popper's dramatic arc at the expense of laughs. Worse still, some of his better comic moments, such as his Jimmy Stewart impression, seem destined to go over the heads of the young audience altogether.



There is some fun to be had watching a supporting cast that includes Jeffrey Tambor, Phillip Baker Hall and Clark Gregg, even if they are underused and ill-served by the material, whilst British actress Ophelia Lovibond is a cute and mildly amusing presence as Popper's alliteration abusing assistant Pippi (a person whose primary purpose pertains to proliferating pronounced p-words). Though the intention is doubtless for the unimaginatively nicknamed penguins themselves to be the stars of the show: the squawking Loudy, flatulent Stinky, clumsy Nimrod, "adorable" Lovey, overzealous Bitey and flight-obsessed Captain. However, their cute appeal relies heavily on a retelling of the popular myth of the animals as dedicated monogamists and attentive parents, a la 'March of the Penguins'. And, even if you ignore the politics at play, animals that come into your house, crap everywhere and keep you up all night face a hard time being considered cute in my estimations.

Ultimately the flavourless, odorless, cinematic beige that is 'Mr. Popper's Penguins' feels like a Christmas movie released a few months early - possibly with eyes on a festive DVD release which could prove considerably more lucrative than this tepid theatrical outing. It's admittedly slightly more tasteful and watchable than the other animal movies of the last few years, but it's unlikely to inspire a resurgence of mid-90s-style Carey-mania.

'Mr. Popper's Penguins' is out today in the UK and rated 'PG' by the BBFC.

'The Referees' review:

Just up on What Culture, my review of French football documentary 'The Referees' which is out on limited release tomorrow in the UK. If you can catch it I'd recommend it, though it's not without its faults - mainly the fact there just isn't enough confrontation between players and referees in it. But it's a decent look at a side of the sport we don't usually see.