Category: Non-Horror

Director: Rupert Wyatt

Starring: James Franco, Andy Serkis, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, Tom Felton

“Ape alone… weak. Apes together… strong.” (Caesar (in sign language), Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes)

It’s always dangerous messing around with the classics. When you take a film as well-loved as Planet Of The Apes and try to give it a modern twist, the results can piss off a lot of people – just ask Tim Burton. As a prequel rather than a remake Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes takes a different approach, albeit one that could still upset a lot of fans if it’s handled badly. Thankfully, they needn’t worry – it’s a fantastic movie that in no way sullies the name of its predecessor.

The film follows Will (Franco), a scientist working on a drug that he believes will cure Alzheimer’s disease by repairing the brain. After trying it on apes, Will finds that the drug does more than simply repair, it improves, making its recipient smarter than they were before they even had the disease.

When one of his test monkeys dies, leaving behind a baby, Will takes the baby home and discovers that its mother’s enhanced brain has passed down genetically to its son. Calling the ape Caesar, Will decides to keep him as a pet and monitor his progress over the years as he gets smarter, learning sign language and essentially acting like a young human boy.

To say any more would spoil a movie that you really need to discover for yourself, but that so much of the film is spent following Caesar’s development over the years is a telling sign that Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is more emotional and intelligent than your typical summer blockbuster. You care for this ape, you’re upset for him when things are looking bad and, while we all know the ‘rise’ of the apes will ultimately result in the end of the human race as the dominant species, such is the power of this film that you almost sympathise with our so-called enemy.

If ever there was a man who could reignite the debate over actors winning awards for motion capture roles, that man is Andy Serkis. Having previously played such memorable motion capture characters as King Kong and Gollum, Caesar is his most impressive performance yet. Within ten minutes of Will taking Caesar home you forget you’re watching a CGI ape and start to completely believe it – an achievement very few CGI characters manage to accomplish. The scene later on where he reacts to the realisation that Will is leaving him for a while is heartbreaking, and his interactions with other simians later in the film are utterly believable.

It’s one scene in particular however that steals the show. I refuse to give it away (you’ll know it because it happens right after the obligatory “damn dirty ape” line), but it sent a chill up my spine I haven’t felt for years. There was such a sharp intake of breath among the audience I watched the film with that if there had been more people in attendance we might have been able to suck the screen off the wall.

I strongly recommend you see Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes. You don’t have to have seen the original film to ‘get’ it, it works perfectly well as a standalone movie. Of everything else I’ve seen this year, this one blows it away in terms of sheer emotion alone. And now, as is a fitting way to conclude a review of an incredible film, I end with a poor joke – you’d be (monkey) nuts to miss it. Sorry about that.

Director: Jason Eisener

Starring: Rutger Hauer, Molly Dunsworth, Brian Downey

“You and me are going on a car ride to hell… and you’re riding shotgun.” (Hobo, Hobo With A Shotgun)

Not since Santa Claus Conquers The Martians has a film’s title so clearly summed up its premise. Hobo With A Shotgun is, when all is said and done, the tale of a hobo armed with a shotgun. And it’s brilliant.

Rutger Hauer plays the aforementioned hobo, a nameless tramp with a shopping trolley who wanders from city to city by catching rides on cargo trains. His journey takes him to Hopetown, a rundown district where murderers, drug dealers and prostitutes are in charge and the police are as bent as a three pound note. After trying to save one hooker from abuse and getting a makeshift tattoo carved into his chest for his troubles, the hobo decides it’s time to clean up Hopetown and take out Drake, the dictatorial leader of the ne’er-do-wells. With a shotgun.

It’s a simple plot, and at a whisker over 80 minutes it’s a brief movie, but Hobo With A Shotgun manages to pack in a hell of a lot of action, not to mention controversial and gory moments. If you were trying to play some sort of drinking game where you had to take a shot every time a head, foot, gut or other body part either exploded in a shower of blood or was removed by force, you’d need to have your stomach pumped by the hour mark.

It’s clear the film thrives on this too, throwing in ever-increasingly ridiculous set-ups and more contentious moments to really try and provoke a reaction. Three naked women hitting a man with baseball bats as he’s hung upside-down? Check. A woman having her hand shredded in a lawnmower, then using her bony stump to stab someone else? Yup. An entire schoolbus full of cute children set on fire? Incredibly, it’s in there. And yet somehow, despite how shocking this sounds in words, the whole film is so over-the-top and so blatantly set on trying to offend that it actually isn’t that bad. It’s the Evil Dead situation taken to the nth degree – show something so ridiculously over-the-top and do it consistently enough and it’ll eventually become so absurd it evokes humour rather than offence.

Top marks should go to the legendary Rutger Hauer in the leading role. He manages to get across a character that you’d never want to meet but still feel a great deal of sympathy and admiration for at the same time. Plus he looks cool as fuck with a shotgun.

Many films don’t try to change the world. They don’t want to cure cancer or spread awareness of suffering or make people appreciate their loved ones more. Some films just want to entertain and show the viewer something they’ve never seen before in any other movie. Hobo With A Shotgun does this time and time again, and as a result what it lacks in subtlety it makes up with shocks and laughs by the shopping trolley-load.

Director: Rod Daniel

Starring: Michael J Fox, Susan Ursitti, Jerry Levine

Harold – “Listen son, you’re going to be able to do a lot of things the other guys aren’t.”
Scott – “Oh yeah, like chase cars and bite the mailman?”

Fresh from his success in Back To The Future, Michael J Fox was the talk of Tinseltown. He was quickly snapped up to play the lead role in Teen Wolf, a teen comedy with “bite”. Ho ho ho, I’m quite the wordsmith.

Scott Howard (Fox) is your typical high school loser. He’s shit at basketball, can’t attract the ladies and can’t buy alcohol because the guy at the liquor store is too smart for him and his pals. In short, he’s a dweeb.

Things start to take a turn for the better when Scott all of a sudden realises he can actually play basketball like a young Michael Jordan. His friends are amazed at his newfound abilities and he is too, but he soon gets concerned when he starts growing hair at a ridiculous rate (no, not like that) and finds himself snapping into violent rages all of a sudden.

Eventually Scott’s hair gets out of control and starts to completely cover his face. He locks himself in his bathroom at home, scared at what he’s becoming. His dad comes into the bathroom too and, to Scott’s surprise, his face is similarly fluffy. It turns out  Scott – like his dad and the rest of his bloodline – is a werewolf.

Oddly, despite his new appearance his schoolmates don’t really question it like they would if it happened in real life. Instead, everyone thinks wolfman Scott is awesome. They love his basketball skills, they think he’s cool as hell and all the ladies want to be with him (even though it’s essentially bestiality). The director of the school play wants him to be the lead (as long as he’s still a werewolf) and he gets invited to all the parties.

Even though it’s a film about an odd subject, the same old teen movie conventions apply and it’s ultimately yet another movie about high school acceptance. When he becomes cool, Scott finally gains the attention of the selfish bimbo all the guys love, at the same time ignoring the wholesome, loveable girl who’s actually in love with him. Meanwhile, all his basketball teammates start to resent him because he hogs the ball and isn’t a team player.

As you’d expect, Scott loves the popularity for a while, but then realises it’s a shallow existence. And, as you’d expect, by the end of the film Scott realises being a cool werewolf isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, tries to play basketball without his werewolf powers and realises who’s really important in his life. It’s all predictable stuff.

Eventually the whole werewolf gimmick becomes pointless because the only ability it really seems to give Scott is the ability to play basketball better. Since I’m fairly sure werewolves aren’t known for their ability to play basketball the movie could have just as easily been called Teen Frog or Teen Coat Rack and it would have been the same film with different make-up and special effects.

Teen Wolf is a perfectly acceptable high school movie, but if you’re expecting a movie showing how a teen struggles to survive high school with a hideous medical affliction you’re going to be disappointed because all it essentially teaches is that if you want everyone to love you, you have to be a werewolf first.

Director: Franklin J Schaffner

Starring: Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Linda Harrison, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans

“Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!” (Taylor, Planet Of The Apes)

The last time I saw a film with an ape riding a horse the police came to my house, confiscated it and fined me £1000. I wasn’t willing to take the same chance again so I did plenty of research beforehand to ensure Planet Of The Apes was above board.

Planet of the Apes is one of those movies that most people know a lot about but many haven’t seen. Many know the twist ending, partly due to the numerous spoofs of it that have emerged over the past years with the likes of The Simpsons and Kevin Smith taking their own crack at it. Yet not many people who haven’t watched it are aware that there’s actually a lot more to this film than Charlton Heston being kidnapped by apes, escaping and then realising where he is. It’s rife with social commentary and other such shenanigans.

An astronaut crew crash-lands on a mysterious planet 2000 years in the future. Commander George Taylor (Heston) is captured by a group of intelligent apes, who believe that they are the dominant species and man is the beast. Two chimp scientists are startled however to realise that Taylor can speak (unlike the other humans on the planet) and so they attempt to help him gain his freedom.

The first fifteen minutes are fairly boring, reminiscent of the sci-fi b-movies of the 50’s where a crew of two or three men crash-land on a planet then look at all the strange things on said planet. Thankfully Taylor’s crewmembers are disposed of quickly (leaving us in no doubt as to who the star is here) and the film begins to swing in a wildly different direction when he’s kidnapped by apes on horses.

Taylor is thrown into a cage alongside some fellow humans, and soon realises that such is the bitter irony of this new world, the humans can’t speak and the apes can, meaning their roles are reversed somewhat. The apes see the humans are mere pets, mindless animals incapable of communication. Conveniently, Taylor’s voicebox was damaged while he was being kidnapped so he can’t speak when he’s initially captured.

I would say that to give more away would be spoiling it but let’s face it, we all have a rough idea where this is going. We know he’s eventually going to speak and that all hell’s going to break loose. We know he’s going to be seen as some freak of nature and he’s going to end up splitting the apes into those that believe he’s from another planet and those that don’t. And if you don’t, well, you do now.

One frustrating annoyance is the character of Nova, played by Linda Harrison. As a love interest she’s pretty weak, mainly due to the fact that she’s mute and doesn’t really seem to understand what Taylor is saying. Indeed, it almost feels wrong to me whenever he tries to instil some sort of romance in her, because she doesn’t really know what he’s doing. It’s pretty close to animal porn in my opinion (and, as noted above, I would know).

One cliché we do expect with mute characters in films, however, is that in a dramatic scene near the end (usually when the hero’s getting the shit kicked out of him) they’ll suddenly talk, or at least make some kind of “ugh” sound. This isn’t the case here. You keep waiting for it, but once the credits hit you think “well what was the point of her?”. Unsurprisingly, this was corrected in the sequel.

Heston gives a performance that’s as needlessly dramatic as you’d expect from a ’60s sci-fi film, regardless of its otherwise high budget. In the scenes where he can speak, every line’s chewed and spat out through gritted teeth in order to make him seem like a gritty hero who takes no shit. Her annoying lack of chat aside, Linda Harrison does do a good job and at times you believe she actually is mute. And despite the makeup, the ape actors are still extremely convincing, in particular Maurice Evans as Dr Zaius and Roddy McDowall as Cornelius.

If you still haven’t seen it Planet Of The Apes is highly recommended, as long as you don’t mind overdramatic sci-fi. The make-up effects on the apes have stood the test of time, and they look as impressive more than 40 years on as they did back when they were created. It’s therefore still somewhat believable (within reason), as opposed to merely a historic landmark in film history that our generation can look back at and giggle at how cheap it all looked. If you’re after a good science fiction film with moral undertones and spectacular cinematography for its time, then Planet Of The Apes is the one for you. Besides, it’s got monkeys on fucking horses.