Rise of the Planet of the Apes ***½

Director: Rupert Wyatt

Cast: James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Brian Cox

Tom Felton, David Oyelowo, Tyler Labine, Jamie Harris, Andy Serkis 

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is simply put: a history of evolution. To say it's simple is nothing but a hopeful invitation for audiences to discover the movie that might've contributed the most to popular culture iconography as far as this year goes. 

Not because the film is especially complicated, or convoluted, plot-wise, but because to dwell too much into its twists and turns might be to rob people of the pleasure of its discovery. How director Rupert Wyatt managed to not only reboot, but also refresh this franchise is perhaps a bigger mystery than the scientific alternatives offered in it.

Perhaps setting the tone for what will be a revolution of minorities, the film is set in San Francisco, where we meet Will Rodman (Franco) a young scientist trying to develop a cure for Alzheimer's disease to help cure his father (Lithgow). Will tests the drug on chimpanzees who begin showing signs of cerebral improvement, but to fulfill dramatic purposes, the program is shut down after an accident involving one of the test subjects.After this Will is left in charge of a newborn chimp, which he names Caesar.

Like a story out of the Old Testament, Will raises Caesar in secret and realizes this is no ordinary creature as his brain capacity increases by the day. As he grows up though, Caesar is left adrift in an existential limbo wondering whether he's a human (because of his ability to communicate) or a wild creature (because of his inability to fully control his instincts).

The burning shrub for this figurative Moses (and this isn't the only nod to Charlton Heston and the 1968 classic) arrives in the shape of an ape sanctuary where he is sent after attacking a human. There -among the abused circus veterans and mistreated test subjects- he realizes that he must save his kind from those who have oppressed them. Singlehandedly, Caesar leads the revolution that will set the apes free.

It's safe to say that humans are the least interesting factor in the film. Other than Lithgow's moving performance and Cox's wicked villain turn, the human storylines are plagued with clichés and things we've seen a million times before (there's a strange romance between Franco and Pinto - who plays a vet - that never really clicks).

The film's soul is obviously Caesar, and more than him, it belongs to the man who plays him: Andy Serkis. Without the need to rely on phony ape suits, Serkis' motion capture performance is a thing of haunting beauty. Not for a second do we doubt this creature is alive and thriving with burning inner desires.

To witness this performance is to find ourselves at the peak of an evolutionary path that began with the first cave paintings, through which humans tried to emulate life using external tools. 

This is one of the evolutionary paths observed keenly by Wyatt and his splendid crew; the transition from rudimentary pencil creations, then to more complex methods and finally to recreate and encourage life using computers isn't a mere technological achievement, it also serves as a sort of ethical clause that makes us wonder: what's next?

The film doesn't rely on a Frankenstein theory to make us understand that its main point is to point out the thin lines that divide our existential ambiguity: we can be monsters or gods. 

Therefore the film follows a parallel road and through Caesar's biography we are given a glimpse of how the actual biological evolution must've occurred. How wild apes slowly had different needs and were forced to develop skills that would help their preservation.

Commanded with a precise, breathtakingly economical, hand by Wyatt, the film is an exemplary blockbuster that proves how our achievements as a race will always have the ability to both mesmerize and terrify us. 

Uninspired By True Events.

Watching Conviction you just know it's the kind of "inspired by true events" movie that will end with a picture of the real people and a corny song. You do not expect this from 127 Hours though.

Yet both do it and with the same degree of corny smugness as the other, the one difference is that while one feels just redundant for it, the other does it to teach us a metaphysical lesson of sorts and loses whatever credibility it had before. Care to guess which is which?

In Conviction Hilary Swank plays Betty Anne Waters, an unemployed single mom who decides to become a lawyer to get her brother Kenny (Rockwell) out of jail. Kenny was accused of murdering a woman and according to his sister he's innocent. We follow her through her hard years of school as she deals with working at a bar, raising her sons and maintaining that thick Massachusetts accent for as long as she can.
This is one of those movies in which you know how everything will go: the villains are scary (Leo gives a one note performance as an evil cop), the good guys are practically angels (Swank is missing but a halo from her "hard working but tastefully dressed" look) and someone always comes along and makes the movie seem much, much better than it has any right to be. In this case it's both Rockwell who gives another of his crazy cowboy performances and Lewis, who in a mere two scenes pretty much owns the film. The movie is directed efficiently, if not truly memorably by Goldwyn who seems to put more attention to his characters than to any stylistic flourishes yet in the end the movie fails gigantically because it doesn't make Betty someone we are dying to know more of.

Have you ever noticed how watching a Hilary Swank movie, you know it's a Hilary Swank movie? Not because she takes over the screen with her inescapable charm or magnetic screen presence but because every other character always seems to bow to her's.

Watching talented actors the likes of Driver, Rockwell and Lewis gaze teary eyed at Swank as if they were in the presence of something divine lacks the impact it would have if they were staring at Julia Roberts. Swank, unlike Julia, isn't capable of killing the "sanctify me" glare the supporting players emit. With a big movie star, their shine is so bright that they make scenes like these work, with Swank you just know she has a hand for picking screenplays and/or casting herself in films she produced.

Speaking of creative control, remember how once upon a time Danny Boyle was one of the most surprising working filmmakers? Each of his films felt like something completely new and exciting. From the creepy terror of 28 Days Later to the joyful cuteness of Millions and of course the addictive Trainspotting, his career seemed to scream "prolificness".

After going unintentionally mainstream with Slumdog Millionaire he seems to have compromised his vision and turned it into something that resembles conformity. Such is the case in 127 Hours where Boyle shows us the events that led mountain climber Aron Ralston (Franco) to amputate his own arm after getting trapped in a canyon.
And by saying he shows us, it's really because he makes a show out of everything, 127 Hours think it's being introspective and deep when it's mostly being obvious and overtly didactic. At the beginning of the film we see how Aron barely misses his Swiss Army knife when packing for his trip and from the position of the camera and the angle we know that this knife will play a part later on. Of course it does and like the knife, Boyle uses flashbacks and characters to put together a puppet show about how sad Ralston's life was before the accident and how amazing he must've felt after being reborn (no spoilers here considering we learn the film is an adaptation from a book by Aron).

Boyle uses complicated techniques to try and inject some energy into the proceedings but the truth is that this time he tries too hard to express stylistic freedom displayed through conventional methods. When his split screens should be recalling triptychs and art history, all they really do is make us think the editor is just showing off his new software and for all of the metaphysical ramblings he makes Aron say, all we're stuck with is ninety minutes of Boyle interpreting the whole "light at the end of the tunnel" people are supposed to see before they die.

After the film sends us home floating in a cloud of positivity (the Dido meets Enya theme song is arid and cliché) we might not be thinking too much about Aron and the rock but wondering if that Oscar fell upon Boyle and is keeping his true talent trapped?

Grades: Conviction ** 127 Hours **

Live From the Kodak, It's Anne Hathaway!

Everyone and their moms have already commented on the great news that the lovely Ms. Hathaway will host the Oscars next year (oh yeah co-host with this dude called James Franco) so as you can imagine from the love I profess for her all the time (just click on her name in the tags down there) I obviously wasn't going to let the moment pass without a celebration.
I was at the office when I found out the awesome news and when I went for lunch what was my surprise if not to see that the November issue of Vogue had just arrived to my local magazine store.
Who's on the cover? Of course it's her...
Now if you'll excuse me, I've had a long day, I proceed to retire to bed with Ms. Anne.

How did you all like this news? (The Oscars, not me in bed with Annie...)

For the press release go here.

Eat Pray Love ***

Director: Ryan Murphy
Cast: Julia Roberts
Javier Bardem, James Franco, Richard Jenkins, Viola Davis
Billy Crudup, Hadi Subiyanto, Tuva Novotny, Mike O'Malley
Luca Argentero, Rushita Singh, David Lyons

How do you sell a movie about a woman who leaves her husband to find herself, while traveling to some of the most exotic locales on the planet? You get Julia Roberts to play her.
It makes no difference that Eat Pray Love is based on the autobiographical novel written by Elizabeth Gilbert, the truth is that perhaps there would've been no way to bring this movie to the screen without making it feel like a "whine fest" if it wasn't because Roberts turns it into a Julia Roberts movie.
Not to pay any disservice to Gilbert, since apparently those who love her book think it gets to be spiritual and transcendental, but the thing is that watching Julia on a movie screen immediately takes you to a place where movie stars still are gods of sorts and mortals can still drool over them.
This helps the movie because it helps make Gilbert approachable, given that we rarely think of her as an actual "normal" person, she's pretty much Julia Roberts' version of Gilbert.
This makes it easy to like Julia because it wouldn't really be easy to like Liz.
When the film begins she decides to leave her husband (Crudup) after figuring out she doesn't love him. She begins an affair with a young actor (Franco) who she doesn't love either and then decides it's time to travel the world and find her balance.
She begins her journey in Italy where she eats, then goes to India where she prays and culminates it in Bali where she loves (Bardem plays Felipe her Brazilian love interest).
Director Murphy (who also wrote the screenplay with Alice Salt) seems to have no real intention to make anything in the movie subtle.
Besides the obvious explanation of the title, he spends trying to digest everything for the audience. Along with director of photography Robert Richardson he tries to make everything seem like what we'd expect it to be.
Therefore the entire movie is bathed in a golden light that makes everything seem nice but doesn't really allow elements to breathe. Richardson who is an extraordinary DP, here seems restricted by the homogeneous look Murphy tries to impose on everything.
The same can be said about the editing, which more often than not seems overcompensating. The scenes where Liz eats are usually cut with such quickness that they make her bites seem car commercials, it's as if Murphy is too worried we would get too envious about the foods and chose not to show them too much and there's a particularly obnoxious scene where a woman's fashion success is celebrated by an entire crowd of football fans.
It's fortunate then that while Murphy digests for us, Julia gets to do the actual savoring. Her performance might not be a reinvention of modern acting but the actress shows glimpses of a maturity that she has experimented with very few times in her career.
Not only does she look more radiant and beautiful than ever but she also manages to infuse Liz with a certain sense of earthiness despite the whole "she's Julia" issue.
Even when the movie succumbs to cliché Julia takes it to a completely different place. For example it doesn't take long to assume Gilbert was a fan of Sex and the City given the way she narrates and tries too hard to deliver Carrie Bradshaw-isms, but Roberts takes these comments with a pinch of salt and instead of turning them into puns or teabag advice she confronts them and even make us wonder if Gilbert wasn't actually consciously creating a marketable product while trying to be spiritual (think Paulo Coelho minus the ominous hocus pocus).
After all this is a woman who literally had to begin from zero after an ugly divorce. It would make sense, and give her some humanity, to think that she was finding ways to make money after her trip was over.
Eat Pray Love rarely gives us a glimpse of the Julia Roberts laughter, you know that big, loud roar that's impossible to ignore, instead we get more of her soulful smile this time around.
Perhaps the screenplay doesn't really try hard to see what's behind Liz, her motivations rarely move past the "find myself" stereotype but Julia detected this and tries to explore it without acquiring methodical tics.
Instead of approaching Liz like a vessel waiting to be invaded, Roberts gets near her and tries to empathize, which is why it's evident that nobody else would've been able to play this woman and not make her seem selfish and to an extent an anti-heroine.
Because for all its soul searching and mumbo jumbo, Eat Pray Love is still very much about an American woman using the world to expiate her sins but without the selfawareness to make it a satire.
Because it has Roberts though it gains a heart, one that is broken on several occassions (mostly by herself) and because of this we leave the movie, not feeling patronized or offended but actually questioning what we just saw.
If people like Gilbert get to travel the world and still come up empty handed, what hope is there for the people who only get to travel from movie to movie looking for answers to their existential questions.
Murphy doesn't seem to know that his glossy travelogue might seem shallow but Julia does and with a comforting smile lets us know that however deep we sink in our own tragedies, almost everyone knows that a spoonful of gelato makes the world seem perfect even for at least a second.

Sheet-y Saturday.

Where we take a look at posters for upcoming features.


Slumdog Millionaire pretty much killed my excitement about anything related to Danny Boyle, at least for a while. See how smug they make him sound with the whole "Academy Award winning" thing when for this movie I would've loved to have him mentioned as "the director of Trainspotting and Sunshine".
The movie itself makes me lazy but this poster is superb. The colors are terrific and the hourglass figure is so subtly paired with the tagline that you might miss it at first.


I have no idea what this movie will be about and I probably won't have any interest in watching it once I do.
But aren't these two just beautiful?

Excited for any of these? Do you too feel Oscar killed Danny Boyle's cool factor?

Date Night ***

Director: Shawn Levy
Cast: Steve Carell, Tina Fey
Mark Wahlberg, Taraji P. Henson, Jimmi Simpson, Common
William Fichtner, Leighton Meester, Kristen Wiig
Mark Ruffalo, James Franco, Mila Kunis, Ray Liotta

Hollywood often has the mind of a child; they often team up rising stars and robots or famous legends and musicals, assuming that putting together A and B will always result in a hit.
More often than not this strategy implodes all over them but when they decided to put together the two funniest people in showbiz things actually worked out in the most unexpected ways.
Tina Fey and Steve Carell star as Claire and Phil Foster, a married couple from the Jersey suburbs whose existence revolves around their house, their kids and their jobs.
Watching their attempts at rekindling their sex life-with only five hours of sleep between the forced foreplay and the time their kids jump on them to wake them- is hilarious but also bittersweet.
As funny as they make the normality of their house scenes (you never see them as something other than the Fosters) they also keep the characters grounded and the comedy sometimes gives way to deep sadness.
After they learn a couple they know is getting a divorce, both decide it's time to relight the flame for good. They decide to venture out of their comfort zone and go have dinner on a Friday night in Manhattan.
They dress up, arrive at the hippest seafood place in the city and are sent to the oblivion of the bar until a table becomes available-if ever.
Trying to impress his wife, Phil steals a reservation from a couple that never shows up, called the Tripplehorns and after their fabulously overpriced dinner is over, they are approached by two men (Common and Simpson) who ask them to walk out with them.
Thinking this has to do with the stolen reservation (and an embarrassing moment involving will.i.am) the Fosters are surprised to learn the two men are actually looking for a flash drive the Tripplehorns stole from a big mobster.
Soon they're on the run across the city trying to clear their name and preserve their lives, in the process having the most exciting night of their lives.
Anyone who says they do not know how this movie will end is lying, the plot's predictability is obvious from its title. The one thing that might surprise you is that Fey and Carell create the chemistry one would've deemed too good to be true.
He's a master at his kind of goofy, heartwarming comedy (when he's called "androgynous" by a guy in a strip club his droll stare is priceless!) while Fey's own kind of dorky sexiness serves her to deliver her OCD bitchiness with enough oomph to make her more likable than not.
Together they have no fear of being absolutely ridiculous (scenes with Henson who plays a police detective make one wonder how did the actress contain her laughter with these two around) and awkward (an often shirtless Wahlberg gets the best out of the dynamic duo).
What's so special about Date Night is the fact that despite your best knowledge of how silly and preposterous the situations might get you are always willing to invest into the main characters.
It's not like one of those movies where you laugh against your better judgment, this one doesn't care to steal a random giggle from the audience, it makes your stomach literally hurt from laughing so much.
Even when they are involved in an oh so typical dance with a pole sequence, you won't be thinking "this is so stupid" but "boy, I wish I could bring someone to see this with me".

Along Came a Spider (and Hollywood Squashed It).

Sony Pictures did what not even Venom could: kill Spider-Man. In what's been regarded as an insane strategy since it was announced earlier today, the studio has decided to reboot the series for the 2012 release (hmm all those Mayan theories are making more sense huh?) after director Sam Raimi refused to compromise the series' artistic integrity by rushing into a filming without a definite screenplay.

Reboots have come a standard of sorts in Hollywood, but they have been relegated for series that were in serious creative issues or were being left behind by the moving times.
When they hired Daniel Craig to play James Bond and Christopher Nolan to retell Batman from the beginning, they were not playing around. Both moves were highly risky and paid off in the best ways: box office hits and critical darlings.

But what was so wrong about Spider-Man that needed a reboot even before the first film turned a decade old?

Now that there's not much to do about this, the issue that follows is the idea of their intended reboot; according to the official release from the studio,

Peter Parker is going back to high school when the next Spider-Man hits theaters in the summer of 2012. Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios announced today they are moving forward with a film based on a script by James Vanderbilt that focuses on a teenager grappling with both contemporary human problems and amazing super-human crises.

Don't they mean Smallville? or even worse Twilight?

If my memory serves me right Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) was bitten by the radioactive spider in the first movie, which means that whatever the studio has decided to tell in this new version will technically be set in what happened in about twenty minutes in the original film.
Hmmm perhaps because it didn't matter much?

The wonderful thing about Spider-Man was to see Maguire grow into those red tights. Remember that if it hadn't been for Raimi's genius casting of the atypical Maguire as a superhero we'd still probably be stuck with the likes of Val Kilmer and Billy Zane as comic book icons.
If Maguire hadn't been so perfect as Parker perhaps we wouldn't even have Craig as Bond or Robert Downey Jr. as Iron-Man.

It was this thinking outside the box that refreshed the superhero movie for the decade that was. With this Hollywood move we're reminded that the 2000´s are indeed over and done with.

More on the Spider-Man reboot:
Deadline Hollywood: "Spider-Man 4" Scrapped; Franchise Reboot for 2012 (includes complete statement from the studio)
Chud.com: The Devin's Advocate: Twilight for Spider-Man and Hollywood a wonderful analysis of what become the end of the blockbuster era or the perpetuation of zombiefied film production.
Cinemablend: 15 Reasons Rebooting Spider-Man is A Really Bad Idea all of them are spot on.

What does your Spidey sense tell you about this?