Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

First published on Northern Soul, Nov 2014

There was a moment in Rupert Wyatt's 2011 reboot Rise of the Planet of the Apes that stopped the viewer in their tracks. A moment when a good film becomes a great one, a moment rarely seen in slam-bang, effects-driven blockbusters in these franchise-saturated times. Caesar's guttural cry of "NO!", symbolically breaking free of his simian roots to become more human than his caged compadres can comprehend, is a hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck moment for any first-time viewer. Rise was a surprise hit, a film which didn't necessarily carry the weight of expectation that a usual studio tentpole does. The fact it turned out to be a grade-A action creature feature with (genetically-enhanced) brains came as a shock to most. The fact it also came pre-loaded with the scene described above to pin cinema audiences to their seats even more so.

Thus Matt Reeves' sequel, for better or for worse, had a weight of expectation resting on its furry shoulders that the first one never had - but to his credit, his film could yet be ranked alongside The Empire Strikes Back and The Dark Knight as the darker, superior picture. Time will tell of course, but as sequels go, Dawn joyously throws out the 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' rule of thumb many studio executives cling to in a vain attempt to keep the coffers full. It sidesteps what could easily have been a giant, LOTR-aping two-hour warfest with thousands of Massive-driven humans and apes going hammer-and-tongs via epic CGI aerial shots, to become something far greater altogether.

If anything, Dawn follows in the footsteps of Full Metal Jacket in being a distinct film of two halves: a slow-burning, tension-building, character study of a first half that sets up complex motivations and divisions within both the human and ape camps; followed by a grim 'war is hell' second half, largely eschewing the predictable circling helicopter shots in favour of muscular, boots-on-the-ground close-ups that showcase the bleak realities of conflict. This may be a film full of computer-generated apes, but in lieu of recent ideological uprisings halfway around the world its message couldn't be more resonant.

It goes without saying that in order to fully appreciate what Reeves has done with Dawn, you need to have seen Rise. This isn't a film that spends much time with backstory, save for a brief newsreel montage explaining that the world has gone to hell in a handcart over the course of ten years due to a killer virus known as the 'simian flu' (in reality, an intelligence-enhancing concoction initially trialled on apes as a cure for Alzheimer's - it worked wonders for the apes, not so much for the humans).

Said humans (led by the ever-watchable Gary Oldman) are now living in what appears to be a San Francisco tribute to The Last of Us - giant vines crawling skyscrapers, the Golden Gate bridge a hot mess of weeds and abandoned cars. After a party of humans in search of a dam that could restore power to the city stumble across Caesar and his pals, a fractious alliance is forged by Caesar to allow the humans to restore power on the apes' turf. But Koba, Caesar's hot-headed second-in-command, has a deep-seated mistrust of humans (again, if you haven't seen the first film, get a watchin' it now). His justifiably warped views lead him to find the rest of the human race stocking up on weaponry in case the whole fragile pact goes belly-up... and belly-up it goes. But not necessarily at the hands of us pesky humans; as Caesar tells his son with a heavy heart, apes and humans are so very much alike.

Around the halfway point, in what could be viewed as an attempt to out-do the "NO!" moment from Rise, Reeves places a camera on top of a tank when the humans vs. apes battle starts to kick off big time. Without cutting away, the turret slowly spins as all hell breaks loose, the lens acting like a first-person-shooter voyeur surveying the fire-engulfed chaos with Koba at the centre. It's a simple but jaw-droppingly effective moment that separates Dawn from your typical Hollywood output, a film that feels truly and artfully crafted rather than churned out off the back of a surprise success to make a quick buck.

Even the fact that the majority of the apes' dialogue is done via sign language and subtitles shows that this franchise is in it for the long game - Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy proved that you don't have to whack an audience over the head with dumb dialogue and huge explosions every five seconds to keep their attention when it comes to a summer genre release. Reeves has taken the gauntlet laid down by Wyatt to make a film that's both action-packed and thought-provoking. It's about as brave a blockbuster as you're likely to see in this attention-deficit age.

Available now on Blu-Ray and DVD

Interstellar

"Some kind of great film, and an unforgettable endeavor."
"A monumentally unimaginative movie."
"Succeeds magnificently on a cosmic scale."
"Morally pretentious, intellectually obscure and inordinately long... a film out of control."

Some criticism for you to chew over there, praise of both the highest and lowest order. Though it's not Interstellar they're talking about; rather Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, a film that polarised opinion when it hit screens in 1968. Nolan's film may not have had quite the impact 2001 had (audiences weren't quite so used to 'serious' effects-driven blockbusters at the time, let alone wide-eyed scientific musings on the nature of existence), but having taken in its IMAX-sized vision, it's easy to compare it to Kubrick's effort and indeed the confused reaction it elicited from audiences and critics alike (even the posters bear a striking resemblance here and here, oh and here and here too). There's a fine line between genius and madness; with Interstellar, its often hard to tell where that line actually is. But it's damn good fun trying to work it out.

Whilst marketed as a typical tentpole picture, director Christopher Nolan (Inception, The Dark Knight) along with his screenwriter brother Jonah have concocted something far more ambitious. Too ambitious, some might say; but when every other film on release is a franchise or a cheap comedy to bulk up the studio numbers for the year, you can't knock the Nolans (no, not those Nolans) for attempting to do something a little more daring, even by their own lofty standards. It's a film that in some ways feels out of time, a throwback to the likes of 2001 but also other films from decades past (Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff was screened to cast and crew prior to shooting, McConaughey's Cooper practically a visual carbon copy of Sam Shepard's Chuck Yeager). Methodical pacing and character building are rare things in many a movie these days, let alone a Nolan one; his passion for exposition often coming at the expense of getting to know who you're rooting for. But from its dust-bowl opening all the way to its gravity-warping finale, it wears its influences firmly on its sleeve whilst going places not every audience member may want to travel to. For those willing to be taken along for the ride however, it delivers thrills and food for metaphysical thought in spades.

Setting up camp in what we assume to be the not-too-distant future, the world has found itself in the middle of a food crisis - a world caked in dust with the remnants of the human race living a meagre existence. Cooper, an ex-NASA pilot turned farmer ('ex' because the space missions were shelved, perceived to be a waste of public money), stumbles on some strange goings-on in his daughter Murphy's bedroom; gravitational waves that appear to be coordinates to an undisclosed location (okay, it looks daft when written down like this and it doesn't make much more sense on screen, but bare with me). Taking a punt and driving to where the supposed coordinates point to, he discovers NASA themselves - in hiding but still operational, and in need of a pilot to scout out new habitable planets beyond our galaxy (it really is starting to read badly now all this). Not one to turn down an opportunity to save the human race, Cooper signs up without barely reading the spacecraft manual; Anne Hathaway (as straight-laced astronaut Brand) must've looked him up and down and said "yep, he's man enough for the job". She'd seen him in Sahara and knew he'd come up trumps.

Now while I did say character building was a part of Interstellar, you might not know it from the opening 40 minutes. But a strained relationship with his daughter (later played by Jessica Chastain, who he leaves behind to fly off in his shiny new rocket) casts an arc across the entire film, an arc that literally comes full circle by the time we reach the film's black hole-enveloped climax. It's a film that plays with notions of time, space and the spaces in-between space; Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke toyed with such 'big ideas' in 2001 and Nolan does the same, pulling in theories about fifth dimensions and how time can speed up or slow down depending on gravity's pull (this is as true for real life astronauts as it is for Cooper and Brand, who at one point return to their mothership to find their crewmate having aged 23 years in three hours).

While much has been made of the dialogue being muffled at times, it's to Nolan's credit that he has made such an artistic decision in order to take the audience on a journey with the characters, for us to experience what they experience, to not to have everything spelled out in black and white on the biggest canvas possible. It takes tricksy science-fact and blurs it with theoretical science fiction, throwing in a huge measure of sentiment in an attempt to pull the whole thing together. Though equally, it could also be argued that in trying to create what Kubrick once termed "the proverbial 'really good' science-fiction movie" he's been given as much rope as he likes by his friends at Warner Brothers, noble intentions turning bloated and indulgent through lack of self-editing. The same happened to Tarantino by the time he made Kill Bill; J.K. Rowling's Potter books became sprawling behemoths once she had more clout than the publishers themselves. Interstellar arguably treads similar ground, its reach/grasp ratio only serving to alienate audiences and confound critics.

But this could be to miss the point. In dealing with such huge unknowns as wormholes, black holes and exactly what might happen when a tiny Matthew McConaughey gets trapped behind a giant five-dimensional bookcase, he's handing ownership of the film over to the viewer - it's for us to decide if he's failed or succeeded to entertain or inform. Like Kubrick and Clarke he's pondered the big questions, ending up not quite with an answer but with even more questions. Boiling it all down to 'love' may seem trite and almost throwaway, but in pondering the tangible nature of emotions and feelings that can stretch across time and space (steady on now) he's giving us the opportunity to consider new ways of thinking about our place in the universe. That's far more than what most films do, let alone a $165 million money-hoovering monster.

Interstellar is flawed, yes. But it's a film absolutely filled to the brim with moments of awe and wonder - not just in the visual sense (at Nolan's behest it's largely CGI-free, which beggars belief) but in the ideas it plays with, so much so that a second viewing is pretty much requisite. It demands your attention, it begs you to talk about it afterwards; throwaway entertainment this is not. It won't be to everyone's taste, but then again neither was 2001, nor The Right Stuff which bombed on initial release in 1983. Only time will tell if Interstellar can be held in the same high regard.

Gone Girl

It was with a vague air of trepidation that myself and my good lady Claire entered the cinema to finally see Gone Girl, about a month after its initial release. You see, it was also about a month after putting up the film's poster in our bedroom, its blue-grey hues fitting perfectly with my better half's chosen colour scheme. This, as many of you will have no doubt already noticed, is a worrying prospect to be dealing with for the better part of thirty days. What if the film's shit? What if Fincher, having already (in my view) misfired on a number of recent occasions, has felt the need to throw another slice of unnecessary cinema our way? What then for the befram'd one-sheet, what then?! Certainly neither of us were going to have it hanging there like an unexpected wall-based piss stain any longer if the film didn't reach - nay, exceed - our lofty expectations. Thankfully, it did.

(I guess I could conclude this review now, all of you safe in the knowledge that it's a) good, and b) our wall remains satisfyingly geek-chic. But I'll elaborate regardless.)

Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) wakes up the morning after 4th July celebrations to find his wife Amy (Rosamund Pike) gone (the clue's in the title - and in the date, if you want to be really clever). An established children's author, 'Amazing Amy' (coined after her semi-autobiographical creation) soon becomes the focus of a Police and media circus after Nick reports her missing. Though not before clues to her disappearance - both visual and literal - are laid out for the viewer and Nick to find: spatters of blood in an otherwise spotless kitchen; a strange air of detachment from Nick that the tabloid media soon pick up on; a blatant act of infidelity that suggests all was not quite so well at Chateau Dunne. But then again, neither Nick nor Amy are reliable narrators - both of them have things to hide, as so many of us do, whether we like to admit it or not. You can take it as read that there's more than a few narrative twists to be mined from both Nick and Amy's duplicitous ways.

In a way, Gone Girl could be deemed the ultimate date movie. A well-worn cliche and somewhat odd for a film that is arguably anti-marriage (or anti-relationship, or anti-ever-becoming-involved-with-anyone-in-any-capacity). But if you've ever felt the natural strains a relationship can place on a couple after any significant period of time, Gone Girl magnifies them to grand guignol proportions and throws them back in your face, jugular blood and all.

Any couple worth their salt will be able to appreciate how easily problems can escalate if they're not addressed, and as such revel in the delicious madness that slowly unravels as Gone Girl's protagonists ballet towards a beautifully twisted, self-inflicted conclusion. In the same way that Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut plays with secrets, lies and all the grey areas in-between when it comes to middle-class monogamy, Gone Girl lays a potboiler narrative veneer over what is essentially a meticulous look at two people trying (and failing) to make a marriage work. One of them may or may not be a psychopath, but every long-term relationship has its issues, doesn't it?

Whilst there are never any 'OhMyGodThisFilmIsAmazing' moments, as there are arguably many of in Fincher's earlier work (it's virtually impossible to escape the long shadow cast by Seven and Fight Club), Gone Girl is a film that stays with you. It practically begs you to chew over what you've just seen, for it to overcome any perceived pulpy origins and blossom as the hours and days go by. It could easily be deemed throwaway, much like The Game and Panic Room in Fincher's oeuvre - Hitchcockian tribute acts that are expertly crafted but nothing more than candy floss fluff. Indeed there's more than a whiff of Hitchcock to Gone Girl, the devious nature of both men and women writ large on a silver screen canvas (Vertigo springs to mind, though that may be far too high a compliment).

But it's much, much more than the sum of its parts. Gillian Flynn's script adapted from her own novel is far cleverer than it first seems, lulling you into a false sense of vomit-inducing security that a whimsical, annoyingly cloying couple who have the cutest of meet-cutes (it is, quite literally, sugar-coated) could ever be hiding so many demons, right to the (very) bitter end. And in the same way that Eyes Wide Shut ends on an abrupt note, the camera focused tight on Nicole Kidman's face as she suggests her and Cruise "fuck" as a way to brush all their sins under the carpet, so too does Gone Girl - Rosamund Pike puts in a stellar performance throughout, but finishes proceedings off with a gaze aimed directly at the audience, leaving the story beautifully hanging in mid-air.

It was telling when someone behind me in the cinema quietly uttered "Oh" as the credits started to roll, neatly-packaged endings so commonplace that the very idea a story could be left unresolved being tantamount to lunacy. But all credit to Flynn and Fincher for pulling it off. And for allowing our poster to stay in place, of course. I'm sure they'll both be pleased.