Hello folks, and welcome the heck back to Wrong Every Time. As the summer heat continues to bear down upon us, this week saw my house concluding our run through Victory Gundam, which has left me scrambling to find a proper followup production. I definitely need to take a break from Gundam, but I’m not really sure what else I can rely on for group viewings – we’re currently watching through the highlights of the modern isekai boom (Log Horizon and Grimgar), but I’m still in the market for a new longer-term project. Maybe the Hajime no Ippo adaptation, or possibly Sailor Moon? Anyway, I’d welcome any suggestions from all of you, but in the meantime, the conclusion of Victory was of course accompanied by plenty of old-fashioned film screenings. Let’s break ‘em down!
First up this week was Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the first feature in the ongoing Planet of the Apes revival franchise. James Franco stars as a chemist working on a cure for Alzheimer’s, testing his serum on chimpanzees and recording some impressive results. However, his research is shut down following a disastrous presentation, leaving only an infant chimpanzee known as “Caesar” (Andy Serkis) behind. Raising Caesar at home, Franco discovers his serum might not just be repairing, but actually improving animal intelligence, leading to a second wave of formal tests and an eventual small army of hyper-intelligent chimpanzees.
Honestly, that summary really doesn’t do justice to the complexity or gracefulness of this film’s script, which effectively juggles half a dozen characters on both the human and ape sides, and naturally winds towards a rebellion that feels righteous and inevitable. Franco puts in fine enough work here, but it’s Serkis who steals the show, demonstrating both the potential clarity of mocap performances and also his own prodigious acting talents. I imagine Serkis spent a long time simply observing ape behavior, working to establish a balance between outsized human expression and the natural, vivid emotional and body language of chimpanzees.
The results are spectacular; Caesar absolutely dominates the screen, his rise to freedom is a fist-pumping spectacle, and the CG holds up remarkably throughout. A film that embodies the virtues of fundamentally sound moviemaking wedded to smart, inventive use of new technologies – CG can actually facilitate new kinds of stories, it just needs to be used purposefully and judiciously.
We followed that up with Tarot, a just-released horror feature about a group of college kids who decide to relieve their boredom by reading their fortunes from a horrifying, hand-crafted tarot deck they find in a clearly haunted cellar. In the coming days, their fortunes end up coming true in the most tenuously ironic yet undeniably gruesome ways, as the gang run through one self-inflicted Final Destination scenario after another.
In terms of plotting and characterization, Tarot is mundane when it’s not being actively stupid, and is more frequently the latter than the former. The film actually does a fine enough job of setting up its cast’s initial personalities, but those personalities have little bearing on the trials to come. When it’s time for one or another character to die, they will simply forget their human intelligence, run off at top speed, and get themselves killed with all possible haste. I’m used to stupid slasher characters, but the lengths this film goes to in order to isolate its characters stretches credulity even beyond my generous accommodation, prompting a hail of laughter from my viewing party whenever the next victim decided it was time to grab the idiot ball.
That said, slashers are rarely defined by the depth of their characterization or coherency of their character actions – it’s all about those squelchy kills here, and Tarot is generously furnished with monster designs courtesy of Trevor Henderson, a rising horror illustration star whose work I’ve been admiring for years. Henderson offers a distinct monster design for every single tarot card, meaning every death sequence has its own creature, theme, and method of menacing approach. His designs are fantastic, and the sequences they’re applied to are frequently excellent as well; The Magician and The Fool were particular highlights, but there’s a lot to enjoy throughout in terms of inventive horror imagery. Weak in common genre weaknesses and strong where it matters, Tarot proves itself an altogether rewarding watch.
We then continued through the new Planet of the Apes series with Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Set ten years after the first film, we now find humanity on the brink of annihilation, with the serum that elevated the apes proving fatal to all but a rare few immunity-bearing humans. A community of such humans remains in San Francisco, and hope to prolong their electric power by reclaiming the nearby hydroelectric dam. However, that dam just so happens to reside within the territory of Caesar’s ape community, leading to escalating conflicts as the two races attempt to either coexist or crush their competition.
Dawn shifts the focus of this franchise directly to Andy Serkis’ Caesar, alongside key members of his tribe like his son Blue Eyes (Nick Thurston) and vengeful rival Koba (Toby Kebbell). I initially felt a little disappointed that this film skipped the downfall of humanity entirely, but my misgivings were more than answered by the clarity and momentum of Dawn’s own drama, as Caesar attempts to maintain peace in a time of mistrust and desperation, with each side possessing reasons both practical and personal to destroy the other. Dawn winds with the confidence of its predecessor’s script, and director Matt Reeves brings a fresh sense of fantastical grandeur to the proceedings, giving the film a tone much like a war-torn historical drama.
Individual setpieces rise above the already-excellent standard of Dawn’s general material, many of them driven by the endlessly compelling Koba. I’d call Koba the kind of character you “love to hate,” but frankly I could never really blame him; as a veteran of experimental testing, he spent his pre-liberation life being educated in the absolute worst humanity is capable of, making it no surprise that he is unwilling to either trust or forgive. Regardless, his sequences of outsmarting and overrunning human opponents are breathtaking, and Dawn ultimately rises into a series of action setpieces that again demonstrate the very best of CG harnessed to smart, old-fashioned action storytelling. A thoroughly satisfying epic film.
Our next feature was The Retirement Plan, a lighthearted crime drama starring Nicholas Cage as a retired black ops assassin, who is called back into action when his daughter (Ashley Greene) runs afoul of a criminal empire. As a fleet of criminals led by Jackie Earl Hailey and Ron Perlman descend on his Cayman Islands home, Cage will have to fight for both his daughter and granddaughter, punching and shooting his way through a conspiracy that leads all the way to the top.
The Retirement Plan is a film of loosely fitted and unevenly polished parts, seeking both John Wick-style hard-boiled old soldier action and quirky, almost Guy Ritchie-esque crime comedy. The Wick stuff basically doesn’t work at all, as the film’s action choreography is mundane, and the general tone of self-awareness undercuts any sense of genuine threat. Additionally, Cage and Greene don’t really develop any kind of meaningful bond through the film; we’re allegedly watching their reconciliation after years apart, but neither their enmity nor their eventual kinship is provided any of the intimate, personal texture that might make such an arc feel anything more than mechanical.
But oddly enough, the film does offer one well-furnished, genuinely compelling relationship: the odd friendship between career criminal Ron Perlman and Greene’s daughter Sarah (Thalia Campbell), who bond over a mutual appreciation for Othello and other points of incidental, eminently human sympathy. Their scenes together feel charming and natural, less strained and more effective than everything else the film is doing, and point towards a better film The Retirement Plan could have been if it was less conspiracy-busy and more concerned with the emotions of its core players. You can certainly use a lot of misdirection to paper over an emotional void at your story’s core, but why would you? It’s not like Nicholas Cage is incapable of a moving performance! Anyway, lots of wasted potential here, but Perlman’s performance demonstrates yet again why he’s one of cinema’s great character actors.
