chapter 10

released July 27, 2001

Well, so far this summer of 2001 we’ve been having hasn’t been too hot. But at least we got that new Tim Burton movie coming out, right? I don’t know why they gotta remake PLANET OF THE APES but it’s a great cast and that guy knows what he’s doing, I’m sure he’ll do something interesting with it.

Nope. 10 years later I’m not sure I need to explain why the PLANET OF THE APES remake is no good. I don’t remember there being an argument about it at the time, or ever encountering anybody that liked it in the decade since. It was a bad idea, it was not good, let’s all pretend it never happened. The end.

But I’m doing this thing so let’s do it.
I got one nice thing I can say: the makeup by Rick Baker is really good, at least on the male apes. Tim Roth’s villainous chimpanzee general and Paul Giamatti’s sleazy orangutan salesman (man, Clyde would hate that asshole) look so real, but allow the actors to express through them. Michael Clarke Duncan is a gorilla warrior, and somehow his eyes make him recognizable (okay, the voice helps).

Luckily there are only a couple of female ape characters. They look ridiculous. On a real ape you don’t really see recognizable “female” characteristics on their face, but for some reason in the movie they thought that was important. So instead of giving them realistic animal faces like on the males they make them closer to human and give them thin, painted-on type eyebrows, the kind that don’t even grow naturally on humans. The hair on the top of their heads is fashionably styled and they seem to be wearing lipstick and mascara. Which I guess makes sense for an advanced race of apes, but they don’t look like males with makeup on, they look much closer to human.

Are they trying to make them look attractive? Kind of attractive? I’m not sure. I don’t think anyone could really say what they were trying to do. They had a release date to meet, no time to think this shit through.

The original PLANET OF THE APES of course holds up as a stone cold classic, and the makeup was a breakthrough at the time. But that’s the only thing that made it a classic that carried over to the new version. The original, written by Rod Serling, had a great story, a human finding himself in a crazy world where he’s considered such a low life form that everybody flips out when he talks and thinks it must be some kind of a hoax. And he has to go to court.

The remake ditches that whole setup. Mark Wahlberg plays a U.S. Air Force space pilot in the near future whose little space pod deal gets sucked into a space storm and he crash lands on the Planet of the Apes. He finds himself in some woods with some humans (dressed like cavemen) and they all get chased and rounded up by gorilla warriors wearing armor, and sold to Giamatti.

For maybe 10 minutes the humans don’t talk, and Wahlberg doesn’t talk to them. Then it turns out they do talk. Huh.

Bonham Carter’s character is the daughter of a senator (David Warner) and she’s some kind of an ape-liberal who’s a human rights activist, but not in a cool way. She sneaks into the place where the humans are gonna be branded like cattle, then hops and swings around and knocks the brand away and then says a bunch of righteous stuff. Although I am a liberal and although I appreciate people who stand up for what they believe in and although I am a human I still found her annoying. It’s a real bummer. Gonna turn me into an apepublican.

She’s kind of dumb too in my opinion because she makes a big deal about being an atheist, and making it clear that she doesn’t believe in it when she explains the ape prophecies and shit to Wahlberg, but when one of the apes jokes about “next thing she’s gonna be telling us the humans have souls” she says “Of course they do!” Oh yeah, scientist through and through… until spirituality is convenient for shocking dad’s friends at the dinner table.

Although none of the other characters are as annoying as hers none of them have much to offer. Wahlberg is just gung-ho soldier guy going through the motions that have to happen for the plot, doesn’t ever show any personality. Estella Warren, the model seen earlier in the summer in DRIVEN, plays a human girl, and that’s pretty much the extent of her characterization. A former synchronized swimmer, Warren does not get to do any water dancing like in DRIVEN, but does have some extensive underwater shots. So that’s good.

Kris Kristofferson plays her dad, doesn’t do anything either. Roth gets really into moving like a chimp, and has at least four or five parts where he gets to bash somebody over and over again like he’s trying to break open an oyster with a rock. But his character is less than one-dimensional. He’s openly evil. His eyebrows are always slanted villainously, even when his face is translated into statue form, and his voice always sounds like he’s threatening to destroy the world, even when conversing with polite company at the dinner table.

And what the hell is he trying to do, anyway? If people are just like animals why is he so concerned about them? From the beginning he fixates on Wahlberg. It’s like if Donald Rumsfeld suspected that a really smart dog he came across was gonna ruin American society and spent 24 hours a day brooding about it, even talking to other human adults about it. But it’s not played like it’s supposed to be silly or funny, the movie just acts like it’s reasonable.

I guess if I had to choose a best character it would be Duncan’s, because he just kind of tries to do his job and then at the end has a change of heart and tries to do the right thing. Too late though, he already killed a good gorilla. It’s nice that he wants to bury humans and apes in unmarked graves so they’ll be mourned equally, but it’s kinda too little too late in my opinion. (SPOILER. I just ruined it. Better not see the movie now. Sorry about that everybody.)

One thing they intentionally did to make it different from the good PLANET OF THE APES was to have the actors move like animals. They hunch over, swing around, pound their chests, that kinda shit. I’m fine with that. What I don’t like is their magic jumping powers. I guess some monkeys can leap, but I can’t get with Tim Roth constantly jumping 15-20 feet in the air, especially since it’s clearly just him being slowly lifted up on a cable. It looks dumb every time it happens.

But you can ignore all the above complaints, none of them really matter that much in the face of the terrible script by William Broyles Jr. (FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS), Lawrence Konner (SUPERMAN IV, THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES, THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE) and Mark Rosenthal (same as last guy). It just has no purpose to it. Here’s the plot: he crashes, he gets caught, they escape (well, more like just leave), they travel, there is a battle, then it’s the end part.

There’s not really a plan, he’s just kind of making it up as he goes along, maybe as a commentary on the script. He’s just trying to go back to where he crashed, thinking his people will rescue him there. There’s not some dangerous path or series of obstacles to get through, there’s not some items he has to get, there’s not some plot or scheme he has to stop, there’s not a character he has to convince of something, or a piece of information he has to learn, or training he needs to have, or even something to avenge. He’s just trying to go from the city to the other place. And yet there’s no beautiful simplicity there. It’s big and sloppy and crowded. It’s a textbook example of the project developed over years and years and instead of getting it perfect they just give up at some point and choose a release date and start filming with the stitched together remains of 25 different unrelated, not good enough scripts.

There are approximately two parts of the movie that are semi-interesting. One is the special guest appearance by Charlton Heston as the villain’s father-on-his-deathbed. He reveals to his son the secret of the gun – they found one in the ancient ruins or somewhere, and he explains how it’s this powerful device that changes everything. It’s weird because it’s Heston’s pro-gun politics, and the movie seems to not just endorse them but go a little overboard, treating the invention of the gun like the most important thing that ever happened. That wouldn’t be that surprising in a John Milius movie, but Tim Burton doesn’t strike me as the gun lover type. He’s barely even had them in his movies before.

I think the way they deal with it though is the scene where Roth gets the gun but he fires it inside a plexiglass room where it just ricochets around. It doesn’t hit him in the ass or anything but it turns out not to help him as advertised.

The climax is kind of amusing, when Wahlberg’s not-human chimp from back on the space ship predictably shows up through the time portal or whatever and is interpreted as the prophesized return of the ape god Semus. The mob of angry apes all bow to him, so it’s just a great “fuck you” when Wahlberg walks over and the monkey holds his hand. YOU SEE THIS, APE MEN? YOUR GOD HOLDS MY HAND LIKE A LITTLE BOY!

I’m kinda surprised that they let the human approach Semus, they don’t seem to care at all. But maybe they figure their god can’t be hurt. And maybe that explains why nobody gets mad at Tim Roth for punching their god.

Also I get a kick out of how his space ship has become thousands-of-years-old ruins, but some of the machinery still works and he can just chip a layer of rock off of the monitors.

The very end of the movie is the most absurd and crazy part, so of course that’s the part I like best… and the part most people point to as the reason why the movie is bad. As if the two hours of boring bullshit before it would’ve been improved by not ending on a strange and unexpected note. It ends with Wahlberg crashing back in what appears to be present day Washington DC, but then it turns out to be Present Day Washington DC of the Apes, and he’s surrounded by ape cops, media, tourists, etc.

I guess the part that bothered people is the way this switch is revealed, when he looks at the Lincoln Monument and it’s now the General Thade Monument. This is a timeline where somehow Tim-Roth-chimp saved the planet and is a great hero of the past. How did this happen? I do not know. Would it be better if I understood the specifics of how Thade travelled through time, what he did to save the planet and why the space-time-continuum would cause a great ape hero to be memorialized in the same way that our timeline’s Great Emancipator was? In my opinion fuck no, you silly people. Anyway if you hate Aperaham Lincoln you support slavery.

Ten years of distance didn’t help this one at all. I guess it didn’t look as ugly as I remembered it. I remember really hating the ape village back in 2001, everything is so close together and sound-stagey looking I thought it looked like a Universal Studios stunt show. Didn’t really bother me this time, maybe because we’re so used to everything being CGI now that you don’t see big sets like that as much. Otherwise nothing improved.

But you know I am a positive individual so I’m proud to say that I thought of another nice thing to say about the movie that I actually didn’t pick up on ten years ago. I realized this time that the good guy gorilla that helps the humans is played by renowned b-movie villain Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa. Who would’ve ever thought mean old Shang Tsung would put up with several hours a day in the makeup chair? It really is good to see him play a good guy, even if you gotta really look close to tell it’s him.

2001-2011 connections: This movie prevented PLANET OF THE APES from being revived until this summer, when it finally got a chance to be a liability to the unrelated rebootquel RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES.

legacy: See above

datedness: Paul Giamatti says “Can’t we all just get along?” in part of it. That was already an old reference when it came out, now I bet the youths don’t even know what the fuck it is. Which is kind of sad as far as knowledge of modern history but positive as far as corny jokes.

Visual-effects-wise it’s up-to-date, because the space ship stuff looks good and the monkeys are all done without the computers and therefore don’t look obsolete.

Dickie is a former contender and now Micky’s trainer, but to be honest it doesn’t seem like his heart is that in it anymore. He spends most of his time pursuing his other passion, smoking crack.

Micky’s got a big fight coming up, but Dickie’s always the center of attention because he’s got a film crew following him around. “HBO’s making a movie about my comeback!” he says, but the documentarians are pretty clear that it’s about crack addiction. (The actual documentary is called HIGH ON CRACK STREET, I’ll have to try to see that one.) Despite his troubles Dickie’s still called “The Pride of Lowell” and never gets tired of bringing up the time he knocked down Sugar Ray Leonard. Knocked him down. Not knocked him out.

Micky’s hotheaded mother (no shit, that was Melissa Leo? I didn’t even recognize her) is his manager. His dad (Jack McGee) seems more level-headed, but is outnumbered by the seven big-haired daughters who take after their mom and work together like a pack of wolves. Dad is kind of like the guy who knows everybody should listen to him but is resigned to the fact that they won’t.

Family is important to all of them so they don’t fire Dickie even though they’re pissed that his outside interests and hobbies (again, crack) interfere so much with Micky’s training, traveling, etc. They try to be all Pride of Lowell, get dressed up and take a limo to the airport before a fight, end up having to make an extra stop to chase Dickie out the back of the crackhouse.

In a way the movie is all about embarrassment. Micky is embarrassed to show his face in Lowell after losing again. Dickie is embarrassed for his mom to find him at the crackhouse. The whole family and town are embarrassed by the documentary. They want the pride back.

It’s also about running away or hiding from problems. Dickie’s always literally jumping out the back window and making a run for it. When Dickie’s in the joint Micky takes the chance to run from his family. He finally shuts out his crazy mom, stays away from the drama, and his career starts to go well. His family hates his new girlfriend (but I don’t, it’s Amy Adams) because she went to college and they think she’s a “skank.” She knows how to hide from her problems too (and hides from the viewers that she’s supposed to have a drinking problem) but she teaches Micky how to face up to shit. For example when the mom and all the sisters track her down and show up on her porch she not only goes out there to face them, she throws the first punch.

In fact it goes back to the very first thing we learn in the movie, when Dickie explains his fighting style as “squirrelly as fuck,” dancing around and dodging, as opposed to Micky getting in close and taking the punches. By the end of the movie I think they learn to stop being squirrelly as fuck about their relationships.

Wahlberg and Bale are both good handsomer Hollywood versions of the real people. Wahlberg is especially impressive in the ring. He and his partners took alot of hits to do the boxing scenes, which is especially noticeable in the last fight where they really seem to be beating the shit out of each other. Bale’s approach is pretty mega, appropriate I think based on the footage of the real Dickie, who obviously has to be the center of attention at all times. Bale also went down to MACHINIST/crackhead weight and shaved a bald spot on the back of his head, although it’s not very noticeable until a ways into the movie.

For personal reasons I choose to believe that the real girlfriend looks exactly like Amy Adams and her hotness is not an exaggeration. Because you gotta be able to believe in something, you know? It’s nice to see Adams getting to play a role that’s not sweet and naive. Good to get back to her CRUEL INTENTIONS 2 roots. Must be tough, though, always getting typecast as good looking.

The other characters are less Hollywood and really well cast. My favorite character is Mickey O’Keefe, the police sergeant who becomes Micky’s trainer. I’ve been telling people for the week or two since I saw this that it seemed like they just got the real guy to play himself, but until just now when I looked it up on wikipedia I didn’t realize that’s because they did just get the real guy. He’s very quiet and emotionally reserved, but throughout the movie you can read on his face the frustration that Micky’s family are getting in the way of his chances, and his genuine, humble loyalty to Micky and wanting to help him. Then when (SPOILER) everything works out and everybody’s jumping up and down happy he barely even smiles, but you can see he’s right there with them.

Leo as the mother reminds me a little bit of the grandma in ANIMAL KINGDOM. She’s much more openly hostile, but seems to have the same motivation of just wanting to be there with her kids no matter what. Maybe she kinda likes being the boss, and maybe she makes the wrong decisions sometimes, but I don’t think she’s a bad person. (I guess I wouldn’t say that about the gal in ANIMAL KINGDOM. I didn’t say they were the same. They just reminded me of each other a little bit).

I also gotta say they got an amazing performance out of a toddler. This tiny kid is supposed to be Dickie’s son, and he has two amazing reactions. One is in a scene where he wants to watch his dad on TV but they won’t let him, one is when his dad just got out of prison and he’s excited to see him, but things don’t go well. It’s weird that the kid doesn’t seem to have aged while Dickie was away, but oh well. The expressions this kid has and the things he does are so perfect it seems like pretty much exactly what they would’ve done if they decided to CGI the whole performance. Shit, maybe they did? It didn’t look like they did. I think they just found the Christian Bale of baby actors.

Or maybe it was Christian Bale. He not only took off weight for this movie, he took off age. He’s gonna have a hell of a time getting back into the right shape and age to play Batman again.

I’ve heard some complaints that this movie is classist or something, that it portrays not-rich people in a cartoonish and stereotypical light. It’s nice for viewers to be offended on behalf of the actual people who worked for years to get their story made into a movie and then worked closely with the production, but I don’t think it’s necessary. If you believe that it’s unfair to depict the women of early ’90s Lowell, Massachusetts as having big hair and being catty I think you’re being a little too sensitive. And whatever the crackhead lobby may say, it is actually true that the individuals of that persuasion are sometimes missing a few teeth. The movie is just reporting the truth when it comes to hair of the early ’90s and dental health of the crackheads.

Also, please take note of the real guys shown at the end of the movie, and tell me with a straight face that the good looking Hollywood versions of them are an unfairly stereotypical portrayal. If all movies portrayed all white people like this that might be a problem, but that’s not the case in my opinion. In INCEPTION the white people wear ties, for example.

By far the most cartoonish character in the movie is a movie buff with a sweater around his neck who says he hears good things about the cinematography in BELLE EPOQUE. And that’s the only guy I felt like I was supposed to hate. I think you gotta acknowledge that the movie ultimately likes all these people. Not in a condescending “isn’t it adorable?” My Name Is Earl type of way, but in a they’re-flawed-but-they’re-my-family type of way. Micky is the protagonist and he’s stuck between the different factions, but he believes they’re all his people. They’re his blood and his neighbors. He wants to be the Pride of Lowell, not the guy who got out. And he wants his brother on his side. He wants to be the Pride of the Pride of Lowell.

THE FIGHTER really got me by having the equivalent of that rare achievement I love in action movies, the simultaneously occurring action and emotional climaxes. I guess you could say that about most sports movies, but I think this one is a little different because (SPOILER?) winning the fight really feels like a supblot, a side issue, an extra bonus. It’s the way all the family drama is resolved that I found myself rooting for and excited about. I’m sure it didn’t wrap up that neatly in real life, but watching the movie I bought it. Consider my heart warmed.

I can’t explain the premise without spoiling the opening heist sequence, so if you haven’t seen it then, as the devil worshippers like to say, do as thou wilt. Donald Sutherland is pulling O.L.J. (One Last Job) with his team in Venice. He’s handing the reins over to his planning protegee Mark Wahlberg. But Edward Norton (movie Hulk #2) betrays them and takes off with the gold. So to my surprise Norton is the bad guy who they’re trying to steal from in most of the movie. You don’t get to see it too often, but he’s real good at playing an asshole. I have no guesses as to why. I would also like to note that he has a mustache in this movie. And I like that he’s just called “Steve.” No big villain name, just Steve.

There are different ways to structure a heist picture. You can just throw us into the job without us knowing how it’s gonna go down, so we have to watch and learn. Or of course you can show the whole planning and preparation, the recruiting of the team and equipment, the casing-of-joints and dry runs, setting up expectations and suspense for the audience. THE ITALIAN JOB remake goes for the good ol’ Best of Both Worlds approach, starting with a job in progress, then doing the preparation for a second heist followed by a monkeywrench that causes them to change the plan so that now we are partially but not fully in the dark about what they’ll do. This is one of those classic structures where if you execute it well it probly won’t matter that we’ve seen this type of thing before. Surprise us if you can but mostly just play the tune well, keep the rhythm section tight and don’t go overboard on the solos or the between-songs stage banter.

The team includes Wahlberg (planner and troubleshooter – kind of like Parker I guess), Jason Statham (getaway driver), Seth Green (nerdy computer genius), Mos Def (demolitions expert), and Charlize Theron (daughter of Donald Sutherland who cracks safes for police and security firms but is convinced to become a crook to get revenge on that asshole with the mustache).

They all get little goofy flashback backstories to explain/simplify their characters. For example Wahlberg started stealing as a little kid when he made a plan to steal from the school bully. Kinda dumb, but kinda funny. The only real groaner for me is some cutesy dialogue where Sutherland and later Wahlberg have an abbreviation for what “fine” stands for. If you say you’re fine it really means freaked out, something something. I would not want to be on a team led by a guy who makes up corny shit like that.

This team leans a little heavy on the eccentric nerds, having only Wahlberg and Statham to balance out Green and Def. But it works. Def is doing his usual mumbly nerd character, but a much less annoying version than in 16 BLOCKS. I thought he was funny in the scene where he couldn’t stop staring at Wahlberg’s Boo Yaa Tribe sized explosives supplier.

A reoccuring joke with the Seth Green character is that supposedly he invented Napster but his roommate stole it from him while he was asleep. I think the dude who invented Napster in real life has a cameo as himself in a flashback. You know how people love those computer programmer cameos. I guess that’s gonna be one of those references that won’t make a whole lot of sense if any future generations still watch this movie. Napster was an early file sharing program that really popularized and profited from music piracy, but got shut down because of updated copyright legislation I think? I guess I don’t totally know what it was either. If you are reading this in the future and don’t know what “Napster” means then I guess look it up on Wikipedia. If you are reading this in the future and don’t know what “Wikipedia” means then I don’t know what to tell you, but thank you for still reading my old timey reviews even after I’m sure new reviewing technology has been invented. Also I gotta say I’m surprised that the remake of THE ITALIAN JOB is still being studied in the future. Have you considered maybe taking a look at something more historically important like STONE COLD or BLADE? But I enjoyed it so I’m not gonna complain. Good for you digging into those academic nooks and crannies. I’m proud of you guys.

The most memorable gimmick of course is the fleet of Mini Coopers that are used in the robbery. They’re chosen for their size, because they can drive indoors, on sidewalks or in sewers, but they look much cooler than today’s Hobbit Cars. They still have to soup up the Coopers to handle the amount of gold they’re gonna be carrying, so that excuses any of the unrealistic stunts they pull off with them.

Although in a supporting role Statham’s character Handsome Rob is pretty close to a prototypical Statham action movie hero, minus the martial arts. Like his characters in DEATH RACE, the three TRANSPORTERS and the two CRANKS, his expertise is driving. He’s also a lady’s man (no hints at him being gay like in the TRANSPORTERs) which relates to THE EXPENDABLES, at least in the draft of the script I read.

In the opening “Italian Job” that the title refers to Handsome Rob gets to do the getaway driving. But since it’s Venice he has to drive a boat instead of a car. They got all your favorite car crashes in there, except with boats. I’m surprised they didn’t knock over a fruit raft or crash into two scuba divers carrying a sheet of glass. Green is impressed by Handsome Rob’s boat skills and compares him to Don Johnson.

But in the movie’s main heist I have to say Handsome Rob gets sort of disrespected. Here is this highly skilled getaway driver, sort of a Kowalski type folk hero and sex symbol due to a multi-state police chase he did just for fun… but his part in this job is the same as everybody else. He drives a Mini Cooper, but so do Wahlberg and Theron. We know Theron can drive one of those things like crazy because she owns one and likes to tear through traffic and do high speed parallel parking maneuvers while going to and from work. And Wahlberg can do it just because he’s a renaissance man, shitty rapper turned underwear model turned Academy Award nominated actor. Everybody else gets to do their own individual thing, but poor Handsome Rob has to share the glory of driving sideways in a sewer pipe with two better looking, more award winning actors.

(By the way, I’m surprised they were able to practice driving in the L.A. river basin. You’d think somebody would keep an eye on that thing for trespassers, especially after T2.)

I’ve always wondered about those specialties anyway. In these type of movies they have the computer expert, I’m sure he’s always gonna be needed for getting past alarms and security cameras. But the explosives guy? I don’t know. They have Charlize to get into the safe. You’d think sometimes they’d plan a more subtle robbery where they don’t gotta blow anything up. And then what’s he gonna do? Is he gonna be offended that he doesn’t get to do anything? Is he gonna try to talk you into some unnecessary explosion just so he can get his cut? Or with this guy you never know, he might just be all mopey and try to guilt you into cutting him in just for being a team member, even if he sits that one out. I don’t know what the protocol is. Maybe there’s some kind of agreement in place.

F. Gary Gray has never been a great director, but he’s usually a pretty good one. This might be his best other than FRIDAY. All the action with cars and helicopter chases and everything is pretty clear and exciting. I noticed some quick cuts that were used in an interesting way instead of a distracting one. There are a couple unimportant details thrown on for spice but they go by real quick, no lingering, just exactly as long as you need to see them. One example is when Mos Def is setting off some explosions on Hollywood Boulevard, there’s a shot of a dude dressed as Spider-man making a run for it. A little later there’s a badass-walking-away-from-explosion shot for Franky G (a secondary Italian Job team member, like Cappadonna in Wu-Tang Clan) but it’s real quick instead of the usual simmering slo-mo, as if to admit that this isn’t very important but Gray wanted to take a second to include it.

The only reason I never watched this before was because I never got around to watching the original. I’ll still have to do that, but I’m glad I gave in and watched this. This is good mainstream Hollywood entertainment. I’d like to see more like this.

Everybody describes Max as this scary guy – they think he never sleeps, and at one point a guy compares interaction to him with kids holding their breath as they walk past a graveyard. But Wahlberg is in his regular grimacing badass mode. He’s cool but the way they talk about him he should be a walking mess of a man, not just a sculpted tough guy who doesn’t smile. Oh well.

There’s a good scene early on where three junkies try to jump Max in a public restroom and are disturbed to find that he knows their names and what they’ve been doing all day. “You’re following us?” one of them says. “No, I’m following you,” he says. Ass kicking ensues. Another nice touch in this scene: he takes the guy’s gun but instead of firing it at him he throws it in the sink and pulls out his own, more powerful gun.

But as the mystery begins to unfold we start to see musclemen with ritualistic tattoos and shadowy demons chasing after people. In the end it turns out to have a reasonable explanation but at the time you worry this is some kind of CONSTANTINE type deal. Unfortunately the character and action scenes are only about halfway there and the mystery isn’t involving enough to fill the gap.

This is one of those movies where at the end there’s a credit sequence that seems like it was designed to go at the beginning. As the names appear, flames noisily spray across the screen, things explode into sparks, bullets fly past. The title of the movie racks itself and ejects a bullet casing. I always enjoy credits that explode or bleed, but isn’t that a little dishonest for a movie that was originally released PG-13? Anyway, I’m glad they saved it for the end because this way I was able to be surprised and laugh every time an unexpected actor showed up: Mila Kunis from FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL as a tough Russian mafia girl (not sure if wearing sunglasses is enough to make that convincing), BATMAN AND ROBIN’s Chris O’Donnel as a corporate drone, Screen Actor’s Guild award winner Chris “Ludacris” Bridges as a police detective, Beau Bridges as a character named “B.B.” which I will go ahead and assume stands for “Beau Bridges” and that this is a 100% factual re-creation of events from his actual life. Bridges is a nice old friend of Max’s, so I’ll let you guess whether he will die horribly for helping Max or whether he will turn out to be the bad guy.

In the interest of fairness I want to mention that I was impressed by O’Donnel’s performance. He did a great job of portraying the nervous paranoia of a guy who has to decide between helping Max Payne and staying alive. One of the better moments in the movie is when he’s in his office trying to appear helpful to Max Payne, everything seems to be going okay and then Max goes over and locks the door. Gulp.

The trailer for the movie kind of looked like a John Woo homage, so I was semi-interested until I found out about the PG-13. It turns out it’s not much of a shootout movie anyway, although it has its share of moments where it gets silent as Wahlberg falls backwards or a bullet fires in very, very, very slow motion. But it’s not so much a John Woo tribute as Woo filtered through the Matrix and probaly into the video game this was based on.

The city has a stylized look, sometimes looking almost black and white and always snowing (I think the only time you see sunlight is in flashbacks and visions of the afterlife). It reminded me of SIN CITY although thankfully it didn’t have that phony green screen look. But it made me wonder if SIN CITY and THE SPIRIT have killed the stylized city for now. Especially after the 1989 BATMAN there were so many movies that took place in a heightened, heavily art designed city that looked somewhere between reality and a cartoon. I used to enjoy that sort of look, and it’s not like they do a bad job on this one, but I think maybe it just doesn’t cut it anymore. Or maybe I’m getting too old.

The snow in the movie doesn’t look very real, it’s the fake snow that’s too light so it floats in all directions instead of just down. This is of course a small complaint but there’s a scene where Mila Kunis knocks on a door and a feather that is part of the fake snow bounces off the door and floats off, casting a large, distinctly-feather shaped shadow on the door. A goof like that is not really the sign of a bad movie but the fact that I rewound it three times and found it more interesting than what was actually going on probaly is.

In that same vein, I got a chuckle in a part where gunmen signal each other before kicking a door in, and the one guy gestures four times. Who goes on the count of 4? How did the other guy know not to go on 3?

If you do watch this movie – which I don’t really recommend unless you’re bored and it’s on cable, on a plane or your friend left it at your apartment – I suggest watching until the end of the credits. There they have a nod to one of my all time favorite badass maneuvers, the Unspoken Agreement of Revenge. This would’ve been a cool way to set up the sequel if, you know, there had been a reason to make one.

[ratings]

But after this one I’m with you guys, I give up on Shyamalan. And it has nothing to do with twist endings (there isn’t one in this movie). This is just a bad movie that blows it from the beginning and gets more silly as it goes along, and there isn’t even much of the technical skill he used to display to make up for it.

The movie (loosely based on WHAT’S HAPPENING? I believe) is about a day when all the sudden everybody in Central Park just snaps and commits suicide. It’s assumed to be caused by a terrorist attack, but then it starts happening at other places, and not just in major cities. The story follows science teacher Mark Wahlberg and his wife Zooey Deschanel as they try to find somewhere safe to go, etc.

It’s a scary idea with some creepy death sequences and you’d think the Shyamalan of those two Bruce Willis movies would be able to make it, as they say on the covers of DVDs, “Scary as hell.” But to me the movie never, even at the beginning, feels real. The opening is kind of like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD or VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, two great movies to emulate. Except in this one, instead of taking a little time to establish everyday life before something odd starts happening, it takes about 3 sentences of conversation on a bench before everybody starts killing themselves.

As the disaster spreads there are just too many things that don’t ring true at all. One that really bugged me was when some construction workers see their friend fall of the building they’re working on, thinking it’s an accident – and their reaction is to stand there in awe. There’s no fuckin way! Have you ever seen somebody get hit by a car, or an old lady fall down? People might hesitate for a second, but then they run in from all directions and try to help. These construction workers see their buddy fall down and they just stand there, then one guy walks toward him and says “give him some room.” Then another guy falls, and they just stand there for him too. It doesn’t make any sense.

Another one: a woman in a crowd is talking to her terrified daughter on a cell phone, and tells the daughter to keep looking out the window next to the tree. Wahlberg (who does not know her) tells her no, tell her to stay away from the window next to the tree, so she does tell her that. Then he starts telling her questions to ask. Then when the girl starts talking nonsense (the first symptom of the toxin) the woman puts the phone on speaker and holds it up so everyone in the crowd can hear. And as the daughter is apparently killing herself the mother allows Wahlberg to take the phone away from her and listen. It’s as if the movie was made by a guy who just woke up from a 20 year coma and has not had a chance to reacquaint himself with human behavior.

It’s like the problem alot of you had with Indiana Jones. A couple things like this wouldn’t kill a movie, but the camel is covered in ten tons of straw before it even steps out into the desert. This movie is mostly made up of odd, not believable behaviors. The whole point of a disaster movie is to make it feel like it’s really happening (get it? happening.) It’s kind of amazing how fake movies look after 9-11. Didn’t you learn what it was like to really experience that kind of terror? So why do you have all these phony news reports pop up to convey all the information you want: experts say it is a terrorist attack. Experts say it might not be a terrorist attack. Most people believe it’s the government, because a confidential source said the CIA has a secret base in the northeast. What the fuck? Do people who make movies just not get cable? I don’t understand how you put these in movies and expect people to accept them as actual news broadcasts.

I think this is a problem he started having with SIGNS. Maybe he’s better at small stories about a few characters. Once he starts trying to depict world-wide disaster it’s clear that he doesn’t get out much. The other problem that started with SIGNS that is a big one here is his “sense of humor.” He’s trying to build this serious tension and then for some reason he thinks it’s funny to have a guy talk about how he thinks hot dogs are underrated. Worse, he seems to think it’s a good idea to put most of the “jokes” in at the end, when the tension should be highest. He has a mostly dead serious movie about a sudden disaster that seems likely to end the human race, and in the last half hour he decides to have a little comedy routine about Mark Wahlberg talking to a plant.

Wahlberg I’m afraid is pretty bad in the movie. I like the guy but he’s not the kind of actor who can play all different types. He sort of needs to stick to working class. As soon as he starts using the word “whom” you got a problem. And here he has to deliver alot of terribly written dialogue where, based on only basic information he comes up with a theory for why this is happening (get it again, happening), that’s obviously supposed to be correct.

And that’s another thing. SPOILERS AHEAD. You knew this being 2008 that the reason for THE HAPPENING would involve the environment, right? But the novel twist Shyamalan puts on it is pretty fuckin funny. I had to put on Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through The Secret Life of Plants to write this review in honor of Shyamalan’s revival of ’70s new age theories. The movie argues that plants can communicate with each other and are pissed at humans and are releasing toxins in order to defend Mother Earth from the humans. I had trouble holding back laughter in the scene where, after enough hints have been dropped that this is what’s going on, a soldier says “whoever’s doing this may be watching the roads” as he stands on a road with a bunch of trees behind him. LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU!

And I swear on Christ’s rarely used crutch that there’s a scene in this movie where a little girl is playing on a rope swing and the camera keeps panning up to the branch it’s tied to as if you’re supposed to be scared. Did you see the expression on his bark? He looked fuckin pissed!

I don’t know, man. Nice try coming up with something new, but I had trouble finding this premise not hilarious. There’s a scene where Wahlberg is in sort of a cabin and there’s pounding from outside and I was hoping the door would swing open and there’d be a GARFIELD style computer-animated Lorax standing there with a pissed off look on his face. That would be a good Shyamalan twist for you.

It’s kind of weird that there’s a whole wave of “suddenly everybody snaps and turns violent” type movies now. There’s this one, THE SIGNAL, there’s the Stephen King book called CELL I think that’s supposed to become an Eli Roth movie, I think there’s some other ones, and then there’s 28 DAYS LATER which is pretty similar. Must be something in the post 9-11 air about this particular theme, I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure if it is remembered as a late oughts cultural phenomenon this will not be the movie anybody points to as representative. It’s a bad movie and not even that crazy of a bad movie, so I’d honestly recommend watching LADY IN THE WATER before this one. That one has more unintentional laughs and a couple monsters here and there.

So I don’t know what it was, I don’t know if I was just wrong about this guy ever being good, if those good ones were a fluke, or if he just snapped due to toxins and is not himself anymore. But many believe it was Bruce Willis. This is because there is a confidential source who says that Bruce Willis secretly directed THE SIXTH SENSE and UNBREAKABLE.

Still, I’m gonna assume anybody who refers to Shyamalan as “Shamalamadingdong” or anything like that is a dumbass. Even if you can convince me it’s not some xenophobic shit where you gotta make fun of any name that doesn’t sound American it still reflects poorly on you. A guy who makes movies as bad as this and LADY IN THE WATER, you oughta be able to come up with something better than making fun of his name like a playground bully.

And before we pack it in for the evening I think we should all share in some possible alternate titles for THE HAPPENING. I would have to start with PLANT OF ATTACK. You could also go with PLANT 9. THE HILLS HAVE PLANTS.DON’T GO ANYWHERE NEAR THE WOODS. LEAF ME ALONE. ABSENT WITHOUT LEAVES. MAXIMUM OVERPLANT.

Hmmm, I thought this would be alot easier than it’s turning out to be. I was thinking you could just take any movie title or phrase with “me” in it and replace “me” with “tree.” But for some reason all the ones that come to mind are small indie movies that don’t sound real badass. For example YOU CAN COUNT ON TREE or TREE, YOU, AND EVERYONE TREE KNOW. Or if you find a phrase using “fallen” you can change it to “pollen.” But POLLEN ANGELS doesn’t work.

You know what – I think I got it. TREEVENGE. Yep, I’m sticking with TREEVENGE.

[ratings]

So now Motown’s Most Infamous are back in the neighborhood like blaxploitation stars, and somebody out there killed their mom, and they aren’t quite as forgiving as she is so holy shit is somebody gonna have all hell brought down on them, in my opinion.

If that isn’t a good hook, I don’t know what is, but unfortunately Mr. John Singleton doesn’t really hang too much meat on it. This isn’t a bad movie, it’s a mediocre one, which is probaly worse. The cast is good, there’s some good moments, I like the basic outline, but it just doesn’t fly.

One big mistake, they didn’t do enough with the problem child angle. We hear alot about how these were the baddest kids on the block, but we pretty much have to take their word for it. Wahlberg is pretty mean and grizzled, has apparently lived a life of crime, etc. He passes the test. Tyrese has muscles, but he’s mostly a fuckup like he gets into trouble screwin somebody else’s girlfriend and that kind of garbage. Not one of the top four worst kids in Detroit. Benjamin isn’t a bad guy at all, he’s a family man with a conscience, and even Terence Howard, the cop who explains to us the premise of the 4 brothers at the beginning, admits he’s an okay guy. And then the kid in the leather jacket, they just tell us that something bad happened to him when he was little, and the brothers pick on him and call him a fag all the time. So he’s a bad motherfucker, I guess.

Don’t get me wrong, they got the brothers shooting some guns and occasionally they do something crazy like pour gasoline on somebody. But I wish there was more of this. I wish we believed these guys were born out of satan’s ass. People should run and hide when they come down the block. They should be the devil’s rejects with heart.

I mean this is the guy who remade SHAFT so I think it was fair to hope for an updated blaxploitation style revenge movie. And that might’ve been sort of what he was going for because the soundtrack pillages half of Marvin Gaye’s classic Trouble Man soundtrack (and various other Motown tunes, since it’s Detroit). These are good songs but I wish somebody would come out with a new classic blaxploitation score. David Holmes is the only guy who ever even gives it a shot. It’s not like you can’t have funky horn sections anymore. They still exist. Let’s get to it boys. Some fresh new badass music would have gone a long way toward making this fucker pop.

One part in the movie that made me laugh, they chase a guy into his apartment and for some reason he has a bunch of rope in there that he uses to climb out the window. What’s this guy really into sailboats or something? I didn’t get why he had so much rope.

I don’t want to give away the big revelation at the end about why they killed the old lady. Luckily, I didn’t really understand why they killed her so there is no danger of slipping and giving it away. If John Singleton or somebody will explain it to me, I promise I will not give it away in this review.

I guess the best thing you can say about the movie is that the cast works well together. I like the chemistry between these guys, always sniping at each other and getting in wrestling matches in the living room, but also having that macho brotherhood bond. It probaly coulda worked with a little more elbow grease in that script.

Usually Hollywood is all about what they call “high concept” where the movie can be explained in one sentence or less. For example, Martin Lawrence has to go under cover so he dresses up as a fat old lady. Or, the Wayans brothers have to go undercover so they dress up as creepy blonde zombies. Or, Robin Williams is a bad father and husband so he dresses up as an old lady and lights his fake tits on fire.

But now all the sudden we got this different category of film that cannot be summed up so easy. And I’m not talking about some experimental arthouse type deal, I’m talking about movies that are intended to entertain the audience, etc. I don’t know what to call this movement other than Kaufmania in honor of its founder, Charles Kaufman. Or Kaufman Fever. Or Kaufmandomonium.

Well now we got I LOVE HUCKABEES which is not much like a Kaufman movie except that it’s completely absurd and crazy and equal parts cerebral and silly and all the heady ideas presented by its characters are mostly depicted as stupid. This movie is about philosophy, coincidence, depression, movements being co-opted by corporations, suburban sprawl, the limited appeal of poetry, chain department stores, advertising, beauty standards, self help, dependence on foreign oil, childhood trauma, and the lost boys of Sudan. Mostly the first one, though.

What this is about is Jason Schwartzman (the hobbity, hairy little dude from RUSHMORE, but now looking like a rock star) who runs a coalition against suburban sprawl, but is depressed because he keeps running into a tall African autograph collector, so he hires two “existentialist detectives” (Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman) to “solve the case,” so they teach him that the whole world is interconnected and spy on him and try to figure out what his problem is, and also get hired by Jude Law, an executive at a Target type store called Huckabees, who is trying to take over the coalition, and also a french lady who wrote a book about nihilism is following Schwartzman around trying to tell him that actually the world is not interconnected, everything is meaningless, which really upsets Dustin and Lily even though by their philosophy they should be interconnected with her and therefore not be upset.

I mean I guess it’s not that complicated, but it’s kind of complicated, in my opinion. Nobody goes undercover as anything.

I mean this is a real screwball type of deal, these people are always running around following each other. You got alot of scenes where somebody is riding their bike and then somebody else is riding a bike following them and then somebody else is driving a car following that person. Or scenes that take place in meetings and the other characters follow them there even though they are not a part of the meeting and somebody will ask “Who are you?” but nobody really cares that much. Also people get hit in the face or knocked down alot. People get tackled. There is alot of overreacting, because people are so threatened by other people’s philosophies. Schwartzman gets tackled by a security guard for trying to plant a tree.

This type of comedy could be real stupid but fortunately it’s a real good cast that knows how to pull off these shenanigans. Schwartzman is real good, Tomlin and Hoffman are obviously good, Jude Law pulls a reverse Kevin Costner (going in and out of an American accent), but when he’s on he’s real on as a smirky whitebread dickface. The best in the movie though is Mark Wahlberg as a firefighter who has been depressed and confused since “that terrible September thing,” and now he militantly opposes anyone who uses petroleum. It makes you wish this guy did more comedies. He furls his brow and does the whole movie with complete conviction. He shows up at a meeting with Schwartzman and they ask who the hell he is, is he even a member of the coalition? And Wahlberg says self righteously, “No, I’m not a member of the coalition, but I am a local firefighter.”

The best scene in the movie has Schwartzman and Wahlberg having a spaghetti dinner with a large SUV-driving republicanish family they’ve never met before, and arguing with them about the environment, the economy and sprawl until they end up throwing rolls and getting kicked out of the house. This odd group of people all throw their philosophies at each other: driving an SUV is like murdering children, how can you complain about sprawl when in Sudan they would love to have business and jobs, etc. etc. Their ideas all sound good on their own but then when you sit down with somebody face to face you realize that people are different and situations are complicated and nothing really fits into these easy boxes. Or you should realize it, but they don’t. This family doesn’t give a shit about the enviroment but they are nice enough to adopt an orphan from Sudan, so which defines them? Is it sad that they teach him to collect celebrity autographs and play video games, or does it even matter? Is it better to retain his culture or stay at home where drugged up little kids in clown makeup are running around massacring people?

In my opinion this scene is what the movie is all about. Alot of the ideas and philosophies they talk about seem pretty wise on their own but seem to slip up when put into practice. Maybe we’re just too dumb to be trusted with this kind of high minded crap. Maybe you should need a license.

I haven’t read any reviews of this movie but I got a pretty good guess what some of them are saying. Alot of people are gonna hate this movie, which is fine because man was born free and we each must follow our own path. But I know somebody is gonna claim this movie is pretentious gibberish patting itself on the back. And let me just point out, if that’s what it was, I would not be giving any leeway to this movie. I don’t go in easy for that type of business. Read my review of WAKING LIFE if you don’t believe me.

I don’t think the philosophies discussed in the movie are supposed to be deep, they’re supposed to be ridiculous, at least in the hands of these characters. Even though they never explicitly say it, I think this movie is sort of about Americans immediately after September 11th, when it seemed like impending death was floating above us waiting to fall on us if we happened to look the wrong way. And this forced us to attempt deep reflection. Unfortunately, we are not deep enough for deep reflection and we didn’t come up with much. This is a movie about people desperately searching for answers but they don’t even know what the questions are. And when they cheat and look at the answers, it seems like there might’ve been a typo, that doesn’t seem like it could possibly be the right answer.

Ah shit, I don’t know man. I don’t know how to explain this movie, but it made sense while I was watching it.

[ratings]

Planet of the Apes is the story of Mark Wahlberg landing on the Planet of the Apes. After this happens, there are many apes, etc.

Now if you’ve seen the original 1968 film by Rod Serling and friends starring Charlton Omega Man Heston, you know what not to expect in the remake – a strong story with unique elements of social commentary, good direction and atmosphere, etc.

Now I’ve read a thing or two about this one in the magazines and what not but I wouldn’t have to know it already to tell that this is one of those mega budget hollywood vehicles where they were still trying to Write it when they had already filmed it. And I know this is gonna be unpopular but buddy, you need a script for a picture like this. I know Mike Leigh, Wayne Wang, Christopher Guest etc. would disagree with me but improv is for pussies, in my opinion.

They got all of the elements of the original: apes and people. And nothing else. In this one, the people talk, and the apes have an even more primitive culture where they don’t even have guns. There is so little difference between the apes and people that the premise doesn’t even make sense anymore. Nobody knows why the apes look down on the humans so much or why the humans don’t fight back. Especially since in this one apes are afraid of water. You fuckin humans ever heard of a dam? Just flood the fuckers. Planet of the beavers coulda figured that one out why can’t planet of the humans?

Since the people can talk you lose the whole storyline of the one human who can talk, the ape scientists who befriend him, the prick of an orangutan doctor who thinks he is mimicking and the trial to prove he can think. Instead you got “We have to escape!” and “we have to find my ship!” and then “lets fight the apes!” There is not much to the ape culture or the human culture. Unless costumes count. There are helmets, etc.

One of the few areas in which this picture succeeds is in the makeup. Alot of these fuckers look like real apes, I must admit. The gorillas are especially realistic. You got Mr. Orange from Reservoir Dogs playing a sinister chimpanzee and his face is scary. He is alot more animalistic than the apes in the original, running around on his knuckles, hopping, sniffing people and what not. But that takes away from the whole theme of apes replacing humans. When the apes and humans are equally unsophisticated you have to wonder why it’s not called Planet of the Apes and Humans.

The worst part of the movie is the whole section that takes place in Ape City. It’s all crammed together on one cheesy set that looks like one of those stage shows at Universal Studios where they have some dude come out and swing a sword around, and then a wizard comes out and shoots fire out of his staff.

There are a few timid attempts to turn this into an animal rights allegory. Helena Bonham Carter, star of 1999 Outlaw Award winner for Best Fuckin Picture Fight Club, plays a half ape/half Janet Jackson creature who feels sorry for the humans, and sometimes lets them out of their cages. But this doesn’t really go anywhere. There are only two examples of real human cruelty and even those are over quickly. One of them involves branding the humans, the best one is giving a little girl to a little girl monkey as a pet. She keeps her in a cage and says “Good night little girl.”

If you’re gonna reinvent Planet of the Apes though why not have some fuckin balls about it. I mean are we Planet of the Pussies or are we Planet of the Strong Men and Women? I want to see the factory farming of humans. I want to see a human slaughterhouse. Shit let’s have a milking scene while we’re at it. Let’s try something new, Hollywood. Come on, who’s up for it?

Nobody?

Shit.

Rumor is that the director wanted to have man and ape sexin each other up, but he wasn’t even allowed to do that. That’s when you quit, bud. No bestiality, no director, that’s what I woulda said.

It gets a little better when they go out into the Forbidden Zone and then run around and hit each other with sticks. That is what ape movies should be about, I guess, if they don’t have a story ready yet.

There’s also a scene I liked called The Necessary Cameo By the Star of the Original. Charlton Heston plays the bedridden father of Mr. Orange, so he has ape makeup on. And guess what happens:

1. it is played completely straight
2. it is played completely straight, but then at the end of the scene he quotes one of the two lines everybody knows from the original film, and everybody laughs and cheers because it was an obvious joke that they knew would have to be in the movie and they would be uncomfortable if the movie surprised and or delighted them

By the way what the fuck is this about remaking Dolemite with LL Cool J as Dolemite and Rudy Ray Moore in a cameo role? Like Dolemite is this great premise that can be entertaining without starring Rudy Ray Moore. “We took this idea of the guy getting out of prison and going to save the neighborhood, but we updated it for the ’90s!” Shit, I’m all for anything that will buy Rudy Ray Moore a new coat but jesus, what in fuck’s name are they thinking. You put Rudy in the starring role and then we’re fuckin talking.

Anyway there are a couple twists in this apes picture but you always see them coming. One of them you figure out before they even land on the planet of the apes. But it still feels kind of satisfying when it happens, just because you’ve been waiting for it for so long.

Then of course there’s a twist ending that sets up the sequel. If you’ve read the original Pierre Boulle novel in the original French, then you have sort of an idea, except in French. Actually it’s not really the same ending, but a little better, and I definitely think Planet of the Apes Part 2 will be more what I’m looking for in an ape movie.

STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE.

I mean it, asshole.

I would like to see the story of part 2 be about Mark Wahlberg on the run. The opening scene will have him beating up 8-25 cops. There will be alot of bloodshed, mayhem, etc.

Then he will go on the run and fight against the man. Maybe he will be a fugitive who travels from town to town helping gorillas who are in trouble. He could wear a dark cloak and a fake beard that makes him look more apelike. I wonder where the humans are in this new sequel society? With my luck they’ll be in prison.

It would also be cool if he travels back in time to assassinate President Lincoln. This movie will be a total anarchist movie destroying all american institutions. It’s okay though, ’cause they’re apes. That’s what you gotta tell the suits. Don’t let them get away with this toothless improv shit.

[ratings]