"Dawn of the Planet of the Apes": No Monkey Business

Now In Theaters

I’m honestly a little bit shocked that this movie exists.  Despite how awesome Rise of the Planet of the Apes was, I don’t remember it being a huge box office success, nor have a heard clamorings for a sequel, and yet here we are with Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.  And you know what?  It.  Is.  Awesome.  In a summer where I’ve had generally positive feelings about almost every blockbuster I’ve seen (not counting the horrible Godzilla, of course), Dawn really takes the cake as a summer action flick.  And you know why?  Because it expects its audience to think, and that’s something one doesn’t see often in cinema between the months of May and August.  This is hard sci-fi at its best, where the action takes a backseat to the intellectualism and character drama, and yet still offers some of the most satisfying imagery you’ll see this summer.

The story picks up ten years after the events of Rise, where the ape Caesar (the only returning character from Rise) has established a settlement for his ape brethren after the fall of mankind to the Simian Flu, the same mutagen that endowed the apes with heightened intelligence.  All seems at peace until the apes discover a band of surviving humans.  It turns out that the humans want only to provide electricity to their settlement through a dam that is in ape territory.  Neither side trusts one another, and yet, neither side has anything to gain or lose by helping the other.  Caesar seems to be the only ape to have positive memories of the human race, so tensions are high as Caesar's chief general advocates a preemptive strike.  The humans, meanwhile, stockpile weapons in preparation of an assault, which only adds to the pressure on the shaky truce the two sides have.

What’s so wonderful about this set-up is that there isn’t really a bad guy in this scenario.  This is a story about two species trying to co-exist, but their mutual distrust of one another makes that difficult to realize.  Everyone who plays a key role in the film’s events has clearly defined reasons for making the decisions they do, and even when a villain does become apparent, their motives are entirely sympathetic and relatable.  This is only further advanced by the fact that the focus of the film is primarily on the apes and their society, treating the humans more as plot devices than actual characters.  This is not only impressive from a storytelling perspective, but it also makes the apes seem like a fully fleshed-out society comprised of thinking individuals, an amazing feat considering that most speak only in sign-language and at most can grunt words in broken English.  What comes of this is a thoughtful meditation on the consequences of mutual distrust and how that can lead to mutual destruction, both from without and within.

But, of course, much of the audience is going to want to see some intense ape action, and this film has it in spades in the latter half.  Without giving away too much of the surprise, seeing apes ride on horseback and wield machine guns while still moving in an apelike fashion is an incredibly fun visual.  The ape-on-ape fights are fantastically choreographed and the final battle is actually quite symbolic of the contrasting ideologies of the characters fighting one another.  The fact that the action works on both a visual and literary level is very much appreciated.

So, yeah, I absolutely loved Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.  It is a thought-provoking science fiction film with plenty of action and plenty of smart writing to balance it out.  Seeing Rise of the Planet of the Apes is recommended, but not necessary for fully enjoying this sequel, and I’m sincerely hoping for a hat-trick with a third Apes prequel in the coming years.

Have a favorite Planet of the Apes film?  Let me know in the comments below.

"Nymphomaniac Vols. I & II": A Self-Contradictory Sexcapade

Now Available on DVD and Blu-Ray

Nymphomaniac is a pretty good film, and not for the reasons that you would think it would be.  It is a strangely pieced-together four-hour, episodic adventure through the life of a woman who can’t seem to get enough sex, but really the sex acts as a backdrop for a greater point that the film is trying to make.  And, remarkably, the film belittles its audience for attempting to sense a greater meaning.  It’s a paradoxical puzzle of a film that wants its audience to just sit back and enjoy the story, but often takes steps to pull the viewer out of the experience and remind them that they are watching an art piece that is subject to interpretation.  In short, this is a film critic’s wet dream and worst nightmare rolled into a package that defies analysis yet seems to be constantly inviting it.

The film opens on our protagonist, Joe, beaten bloody in a back alley, where she is discovered by an academic named Seligman, who takes her back to his apartment to nurse her back to health.  When asked how she got there, she proceeds to tell her life story in eight chapters, revealing a life where sex has been the sun around which she revolves.  It is at times humorous, and at times heartbreaking, and Joe’s journey remains compelling throughout.  However, I wouldn’t recommend going into this film expecting a coherent opinion on sexuality’s role in our lives.  Much of Joe’s actions and the things that happen to her revolve around the theme, and the unsimulated sex scenes are certainly explicit enough, but I don’t think there’s much in the way of social commentary here; if there was an attempt to analyze sexual politics, it isn’t apparent.

No, what this film seems to want to focus on is that Seligman constantly interrupts Joe’s narrative, trying to find meaning in her life story through allegory, history, and mythology, while Joe repeatedly insists that there’s no greater meaning to her tale and that this is just what has happened to her.  Seligman’s observations are simultaneously profound and asinine.  Director Lars Von Trier recognizes that there are parallels in his work to his literary predecessors, but he’s just trying to tell a story here.  Except, obviously, the film does not simply want passive observation, or else the Seligman framing device wouldn’t exist in the first place.

What results is a film that takes a stab at the very nature of critiquing film as an art form.  It uses the tricks of the trade that have accumulated over centuries, going so far as to borrow some aesthetics from various eras in film history, in order to create an art film that defies the very nature of art film: the desire to be analyzed.  I’m sure there are plenty of arguments that could be made about how the individual chapters of the film act as commentaries on different film styles; I’m not familiar with Von Trier’s previous work, but I’ve read that Nymphomaniac is rife with self-reference to his filmography.  Ultimately, though, any such analysis flies in the face of the film’s self-professed point that symbolism is subservient to plot and characters, and Nymphomaniac does tell an entertaining story.  This review may have been light on the story elements, but that’s only because the tale is complex enough that a summation would not do it justice and would likely detract from the experience of seeing it firsthand.

And so, Nymphomaniac is a paradox of a film, and whether or not the subtext appeals to you, it is a good film at that.  It has been released in two parts, approximately two hours each in length.  It is a time investment, but one that I think worth it.  Check it out.

Is subtextual analysis of a film really as pointless as this film suggests?  Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts.

Looking Back At: "The Raid: Redemption"

The Raid: Redemption is a damn good action flick.  The sequel is coming out on Blu-Ray this month, so I figured I’d take a look at the first film to see what the big deal is, and I was not disappointed.  It’s not trying to be groundbreaking or reinvent the martial arts action genre by any means, but it is really damn good at being what it’s trying to be, which is a series of absolutely brutal martial arts brawls that are beautifully choreographed and devastatingly violent.  This film is a lot of fun, and if you like intense, R-rated action, this is a pretty good film for you.

The premise here is that a raid squad is set to enter a high rise in Jakarta in order to take down an infamous crime boss, who has rented out the rooms of the high rise to various thugs and criminals looking to lay low, forming what amounts to a makeshift army.  Through a series of complications, the raid squad ends up outmanned, outgunned, and with zero hope of reinforcements, so the focus quickly shifts from being about heroically taking out the bad guys to just getting out of the building with their lives.  It’s a pretty intriguing idea that, while having some fairly genre-typical twists, allows for one element to be played up very well: suspense.  At times, the film borrows heavily from the atmosphere of classic slasher flicks, emphasizing the helplessness of the once-powerful heroic cops in the face of better armed adversaries lurking around every corner.  It adds a lot to the tone of what could otherwise just be fast action all the way through, and it’s an appreciated aesthetic choice.

The action itself is very well captured, and it’s really different than the more majestic take on martial arts that one typically sees from Asian action flicks.  The brawls focus on full body combat rather than focused strikes, so there’s a lot of knife and gun-play intermixed with tackles, throws, and ramming, though that isn’t to say there isn’t a fair share of punching and kicking too.  A shaky, handheld camera is used for many of the fight scenes, and while I would say that occasionally it is hard to tell what’s happening, most of the time the swooping camera is used to showcase the most brutal aspects of the fights, lingering on necks getting sliced and kicks connecting to sternums.  It focuses in on what its audience came to see, and it really revels in showing its spectacle in a way that’s satisfying and coherent.

And, yeah, there isn’t too much more to say on the matter.  I liked this movie.  It’s a lot of fun, fast, satisfying action, interspersed with some tense horror-style suspense.  My one stipulation is that you should watch it in the original Indonesian with subtitles, because the English dubbing crew mostly sounds bored with their own flat deliveries.  That one nitpick aside, though, if you want to see 100 minutes of action without a ton of plot getting in the way, The Raid: Redemption is as about as good an offering you can expect.  Check it out.

Have a favorite mindless action flick?  Tell me about it in the comments below.