KINGDOM
OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2024)
Following the entertaining trilogy that chronicled
the life of Caesar, one of the great cinematic characters of the 21st
Century, the latest chapter, seven years after “War for the Planet of the
Apes,” more than holds its own without the charismatic ape.
The
new film sends Noa (stop-action actor Owen Teague), the son of a tribal leader,
on a coming-of-age journey during which the wisdom of the long-dead and almost
forgotten Caesar—the movie is set a few hundred years after his time—plays a
big role.
Along the way, he encounters Raka (Peter
Macon), an orangutan who is a disciple of Caesar, and Mae (Freya Allan), a
human on her own mission. The pair help Noa gain a better understanding of the
planet’s complicated history and what that might mean for the future. The
action-adventure culminates at the headquarters of Proximus Caesar (Kevin
Durand), who has twisted the founding ape’s words for his own maniacal plans.
There’s no discerning what’s actual
cinematography and what’s computer generated, but, for the most part, every
scene, except for a few incredible cliff-climbing sequences, looked very real.
Screenwriter Josh Friedman, following the
work of trilogy creators Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, does his best to make
this age-old story seem fresh and creating distinct personalities for the
various apes.
Director Wes Ball, best known for the
“Maze Runner” trilogy, understands this is a popcorn movie first, quickly
moving from character-building scenes to one intense action sequence after
another.
Noa may not cast the shadow that Caesar did
over the first three films, but it’s early; he’s still growing into a leader
and his encounters with those pesky humans will no doubt change him further in
the next episodes of this superb franchise.
COUP
DE CHANCE (2024)
Woody Allen’s delightful new film, the 50th
feature in the legendary writer-director’s career, glows in the golden hues of
natural light, visually and thematically. Along with the sarcasm-filled script
and pitch-perfect acting, three-time Oscar winner Vittorio Storaro’s sublime
cinematography makes this Allen’s best movie since “Midnight in Paris.” The
City of Lights seems to recharge the writer’s imagination, this time, daringly,
all in French.
Subtitles will no doubt put off many
filmgoers, but at this point in Allen’s career, so few people see his films
that it hardly matters.
Lou de Laȃge, who resembles a young Jane
Fonda, plays Fanny, who works at an art auction house and is married to a
wealthy money manager (Melvil Poupaud). Though happy, she remains uncomfortable
by his lavish gifts and upper-class friends. Thus, there’s little mystery as to
what’s in store when she runs into a high school acquaintance while walking to
work. Alain (Niels Schneider) is your classic Allen romantic figure, an
idealistic, struggling novelist who had long admired Fanny from afar.
But the predictable first act quickly turns
surprisingly dark, living up to the title, which translates to “Stroke of
Luck.” Sparking the clever final act is Fanny’s inquisitive mother (Valerie
Lemercier).
Allen reports that all the actors
understood English, making his task of directing a French film easier. (Though
he does have a basic understanding of the language.) It’s such a finely crafted
screenplay that it would work in any language.
Unfortunately, Allen films receive such
minimal distribution in this country that fans outside of L.A. and N.Y. will
have to stream the film (through Apple or Amazon) if they are interested.
Even at age 88, Allen hasn’t lost his
skill as a screenwriter, poking fun at those who believe they are special
because of their bank account and reminding audiences how much luck determines
our lives.
BEGGARS
OF LIFE (1928)
When “Wings,” the World War I epic
featuring spectacular aviation sequences, won the first Academy Award for best
picture, its director, William Wellman was elevated to the first rank of
filmmakers. During the next 25 years, as Hollywood moved from silents to sound,
few directors delivered thoughtful and entertaining movies as regularly and in
a variety of genres as Wellman.
Among the highlights of his career include
such acknowledged classics as the gangster film “The Public Enemy” (1931), the show-biz
cautionary tale “A Star Is Born (1937), the newspaper comedy “Nothing Sacred”
(1937), the desert action-adventure “Beau Geste” (1939), the Western “The
Ox-Bow Incident” (1942) and war movies “Story of G.I. Joe” (1945) and
“Battleground” (1949).
One of his last films released as a
silent, “Beggars of Life” (available on Youtube) is an unsentimental portrait
of hobos and the dangers they face on the road. This realistic tale reminded me
of the heartbreaking power of the John Steinbeck-penned “The Grapes of Wrath”
and “Of Mice and Men.” It also features cult actress Louise Brooks’ most
substantial role in an American film.
Wellman doesn’t pull any punches about
life on the road, never glamorizing the struggle to simply eat and stay ahead
of club-wielding cops.
Blue Washington, in a rare dignified role
for a Black actor in that era, plays Black Mose, whose actions are crucial in
the exciting finale. Also among the supporting cast is Mike Donlin, playing one
of the hobos, He was a retired baseball player, once a star outfielder mostly
for the New York Giants, who starred in the Broadway hit “Stealing Home” before
going to Hollywood. He appeared in dozens of bit roles, often for Wellman, from
1917 until his death in 1933.
This is one of Wellman’s best films—better
than the similar-themed and more acclaimed “Wild Boys of the Road”—and a rare
chance for Brooks to show she was more than a sex symbol. Even her trademark
bob haircut is covered by a newsboy cap for most of the film. The next year,
she gave up on Hollywood and went to Europe to star in G.W. Pabst’s masterpiece
“Pandora’s Box” as Lulu, one of the most iconic roles of early cinema.
CIVIL
WAR (2024)
With most combat films, the issues that
turned the conflict deadly are either common knowledge (in the case of
real-life wars) or dramatically detailed before viewers are dropped into the
firefight. In British writer-director Alex Garland’s provocative and intense
picture, nothing much is offered to the question of why.
Especially in a film seen through the eyes
of journalists, this felt like a gaping hole in an otherwise compelling story.
It’s clear that the war has been raging for
a while—abandoned city streets, bombed out buildings—when photojournalist Lee
(Kirsten Dunst) and reporter Joel (Wagner Moura) nearly get killed by a suicide
bomber. Later, in a hotel bar, they admit to veteran scribe Sammy (the always
impressive Stephen McKinley Henderson) that they are headed to Washington D.C.
in hopes of interviewing the embattled president (briefly, Nick Offerman). They
agree to take Sammy along, then become four when neophyte photojournalist
Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a fan of Lee’s, wrangles her way into their van.
As they traverse the battleground, through
Pennsylvania and then south toward the capital (the same area where the 19th
Century Civil War was fought), the made-for-a-movie quartet encounters pockets
of unaligned vigilantes, a few federal troops and an impressive staging ground
for the rebels—an unlikely union of California and Texas.
While the focus stays on the work of Lee
and Jessie, I kept wondering why Joel and Sammy never took a note or recorded a
single interview while they were “covering” the war. Not for a minute did Joel
make me believe he was a reporter (at some point, he says they work for the
wire service Reuters.)
The gripping final act makes one forget the
sluggish pace of most of the film, but the real reason to see “Civil War” is
for Dunst’s performance. As Lee, she captures the world-wearing regrets of this
veteran of foreign wars, now left sadden by the violence she’s photographing on
U.S. soil. This underrated actress has given superb performances, after
impressive work as a juvenile and then the star-making “Spiderman” role, in
“Marie Antoinette,” “Melancholia,” “All Good Things,” “The Beguiled” and “Power
of the Dog,” which earned her an Oscar nomination. She deserves more
high-profile roles.
Director Garland, who previously created
other distressing visions of the future with “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation,”
offers plenty of visceral fear in “Civil War,” but not enough rationale to make
me care.
HE
WHO GETS SLAPPED (1924)
One hundred years ago, American movies were
nearing their pre-sound peak. One could argue that the art of filmmaking never
surpassed the accomplishments of the five years that began in 1924. Marking
their centennial this year are Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock Jr.,” John Ford’s “The
Iron Horse,” F.W. Murnau’s “The Last Laugh” and Raoul Walsh’s “The Thief of
Bagdad,” starring Douglas Fairbanks at his playful best, along with this
psychological melodrama featuring another mesmerizing performance by The Man of
a Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney.
Ambitious scientist Paul Beaumont (Chaney,
for once looking like a matinee idol with a mustache and goatee) has made a
breakthrough in his research on the origins of man. Shockingly, his benefactor,
the Baron (Marc McDermott), steals his ideas during a presentation to an
academy of scientists. They laugh off Chaney’s claims that it was actually his
research.
Then, just to add salt to the wound, Paul’s
wife admits she loves the Baron and helped him to take credit for her husband’s
work.
John Gilbert, on the cusp of becoming
the biggest romantic figure in films, starring in “The Big Parade” (1925) and
Greta Garbo’s co-star in a series of romances, plays a trick horse rider in the
circus. He immediately falls for the circus’s new acrobatic rider, played by
another future star Norma Shearer, who, unlike Gilbert, was embraced with the
coming of sound.
Their budding love affair is complicated
by the ruthless Baron, a friend of her corrupt father (it is a small world),
who sets his sights on the young performer. But the disguised clown will have
none of it.
This was one of the first American films
directed by Victor Sjöström (he changed his name to Seastrom in Hollywood). Considered
the father of Swedish cinema, he went on to work with Lillian Gish in two of
her finest pictures, “The Scarlet Letter” (1926) and “The Wind” (1928), one of
the greatest works of the silent era. He turned to acting in his later years,
most famously, at age 77, as the main character in Ingmar Bergman’s “Wild
Strawberries” (1957).
A few years after its release, “He Who
Gets Slapped,” a film about the cruelty and unfairness of life, would never have
been made in Hollywood as censorship pushed the industry toward uplifting
stories. Before Chaney’s death in 1930 at 47, he probably played more tragic
characters than any actor in cinematic history.
Among his memorable work, all done behind
inventive makeup of his own design, include Quasimodo in “The Hunchback of
Notre Dame” (1923), the disfigured, ghostly title character in “The Phantom of
the Opera” (1925), a corrupt ventriloquist in “the Unholy Three” (1925) and the
murderous Chinese lord in “Mr. Wu” (1927). To me, he’s the finest dramatic
actor of the silent era, whose work remains compelling a century later.
LA
CHIMERA (2023)
One of the more interesting films of 2023,
this Italian picture follows Arthur (Josh O’Connor, one of the stars of tennis
film “Challenger”), a sullen, indifferent Englishman who makes his living
selling ancient artifacts that he and his gang dig up from unmarked graves
across Italy.
He lives in a shack that sits against a
steep cliff—just one step above homelessness—but spends much of his time
lamenting the disappearance (death?) of his girlfriend (his chimera) with her
spunky mother, amusingly portrayed by Isabella Rossellini. Even when Arthur’s
dowsing turns up another centuries-old abandon tomb, he shows little
excitement.
Writer-director Alice Rohrwacher, whose
“Happy as Lazzaro” won the screenplay prize at Cannes in 2018, connects the
past and the present (it’s set in the 1980s) and the rich and the poor in “La
Chimera,” as the lower class provides, or unearths, the collectables of and for
the wealthy. In an ancient land like Italy, the past never disappears.
There’s a thrown-together quality to the
film that fits the tone of the story. Nothing goes in a straight line, be it
staying a step ahead of the police or a rival, more affluent group of tomb
raiders, facing off with the antiques dealers or helping out a housekeeper and
single mother (Carol Duarte) survive.
O’Connor, who portrayed the young Prince
Charles in the Netflix series “The Crown,” knows how to play disaffected; his
Arthur always seems one step away from throwing himself off a cliff. But
memories of his lost love keep him going.
STOLEN
FACE (1952)
Before “Vertigo” turned sexual obsession
into high art, Hammer Films, the British company later associated with glossy
horror pictures, released this twisted tale of a plastic surgeon who recreates
a lost love.
Paul Henreid, a decade after his heroic
performance as Victor Laszlo in “Casablanca,” plays Dr. Philip Ritter, who, in
an act of goodwill, reconstructs the faces of disfigured convicts in the hope
that it will help them avoid returning to the life of crime.
Just before he’s about to apply his magic
to an especially tough female con, he meets Alice, a beautiful concert pianist
(the always memorable Lizabeth Scott) while on vacation. They fall in love, but
soon after, Alice, who is married, slips out of town, ending the affair. When
Ritter discovers she’s spoken for, he gives up on their relationship, but his
obsession just begins.
He not only reconstructs the convict
Lily’s face into a duplicate for Alice (not that it’s remotely possible), but
he marries her when she’s released from prison. The inevitable consequences
ensue, especially once Lily hooks up with her old criminal running mates.
Director Terence Fisher went on to make
“The Curse of Frankenstein” (1957), “Horror of Dracula” (1958) and two dozen
other Hammer classics, ending his career with “Frankenstein and the Monster
from Hell” (1974).
Oddly, “Stolen Face” lets the clearly
disturbed doctor off the hook with a very abrupt “happy” ending. Surely, the
horror instincts of Fisher could have come up with something more sinister,
more Hitchcockian.
Paul Henreid and Lizabeth Scott in "Stolen Face." (Hammer Films)
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