The Adventures of Tintin: The Tingles for Adventure, Drunkard and Canine in Tow

The Adventures of Tintin

Directed By: Steven Spielberg

Written By: Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright, and Joe Cornish, based on the comics by Hergé

Starring: Jamie Bell, Andy Serkis, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Toby Jones

Editor: Michael Kahn, Art Direction: Andrew Jones and Jeff Wisniewski, Original Music: John Williams

Rated: PG for comic book violence and fun.

            There’s one man you can’t keep your eyes off of in The Adventures of Tintin, and he’s not even on screen, and this time not even behind it. I’m of course referring to the film’s director, Hollywood wonder-boy Steven Spielberg. His presence looms large in this adaptation of the comic books by Hergé, who, while world-famous, remains mostly anonymous to American viewers, myself included. But its Mr. Spielberg’s camera—how he uses it and how he constantly reinvents the rules of modern cinema (many of which, he wrote)—that remains the constant thrill of Tintin. It’s also the downfall of his film.

            Mr. Spielberg is no stranger to adventures, and Indiana Jones seems to be in the town over from wherever globetrotting Tintin, a young and peppy journalist with an ache for adventure, must be. But here the craftsman takes on new challenges; not just the added dimension of 3D (something I really only noticed in the weight of my wallet), but going for full-scale animation. The Adventures of Tintin isn’t a classically animated world—Mr. Spielberg used the aide of Avatar director James Cameron, as well as producer Peter Jackson, to use the WETA studios and shoot the whole film in a digital landscape with actors carefully monitored to bring their performances to the cartoonish caricatures. But there’s something lifeless in Tintin, and its not just the odd uncanny valley look of the film’s characters, but its lack of a true adventure spirit, which instead feels calculated and often standard, that the reveals and boyhood adventure that has marked so much of Mr. Spielberg’s career remains absent.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes: Angry Monkeys

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Directed By:  Rupert Wyatt

Written By: Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, as suggested by the novel “Planet of the Apes”  by Pierre Boulle.

Starring: James Franco, Frieda Pinto, Andy Serkis, John Ligthow, Brian Cox, and Tom Felton.

Director of Photography: Andrew Lesnie, Editors: Conrad Buff IV and Mark Goldblatt, Production Designer: Claude Pare, Original Music: Patrick Doyle

Rated: PG-13 for some violent monkey business.

            Frank Schaffer’s 1968 Planet of the Apes is at its core, a pretty silly movie. The Charlton Heston sci-fi adventure pulled together the right wing concerns of the civil rights movement into an obvious allegory, creating a campy classic, but not certainly memorable save for a few select scenes. How else would you explain that the film’s most iconic sequence—a twist ending so well known that it appears on the DVD box—is the only part basically unrelated to the rest of the story? But it spawned numerous sequels, which vastly vary in quality, as well as a hokey Tim Burton remake only a decade ago. So why return to this planet?

            Well for starters, we no longer have to stare at those amusingly awful make-up designs, which are replaced here by the CGI work of WETA Digital, famed for both The Lord of the Rings and Avatar. And secondly, director Rupert Wyatt, a newcomer off everyone’s radar, knows that this prequel story is inherently campy, but requires a touch of serious depth to be enjoyable. And Mr. Wyatt, as well as the work of WETA, is the reason that Rise of the Planet of the Apes is easily the best blockbuster of the summer.