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.

Your Highness: Merrily We Roll Along, Toking Up On Our Way

Your Highness

Directed By: David Gordon Green

Written By: Danny McBride and Ben Best

Starring: Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Theroux, Rasmus Hardiker, and Toby Jones.

Director of Photography: Tim Orr, Editor: Craig Alpert, Production Designer: Mark Tildesley, Original Music: Steve Jarblonsky

Rated: R for plenty of foul language, violence galore, and some titillating imagery.

            There is a certain rift within the new comedy Your Highness. On one side, the film is clearly indebted to Lord of the Rings, Dungeons and Dragons, as well as all other medieval myths that came before it. But it’s also a stoner comedy, filled with dick jokes, swearing, and everything else that a dirty mind can conjure up. It’s no surprise then Your Highness is the work of Danny McBride, the writer and actor from HBO’s Eastbound and Down, as well as Pineapple Express. Mr. McBride, uniting once again with director David Gordon Green, seems fit on making another dumb action comedy, but using its setting to create a self-conscious irony.

            Which is what makes Your Highness so stupid, but so fun nonetheless. Medieval films, and especially recent Television shows like Game of Thrones and The Borgias, are so serious, and held down by their self-importance. Mr. Green might have started with independent masterpieces like George Washington and All the Real Girls, but now he’s become a downright irreverent filmmaker, albeit still a good one with a stoner-set mind (Mr. Green last directed Pineapple Express). So the best jokes that emerge in Your Highness are of course those that hold such irreverence, for the language, the mythology, or simply the absurdity of it all.