GORILLA WARFARE
A peaceful, fish-eating clan is attacked by fellow apes in a masked gang. But how is a woman in a strappy top meant to help?
Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes
Cert: 12A, 2hrs 25mins
★★★★★
La Chimera
Cert: 15, 2hrs 10mins
★★★★★
Made In England: The Films Of Powell And Pressburger
Cert: 12A, 2hrs 11mins
★★★★★
The Almond And The Seahorse
Cert: 15, 1hr 36mins
★★★★★
It has been seven years since War For The Planet Of The Apes seemed to bring the trilogy of films starring a motion-captured Andy Serkis as ape-leader
Caesar to a natural end. So, as Kingdom Of The Planet Of
The Apes arrives in cinemas, the big question is – is it a sequel or a reboot?
Clearly it would like to be both, but given that the sequel bit is over in a couple of minutes, there are no returning characters and an early caption contains the giveaway words ‘many generations later’, I think we can safely plump for reboot.
In fact, Kingdom is apparently based some 300 years after the events of War, although one of the film’s shortcomings, apart from its sheer length, is that it doesn’t always feel that way.
The central character is a young male ape, Noa, apparently played by It star Owen Teague, unrecognisable behind a convincing layer of furry visual effects.
Part of a peaceful eagletraining, fish-eating ape clan,
Noa is on the verge of manhood (apehood?) when his village is attacked by a violent gang of masked gorillas. And yes, that is the right spelling.
Half of his clan are killed, the remainder taken prisoner and marched away. But as Noa sets off in hot pursuit, is he alone in the forest? Of course he isn’t – there’s a wise orangutan who reminds us of Maurice from the Serkis era and a cold, starving and inevitably very pretty human female, Mae (Freya Allan) who, despite the passing of three centuries, still pitches up in a strappy top and ripped jeans. Hmm.
The landscapes of the film are stunning, with forests and grasslands littered with the disintegrating, rusting remains of human civilisation and, to be fair to director Wes Ball, hitherto best known for the Maze Runner trilogy, he does keep the action bouncing along.
But the story feels episodic, the visual effects fall short at times (particularly when the apes are moving) and the latter stages involve a sub-plot that seems a little too familiar.
The British actor Josh O’Connor has won plaudits for his performance in the sexy tennis romp, Challengers. But fans spotting his name in the credits for La Chimera and hoping for more of the same will be disappointed. There’s no tennis, for starters, in what turns out to be an Italian arthouse film directed by festival favourite Alice Rohrwacher.
O’Connor is playing Arthur, a bestubbled English archaeologist in a crumpled suit who scrapes an illegal living finding and selling Etruscan artefacts with the help of a gang of cheerful Italian grave-robbers.
When the film starts, he has just emerged from prison and, as it continues, it’s clear that he could be going back there very soon if he persists in using his ‘sixth sense’ for sniffing out his beloved treasures.
But maybe the love of an attractive housekeeper-cummusic student will save him. Thanks to Rohrwacher’s filmmaking eccentricity and slow pacing you may grow impatient waiting to find out.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made their last significant movie – Ill
Met By
Moonlight – in 1957 but the British
Film
Institute recently re-released all their major films, and now the great
Martin Scorsese has made a fabulous documentary celebrating their achievements.
In Made In England: The Films Of Powell And Pressburger, Scorsese looks back at such beloved classics as A Matter Of Life And Death with David Niven, Black Narcissus with Deborah Kerr and The Red Shoes with Moira Shearer.
It’s clearly a labour of love for Scorsese, and it does make you want to rush out and see their films again.
But it’s also somewhat overlong and runs out of energy in the same way that Powell and
Pressburger eventually ran out of box-office success.
The Almond And The Seahorse is a film about brain injury, but one that too obviously wears its well-intentioned heart on its awareness-raising sleeve. Despite a cast that includes Rebel Wilson, Charlotte Gainsbourg and an excellent Meera Syal, it often comes across more as a public information film than hard-hitting emotional drama.