THE WATER DIVINER

You can listen to a podcast review of this film below:



THE WATER DIVINER is a brave directorial debut from Russell Crowe.  It tells the tale of a grieving father who journeys from Australia to Turkey to find the graves of his three sons, killed in the battle of Gallipoli four years previously.  In doing so he encounters a still highly contested and wartorn land, whether the men of the Imperial War Graves Commission has to rely on its former enemies, the Turks, to help them locate bodies on the field of battle.  And while World War One may be over, the war for the future of Turkey is only just beginning, with a nationalist uprising under Kemal Ataturk beginning, bringing with it a fierce debate over secular modernisation versus traditional religious values. 

THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES

THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES picks up in media res, with the wicked dragon Smaug laying waste to the good fisherfolk of Laketown, having been usurped of his treasure by the dwarf-king Thorin Oakenshield and his fellowship of adventurers.   In the pre-credit sequence our erstwhile hero, Bard, famously shoots the dragon in his one vulnerable spot: a spectacular CGI battle of epic scope that we have come to almost take for granted in Peter Jackson's interpretations of Tolkien's oeuvre.  But as we enter the main body of this two hour movie, we realise that Smaug casts a long shadow, and that his "dragon sickness" has corrupted King Thorin, who sits brooding jealously over his treasure, in paranoid search for the Arkenstone.  This corruption belittles Thorin, who looks on indifferent as a great battle wages outside the walls of The Lonely Mountain.  The Laketown men, led by Bard have come for their share in the treasure, as has an Elven army led by Thranduil.  They face Thorin's kinsman, led by Dain, and all in turn must put aside their petty rivalries and unite against the armies of Orcs (goblins in the books) until a fifth army makes a late in the day appearance.  The story of the movie is thus the blow by blow story of this battle, but really it's the story of Thorin throwing off the corruption of the treasure and becoming a king worthy of the name. And in the background, as Peter Jackson broadens his scope from The Hobbit, we see the more important battle, as Galadriel banishes proto-Sauron into Mordor, and an already tricksy Saruman prevents Elrond from warning the men of Gondor or going immediately to vanquish him there.  

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES - Oh, in the name of God! Now I know what it feels like to be God!

RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is, much like its iconic predecessor, a thoughtful, emotionally affecting film.  It feels much more like a character-driven drama than a generic summer blockbuster - which is not to underplay how good the final action set-piece is.

As the movie opens, Will Rodman is testing a potential cure for Alzheimers, ALZ-112, on chimps at the GenSys lab. When GenSys shuts down the trial, Will rescues a baby chimp called Caesar, not having the heart to put him down and unaware that Caesar has ALZ-112 in his genes.  Seeing the impressive impact of ALZ-112 on Caesar's brain, Will starts testing the drug on his father, who is miraculously cured.  

Flash forward a few years and Caesar is an older chimp, very clever, but straining at the leash of domestication.  After a misunderstanding turns nasty, Caesar is finally impounded in an animal shelter while Will appeals for his release. Worse still, Will's father Charles has fallen into remission - his body resisting the ALZ-112 and the Alzheimer's back with a vengeance. This prompts Will to create an even more virulent strain of the cure, ALZ-113, oblivious to its devastating side-effects on humans. And while Charles refuses to take it, Caesar steals it and infects his fellow primates at the shelter. Because, while Will has become ever more confused about his identity as a Man of Science, letting his love and arrogance warp his judgement, Caesar has become far clearer about his identity as an ape. Newly politicised by his brutal treatment in the shelter, and disenchanted by Will's refusal to let him be anything other than a cute family friend on a leash, he leads the apes in a rebellion.

The strength of the film is the depiction of Caesar's journey to social and political consciousness. Andy Serkis, who stole every scene as Gollum in LORD OF THE RINGS, is simply brilliant as Caesar - portraying the journey from youthful naivete, to hurtful rejection, to resolution. I kept thinking that Caesar's story was similar to that of Frankenstein's monster - the creation of an arrogant scientist; not really a man and yet possessing a man's intelligence; confused and eager to fit in, but frightening the humans he meets. So powerful is Serkis' performance that you root for Caesar, even more than for the human protagonist. And when he reaches his final declamatory scenes, the audience audibly gasps in awe.  It was a crime that Serkis didn't win an Oscar as Gollum, and the Academy should not overlook him now.  

The Academy also shouldn't overlook the behind-the-camera work director Rupert Wyatt (THE ESCAPIST), DP Andrew Lesnie (LORDS OF THE RINGS) and the effects team that so vividly created Caesar and so seamlessly blended him into a live-action background.

The weakness of the film is that the humans are by far less interesting than the apes.  James Franco's Rodman is far less powerful and charismatic than Victor Frankenstein. In fact, he just comes across as a sappy dope.  His girlfriend (Frieda Pinto) exists merely as a foil - occasionally pointing to his folly but going along with it anyway. The corporate boss (David Oyelowo), is surprise surprise, amoral and purely profit-motivated.  The father too, is simply there to tug the heart-strings, although John Lithgow is too good to allow a potentially mawkish final scene to become kitsch.  Brian Cox and Tom Felton as the animal shelter guards are simply pantomime villains, and I do hope Felton aka Draco Malfoy, doesn't get typecast as the insecure bully.  

Still, despite the cardboard cut-out humans, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES more than delivered in the character of Caesar, and in the final action sequence.  And I really can't wait to see the next instalment in the franchise.  As we've left the movie, we know that humans are going to be infected by the virus, but we haven't seen their hysterical response. And Caesar is still an ape who loves his human friend, and forbids his followers to deliberately kill humans. In other words, his rebellion is of the Gandhi/Martin Luther King variety. I am fascinated to know whether it is Caesar who is radicalised to the point where humans end up as slaves, or whether he is deposed by the brutalised chimp who was infected with ALZ-113.  I am NOT however, eager to know what happens to Will, his drippy girlfriend or any of the other humans.  


DANIEL PLAINVIEW adds: I agree, the humans are all ineffectual idiots - set-piece props for the more complex apes. 

For me though, this was a more serious omission. There are clearly parallels in this story with the African American civil rights movement - and hence the question of whether Caesar is Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, and how the story develops from here, is key.

However, casting the "white people" as either textbook Republican money-grubbing baddies, or ineffectual liberal good-at-heart nicies, is in this context disappointing. The reaction of society at large to the ape movement is probably more interesting than the ape movement itself, because it gives us an opportunity to explore and comment on different reactions of difference, fear and prejudice.

This films gives us two choices - you're either a full-on exploiter, or a patronising do-gooder. Particularly sad was the way Draco Malfoy was used - he's just a sneering arsehole - and then there's the mentally retarded nice-guy who tries ineffectually to look after the chimps at the shelter. What polarised American nonsense!

Having said all that - it was well made, a lot of fun, some of the performances were excellent, and we can all rest happy knowing that most of humanity is going to be wiped out in Episode 2 - and the remaining rump are likely to be spunkier, more interesting characters (we hope).

THE RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is on release in Malaysia, Indonesia, Belarus, Denmark, Greece, Kazakhstan, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Slovenia, Thailand, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Spain, Turkey, the USA, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Portugal, the UK, Finland, Ireland and Norway. It opens next weekend in Sweden, Georgia, Hungary and the Netherlands. It opens in Italy on September 23rd and in Japan on 7th October.

Early review from Al - I AM LEGEND

This review is brought to you from Al, who can usually be found here.

Just got back from Kuantan couple hours back - still recuperating. It was raining pretty much every second I was there, but turned out quite a therapeutic experience if you take the nightmarish weather aside. Anyhu, managed to catch I AM LEGEND while I was there - a film I wasn't particularly excited about, but finally decided to watch (it was between this and ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS) knowing how in the past, the charismatic Will Smith was the only good thing about movies like PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS and HITCH that were otherwise massive stinkers.

Oh wow, looks it's Will Smith trying what he does best - saving the world!*Applause* But alas, Smith looks fatigued and reluctant in this movie - out of his usual energetic self, from start to end he's pretty much moping around and by the time a pedantic attempt at an emotional climax arrives, it's evident that nothing can save this movie from the self-destructive monotony it's chosen to pursue. I understand where it intends to go - to try and construct that magnificent 28 DAYS LATER effect - relying on the sights of a usually chaotic city (in this case, NYC) now disturbingly quiet & inhabited only by overturned cars, rubbish and a main character who seems to have lost hope in mankind and lost his soul along the way. But here, it's just dead monotonous and dreary as fuck. It just doesn't work on any level. Oh,and it probably didn't help that the "Dark-Seekers" were as scary as Spongebob.

Possible SPOILER ahead. As if it weren't bad enough that for an entire three quarters they put all this weight on this bloody dog I really wanted out of the picture from the get-go: not that I hate dogs, but you could see from the start the way they established the man-dog relationship in this tacky, superficial dog-food commercial way that they were eventually going to USE the dog for some exploitative purpose. Oh,and once they're done with the dumb disposable dog as a plot-driving tool - suddenly this pile of dung about Bob Marley Being A True Inspiration and Survival Philosophy and Where is God pops out of NOWHERE - no,seriously, the film walks miles just him and his bloody canine, talking about nothing specifically, then without any build-up or the slightest hint this random mother-son pair show up and before you know it they're having THAT argument about The Human Race and Fate. At this point, I felt like choking myself on popcorn.

It's just so damn stupid and ridiculous-I can't put it any better than that.Think movies like Transformers,The Day After Tomorrow-movies with really one-dimensional,self-important characters with laughably shallow motivations at the center,where the writers have this EPIC movie in mind and they take everything so goddamn serious the final film turns out some sort of banal mockery of itself.There's always a cheap family-related backstory,a whole proud bunch of unfunny jokes and the action scenes seem lavishly done but are flatly disappointing.There is absolutely nothing to salvage from this film.

Spoiler-free: I went in hoping for a half-decent post-apocalyptic film with mildly scary devolved humans, and I also read beforehand they were showing a 7-minute Dark Knight preview before I Am Legend in US theatres and also, I vaguely remember seeing online a screenshot of the making for this film featuring Charlize Theron. Well,obviously none of those materialized.

I AM LEGEND is on release in the US, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Thailand, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the US. It opens next week in Spain, France, Belgium, Israel, the Netherlands and Denmark. It opens in Christmas week in Denmark, Egypt, Iceland, Norway and the UK. It opens in January in Greece, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, Estonia, Turkey, Germany, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Italy, Brazil, Russia and Sweden.

Bina007 adds: If we were gonna get a remake of The Omega Man, then wouldn't it have been cooler to get a Ridley Scott/Schwarzenegger remake as originally intended? Apparently Gulliermo del Toro also turned Smith down which is how we ended up wih relative newbie Francis Lawrence (CONSTANTINE). I also have a soupcon of suspicion about any flick that's green-lit without a script in place.