War for the Planet of the Apes - Movie Review

Starring Andy Serkis, Woody Harrelson, Steve Zahn, Amiah Miller, Karin Konoval, Terry Notary, Judy Greer, Gabriel Chavarria, Toby Kebbel and Sara Canning.
Written by Mark Bomback & Matt Reeves.
Directed by Matt Reeves.

★★★

Andy Serkis & company do a wonderful job in the motion-capture performance area, the special effects are top-notch, and Matt Reeves has made another movie, as the first two, that follows but could still stand on its own.

Caeser and his apes are still dealing with the betrayal of Koba, the ape that set off the chain reaction meant war between apes and humans. The main threat these days are a base of soldiers in northern California being led by a maniac. Woody Harrelson has a lot of fun playing a Col. Kurtz type in charge of these soldiers (and in case you miss the reference, there's "Ape-ocalpyse Now" graffiti in a tunnel).

I liked it, but I have to address five problems I had with this movie:

1. This conclusion to the prequel trilogy to Planet of the Apes isn't just about how the smart humans were wiped out. This movie is designed for you to root for the extermination of the human race. That may be why there were hardly any black or female soldiers. Easier to root for white US soldiers acting like Nazis toward the apes. There is one Hispanic soldier sent up to be somewhat sympathetic, but that's it. If A.I. ever rises up and wipes out humans, I blame this movie more than The Matrix.

2. Where are the females? Among the humans and apes, they were over 90% male. Is the next movie going to be Planet of the Dolphins because the other smart races went extinct over having so few females?

3. A little girl walks through the middle of a prison camp of soldiers on high alert, and they even have spotlights shine over her, and yet no one notices? These soldiers are terrrrible.

4. They say the simian flu, the disease that's robbing humans of speech and intelligence, is dormant in everyone, but the triggering of it is highly contagious. That felt like a yada-yada explanation hat-tipping the Walking Dead's logic.

5. Why at this point is Caeser the only ape who can talk in complete, unawkward sentences? Almost all of the apes stick to sign language. Didn't more apes speak in the last movie?

The Edge of Seventeen - Movie Review

Starring Hailee Steinfeld, Woody Harrelson, Kyra Sedgwick, Haley Lu Richardson, Blake Jenner, Hayden Szeto and Alexander Calvert.
Written & Directed by Kelly Fremon Craig.

★★★½

In a just world, this would be more successful at the box office, but I suppose it's more likely to gain its followers when it goes to iTunes, Netflix, and so on.

Hailee Steinfeld plays Nadine, an 17-year-old insecure frustrated teenage girl in the tradition of John Hughes heroines. She's constantly fighting with her widowed mother (Kyra Sedgwick), her overconfident older brother (Blake Jenner), and 99% of people at school. When her best friend Krista (Haley Lu Richardson) falls for and starts dating her brother, Nadine has had it.

Nadine is a jerk to everyone around her, and yet we're sympathetic with her all the way. We can see she's just in a lot of pain and hasn't figured out how to get out of her own head. The one person who seems to be able to get through is her teacher Mr. Bruner (Woody Harrelson), who mostly acts annoyed anytime she interrupts him during lunch to let her know her latest angst.

This is a star-making tour-de-force by Steinfeld, who first made audiences take notice as the girl in the Coen Brothers' True Grit. She's had decent roles in films like Begin Again, Ender's Game, 3 Days to Kill, and Pitch Perfect 2. This is the film that announces she's arrived.

Out of the Furnace - Movie Review

Starring Christian Bale, Woody Harrelson, Casey Affleck, Zoe Saldana, Forest Whitaker, Willem Dafoe, Sam Shepard and Tom Bower.  Directed by Scott Cooper.

★★★

This is a movie that takes a basic story - a very, very basic story - and shows that it can be a quality product if done right.  The plot sounds like one of those Patrick Swayze revenge movies, but this has more on its mind. Director Scott Cooper gives each scene time to breathe, and good actors come through for him.

Bale and Affleck play brothers from a small town hurt by the bad economy.  Bale's the older brother who works in the mill, Affleck the younger Iraq War vet who wants to break out of their poverty-stricken life, and he earns money quickly by bare-knuckle brawling.  When he starts to get mixed up with some dangerous people, Bale goes a quest for answers/revenge.

Story-wise it didn't go anywhere surprising, but by taking action-movie tropes and applying them to a somber drama style, it made for a richer experience.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire - Movie Review

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, Sam Claflin, Jena Malone, Lenny Kravitz, Jeffrey Wright, Willow Shields and Amanda Plummer.
Directed by Francis Lawrence.

★★★½

I liked the first movie. I read the books, felt the first book was the strongest, and the movie was a pretty faithful adaptation. I had reservations about how the rest of the franchise would go, but I was impressed at how they were able to improve not only on the second book but on the first movie.  Yes, it is one of those rare sequels where it's better than the first one.

Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) is living in District 12, almost a year since the Games. She's having nightmares and other symptoms of PSTD, but before the next Hunger Games begin, she and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) are supposed to do a victory lap through the districts before meeting back at the Capital.

Pres. Snow (Donald Sutherland) isn't happy with their being two winners from the last Hunger Games, and he doesn't like the symbol of hope that Katniss is becoming. He and new gamesmaster Plutarch (Philip Seymour Hoffman) devise a way to crush her. They change the rules of the Hunger Games and make the next one an All-Star edition, where 24 previous winners will be forced to fight.

I was grateful to see the shaky-cam style of Gary Ross gone. Director Francis Lawrence knows how to direct spectacle. The story also benefits from having adults in the Games. No chance for a scared kid to get offed here; these are all experienced winners.  Sam Claflin, Jena Malone, Jeffrey Wright and Amanda Plummer are among the contestants, and they do great.

The movie's success still hinges on its leading lady, and Jennifer Lawrence once again shows she's going to rule Hollywood for the next decade.

HBO's Game Change - TV Movie Review

Finally got a chance to see HBO's movie based on one-fifth of the best-selling book from Heilemann/Halperin about the 2008 election.  And it did play like one-fifth of the book, where I wished we could get the other four-fifths.  You know, since the book's main plot was how Obama beat Hillary in the Democratic primary.

But this focusses on three characters. The main character is Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson), one of McCain's closest advisors and likely one of the main sources of the book.  Just as it looks like Obama's sealed the Democratic nominee, McCain's thinking of who his running mate should be.  He wants his pal Joe Lieberman, but internal polling shows it would be disastrous, so they have to look for a high-risk high-reward candidate.

Enter Sarah Palin, played with juuust a little too much Alaskan twang by Julianne Moore sometimes, while other times she's lost in the role and I forgot I was watching Moore.  Sarah is this enigmatic figure, smart on some things and unbelievably stupid on other things. (She really didn't know that England's run by the Prime Minister, not the Queen?  She really thought Saddam was in on the 9/11 plot?)  But lest you think we're seeing a caricature, we see the scenes of her children crying due to the press treatment they're receiving, and we see her putting on a brave face while her son's deployed in Iraq.

John McCain's role isn't as big as I thought it might be.  Ed Harris does a fine job, and for the most part, McCain's portrayed as a good man bewildered by his friends in the press turning on him.  Schmidt is the moral center, and Palin by the end is Willie Stark as Greg Stillson in The Maleficent Story, and it's Schmidt's willingness to be candid in interviews afterward about just how unprepared she was that put the brakes on the printing of Sarah Palin 2012 bumper stickers. (So that's how he got his job at MSNBC.)

So if HBO was willing to go warts-and-all with the Palin parts of the book, why not do the rest and be a mini-series?  Politics, obviously.  If Palin had decided to run, what a deliciously opportune time for the movie to come out.  But we won't go into the Hillary/Barack/Bill/John & Elizabeth Edwards sections of the book.  Might make the Democrats look bad.  It's from Danny Strong and Jay Roach, the same team behind HBO's Recount, which retold the 2000 election through Gore-colored glasses.

But I do hope Woody Harrelson wins the Emmy for his work here.