The View From The Mountain

I had always been a huge fan of the Planet of the Apes movies, from the moment my father took me to see Beneath the Planet of the Apes at the theater when I was very young. Beneath was the sequel to the original, seminal POTA , and it was a horror show dealing with subterranean humans who peeled off their faces to better worship their “God,” which was a super thermonuclear bomb. Just a toddler at the time, I fondly remembered my father abruptly pulling me into a tight hug every so often in the theater, and loving it then. But I didn’t realize, until much later, that my dad was actually making sure that I wasn’t staring at the screen whenever some of the still-disturbing images in Beneath occurred. I was greatly impressed with the smartly done POTA remakes that were recently released, starting with Rise of the Planet of the Apes , and so I looked forward to seeing the latest, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes , and I wasn’t disappointed. Taking place s...

During the height of the summer movie season, the theaters become inundated with the big dopey popcorn movie with the formula plot, plenty of explosions and rapid fire film editing that’s designed (not created--there’s no creativity to speak of, here) to keep the attention of the audience from wandering off the screen. For the most part these movies are completely forgettable, usually slipping from the minds of the audience once they leave the theater and start making plans to get something to eat. But there was one film this summer that was anything but a ’by the numbers’, carefully designed blockbuster. War for the Planet of the Apes --the third film in the rebooted Ape trilogy that began with Rise of the Planet of the Apes , and continued with Dawn of the Planet of the Apes --had also been released this summer, and the movie season is all the better for it. Directed by Matt Reeves, who also directed Dawn , War for the Planet of the Apes finally brings the epic war between Ape and ...