WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES

Cert 12A 142mins Stars 5

There’s no monkeying about when the fur starts flying in this epic end to the sci-fi trilogy.

It’s a mean, meaty, and hair raising action adventure which doesn’t hang around and becomes increasingly tense and spectacular as the explosive conclusion approaches.

And it’s far superior to this year’s other monkey movie, the disappointing Kong: Skull Island.

This is a rare beast of a series, improving in quality from good to great to gripping.

In 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, scientific experiments led to apes talking, and in 2014’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the humans were mostly wiped out by a virus.

Now the remainder of humanity is on the warpath and the talking apes are being hunted to extinction.

Caesar the chimp is a thoughtful tribal chief who abandons his responsibilities and sets off on a mission of personal revenge with a small group of friends.

When he’s confronted with the consequences of his disastrous failings as a leader, father, and spouse, Caesar seeks to redeem himself and save his tribe.

Heading a strong cast and reprising his role as Caesar, Andy Serkis provides the powerful emotional heart of this film with another mesmeric and masterful performance.

He is the king of motion capture technology, the process which convinces us the apes, gorillas and orang utans exist as living, breathing, and bleeding creatures, not just animated computer pixels.

Woody Harrelson brings a controlled menace to role of Caesar’s nemesis. He plays a crazy army colonel who has established the power of life and death over his troops.

Using humour to light the darkness is Steve Zahn as a stray ape in a beanie hat, and young Amiah Miller is a slight, sweet presence as mute human, Nova.

An ambitious script owes as much to British classics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai as it does to westerns such as Clint Eastwood’s The Outlaw Josey Wales. And there are unmistakable references to Vietnam war epic, Apocalypse Now.

This is a world of difficult choices and painful consequences, filled with madness, torture and death. Even older primary school kids may struggle with the heavyweight tone of a film pitched far ahead of films featuring spangly spandex superheroes or wise cracking giant robots.

Though the Hollywood jungle drums suggest this may not be the end of the story, the emotional finale guarantees you’ll go ape for this chest beating brute of a blockbuster.

TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT

Cert 12A 148mins Stars 1

Run for your life as the giant alien robot franchise returns to obliterate the box office.

The previous four films have taken nearly £3 billion in total at the box office and this wretchedly repetitive and grindingly incoherent episode will probably add considerably more.

Never afraid to do less with more, director Michael Bay takes his £200m budget and adds King Arthur to this mangled mess of globe hopping machines, endless explosions and terrible bantz. Even the supposedly quiet moments are played with a rock music video intensity.

The plot shamelessly apes the plot of the most recent Fast Furious film. Hero robot Optimus Prime is coerced by a glamorous female villain to turn on his former comrades so she can rule the universe, or something. 

As Optimus is a pompous, vain, and speechifying dumbbell, it’s a blessing he’s sidelined for long periods.

Mark Wahlberg resumes his role as Cade Yeager, a struggling inventor and now legendary resistance leader. He gamely runs around, shooting stuff and flirting with Laura Haddock.

The Brit actress has been jettisoned in to provide a glamorous love interest and miraculously escapes with her dignity intact.

This is despite her character being described as a ‘professor in a stripper dress’ and being obliged to perform a zero gravity pole dance during one of the many lengthy action sequences.

Anthony Hopkins’ broader eccentricities are unleashed as Sir Edmund Burton, a historian with back door channels to Downing street.

He explains the sub-Da Vinci code nonsense as they chase about castles and stately homes in pursuit of the staff of Merlin.

It’s the weapon of ultimate power. Which is useful as the robot planet Cybertron is en route to suck the life out of Earth. I now understand exactly how that feels.

This obsolete hunk of junk should be sent to the wreckers yard.

 

 

HAMPSTEAD

Cert 12A 103mins Stars 3

Take a sunny stroll over the hill with this amiable odd couple romcom, inspired by a true story.

A pair of mature misfits begin an unlikely relationship in Hampstead, a leafy village for the rich which looks down on the city of London.

It’s here an elegant American widow and a down and out Dubliner struggle against evil property developers. Thye’re attempting to evict him from his shack, self built on the nearby heath.

Though the actors aren’t required to stretch themselves, Diane Keaton’s breezy comic presence contrasts nicely with Brendan Gleeson’s glowering demeanour.

Any sharp points the script may have made about pensioner poverty or the inequalities of the housing market are smoothed out in favour of light weight humour and a tourist friendly vision of the capital.

Hampstead is charming, competent and comfortable within its own boundaries, and unlike other films out this week, it has the virtue of succeeding in what it sets out to achieve.

THE BOOK OF HENRY

Cert 12A 105mins Stars 1

The previous film by director Colin Trevorrow was the box office behemoth Jurassic World, and the next one will be Star Wars: Episode IX. It’s coming to a galaxy near you in 2019.

One was a monster hit and the other is as much as a guarantee as it’s possible to be. Which is just as well because this pet project of his is one of the mawkish and most misjudged movies of the year.

A shambles strewn with scenes of awful inappropriateness, it’s a coming of age fable for adults, a silly and sanctimonious ghost story, and a dull heist movie.

Henry is a gifted eleven year old and part time stock broker whose death leaves his mother distraught. However he’s left her a book of instructions with which she find solace and save the young girl next door from her wicked step uncle.

Rarely has a film so bonkers in concept has managed to be so boring and inept in execution.

 

 

IN THIS CORNER OF THE WORLD

Cert 12A 130mins Stars 3

Find a quiet place in the corner of your heart for this gentle Japanese animation.

Melancholy and reflective in tone, the script encourages us to consider the effect of conflict on the least privileged in society and is full of stealthy anti-war rhetoric.

With the war kept at arms length for much of the time, there is an emphasis on the wonder of the natural world and the simple pleasures of drawing and cooking.

Naive, uneducated and impoverished, young Suzo is married off in haste at the outbreak of the Second World War.

She leaves her family in Hiroshima and moves to a farm above a military port, where her husband works as a lowly clerk.

The filmmakers respect our knowledge of the horrors which lie in Suzo’s future, and by focussing on the details of her day by day drudgery, they create a heavy cloud of tension which looms over the film.

 

THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE

Cert 15 86mins Stars 2

Despite the intriguing premise of this supernatural horror, the rigor mortis it reveals will leave you bored not scared stiff.

Following a multiple homicide, a local cop deposits the cadaver of an unidentified and beautiful young woman in the care of the local mortuary.

Brian Cox and Emile Hirsch are curiously cast as the father and son owners. And as the girlfriend, Ophelia Lovibond completes the trio of underwritten characters.

They’re tasked with establishing the cause of death of the mysterious ‘Jane Doe’, and begin to take her apart in order to piece together a picture of her life .

There’s an enjoyable reliance on old school effects such as smoke, mirrors, prosthetics and and sound effects. But sadly the most scary aspect of this poorly thought out exercise is the alarming lack of narrative vigour. And it’s painfully obvious where it’s all headed.

Jane Doe is probably best left dead and buried.

CHURCHILL

Cert PG 98min Stars 4

Brian Cox gives a rich full bodied performance as the UK’s greatest Prime Minister in this compelling wartime drama.

Suitably stately and sombre, it’s a sometimes stagey account of his days leading up to D-Day in June, 1944. Having steered the country through the war, Churchill is affronted when marginalised by the allied Generals Montgomery and Eisenhower.

Moving between gravitas, charm, weariness and anger, Cox essays a deeply personal portrait of Winston Churchill. This is a man haunted by his disastrous campaign at Gallipoli in the First World War and anxious to avoid unnecessary bloodshed on the Normandy beaches.

As the outcome of the Second World War isn’t in doubt, we’re presented with a superbly performed character study, with each principal actor given their chance to shine.

Julian Wadham, John Slattery and James Purefoy respectively play Montgomery, Eisenhower, King George VI and and each give a distinctive interpretation of the very different personalities.

Miranda Richardson is sadly rationed as Churchill’s no-nonsense wife, Clementine, possibly because she dominates whenever she enters a room.

There are echoes of Shakespeare’s King Lear in this moving account as Cox humanises the great man, capturing his mood swings, self doubt, irascible spirit and sharp wit. Cox savours his dialogue, swilling words around his mouth as Churchill does his ever present Scotch and cigars

With an insistence on the importance of General’s leading from the front and concern for civilian casualties, the brisk script is inherently critical of the vogue for drone warfare.

An absence of spectacle and battles allows the elegant photography to conjure a carefully composed mood of apprehension and fear.

The power and intelligence of the film swell up on us, erupting in a magnificent piece of Churchillian oratory which may well inspire people to stand in the aisles and salute. It would be fully deserved by the film, and the man.

GIFTED

Cert 12A 101mins Stars 3

A high tolerance for sugary sentiment is essential to enjoy this syrupy custody battle.

The precocious, cute and extremely funny Mckenna Grace comprehensively upstages her far adult co-stars as seven year old, Mary.

On her first day at a new school, Mary is identified as being intellectually gifted at mathematics. But her guardian, Uncle Frank, just wants her to have an ordinary life. The pair have a winningly convincing chemistry.

Mary’s teacher unsurprisingly have the hots for Frank, who’s played by Chris Evans and best known for being Marvel’s Captain America. He probably gets turned down for Diet Coke adverts for being too ridiculously good looking. The git.

Waiting in court is Lindsay Duncan as Mary’s magnificently mean grandmother. She wants to send Mary to a special school so the child can achieve her full potential.

The script pounds your heartstrings, a famous maths theorem lurks uncompleted and the increasingly preposterous plot doesn’t add up.

 

ROCK DOG

Cert PG 86mins Stars 1

Tone deaf humour and off-key animation characterise this incoherent and tuneless hymn to the unifying magic of music.

It’s a discordant mix of eastern mysticism, western music, Tibetan mountains, Texas accents, analogue technology and giant robot mice. The original songs are uninspired auto tuned pop rock.

Luke Wilson voices Bodi, a naive pup who leaves his village of sheep at the mercy of wolves to pursue dreams of stardom in the big city.

Narrator Sam Elliot riffs on his cowboy persona from The Big Lebowski, while Eddie Izzard channels his inner Osbourne as a thin white rock legend with a robot servant called Ozzie.

Bodi’s father is an incompetent disciplinarian who frowns on his son’s ambition and wants him to remain at home, working at the family firm.

Personally, the sooner my son leaves home on a tour bus to find fame, fortune and a mansion full of adoring groupies, the more proud I’ll be.

 

WHITNEY: CAN I BE ME

Cert 15 105mins Stars 4

Drugs, booze and sexual jealousy feature heavily in the tragic life of 1990’s music superstar Whitney Houston, compassionately explored in this fascinating documentary.

The first black solo female artist to achieve global mainstream pop success, Houston was famous at 19 and dead at 48 from a drug overdose.

Having lived her adult life in the media gaze, there’s little new information here. But in a triumph of research, editing and storytelling, we see her story from a new perspective.

With her close family coming from a gospel music background, it’s suggested the church’s stance is complicit in her fall from grace.

A crowded marriage to Bobby Brown was made worse by the pressures of fame. It’s made clear Houston’s substance abuse began long before entering a destructive co-dependent relationship with the bad boy singer.

Of all her entourage, Houston’s bodyguard is the most clear eyed observer, but unlike in her smash film The Bodyguard, he was unable to save the star.