DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Chuck Heston, why hast Thou forsaken me? Why must I put up with this abysmal contemporary reboot?

2014: Boy-crush hug twixt
Jason Clarke & Andy Serkis
1968: Hot open-mouth kiss twixt
Kim Hunter & Chuck Heston

2014: When men are wimps
1968: When men are men among men
2014: When women are bedraggled hags
1968: When women are Linda Harrison as "NOVA"

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) *
Dir. Matt Reeves
Starring: Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke,
Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell, Kodi Smit-McPhee

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I pity all of you. Some came of age to (Ugh!) Star Wars, others came of age to (Ugh!) John Hughes or (Ugh!) The Goonies, yet others came of age to (Ugh!) Toy Story or (Ugh!) Jurassic Park, and even worse, many came of age to (Ugh!) Harry Potter, and then, perhaps worst off of all are those who will come of age to (Ugh!) stupid, noisy superhero comic book movies and those who will be completely bereft of originality will come of age to (Ugh!) reboots like Rise of the Planet of the Apes and its (Ugh!) dull, mediocre sequel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. What's next? Afternoon of the Planet of the Apes? Tea-Time of the Planet of the Apes? Night of the Living Dead Planet of the Apes? Seriously, all of you not only have my pity, but my condolences for childhoods that could really be little more than living the death of a thousand cuts to thine brain and soul. About the best that can be said in favour of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is that it's not as dreadful as Rise of the Planet of the Apes. This is predominantly due to the fact that it has a real director, Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Let Me In) at the helm. Alas, he struggles valiantly, but unsuccessfully with an utterly boring screenplay and no real reason (artistically) for the picture to exist.

In fact, the entire reboot exists only to fill the 20th Century Fox coffers with dough from a lot of desperate and stupid movie-goers. The Original Five (kind of like the N.H.L.'s Original Six) is a perfectly fine series of films and frankly, Franklin J. Schaffner's original 1968 Planet of the Apes is not only a bonafide masterpiece, but it's so terrific that it holds up beautifully to this day on levels of both storytelling and craft that dazzles. As everyone knows, the first picture took us on a thrilling journey to a topsy-turvy planet by way of time travel and subsequent films offered a series of entertaining, often exciting and boldly satirical adventure films which perversely added up to one massive time warp - one which led to a never-ending cycle of the same mistakes wrought by humanity and an ever-present and always inevitable reality that nuclear annihilation is, was and always would be the end result.

The sheer genius of this within the context of popular entertainment is one thing, but that each film was infused with buoyant snap, crackle and pop by way of thrilling classical adventure always tempered with great humour - some black, some satirical and often, just plain hilarity emanating naturally out of the drama - is what made the original film and its sequels immortal.

The reboot is dull on several fronts, but the most egregious flaw in its storytelling is to begin, literally, with the beginning. The second big problem is just how dour, serious and irredeemably humourless the whole thing is. There's one laugh in all of Dawn that's surprisingly clever - so much so I won't ruin it for you save to note that it's rooted in the kind of satire so prevalent in Schaffner's 1968 original and that wended its way through the sequels - and involves an ape equivalent to the antics of a Steppin' Fetchit or Mantan Moreland to curry favour with the "dominant" race in films of yore.

Dawn begins ten years after Rise. The virus which sprouted in the last movie has decimated almost the entire human race. In the city of San Francisco, those humans who were resistant to the terminal illness, live in isolation and fear that their meagre power supply will soon run out. The apes, on the other hand, are living idyllically in the forests of northern Cali and getting stronger and smarter. Caesar (Andy Serkis) is still their leader, but his authority is being challenged by Koba (Toby Kebbell), a violent warmongering ape. The human beings are led by Dreyfus (Gary Oldman), a stirring orator of the fascist variety who grudgingly allows Malcolm (Jason Clarke) a few days to try and peacefully negotiate with the apes for access to the nearby power dam in order to get San Fran up and running again.

Malcolm drags Alexander (Kodi Smit-McPhee), his sensitive (Ugh!), artistically-inclined son and Ellie (Keri Russell), his (Ugh!) supportive, loving and oddly haggard nurse girlfriend along with a few other fellas to do their power dam magic. Everything twixt human and ape in the jungle seems reasonably "Kumbaya, My Lord" until bad apes pull bad shit and bad humans pull bad shit and hell breaks loose.

Eventually, order is restored, but a storm's a brewin' with imminent all-out war for the next sequel.

Dullsville!

Both the performances and characters of the humans are strangely lacklustre and the apes (save for Caesar and Koba) are indistinguishable from one another - a far cry from the indelibly-etched characters on both sides of the equation in the 1968 classic and its sequels. While there is an inevitability of doom and despair in the 60s/70s Apes pictures, nothing is ever oppressively dreary and predictable the way it is here.

Reeves handles some of the action sequences with the sort of aplomb one would want, but because we have no real investment in any of the characters, his efforts are all for naught.

There's a lot of noise and thunder here, but finally, this is a film which is perfectly emblematic of the sheer unimaginative roller coaster amusement park rides that major studio films are transforming into. The 3-D, as per usual, adds nothing to the proceedings save for inducing headaches and muting the colour and sharp contrast of the visuals.

Again, all I can do is offer my pity to audiences so starved for a good picture that they're willing to suffer through this unoriginal mess that been crapped upon them by a studio system that's increasingly losing its way into a miasma that I suspect cinema might have a hard time recovering from.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is in humungously wide release via 20th Century Foz and predictably drawing in audiences throughout the world.

For more elaboration on the Original Five and my vitriol about Rise of the Planet of the Apes, feel free to read my review of that film HERE.

SOUTH PACIFIC - Review By Greg Klymkiw - One of the GREAT movie musicals of all time !!!

South Pacific (1958) ****
dir. Joshua Logan
Starring: Mitzi Gaynor, Rossano Brazzi,
Ray Walston, Juanita Hall, John Kerr, Tom Laughlin, France Nuyen

Review By Greg Klymkiw

South Pacific is a great movie musical. Its detractors will have you believe it’s clunky, theatrical to a fault, hampered by poor casting choices and a waste of actual locations on the Hawaiian island of Kauai because of the aforementioned. It is none of those things.

In fact, it’s quite the opposite and I daresay it might well be one of the great movie musicals of all time and as thrilling and stunning a MOVIE musical as the best work of Vincente Minnelli, Rouben Mamoulian, Rene Clair and Busby Berkeley.

Based upon the huge Richard Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein II Broadway success (first launched onstage in 1949 and recently afforded a highly acclaimed remount) and in turn taken from James Michener’s bestselling “Tales of the South Pacific” (recounting his own experiences in the Eden-like setting of the title), South Pacific charts the love lives of several characters who find themselves in a paradise on Earth. The main love story involves a vivacious female Navy Ensign and nurse, Nelly Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor), who is stationed, along with hundreds of other military personnel on an American island during World War II in order to prepare for an offensive upon the Empire of the Rising Sun and to keep an eye on the nearby Japanese-controlled islands.

A local French landowner and man of mystery, Emile De Becque (Rossano Brazzi), is courted by the U.S. navy to assist them with gaining access to one of these islands, the enchanting Bali Ha’i. The island, bearing two volcanoes and a bevy of beauties (male and female) and fresh fruits (edible, I would argue, in more ways than one) acts as a magnet for all these sailors, but is, alas, off-limits to them.

When a Hawaiian Earth Mother named Bloody Mary (the brilliant Juanita Hall) beckoningly sings of the island’s virtues to the young Lt. Cable (John Kerr) he, not unlike the other American seamen and women, is drawn to the “special island [where] the sky meets the sea”. And of course, before you can sing “Cockeyed Optimist” (one of the immortal Rodgers-Hammerstein songs in this musical), love begins to blossom between Nelly and Emile as well as Lt. Cable and Bloody Mary’s gorgeous daughter Liat (France Nuyen).

Bring on the bare-chested hunks and grass-skirted babes, please.

Volcanoes were made for erupting, mais non?

And eruption of the most pleasurable kind is what happens to me whenever I see this musical. Aside from the fact that it’s a pretty agreeable narrative with great characters and terrific tunes, what really get my juices flowing are Joshua Logan’s stunning and brave visual choices as a director.

Logan gets a bad rap from most film critics. Originally a stage director (and yes, he mounted the original Broadway production of South Pacific), Logan is often criticized for not using the medium of film in a “cinematic” fashion and that his attempts to do so are mistakenly labeled as clunky.

Here’s where I really have to disagree with my colleagues on the matter. In fact, the knee-jerk negative reaction to utilizing a proscenium-styled frame in film adaptations always gets this fella’s yarbles in a wringer. I love the use of proscenium, the tableaux approach if you will, as much as I love the dipping, whirling shots of Mamoulian and Clair, the kaleidoscopic, only-in-a-film stylings of Berkeley, the stunning splashes of colour in Minnelli (and most of the pictures out of Arthur Freed’s unit at MGM). The proscenium is only wrong if it’s done without passion and imagination. That’s not Logan’s problem at all.

Using the stunning 65-millimeter TODD-AO widescreen process he manages to create one of the strangest and I daresay imaginative visual hybrids ever created for a motion picture. Perhaps it’s the hybrid effect that stymies critics, but for many viewers, myself obviously included, the effect is always a treat – more so because it is rooted in the emotion of the narrative, the characters and the truly magical settings.

First of all, you get the intense clarity of the huge 65mm negative that delivers a truly widescreen image without anamorphic compression. Shooting on location, one gets all the real-thing backdrops instead of theatrical backdrops or, for that matter, the studio-bound backdrops of other musicals. Then, utilizing a variety of coloured filters, Logan brings movie magic to the proceedings wherein we can feel the filmmaker’s hand applying a wash of colour to transport us to a realm of Never-Never-Land so that we ALWAYS feel we’re watching a movie, and most importantly, a world within the movie that feels like a world unto itself. Blending this with stationary chorus line compositions, we get to see the beauty of the choreography and enjoy the various bits of business without a barrage of cuts and cutaways that purportedly move us emotionally through the action using a variety of shots at different lengths.

We get to experience all the action in as pure a form as the dance numbers in the RKO Astaire-Rogers musicals. Logan lets the action occur WITHIN his frames. He uses theatrical convention as one piece of his extremely rich visual palette. Logan makes us feel like we’re watching something we’ve NEVER seen before. Ultimately though, we have. By distorting the reality of the on-location settings with both cinematic and theatrical techniques, Logan ventures boldly into the world of expressionism that, frankly, feels perfectly apt for a tale that examines love and magic against the backdrop of war.

This directorial decision is a stunner. Then again, for anyone who loves Logan, it makes perfect sense. His occasional forays into the world of movies almost always yielded strange, uncompromising work. Picnic, his film adaptation of William Inge’s play still has the power to move and provoke while Bus Stop, also from Inge, is as funny and heartbreaking as any of Marilyn Monroe’s great work and Sayonara, a straight-ahead examination of American-Japanese relations and racism taken from writing by James Michener is one of the great dramas on these themes. Even his tremendous flop, Paint Your Wagon, is not without the expressionistic qualities of his best work – the mere thought of juxtaposing Harve Presnell’s outstanding vocal rendition of “They Call The Wind Maria” and Clint (I kid you not!) Eastwood half-singing, half-whispering, semi-rasping out “I Talk To The Tress” delivers the kind of satisfying gooseflesh very few movies are capable of.

The Blu-Ray release of “South Pacific” is a mixed bag. It features both the theatrical and Roadshow versions of the picture. Alas, the Roadshow version is presented from a solid, but definitely standard definition transfer – which is a real shame, since it adds footage that is not in any way, shape or form extraneous. That said, the shorter theatrical version is still a mind-blower and to see it in a high definition transfer is to experience a lifetime of orgasmic pleasure in one huge dollop. Also, the extra-features – including a terrific feature length documentary – are magnificent supplementary materials to an already magnificent motion picture. “South Pacific” is available in a special Blu-Ray release on the 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment label.

Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Well, this dull, bloated, meandering hack job sure as hell isn't ALIEN. It is, however, co-written by the TV hack who gave us the woeful screenplay for COWBOYS and ALIENS.

Prometheus (2012) *1/2
dir. Ridley Scott
Starring: Noomi Rapace,
Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Ridley Scott's film of Alien from the screenplay by Dan O'Bannon was (and still is) a great movie. When I first saw it in 1979, the experience was so perfect, so complete, that I never imagined there would be a need for a sequel (or prequel) of any kind. When the sequels started coming, I was less than impressed. I detested James Cameron's overlong, noisy Rambo-lina-styled Aliens, David Fincher's miasma of half-baked pretention Alien 3 and only Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Alien: Resurrection had decent entertainment value. The less said about the AVP instalments the better.

I loved Alien so much I probably saw it at least ten times in its first year of release and a few more times in subsequent years. Scott's direction was so dazzlingly proficient, H.R. Giger's legendary design elements so astounding and O'Bannon's script so tight that it held up on repeated viewings - allowing one to admire different elements of both craft and subtext once the pure visceral nightmare of the first screening was out of one's system.

And, it was one hell of a great monster movie - so much so that I kept my eyes peeled for any subsequent film Scott and O'Bannon were attached to.

Having penned the hilarious and creepy Dark Star, the John Carpenter-directed satire of 2001: A Space Odyssey, O'Bannon was already familiar to me. After Alien, though, he always delivered the goods - even when the directors were hacks (as was the case with John Badham's competent rendering of Blue Thunder) or if the directors completely buggered up the writing (in particular, Tobe Hooper's mish-mash of Lifeforce and his lamely directed remake of Invaders From Mars) or when the directors were talentless non-entities (like Gary Sherman, whose dull by-the-numbers helmsmanship of Dead and Buried strangely enhanced the writing and made you wish a real director had delivered up O'Bannon's scenario).

When O'Bannon was paired with a great director, though, like Paul Verhoeven - watch out! Total Recall is so perfect and hasn't dated one bit and makes one automatically assume that the upcoming new version will have to be an utter waste of time.

The only opportunity O'Bannon had to direct his own original screenplay was the phenomenal Return of the Living Dead - a horror film so blisteringly insane, scary and funny that I still can't figure out why O'Bannon's output eventually petered out (though he did a decent directorial job on a Lovecraft adaptation written by another screenwriter called The Resurrected).

O'Bannon is one thing - the real thing!

Ridley Scott, however, is another matter. He's directed 20 pictures. He will always be in my good graces for Alien - his work there is unimpeachable. If truth be told, however, I haven't much liked most of his other pictures.

Blade Runner is clearly not without merit, but whatever version one sees, it's pretty much a gorgeous looking mess (and I still think the studio cut is the best). Thelma and Louise is entertaining, but full of fake female empowerment and has little value beyond one helping. Hannibal has the distinction of being a first-rate piece of A-movie trash and Black Hawk Down is still one kick-ass war picture. The rest of Scott's output is completely negligible - and yes, this includes his testosterone-infused Oscar-winning snore-fest Gladiator.

In spite of this, I was genuinely thrilled when I heard about Prometheus. I went so out of my way to NOT know anything about it that all I could tell you about the movie before seeing it was that Scott was directing, it had something to do with Alien and had a cool poster I couldn't avoid. About an hour before seeing the movie, I sadly made the inadvertent discovery that Michael Fassbender was in the movie and playing an android. Knowing this kind of annoyed me after all my hard work of not watching any trailers or reading anything in advance about it, but what finally annoyed me even more was the movie itself.

Anyone who thinks Prometheus should be viewed as a stand-alone piece and NOT a prequel to Alien (as some have suggested) is an idiot. It's a prequel all right. A scientific expedition is launched based upon similarities in ancient art works from different eras. A crew of scientists go to another planet and discover that it was once populated by alien beings who were responsible for creating life on Earth until they were wiped out by the nasty monster aliens from the first movie. Everyone gets wiped out save for Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender.

And there you pretty much have it.

The movie might have been worth watching, but the screenplay is so dull that there's little going for Prometheus other than leading lady Noomi Rapace (from the original German Dragon Girl trilogy), Fassbender's amusing android who models himself after Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, Scott's first-rate visuals and terrific special effects. That said, the effects here are typical of the digital age and nothing has the majesty or power of those rendered in Alien. I even hated the Prometheus spaceship. I'm more of water-dripping Nostromo rust-bucket-spaceship-kind-of-guy from instalment number one.

What drove me crazy in Prometheus is how most of it was all sizzle and no steak. There is only one - count 'em - ONE brilliantly horrific, suspenseful set piece that's ALMOST as good as anything in the first Alien.

And it IS a great scene, on a par with John Hurt's chest explosion. The Prometheus near-equivalent involves Rapace giving herself a Caesarean to pluck out the alien growing in her womb before it bursts out and kills her. It was the only time in the whole movie I genuinely perked up. Scott handled this harrowing sequence with tremendous aplomb. Though the chest explosion in Alien was a tough act to follow, the movie did so in spades and was so ridiculously scary you spent much of the movie squeezing your bum cheeks to keep the fecal matter from spewing out. The rest of Prometheus, however, feels plodding, predictable and is possibly even worse than Gladiator. Though I will concede it beats the AVP pictures.

The movie is rife with BIG IDEAS, but most of them are introduced, then dropped in favour of forward thrust and pyrotechnics. Even more offensive is the predictable conclusion that offers up a sequel or two. I saw it coming from very early on and prayed the story WOULDN'T go where it did.

It does.

So much for shocker endings.

However, I do suspect a gibbon might have trouble predicting the outcome.

That the screenplay is woefully inadequate is no surprise. It's written by Joe Spaights whose only claim to fame is a silly direct to video thriller a la Deliverance and Damon Lindelof, a TV hack whose only feature credit as a screenwriter is (need I say more?) Cowboys & Aliens.

The tagline for the original Alien was the brilliant: "In space, no one can hear you scream." With Prometheus, everyone in the theatre will hear discriminating audience-members scream for the movie to finally end so they can get home, slap on their Alien Blu-Ray and cleanse their palates of this decidedly unpalatable, over-hyped and shockingly well-reviewed hack job.

"Prometheus" is currently in world wide release via 20th Century Fox.

CHARLIE CHAN IN HONOLULU - With Warner Oland's death, Sidney Toler stepped in. A perfect fit, like most honourable pair of old slippers

Charlie Chan in Honolulu
dir. H. Bruce Humberstone
Starring: Sidney Toler, Phyllis Brooks, Victor Sen Yung, Eddie Collins

***1/2

Review by Greg Klymkiw

When longtime Charlie Chan star Warner Oland died in 1938, Twentieth Century Fox was faced with a dilemma of considerable magnitude. The Chan series (based on writer Earl Derr Biggers character who, in turn, was loosely based on a real-life detective in Hawaii) was one of Fox’s more profitable franchises and exhibitors and the public were still hungry for more. And now Oland was dead. Though he was Swedish, his swarthy features allowed him to be made-up as an Asian and he made quite a career of playing “yellow-face” roles. After appearing in 16 pictures as Charlie Chan, the most venerable Asian detective, Fox and the world both wondered who would succeed him.

Oland, of course, was not Asian – few leading Asian roles were actually entrusted to Asian actors. Would an Asian actor be cast? While rare, there was already some precedence for utilizing actors like Sessue Hayakawa and Anna Mae Wong in leading roles. After a period of intensive casting (well over thirty actors were tested for the role) it was announced that a new Charlie Chan picture was on the way and that it would star the non-Asian American-born character actor Sidney Toler. While he was not Swedish like Oland, it is said his ethnic background was primarily Scottish – definitely not Asian. Ah well, it’s interesting to make note of this, but kind of ridiculous to place the contemporary values of political correctness and tolerance on such matters.

Charlie Chan in Honolulu is definitely a transitional picture within the series – due mainly to the challenges of maintaining a much-loved character with both a new actor and changing times. It does, however, succeed as one of the more entertaining entries of the series.

Up to this point, the Chan pictures had been set in a series of far-flung locales such as Egypt, London, Paris and Monte Carlo (among others), but this entry takes us to Chan’s home in Honolulu where we’re introduced to an All-American mailbox (emblazoned delightfully with the All-American: “Chas Chan”) in front of an All-American bungalow. Inside, we’re treated to an All-American depiction of a typical Asian-American family as Charlie presides over a dinner table filled with what seems like dozens of his offspring. Here we’re also introduced to the new sidekick of the series, Number Two Son. The terrific young Asian actor Keye Luke portrayed Number One Son, but Luke was so distraught over Oland’s death that he withdrew from the series – hence: Number Two Son (played delightfully by Asian actor Sen Yung).

This family dinner is especially fraught with tension since Charlie’s daughter is in the hospital and about to give birth to his first grandchild. It’s also revealed that Number Two Son wants to be a detective, but Dad scoffs at the very idea. When the entire family takes off to the Honolulu Hospital to be present for the birth of Number One Grandchild, Number Two Son takes a telephone call for Charlie.

Chan is being summoned to preside over a murder case. Number Two Son’s telephone interception is a perfect antidote to his overwhelming desire to be a detective. He decides to take Charlie’s place and soon finds himself on a freighter where a particularly brutal murder has taken place. Number Two Son bungles his way along until Charlie swoops in to save the day. Eventually, Charlie – in classic Chan fashion – assembles every one of the suspects into one room to reveal the killer and with the help of Number Two son, he does so with his usual flair.

All in all, this is relatively straightforward stuff and quite par for the Chan course. This doesn’t mean it’s not supremely enjoyable. It most certainly is. The supporting cast includes two absolutely delicious babes (one “good” and one “bad”), some hilarious comedy relief from Eddie Hogan as a zoo keeper continually on the run from an escaped lion and last, but certainly not least, the inimitable George Zucco as a crazed psychiatrist called Dr. Cardigan who has some weird machine affixed to an actual human brain.

The movie is replete with Chan’s trademark “Confucius Say”–styled sayings and Sidney Toler adds considerable flair to the role of everyone’s favourite Number One Detective. Fans of the series will be more than satisfied with this picture, though I suspect non-Chan-fans will potentially have no idea why this series was one of the most popular detective series in movie history.

Also, those who are humourless politically correct fascists will be idiotically offended by the period ethnocentricity that’s basically gentle and never mean-spirited. One example of this is when Charlie, at the hospital, is accidentally handed the wrong baby – a tiny Black child. Charlie smiles and quips, “Wrong flavour.” It’s a genuinely and sweetly funny moment that has more to do with the racism and/or ethnocentricity and/or just-plain stupidity of the character of the nurse who hands the child to Chan. However, one can easily imagine Birkenstock-wearing-granola-bar-knee-jerkers sharpening their venomous fangs of righteousness over this and several other moments like it.

The Fox Cinema Classics Collection DVD release of "Charlie Chan in Honolulu" is a very handsome package. It is full of terrific background documentaries and a painstaking reconstruction of one of the lost Charlie Chan features using publicity skills and a reading of the shooting script. This movie is part of Volume 4 of the first-rate Charlie Chan Collection that continues to deliver the Chan-goods to all of us Chan-oid geekster psychos who can never get enough of these wonderful old pictures.