Movie Nation

You could kind of sense the low-heat with which the latest “Planet of the Apes” sequel is being treated by the Interwebs — little traffic on trailers, and the rave reviews (mine was somewhat less than rave, but very positive). Does anybody still sing “Hey Hey we’re the MONKEES” over these movies?

Earlier predictions had pointed to a blockbuster opening — $75 million+. Based on Thursday night’s showings — tepid — that won’t happen. Box Office Mojo says $50 million, easily.

Box Office Guru is saying $64 million, which seems a bit high (he may have posted before Thursday’s flameout).

As this is the only major release opening wide — nearly 4,000 screens — that’s another letdown in a summer of letdowns.

Attendance was down 20% by the end of June, and this won’t help. Next weekend’s movies (“Purge 2, “Planes 2”) may also suggest franchise fatigue, if they don’t blow up. And nobody expects them to.

It started as “a narrative problem,” writer-director Richard Linklater says. “How do you tell a story, with actors, over a long period of time? You can’t re-cast it when you’re catching up with somebody, year by year. The change in appearance would be too abrupt.”
He wanted to follow a child from first grade to college enrollment, “and I was stuck with the limitation of the physical appearance of whatever young actor I had.”
His solution is “Boyhood,” the most acclaimed film of the year, a movie that uses the same actors — children and adults — over twelve years of filming just a few days each year, telling a story of one Texas family and one boy. “It may be years before anyone works up the gumption to match its achievement,” critic A.A. Dowd said of “Boyhood.” And that’s almost certainly true.
Linklater, who turns 54 at the end of July, is best-known for such talky/thoughtful films as “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset,” another long-term project following a couple (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy) through a budding romance, a courtship and eventually years-into a marriage that’s in trouble. To say the filmmaker, who got his start as an indie classic “Slacker,” is a patient man, would be an understatement.
“Cinema makes you patient,” he says. “Sometimes it takes ten years for a film you want to make to come together. That’s not unusual. But in this case, it was fun to have a life project that was taking just a chunk of time every year. I had to have my artistic antenna out, thinking about this movie, all year long, every year. Parenting, growing up, all these things that are part of life i was paying more attention to, because of this film I was making.”
And he would be taking a sensitive, introspective little boy along for the ride. Ellar Coltrane, now 19, went through “multiple auditions” as a six year-old, trying to land this role. He, and his director, got lucky.
“Ellar’s a lot like he is at the end of the film,” Linklater says of his star. “That’s Ellar, sitting at the top of a mountain, observing, taking it all in. That wasn’t him — Mason (his character) — at the beginning of the film. But even so, there were days, every year, where I was grateful that I’d cast the perfect kid.
“Boyhood” follows Mason, a Texas boy, part of a broken family, as he copes with a stressed, working class mother (Patricia Arquette) and sometimes-bullying big sister (Lorelei Linklater) and misses his free-spirited, often-absent father (Ethan Hawke).
Coltrane remembers that he was an aspiring child actor, home-schooled, going on “a lot of auditions, at the time I was cast.” He can’t recall much about the early years of filming, but he never lost interest in this life-long commitment and never minded giving up a chunk of each year to making “Boyhood.”

“It’s surreal,” he says, looking at the movie now. “There’s parts that are terrifying, or could be embarrassing. It’s also kind of comforting to see those parts of myself kind of magnified — these awkward teenage phases that you go through. Seeing them years later is a lot different from the way I experienced them. When you’re that age, you don’t feel like a complete person. Everything is this dramatic part of your personality. To see it all together and in context is a beautiful thing and kind of comforting and reassuring, existentially.”
Coltrane says he was always able to treat Mason, his alter ego, “as a character…As much as I used myself as a reference point, I was taking those personal memories and putting them outside of myself to play Mason, putting them through a different filter.”
Linklater, despite having a daughter in the film, felt far enough removed from the world of the kids that he would give Coltrane assignments — pick his brain for what he was going through each year, and then script accordingly. Ellar’s into “Star Wars”? So is Mason. Ellar’s about to start dating? “Take notes, remember exactly what you and that first girl you talk to talked about,” Linklater says he told Coltrane.
The result is a movie that’s a lot like life itself — little details, arguments about the most banal things, kids testing boundaries, and a divorced couple trying to do right by their kids. A filmmaker famed for his “gift for spotting the extraordinary in the ordinary” (Film Journal International) had his career-crowning achievement.
But perhaps the real acclaim should go to the way Linklater, for decades a role model to aspiring filmmakers, managed to make a movie without turning his young star into a diva. Coltrane is sensitive, soft-spoken and articulate. Making the movie altered his life, he admits. He idolized the set photographer, who mentored Coltrane’s budding interest in the arts. He is planning on going to college rather than solely pursing an acting career, because of that.
“In the last year of filming, sometimes I’d step back and look at Ellar at a distance and go, ‘WOW. Did I pick the right guy, or what?'” Linklater says. “. He’s smart. He’s 19, he’s a good actor and he’s got options. School, acting, art, whatever. And no limits, no restrictions. Maybe that’s the message of the movie. Mason learns from his parents, that one great teacher who takes an interest in him, and his own observations. He won’t be limited, like his parents, who had responsibilities — kids — at his age. After ‘Boyhood,’ the world is his. The fact that he grew up to look like a rock star didn’t hurt, either.”

“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is an action-packed epic, a moving sci-fi allegory rendered in broad, lush strokes by the latest state of the computer animator’s art.
Yes, you will believe a chimp can talk, ride a horse and fire a machine gun. These evolved animated apes have fur with feeling, expressive faces, fangs and eyes that show them well on their way to being human. “Dawn” illustrates the accelerating pace of improvements to CGI as these apes — with performances built around motion-capture-suited actors Andy Serkis and Toby Kebbell among others — in sequences so dazzling your jaw will drop.
It’s all in service of an utterly conventional story, however, one you’ll be three steps ahead of even if you have no memories of the ’70s “Apes” movie (“Battle for the Planet of the Apes”) this is largely based on. If you’ve ever seen a cavalry-vs.-Indians Western, a war movie built around pacifist efforts that ask “Can’t we all just get along?”, you’ll see this genre piece’s plot twists coming.
In a brisk opening credits sequence, we see the world’s collapse post-“Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” “The Simian Flu” felled much of the human race, snippets of newscasts from around the world tell us. Few survived.
Meanwhile, the first scientifically-evolved ape Caesar (Serkis) has led his tribe into the Muir Woods, where they’ve built a village, mastered fire, SSL (Simian Sign Language) and horseback riding, isolated and safe from human interference.
“Humans destroyed each other,” Caesar counsels. So apes must live by a higher code.
“Ape not kill ape.”
Then some humans, led by the curious and compassionate Malcolm (Jason Clarke) encounter the colony. Caesar strikes a pose at the head of his legions, and the humans, even though they’re armed to the teeth, tremble. The Ape in Chief doesn’t stutter when he issues an order to the intruders.
“GO!”
Of course, the humans have need of something within ape territory. Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) is ready to arm the troops and invade. But Malcolm, his Centers for Disease Control girlfriend (Keri Russell) and sketch-pad happy son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) are given a couple of days to work out a treaty, get the electrical power back on and save humans and apes from what is sure to be a bloody war.
Director Matt “Cloverfield” Reeves and his team make good use of 3D space as we see apes swinging through real trees in the Muir Woods, and by power lines through digitally-rendered ruins of San Francisco, including the Golden Gate Bridge.
They get less use out of the cast, with Clarke playing a cardboard cut-out, Russell given nothing to do and Oldman’s character watered-down to the point where he’s no challenge to Malcolm’s overly-trusting pacifism. Hints of the family they’ve lost, the grief they carry, are just that — hints.
There are advocates of violence in both camps, and the paranoid have a point. Trusting the other side could lead to human or simian extinction.
Make your own Middle Eastern, race relations/racism or gun culture allegories here, because the script leaves plenty of room for those interpretations. Wary foes stare each other down as they, and we, wait for some hothead’s miscalculation (or calculation) to ignite a war.
There isn’t much time for humor, but a few moments have apes mocking human behavior. And if you’re not a little amused by the sight of an chimp, on horseback, firing two assault rifles as he gallops into battle, you’re taking this too seriously.
It’s hard to know who to root for, which was always the point of these movies. Yeah, we’re obligated to hope humanity doesn’t go extinct, even if we brought this down on ourselves. But the “Apes” in “Dawn” are awfully darned appealing, learning the hard way that ape lesson of Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”– that murder and treachery are the traits that make us, and them, most human.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and brief strong language
Cast: Andy Serkis, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, Keri Russell, Toby Kebbell
Credits: Directed by Matt Reeves, scripted by Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver and Mark Bomback, . based on the Pierre Boulle novel. A Fox release.
Running time: 2:06

“Land Ho!” is a droll, Icelandic “Odd Couple” — just two slightly mismatched geezers on a sight-seeing/skirt-chasing trek to the island of ice and volcanoes. Its pleasures are slight, but rewarding, if you know where to look for them.
Paul Eenhoorn, of “This is Martin Bonner,” is a depressed retired bank manager whose second wife just ditched him.
Gregarious, drawling Mitch (Earl Lynn Nelson of “Pilgrim Song”) is a New Orleans surgeon, Colin’s ex-brother-in-law and a hale fellow determined to get Colin out of his funk with a vacation. He’s bought them both a trip to Iceland.
“It’s already decided,” Mitch announces. That becomes something like his mantra.
Co-writer/directors Martha Stephens and Aaron Katz, working in a sort of post-mumblecore style, don’t give these two a lot to do or that much to talk about. We get their history together. But Mitch drives the conversations — about women, younger women, famous women and sex.
And Colin plays along with his boorishness, hiding his occasional cringe from the blowhard nice enough to spring for this trip.
Two coeds — one of them a cousin of Mitch’s — show up, and he’s determined to take them out for a five star meal. Here’s my Platinum Card, go buy something nice to wear.
“Looks like you got into Janet Reno’s closet!”
The two 20somethings go clubbing with the two pushing-70s, with unpredictable results. Then they fly off, and Mitch and Colin drive their rented Hummer across the gorgeous Icelandic countryside, from geysers to spas, hot springs to seaside retreats. They eat well, drink a lot and dance on the black volcanic sand of Iceland’s beaches. Sometimes, they bicker.
Forget the Neil Simon analogy — this is “The Trip” with far fewer laughs. But the actors — both of whom have found (indie) stardom late in life — make the seemingly improvised banter feel fresh, even when Mitch is trying too hard, even when Colin is biting his tongue.
One of them has a secret. It’s not much of a secret. One of them has to find his way back to the human race, but it’s not a long trek.
The co-directors pepper the soundtrack with ’80s sync-and-guitar pop (Big Country) or bands that sound like they’re from that era (Monster Party). It adds bubbles to the show, but doesn’t change the essentially deadpan, amusingly banal nature of this journey and the two charming old men who take it.
　
MPAA Rating: R for some language, sexual references and drug use
Cast: Paul Eenhoorn, Earl Lynn Nelson
Credits: Written and directed Aaron Katz and Martha Stephens. A Sony Classics release.
Running time: 1:35

The trailer to Terry Gilliam’s “The Zero Theorem” proves he’s still got the vision.