A self-taught critic and genuine movie geek
Once upon a time, a little girl was sent on a long journey to live with her father and her stepmother in a castle in a tiny kingdom called Rhode Island. That isn’t quite right, since it’s just a really big house, and her father isn’t actually married to the new lady in his life, but this is, in the end, a fairy tale, all right.
Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. Morgan Freeman says it in the voiceover, so it must be true, even if it does sound faintly silly. It’s about the only thing this version has in common with the first Conan movie, though, so I thought I might as well mention it.
Little-known fact: When I was in college, I was the pizza-delivering Movie Critic Next Door. Well, okay, I was just a pizza delivery driver, not yet a movie critic of any sort. Yes, I was the only female driver, and yes, I worked for Domino’s, though the 30-minute guarantee was already a thing of the past. It was not, however, a guarantee of a free pizza; you actually got a coupon for $3 off your next order or something like that.
It occurred to me while at the theatre that probably a good proportion of the people there had never seen the original Planet of the Apes. They work in one of the most ultra-famous lines from the original at one point, and aside from me, only about five people reacted. This is probably not the reaction the filmmakers might have hoped for, but really, you don’t have to know the first film very well.
Continue reading “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”
Yes, someone did get a little cutesy with the title. Don’t let that throw you, though. It may only be rated PG-13, but it’s got plenty of violence, explosions, and just-barely-off-camera gore. Everyone has a gun, and nearly everyone knows how to use it. It isn’t a cute movie by any stretch of the imagination.