In this era of constant reboots and re-imaginings and the like, “Planet of the Apes” has had a pretty successful run. 2011’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” was such a big hit both commercially and critically that pundits were talking about an unprecedented motion-capture-based Oscar nomination for Andy Serkis as lead ape Caesar (it didn’t happen, but it was fun to speculate). Two follow-up films in 2014 and 2017 weren’t shabby either, and it looked like the series was going to stop at a taut little trilogy. But now we’re back with “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” which takes place in the same continuity as Caesar without overextending the neatly-wrapped arc.

Set 300 years after Caesar’s passing, apes have taken over the world landscape, while humanity is all but wiped out. The apes have formed tribes and communities, and even taken to domesticating animals like horses. Our new hero Noa (Owen Teague) is part of a tribe that trains eagles, even bonding with them like family members. He and his friends Soona (Lydia Peckham) and Anaya (Travis Jeffrey) make risky climbs to pick out the best eggs for a ceremony to impress leaders Dar (Sara Wiseman) and Koro (Neil Sandilands), Noa’s mother and father, respectively. Noa has a rare encounter with a human, followed by an even worse encounter with a malevolent ape army that ransacks his village and takes surviving tribe members hostage.

Left for dead, Noa soon sets out on a mission to rescue what little remains of his home and family. He meets wizened old ape Raka (Peter Macon), who becomes his mentor. He also re-encounters human Mae (Freya Allan) and the two form an unlikely bond, even though the two species have been feuding for generations. They’re eventually captured by head pillager Sylva (Eka Darville) and taken to the titular Kingdom. The good news is that Noa is reunited with the rest of his tribe, the bad news is that they’re all enslaved by mad king Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand).

Surprisingly, Proximus doesn’t hate humans as much as the other apes in these movies. He likes their culture and even keeps one (William H. Macy) as a sort of pet. Unfortunately, his love of humans has led to him picking up some of their worst tendencies, like greed and manipulation and a thirst for power. He’s convinced that if he can get into a locked human vault, he can use the human “knowledge” (mostly weapons) inside to take over the world. Noa and Mae agree that they can’t let that happen, but they have different, and perhaps conflicting motivations.

To be honest, until it reaches the Kingdom, this movie drags. The destruction of the peaceful village is just so expected from this kind of movie, as is the journey filled with unlikely friendships. Fortunately things pick up toward the end, with the psychology of shifting loyalties and some memorable action. Let’s just say that this movie adds another chapter to this franchise’s complex history with gun violence.

The exciting conclusion is admittedly quite successful in making the audience (including myself, since I’m recommending it) forget what a slog the movie was beforehand. “Kingdom” is going to do well enough that we’ll probably see another “Planet of the Apes” in the near future, and sure, I’m interested enough to stay with this continuity for a while. No character in this movie is as memorable as Serkis’ Caesar, of course, but I’d like to see how some relationships and journeys develop. It won’t happen for this movie, but who knows, maybe a future installment can finally score one of the apes that elusive Oscar nomination.

Grade: B-

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence/action. Its running time is 145 minutes.

Robert R. Garver is a graduate of the Cinema Studies program at New York University. His weekly movie reviews have been published since 2006.

Babes, 2024.

Directed by Pamela Adlon.
Starring Ilana Glazer, Michelle Buteau, John Carroll Lynch, Oliver Platt, Sandra Bernhard, Stephan James, Hasan Minhaj, Keith Lucas, Kenneth Lucas, Caleb Mermelstein-Knox, Elena Ouspenskaia, Crystal Finn, and Whoopi Goldberg.

SYNOPSIS:

It tells the story of Eden who becomes pregnant from a one-night-stand and leans on her married best friend and mother of two to guide her.

From director Pamela Adlon and the screenwriting team of star Ilana Glazer and Josh Rabinowitz, Babes is fittingly gross in its comedic exploration of the messy, torturous process of pregnancy and childbirth. The great trick pulled off here is that the filmmakers accomplish this primarily through side-splitting dialogue and observations about the transformation of a woman’s body rather than taking the cheap route and crossing into something more pointlessly graphic. There is a balancing act to gross-out humor and one that is also easy to appreciate here, as much of this material hasn’t necessarily been mined for laughs yet. And if it has, it probably didn’t have fearless women collaborators steering the ship to find something authentic and moving inside all the jokes.

Eden (Ilana Glazer) and Dawn (Michelle Buteau) are childhood best friends, now living four subway rides apart, with the former making that trek every Thanksgiving to hang out. Michelle, now married to her supportive husband Marty (Hasan Minhaj), already has one child and is expecting another baby when they reunite. They decide to see a movie, with Michelle moving from seat to seat, exclaiming that they are all wet, amusingly unaware that her water is breaking or on the verge of breaking. Suddenly, Michelle is crawling out of that building in a scene reminiscent of and physically funny in the same manner as Leonardo DiCaprio on Quaaludes trying to reach the front door in The Wolf of Wall Street.

That’s the idea of the comedy here, which leaves no stone unturned, diving into every stage of pregnancy, as Eden finds herself with child after a one-night stand with Claude (Stephan James), making the most of a small role and establishing believable chemistry together. For reasons I won’t reveal, although I will say it’s nothing cruel, Claude is out of the picture, leaving Eden set to be a single mom, looking to the already overstressed and exhausted Michelle (who also has a job and further career ambitions beyond parenting) for guidance and support.

There is a tender, quietly devastating moment when Eden asks Michelle if she really thinks she can do this. Michelle’s facial expressions read no, but she is physically unable to tell her best friend that she doesn’t believe in her or that she has no idea what she is getting into.  Part of Michelle’s arc also involves the assumption of being ready to have a second child and the feeling she has had since she got through pregnancy. The early stages of infancy find before everything will be fine and possibly easier next time, when, if anything, it might turn out to be more nightmarish, even if that nightmare does come with a bundle of joy.

Even when Babes is speeding full-throttle through jokes about morning sickness, crazy horniness, amniotic fluids, frighteningly long needles being inserted you know where, or something out-of-left-field silly like Eden wanting a prom-themed childbirth, it’s grounding that comedy into a raw story of a tested best friendship. The situation only becomes more taxing on Michelle, whereas Eden might be planning to lean too much on her for support. The point is that even when the inevitable comedy cliché of fighting best friends arrives, it works here through cutting dialogue and real emotions vented.

Despite maintaining tight control over that characterization, Babes does lose steam as it goes on. This is also not helped by some of the bigger comedic set pieces being dragged out slightly longer than necessary. It’s also almost too convenient for the story that Eden has no one else to turn to for support, although her estranged father does appear for a moving scene. There is also the feeling that, aside from the compelling friendship drama, one has seen everything the jokes have to offer roughly an hour in. Still, when Babes is funny, it is howlingly hilarious and treads new ground, unfiltered and full of infectious, crass energy. 

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=embed/playlist

We checked out Tarot to see if it’s better than the trailers suggested, and surprisingly the answer is yes.

*warning: minor spoilers for Tarot

I need to start this review with total honesty: my expectations for Tarot going in were pretty low. In fact the only reason I went to see it is because tarot cards were heavily featured in the plot and I wanted to see what they were doing with it.

The plot follows a group of friends who decide to mess around with a mysterious deck of tarot cards after finding them at a house they’re renting for the weekend. It’s all fun and games until the predictions start coming true in the most gruesome way possible.

To my surprise, Tarot was actually fun to watch. To be fair, how the characters get into this mess is still predictably idiotic, but really a bit of stupidity from the characters is usually required for most horror films to work. Once the story is set in motion though, it plays very well. The writers put some thought into the “why” of how this story works and it shows in the final result. I’m sure real practitioners of tarot would roll their eyes at several aspects of this story, but I really think what the writers came up with worked for the sake of the overall story.

One thing Tarot does very well is with the jump scares, of which there are many. It becomes a bit predictable towards the end, but this doesn’t make them any less scary. The main enemy of this story, who will remain nameless for spoiler reasons, is very terrifying with how they’re presented. It would be interesting to see this character explored more deeply in another story. While the ending of the film seemed quite final, it wouldn’t be the first time a story has been reworked to let a monster reappear in another entry. I’m not sure if that will happen with Tarot, but I wouldn’t mind if it did.

Tarot also did a good job with its characters. A lot of times in films of this genre, most of the characters are barely fleshed out, with only the final girl and maybe the penultimate survivor getting the most development. That’s not the case here though. Enough time is spent with the characters before terrible things begin to happen that the audience develops a bond, albeit a slim one, with all of them. This makes their horrific fates all the harder to watch, especially toward the end of the film.

I will say that Tarot didn’t quite stick the landing. For a minor spoiler, there’s a last second twist that, while funny, also takes the audience right out of the dramatic moment that just finished. I commend the writers for sticking so closely to the story’s premise, but there was surely a better way to go about it.

All in all, while not the most original story, Tarot is good spooky fun. Check it out if you have a free afternoon, you might be surprised at how much you enjoy it.