BEFORE: So here's my plan, for what happens after July 4 - and I had to consider what movies are being released in June that I might want to see. (Since I've been to the movies a LOT lately, I've seen just about every preview out there, multiple times.). Based on where I'm going to end up on 7/4, I could easily link to ONE of the three big June films I want to see ("Jurassic World", "The Incredibles 2" or "Ant-Man and the Wasp") and so far I haven't figured out how to work in all three. But ONE of those paths links me, within a week, to a certain documentary that will allow me to kick off a Summer Rock Concert event, of sorts. This is about 17 or 18 rock documentaries (rockumentaries?) that I either have on DVD or are available on Netflix, and they've just been sort of building up at the bottom of my list.
But, with Netflix, you never know when a film's going to disappear, so it's imperative that I try to get to some of these sooner, before they're gone. (Seriously, can we do something about this? I can't be the only person bothered by the fact that when I go to look for a film I saw last month on Netflix, suddenly it's not there any more. Who can fix this problem?) I took a little time last week while on break to link these films together, and it turns out that if I add a couple more that are on iTunes or Amazon, I can stitch together about four weeks worth of programming, and many of these are films that I've been dying to see, but couldn't find a way to get to. This will clear a LOT of films off of my list, while still maintaining my linking chain (umm, except for maybe four films at the end).
When I did my geek-themed documentary chain last year, what I learned was that there are only so many "experts" in a field to interview, and those films kept going back to the same people again and again, so maybe it will work the same for rock and roll. (They don't always list every interview subject, or every person who appears in archival footage on the IMDB, so I'll have to stay sharp and look for ways to work in those last 4 films.). But I think this is a "go" for the Summer Rock Concert series, especially since I'm not going out to San Diego this year, for the first time in about 15 years.
So I can relax now, my chain's good until mid-August, and I've got plenty of time between now and then to figure out how to get to my back-to-school chain. I've just got to stick to the program and get through Memorial Day, Father's Day and the Fourth of July, then things should fall into place. Meanwhile, Woody Harrelson carries over from "Solo: A Star Wars Story", and he'll be here tomorrow as well.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" (Movie #2,426)
THE PLOT: After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind.
AFTER: It's a little weird to cover this one right after "Solo", because the two movies faced a similar storytelling challenge, and managed to solve it in different ways. How do you have characters interacting with each other when they don't all speak the same language, or in the same way? Caesar is not the only talking ape, but there are only a few other apes that manage to speak as well as he does. So the other apes mostly resort to sign language, and this makes sense in a way because humans have been known to teach apes ASL, they clearly have the mental capacity for it, even if their lips and throats can't make all the sounds. Or is it a brain capacity thing? I probably should research that a bit before I weigh in.
"Solo", on the other hand, has Chewbacca speaking in Shyriiwook, but clearly capable of understanding Basic (English), while other characters like Han do the opposite, speak Basic but somehow understand Shyriiwook. Han is like most of the apes in reverse, when he does try to speak in Chewbacca's language, it's very broken Shyriiwook, he gets some of the words wrong but he does get his point across, and thus endears himself to the bestial (but very caring) Chewie. For all other characters, including the audience, they have to figure out what Chewbacca is saying from the tone and the context. Good luck with that. "Solo" the movie also resorted to subtitles for Chewbacca for the first time, and "War for the Planet of the Apes" also uses this tool, so in a way the films are similar, even though they generally took different tacks to solve this communication problem.
Anyway, the humans are on the outs in this film, attacking the apes in a last-ditch effort to wipe them out, but at the same time, it appears that the simian flu has mutated, and the latest incarnation is slowly taking away human's ability to speak, or to process language or whatever. This latest twist sort of brings the saga full circle, because way back in the Charlton Heston original film, he landed on a world where apes could speak and the humans could not. There are many other shout-outs or callbacks to the original film, because that 1968 film also had a woman named "Nova" in it, and this film bends over backwards to perhaps tell her origin. But in the end it's unclear if this is definitely the same girl, or if it's all one big coincidence, or just a little something to get the fans wondering.
Harrelson plays The Colonel, a military man who's in charge of an outpost near where the apes live, and he seems to have his own opinions about whether it makes more sense for man to live in harmony with the other primates, or to keep trying to wipe them out. And somewhere up north there's more military men coming, perhaps to join the Colonel, or perhaps to try to show him the error of his ways, this also is a little unclear. But all the apes know is that the Colonel manages to capture the vast majority of them, and he places them in internment camps, treats them like prisoners with very little food and water, and forces them to build a wall. Clearly this plot must have been in production for several years, so any resemblance to U.S. politics since 2016 is coincidental, but if you want to go ahead and draw connections between the Colonel and our current President, feel free.
It's perhaps easier to draw connections between the Colonel and Brando's Col. Kurtz, since they both have shaved heads - the movie even makes this suggestion for us by showing some graffiti on an underground tunnel that reads "APE-ocalypse Now". Just in case you couldn't make the connection for yourself. But when Caesar and a small, ragtag bunch of simians realize that most of their fellow apes are now essentially POW's, that's when their mission turns more into something resembling "The Great Esc-APE". (Sorry, couldn't resist.).
Once the other humans arrive from the North, it's an all-out battle, with guerrilla warfare vs. umm, GORILLA warfare. Can the apes survive and get clear of the humans, and travel through the desert to their new homeland? And if so, will that be the end of the story, or is there still more to tell?
Also starring Amiah Miller, Gabriel Chavarria, and voices/mo-cap performances by Andy Serkis (last seen in "Black Panther"), Steve Zahn (last seen in "The Ridiculous 6"), Terry Notary (last heard in "Avengers: Infinity War"), Karin Konoval (last heard in "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes"), Ty Olsson (last seen in "Godzilla"), Toby Kebbell (last seen in "Ben-Hur"), Michael Adamthwaite, Judy Greer (last seen in "What Women Want"), Sara Canning, Max Lloyd-Jones, Devyn Dalton, Aleks Paunovic, Alessandro Juliani.
RATING: 6 out of 10 apple slices
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