TheRetroCritic

Month Of The Apes wouldn't have been complete without a Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Vlog so... There it is!

After the ridiculously fun Mars Attacks! , Tim Burton soon went back to sci-fi with his very own "reimagining" of a classic and famously did not exactly charm critics and audiences with 2001's Planet Of The Apes , a film widely regarded as his worst effort to date. Even if Dark Shadows and Alice In Wonderland got just about as much crap upon their releases. The sad thing is that, although this Planet Of The Apes has a few things going for it, it's a hard one to defend seeing as it gets so much wrong. Not even just in terms of how it differs from the original story but as a film in general. To start on a positive note, however, I should point out that the film sets itself up rather well with a terrific score by the ever-reliable Danny Elfman and the best ape make-up effects in probably any movie. The all-star cast, which includes Charlton Heston himself in a cameo appearance, disappears under those effects and that makes it much easier to buy the whole talking

I attempt to find 10 cool things about Tim Burton's Planet Of The Apes . Wish me luck!

Before Bruce Willis was sent back in time in Looper , he was sent back in time in Twelve Monkeys and, funnily enough, things didn't turn out so good for him then either! Further proof that, if you're going to mess with time travel, you'd better have a Doc Brown helping ya. Terry Gilliam's modern take on La Jetée 's themes is set in the near future (well, the late nineties, anyway) when a virus has wiped out most of humanity leaving only animals to rule the Earth, Planet Of The Apes -style except they don't talk and ride horses, that'd be absurd. The remaining people, who live underground, decide to send back in time some prisoner in order to try and figure out what the hell happened, who started this and perhaps stop it altogether. It's not quite clear how this time-travelling technology works and that's dealt with abstractly, which is probably a good move seeing as it cuts down on what could have been 10 dull minutes of explanation. Being a n

Check out my review of  Planet Of The Apes   on the PS1 only on retro gaming super-site  1MoreCastle.com .

What a strange franchise. Really, when you think about it, that was five movies about talking apes they made back in the day, along with a TV series, of course, and now two more films! After going beneath the Planet Of The Apes , escaping it, conquering it, now, finally, we get to see the epic Battle For The Planet Of The Apes and, after such a massive build up, it's sure to be something special and unforgettable. Or a dud, whatever. As it turns out, the Apes franchise ended with more of a whimper than an all-out "battle". With the ever growing plot-holes added on between each movie from the first sequel onwards, reaching near-incomprehensible levels, the logic of this whole story finally comes crumbling down in a messy effort featuring yet another fine performance by Roddy McDowall and a couple of promising ideas but mostly unremarkable developments. For one thing, it's weird that Caesar is still alive and that the world crumbled this easily off-camera. B

Going back to this one post- Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes (and Rise) was certainly a bizarre experiment seeing as Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes is essentially the basis for these reboots even if it has a pretty different vibe and plot to it. As with every Planet Of The Apes sequel, the film starts with some hugely unconvincing expositional dialog only there to explain what happened between movies and justify stuff that was foreseen in Escape From The Planet Of The Apes . Roddy McDowall is back, not as Cornelius mind you but as that very ape's son Caesar, who was being kept hidden by circus ringmaster Armando (Ricardo Montalban reprising his role) as the humans started freaking out about the future and, following a disease affecting cats and dogs, using apes as slaves performing all kinds of mindless manual tasks for them. Ludicrous? Definitely, but no more than time-travelling apes. The thing is, this whole pet scenario makes very little sense and the fact that all the

Long before Peter Jackson took on the iconic beast, John Guillermin tried his hand at a King Kong movie and, although it didn't exactly shake the world upon its release, how does it hold up looking back? Can man-in-King Kong-costume outdo CGI Kong? Actually... In terms of the King Kong character and how bad you feel for him come the inevitable downer ending, I'd probably give the point to this movie. Where Jackson's mega budget motion-captured Kong was given far too many moments to be cute and likeable, this admittedly faker-looking Kong is more akin to the 1933 classic's depiction: very much monstrous but also subtly innocent. Which means that, by the time the surprisingly violent and bloody end scene happens, it should hit you pretty hard. It's refreshing to re-watch this one post-the 2005 version as it makes the latter's flaws stand out a little better. The recent film just tried too hard to get to that dramatic ending (see the random ice-skating sc

Here's a blast from the past. If you've ever wondered what Michael Gough was up to before he was making soup for Batman as reliable butler Alfred in Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher's movies, boy are you in for a treat. In Konga , Gough plays a megalomaniac botanist who devises a formula which would allow him to grow plants and animals to ridiculous sizes. We know his research is valid because some of the plants he's brought back from Africa and planted in his greenhouse are huge, penis-shaped and clearly made of papier maché. Think the original Little Shop Of Horrors but in colour and somehow even sillier. Our mad scientist sure gets up to some crazy sh** in this movie but unlike, say, Victor Frankenstein, who more or less seems like a normal enough dude before he loses it and starts digging up bodies for science, this guy is a bonafide creep from start to finish: he treats his assistant like garbage, keeping her quiet about what he's doing with the promise o

Based on the literary classic, Journey To The West: Conquering The Demons is actually a prequel setting up the iconic team of characters we all know and love and how Taoist priest Tang Sanzang (Wen Zhang) got to meet them and, eventually, journey with them. And, since Stephen Chow's in charge (along with co-director Derek Kwok), you can expect a pretty unique take on the familiar tale. To give you an idea, the film opens with a fish demon eating a father Jaws -style in front of his child (with blood spilling in the water) and, soon after, eating the child. From the get-go, this is a brutal, surprisingly dark affair. Which makes the more light-hearted tone of the humour feel quite mean-spirited. In a good way. Parts of this movie could comfortably be part of a horror movie in the vein of The Cell . Think a dark comedy like Delicatessen , with its odd bursts of disturbing moments, but with an omnipresent cartoonish feel. Chow is certainly not sugar-coating anything this time.

Not content with churning out tons of Godzilla movies, legendary Japanese studio Toho followed a King Kong vs. Godzilla crossover movie with a straight-up King Kong movie entitled King Kong Escapes which saw poor old Kong not only get kidnapped (again) but get hypnotized and eventually fight a robot version of himself. The film opens with the baddie, amusingly named Dr. Who, setting his Mecha-Kong (or Mechani-Kong) loose in order to use him as part of some kind of bizarre mining operation where a rare element would be uncovered. Unfortunately, Mecha-Kong turns out to be useless and nowhere near as powerful as the real Kong. So, you've guessed it, Dr. Who goes to find the iconic beast and, with the help of some well-delivered ether bombs, Kong is soon put to sleep and taken back to Who's lair where he is hypnotized by a glowing lamp and sent out to do the job Mecha-Kong couldn't. As with every single plan Dr. Who's ever had in this movie, this all backfires and King

Tarzan may not be the one Disney film people rave about constantly and it tends to be completely forgotten these days with the company's CGI efforts being such a huge hit everywhere. Even nostalgia-wise, the film is left in a kind of no man's land between Mulan and Toy Story 2 . My Disney loyalty, when it came to the animated features, unfortunately ended post-Mulan, which is odd since I loved the latter. I wouldn't sit through or fall in love with another Disney flick until finally seeing Toy Story years after everybody else. This thankfully kick-started my interest in those movies again and I started going back to watch all the good stuff I'd missed. Honestly, Tarzan was one of those. Like Hercules , I never thought I'd have any interest in it at the time: nothing about it sounded or looked all that interesting to me. I was an idiot. It's exactly that kind of attitude which made me miss The Emperor's New Groove back in the day. What I found

And so... Our "Month Of The Apes" truly begins.