Fruitvale Station (2013)

Director: Ryan Coogler

Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, Kevin Durand, Chad Michael Murray

Have I Seen it Before: Here we are. My 1,000th review. I had a list of potential candidates for this entry, but something became clear when I considered this one. I have long put off watching this film. Clearly, there’s an impulse to wait for a particular kind of mood to watch a film dealing with this subject matter. But I swear, the main reason I’ve delayed watching the film is that something was exciting about perpetually having a new Ryan Coogler film to watch.

Ah, well. I’m glad I picked one that I felt some anticipation for as number 1,000.

Did I Like It: Yes.

You probably want more. Okay.

I have a deep, unrelenting suspicion of anyone who can get to the end of this film and not feel palpable anguish. The story unfolded that way in real life, and you can’t escape it, outside of burying yourself in cynicism. Don’t do it. There’s no hope for the world to get any better without confronting the worst parts of the here and now, and the events of January 1, 2009 are very much still the here and now.

But that doesn’t begin to cover Coogler’s calling cards of the skills he has only built upon in the ensuing years. His debut feature is a ruthless machine of character development. In a flash of a runtime, we know, like, and feel for Oscar Grant III (Jordan). There is no knee-jerk impulse on display to artificially graft on a traditional plot to the proceedings. This is Grant’s life. We’re just guests.

But there is a degree of slyness still here. Coogler can’t help it. I run through the entirety of the film and feel like I know where everything is heading. I’m living in the here and now. I know how these stories end, but I didn’t know this story. And yet, I couldn’t help but wonder if there’s a misdirection coming up ahead. Tragedy looms, but is it a tragic end for Oscar? Is it a tragic end for another character? Is it an end at all, and the tragedy will just continue ad infinitum?

There is no misdirection. Somehow, that becomes the greatest misdirect of all. We’re left with an exquisitely crafted portrait of a life, all told in its last day. Had Coogler moved on to diminishing returns, we would still be able to look at the film and see something remarkable.

Thankfully, Coogler was just getting started.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024)

Director: Wes Ball

Cast: Owen Teague, Kevin Durand, Freya Allan, William H. Macy

Have I Seen It Before: Nope. Brand new…?

Did I Like It: On spec this film has a lot working in its favor, and a lot working against it. For one, the previous trilogy of Apes films took a moribund franchise* and infused in with more than enough good will to go around. In my review of those films, I struggled to find anything that might not have been up to snuff, even with Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) my least favorite of those three films.

On the other hand, the fundamental engine which made those films as special as they are—spoilers, it is Andy Serkis—is nowhere to be found.

Where does that leave this film? Mostly fine. I think Owen Teague especially equates himself rather well, when he could have been overwhelmed by the legacy of the truly great performance which preceded him. He has a certain sensitive quality which brings to mind Roddy McDowall, and feels perfectly at home in this story taking place as the titular planet is more fully taken over by the titular apes.

The film that surrounds Teague’s Noa isn’t quite as good as its predecessors, although tis certainly a fair sight better than most of the movies for which the aforementioned Roddy McDowall had to politely show up. The larger portion of the first half of the film drags interminably, and feels like it is borrowing too heavily from the Serkis-led films. Each of the predecessors felt like a different from each other, which is enough of a small miracle from a modern blockbuster series. Once things pick up and the goals of the still-verbal humans out in the world become clear, things are a bit more interesting, but ultimately not as well-crafted. War brought the human race even lower, but this one seems to insist on retconning that to the point that almost most of the humans are behaving as if the Simian flu had only broken out last year as opposed to 300 years ago. It makes the saga all a bit murky, although, again, not nearly as murky as the time-loopy stuff of previous films…

Although if there are more Apes to come, maybe they’ll come around to that stuff too. More than a few characters do spend more than a little amount of time looking out through telescopes during the film, if you catch my meaning.

*For once, I’m not specifically trying to drag the later work of Tim Burton. For all of the charm that the latter entries in the original Apes films have, they weren’t exactly the big-time awe-inspiring experience of the original.