Change Your Image
Absinth
Reviews
Planet of the Apes (2001)
The original story re-imagined. Amazing!
When 'The Haunting' flopped at the box office while the ultra-low budget 'Blair Witch Project' became all the rage, it was a prime example of how the most sophisticated high-tech special effects don't guarantee a good remake of a classic movie (or, for that matter, any other movie). Consequently, I expected much the same when I heard of the 'Planet of the Apes' remake: today's advanced effects, prettier actors perhaps, and essentially expensive rehash. Tim Burton's version of the classic epic is a pleasant surprise. Sure enough, the movie does have dazzling special effects--the most impressive beyond a single doubt Rick Baker's ape makeup. And the actor's are, for the most part, new-millennium pretty (even some of the apes). But the story has also been completely and compellingly re-imagined and re-created. This is a new tale which has little in common with the original movie except that they are both based on Pierre Boulle's book--and that they are both excellent. The attention to (often hilarious) detail in Tim Burton's movie is delightful, and for those who remember the original 'Planet of the Apes' well enough, there are also a few pleasantly twisted nods to the classic to discover. The story moves along at a brisk pace and never fails to involve, making the movie seem shorter than it is, and the plot surprises in intelligent ways during the final part of the action. Another wonderful thing to observe is how well the makeup allows the actors behind it to bring their characters to life. While the masks in the original films were impressive, they allowed for little more than moving mouths and the occasional twitching nose. The masks in the new movie, on the other hand, accommodate a seemingly unlimited range of facial expressions. It takes more imagination to picture that there are human faces behind the makeup than it does to accept the simian characters as genuine. This new 'Planet of the Apes' is indeed not a remake, but an original movie based on the same novel that inspired the first one. A strong story, solid characters, AND amazing special effects, that's the stuff the 'suspense of disbelief' is made of. Let's just hope it won't suffer from the same sequel-itis as the original.
Welt am Draht (1973)
Ahead of its time, to say the least!
In these days of ultra-fast processors and the Internet, coming up with a movie like "The Matrix" may seem merely the next step from coining the term 'cyberspace', but do you remember what computers were like in 1974? Right. To come up with the notion of virtual reality back then is truly an amazing feat of the imagination. Fassbinder's movie, of course, has none of the massive gunslinging and pyrotechnics, and a lot of 'artsy' elements instead, but the atmosphere it creates is intense and poses the question how we can know what is real in a dark and gripping manner, making this a chiller and a thriller for the mind. It also takes it up a notch on more recent VR stories: if you get out of one cyberspace, can you be sure you didn't just emerge into another level of virtual reality?