The recap first: before we can know where we are, we must be very certain to know where we’ve been. Now, the notion that there is a thing called the “Amityville series” is a tricky, difficult claim to defend on the merits, but it’s at least the case that there are certain behind-the-scenes maneuverings that […]

Before I go on and on about how Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is such a  good example of the transporting cinematic power of unbridled spectacle, so profoundly, importantly great at creating a brand new world for our eyeballs to soak up and our brains to play in, that it almost completely […]

Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: if we are being strict with words, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets is closer to the […]

All good things must come to an end, and unfortunately for the Planet of the Apes franchise, that happened sometime in between 1972’s Conquest of the Planet of the Apes and 1973’s Battle for the Planet of the Apes. I wouldn’t say that Battle… is “all” bad, nor even predominately bad, not necessarily. But it’s […]

It would be a blatant exaggeration to call Dunkirk an experimental film, or any such thing. But for a film with a $150 million price tag that’s been positioned as the biggest superhero-free Warner Bros. tentpole of 2017, it does just about as much experimenting as it could possibly dare. The film, on paper, is […]

Once upon a time, Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form co-founded a production company called Platinum Dunes, whose purpose was to remake old horror films, but shinier and worse. I mean, presumably the “worse” part wasn’t in the corporate statement of principles, and it just worked out that way. I think it’s entirely fair […]

Let no-one accuse Conquest of the Planet of the Apes of playing it safe to avoid any accusation of tastelessness: the 1973 film about apes overthrowing their human rules draws very explicitly from the rhetoric and imagery of the Black Power movement, as well as the protests against the Vietnam War. And this in service […]

Two things first. One, War for the Planet of the Apes is an entirely excellent bit of popcorn drama, the first summer movie of 2017 (an important, subtly different thing than any old movie released in the summer) that I think has a fighting chance of still being passionately remembered 20 years hence, but having […]

TIM: I’d like to thank Zev Valancy for his contribution to the Second Quinquennial Antagony & Ecstasy ACS Fundraiser & Review Auction, which in his case wasn’t simply a run-of-the-mill review; for his money, he wanted to have to do some work. So his request was that he and I join forces for one of […]

There aren’t all that many endings that would seem to automatically forestall any possibility of a sequel, but surely “destroying the whole world in a massive nuclear explosion” would make that short, elite list. Nevertheless, after Beneath the Planet of the Apes played precisely that card, it fell to that film’s screenwriter, Paul Dehn, to […]

Beneath the Planet of the Apes is a tough one to deal with. Soldier all the way on through to the ending, and your reward is one of the most impressively demented (in my opinion) and most influential (somewhat more objective) conceits in all of 1970s movie sci-fi – and with the ’70s just five […]

Every week this summer, we’ll be taking an historical tour of the Hollywood blockbuster by examining an older film that is in some way a spiritual precursor to one of the weekend’s wide releases. This week: War for the Planet of the Apes is likely to be the last film in that franchise for a […]