Room & Planet of the Apes | Weekly Recap 4

Hello everyone! Today we have a lot to get through, so let’s jump straight in. Starting off the week is the critically aclaimed Room. This earned Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay several awards, which we definitely thought were well deserved. We find it peculiar that Larson has declined in her acting talents of late, but Tremblay only gets better, most recently giving us the single best scene from Doctor Sleep which we got a lot of morbid enjoyment out of. However, while the first half of Room is a brilliant piece of cinema, any sense of drama and tension is immediately dismantled when the film just keeps going for another hour past the climax. At first we thought it would be a short but sweet epilogue, only to realise Abrahamson inexplicably decided to make this the main focus of the plot. Two films were spliced together here, and only one was worth watching. Watch this film for the performances, but don’t stick around expecting something that is consistently engaging.

Room: https://boxd.it/1z3ASH ⭐⭐⭐

Now for something a little bit more obscure, Two Mules for Sister Sara is a Clint Eastwood western without Sergio Leone at the helm. The writing and performances are certainly good, though we definitely felt like there was far too much talking, especially since Eastwood’s strengths lie in his charming silence. It’s interesting to note that A Fistful of Dollars likewise inititally had an overabundance of dialogue, but Eastwood had the foresight to cut a lot of his own lines. It’s a shame he didn’t here (or perhaps he wasn’t allowed to) as something was lost from his character by there ironically being too much. This film is not Siegel’s best film by any means – that title most likely goes to Dirty Harry, which in fairness we enjoyed just as much as Two Mules – but this is nevertheless a fun adventure with gripping characters, and the cinematography frequently surprises in its artistry.

Two Mules for Sister Sara: https://boxd.it/1zlRMx ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Onwards to our first non-film, the Brazilian series 3% is a fascinating allegory of our own world. Set in a dystopian future where society is physically and ideologically divided between the elites and everyone else, a lot of very interesting narrative arcs arise from the chaos of characters. We are rather conflicted on this series, as it is very uneven in its quality from episode to episode. On the one hand, the many vibrant characters are phenomenal, fleshed out to their maximum potential to make for truly impressive drama. On the other hand, the plot is at times simply idiotic, with brainless decisions constantly making for a frustrating viewing experience. Even so, the premise is inherently something that would hook us from start to finish, so while the writing and production design isn’t the best (though the budget does noticeably increase with every season), everything is held together just enough so that the myriad of flaws become minute in comparison to the grandiose battle of minds, a chess game where the pieces clash with tremendous vigour.

3%
Season 1: https://boxd.it/1vMk83 ⭐⭐⭐
Season 2: https://boxd.it/1wPPZR ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Season 3: https://boxd.it/1yP5rR ⭐⭐⭐
Season 4: https://boxd.it/1zAtrb ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Speaking of chess, after finishing the fourth and final season of 3% we immediately jumped onto Magnus. This is a documentary about the current chess World Champion, Magnus Carlsen, detailing his childhood and chess journey, from prodigy to grandmaster to the best player who ever lived. Perhaps there isn’t a great deal of substance to this documentary – and perhaps one has to be a chess player themselves to glean every nugget of value that sparkles inside here – but since we are chess players ourselves, we absolutely loved it. Now, 2020 may have been a dissapointing year for the world, but it definitely wasn’t for the chess community. Although none of what follows is covered by the documentary (since it was made in 2016), The Queen’s Gambit revitalised the game for the public, with an explosion of online chess activity and engagement with the Twitch streaming geniuses such as Eric Rosen and Hikaru Nakamura. Magnus himself is facing serious competition for his title, even more so after his drastic defeat at the hands of Dubov. So we definitely recommend watching this film above all others from this week, simply because it offers an introduction to such a dynamic and rewarding world.

Magnus: https://boxd.it/1zBGVZ ⭐⭐⭐⭐

But what is a Recap without at least one film to dampen our spirits. Beneath the Planet of the Apes is the second film in the original Planet of the Apes series, and what an embarassment it is. We did like the first film – even if it’s hardly a masterpiece – but they completely dropped the ball with this sequel. It’s simply too absurd to put into words, with psychic humans and a gold nuke appearing from literally nowhere. At least there’s a lot of killing to quench our dehydration, but the sooner we erase this from our minds the better. Remarkably, the third film is actually good. In fact, we would argue it’s the best of the series so far. Escape from the Planet of the Apes quite literally escapes from all the nonsense that plagued the previous two films, with the apes now being the strangers in our human world. Zira and Cornelius have way more personality than the human protagonists we were forced to endure, leading to genuinely funny scenes with characters that we actually care about, and a plot that actually makes sense instead of making up stuff as it goes along. The writing is far tighter here, so while the budget is markedly poorer, the film itself is enjoyable to watch.

The Planet of the Apes: https://boxd.it/1v4t5f ⭐⭐⭐
Beneath: https://boxd.it/1zCN4v ⭐
Escape: https://boxd.it/1zJeo5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐