Today’s movie: Planet of the Apes

We were looking for some action, some chest pounding, screaming action today. And hoping a bunch of apes could deliver. Did they? You bet. Tim Burton has reimagined Planet of the Apes, going back to Pierre Boulle’s original novel and mostly ignoring the cheesy Charleton Heston version–although the main character is American, not French, and he travels in time, not to another star. Mark Wahlberg keeps pushing the memory of his days as a Calvin Klein underwear model further and further into the dim recesses, Helena Bonham Carter shows the complexities of being an ape with a conscious, and Tim Roth is positively vicious as the human-hating general. Is Burton making a movie about racism and ignorance or an action flick?

Did you know Boulle also wrote The Bridge over the River Kwai, made into an excellent movie with Alec Guinness?