عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Entertainment

Movie Review: ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Finds a New Hero and Will Blow Your Mind

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows a scene from "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes." (20th Century Studios via AP)
This image released by 20th Century Studios shows a scene from "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes." (20th Century Studios via AP)
TT
TT

Movie Review: ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes’ Finds a New Hero and Will Blow Your Mind

This image released by 20th Century Studios shows a scene from "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes." (20th Century Studios via AP)
This image released by 20th Century Studios shows a scene from "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes." (20th Century Studios via AP)

Fans of the “Planet of the Apes” franchise may still be mourning the 2017 death of Caesar, the first smart chimp and the charismatic ape leader. Not to worry: He haunts the next episode, the thrilling, visually stunning “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”

We actually start with Caesar's funeral, his body decorated with flowers and then set alight like a Viking, before fast-forwarding “many generations later.” All apes talk now and most humans don’t, reduced to caveman loin cloths and running wide-eyed and scared, evolution in reverse.

Our new hero is the young ape Noa (Owen Teague) who is like all young adult chimps — seeking his father's approval (even chimp dads just don't understand) and testing his bravery. He is part of a clan that raises pet eagles, smokes fish and lives peacefully.

That all changes when his village is attacked not by humans but by fellow apes — masked soldiers from a nasty kingdom led by the crown-wearing Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand, playing it to the hilt). He has taken Caesar's name but twisted his words to become a tyrannical strongman — sorry, strongape.

Unlike the last movie which dealt with man's inhumanity to animals — concentration camps included — ape-on-ape violence is in the cards for this one, including capturing an entire clan as prisoners. Proximus Caesar's goons use makeshift cattle prods on fellow apes and force them to work while declaring “For Caesar!”

Screenwriter Josh Friedman has cleverly created a movie that examines how ancient stories can be hijacked and manipulated, like how Caesar's non-violent message gets twisted by bad actors. There's also a lot of “Avatar” primitive naivete, and that makes sense since the reboot was shaped by several of that blue alien movie’s makers.

The movie poses some uncomfortable questions about collaborationists. William H. Macy plays a human who has become a sort of teacher-prisoner to Proximus Caesar — reading Kurt Vonnegut to him — and won't fight back. “It is already their world,” he rationalizes.

Along for the heroic ride is a human young woman (Freya Allan, a budding star) who is hiding an agenda but offers Noa help along the way. Peter Macon plays a kindly, book-loving orangutan who adds a jolt of gleeful electricity to the movie and is missed when he goes.

The effects are just jaw-dropping, from the ability to see individual hairs on the back of a monkey to the way leaves fall and the crack of tree limbs echoing in the forest. The sight of apes on horseback, which seemed glitchy just seven years ago, are now seamless. There are also inside jokes, like the use of the name Nova again this time.

Director Wes Ball nicely handles all the thrilling sequences — though the two-and-a-half hour runtime is somewhat taxing — and some really cool ones, like the sight of apes on horseback on a beach, a nod to the original 1968 movie. And like when the apes look through some old illustrated kids' books and see themselves depicted in zoo cages. That makes for some awkward human-ape interaction. “What is next for apes? Should we go back to silence?” our hero asks.

The movie races to a complex face-off between good and bad apes and good and bad humans outside a hulking silo that holds promise to each group. Can apes and humans live in peace, as Caesar hoped? “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” doesn't answer that but it does open up plenty more to ponder. Starting with the potentially crippling proposition of a key death, this franchise has somehow found new vibrancy.

Most Viewed

 
 
Entertainment

Matthew McConaughey on His Sweet Return to the Big Screen

US actor Matthew McConaughey ended a yearslong break from acting with 'The Rivals of Amziah King,' which premiered at the 2025 SXSW film festival. SUZANNE CORDEIRO / AFP
US actor Matthew McConaughey ended a yearslong break from acting with 'The Rivals of Amziah King,' which premiered at the 2025 SXSW film festival. SUZANNE CORDEIRO / AFP
TT
TT

Matthew McConaughey on His Sweet Return to the Big Screen

US actor Matthew McConaughey ended a yearslong break from acting with 'The Rivals of Amziah King,' which premiered at the 2025 SXSW film festival. SUZANNE CORDEIRO / AFP
US actor Matthew McConaughey ended a yearslong break from acting with 'The Rivals of Amziah King,' which premiered at the 2025 SXSW film festival. SUZANNE CORDEIRO / AFP

Matthew McConaughey had plenty of reasons to select "The Rivals of Amziah King," a honey-themed thriller set in the American Southwest, for his return to the big screen after more than five years away.

"The joy, the soul, the humor, the music, the poetry, the mythology, original time, place, and space," the Oscar-winning actor told AFP when asked why he had chosen the indie film for his comeback.

Written and directed by Andrew Patterson, "The Rivals of Amziah King" follows McConaughey's charismatic local honey producer, who splits his time between tending his beehives and playing the banjo in a folk band of friends and neighbors.

"I knew these people. I liked the way they loved each other. I liked the way they fought with each other, I liked the way they cared. I liked the way they use music and humor to survive," the 56-year-old Texan said.

"Amziah is a guy who really, at the heart of himself, gives people belonging, helps people belong, and that's part of the thing.

"This wasn't the reason I did it, but in hindsight, I go: 'That's a nice thing to put out there into the world, and share with people.'"

- 'Strong Indigenous woman' -

McConaughey stepped away from movies after Guy Ritchie's 2019 dark comedy "The Gentlemen," turning his focus to writing his memoir "Greenlights."

Although movie-goers saw him last year in "The Lost Bus," that was filmed after "The Rivals of Amziah King" wrapped.

The Southwestern US tale, which draws on genres like crime, comedy, musical, and drama, sees King's life take on a new purpose when he reconnects with Kateri -- played by Angelina LookingGlass -- a young Native American woman he had first taken in years earlier with his late wife.

With life lessons learned among the bees, communal dinners, and music, King not only helps her gradually integrate into the community, but also passes on his leadership role to her.

However, the young woman soon learns that the world of honey isn't as sweet as it seems.

For LookingGlass, the role was a perfect fit.

"I really loved playing her," the 22-year-old told AFP.

"A lot of people would underestimate her just by looking at her. You know, they wouldn't expect the things that she does.

"Her being this really strong Indigenous woman, and this person that goes under the radar, but then like bites at the end."

That sting was very intentional on the part of Andrew Patterson, who developed the project after his acclaimed debut film, "The Vast of Night" (2019).

Patterson wanted to center the film around a Native American woman who stops at nothing, he told AFP.

"She just uses her intellect and resourcefulness. And I was excited to put that kind of character into the world. That was that was quite literally the germ of an idea that made me want to go, and then eventually the Amziah character came after that," Patterson explained.

McConaughey wasn't initially in his plans, said the indie filmmaker, who also added Kurt Russell to his cast.

"I was just a guy in Oklahoma writing scripts, making little movies. It had nothing. There was no way that this had any chance to get in front of him.

"And over a number of years, and people getting behind my career, and you know, I think in spirit, Matthew and I were on a collision course for each other. There was no way of knowing that it would happen."

Patterson said he was "grateful" to have a movie that will open in US theaters Friday and delighted that it was with such a stellar talent.

I'm "humbled that I'm getting to put Matthew back in cinema after six and a half years," he said.

Entertainment

Movie Review: ‘The End of Oak Street’ Is a Gonzo Good Time

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from "The End of Oak Street." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from "The End of Oak Street." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
TT
TT

Movie Review: ‘The End of Oak Street’ Is a Gonzo Good Time

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from "The End of Oak Street." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Ewan McGregor, left, and Anne Hathaway in a scene from "The End of Oak Street." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

At the end of the block in David Robert Mitchell’s “The End of Oak Street,” is a cul-de-sac with a telephone pole in the middle and wires radiating out like the cables of a big top. It’s a fitting touch for a breakneck, carnivalesque movie made with throwback showmanship.

Summer movies, of course, are not known for lacking in circus-like mayhem. But much of the pastiche delight of the 1980s-set “The End of Oak Street,” a mid-August surprise, is how it absorbs an Amblin-style blockbuster spirit and conjures, without winking irony or belabored homage, a summer thrill ride seemingly designed for the drive-in.

Mitchell’s breakthrough was the nifty 2014 horror “It Follows,” which he followed up with an admirably ambitious but shaggily self-indulgent Los Angeles neo noir, “Under the Silver Lake.” But any indulgences in “The End of Oak Street,” about a 1980s suburban family whose neighborhood is transported through time, are for the audience. “The End of Oak Street” is a bonkers blast.

It’s best going in not knowing anything about the movie’s twists, so tread carefully on the rest of this review. That’s not to say that an enormous amount of “The End of Oak Street” isn’t immediately familiar, starting with the central family.

The Platts live in what looks like a San Fernando Valley neighborhood full of split levels and tidy little streets. Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) have two kids and a dog named Starbuck. Audrey (Maisy Stella) is a teenager and Brian (Christian Convery) is her younger brother.

But from the moment we meet them, during a neighborhood fair, there are obvious cracks in their all-American life. Greg is working a side job delivering pizzas while Denise is secretly typing up a maybe-aspirational novel about a woman dreaming of leaving her family. The kids have their own secrets, too. They suspect their parents are on the cusp of divorcing, and so, seemingly, do Greg and Denise.

Such a framework for sci-fi cataclysm is, naturally, Spielberg 101. But while “The End of Oak Street” is sure to test and restore their familial bonds, Mitchell, who also wrote the script, takes a route that leans more into horror, absurdism and outright silliness.

In any case, yes, there are dinosaurs. It’s both skillful and a lot of fun how Mitchell teases them out. The first signs are mysterious. A flash of light. A strange exotic flower in a neighbor’s backyard. A giant mount of feces in another’s. But soon, the Platts find that their neighborhood is overrun with primordial beasts and surrounded by jungle: Oak Street is suddenly a suburban island in a prehistoric world.

It’s a perfectly “Twilight Zone” plot that inadvertently solves the problems that have plagued the “Jurassic Park” movies for 20 years. If those films have struggled to find an off-island setting, “The End of Oak Street” instead brings the dino isle straight into suburbia. Encounters with raptors and worse transpire across front porches and shag carpets.

You could chalk it all up to good dumb fun. And it is mostly that, with set pieces built to make an audience groan in anticipation or cheer for the successful swing of a sledgehammer. But where “The End of Oak Street” succeeds where so many others fail is in the sincerity it has for its characters. Ridiculous and over-the-top as the concept is, the Platts are firmly grounded. (Hathaway, especially, helps in this department.) The combination of an earnest family drama with CGI hijinks, plus increasingly nutty plotting, make “The End of Oak Street” a fairly nonstop hoot.

Composer Michael Giacchino does his best John Williams impression to match. But Mitchell’s film also increasingly detours from the Spielberg playbook. Only Mitchell would take a moment for a freaked-out Audrey to sneak into the car to pop a cassette in and listen to Steve Winwood’s “Valerie.”

And while it would be pushing it to say there’s that much underneath “The End of Oak Street,” its characters are united in keeping certain things secret out of fear that their spouse or kids or parents can’t handle the truth. The swiftness that the dinosaurs invade their neighborhood could be symbolic of any ecological disaster, but the subsequent challenges prove each member of the family can handle quite a bit more than expected — even when the parental assurance that everything's going to be OK, like when a giant snake is slithering through their home, is laughably disputable.

It adds up to a gonzo good time that gives an old-school family adventure a darker, modern spin. Mitchell has quickly made suburbia his evident domain, where “it,” or something else, is sure to follow.

Entertainment

Movie Review: ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ Is a Southern Fried Flick with Too Many Ingredients

This image released by Black Bear shows Matthew McConaughey, left, and Angelina LookingGlass in a scene from "The Rivals of the Amziah King." (Kyle Kaplan/Black Bear via AP)
This image released by Black Bear shows Matthew McConaughey, left, and Angelina LookingGlass in a scene from "The Rivals of the Amziah King." (Kyle Kaplan/Black Bear via AP)
TT
TT

Movie Review: ‘The Rivals of Amziah King’ Is a Southern Fried Flick with Too Many Ingredients

This image released by Black Bear shows Matthew McConaughey, left, and Angelina LookingGlass in a scene from "The Rivals of the Amziah King." (Kyle Kaplan/Black Bear via AP)
This image released by Black Bear shows Matthew McConaughey, left, and Angelina LookingGlass in a scene from "The Rivals of the Amziah King." (Kyle Kaplan/Black Bear via AP)

It turns out that the honey business isn't as sweet as it sounds: In the new movie “The Rivals of Amziah King,” beekeepers steal from each other, poison rivals' insects and rip folk off. “It’s not full of kind people,” the title character warns.

“The Rivals of Amziah King” isn't as sweet as it thinks it is, either. Instead of picking a single variety to explore, the movie is a maddening mishmash of genres — blending Quentin Tarantino's sudden brutality, a coming-of-age tale, a heist flick, a revenge fantasy and a sweet, music-filled country hoedown.

Matthew McConaughey returns to the big screen playing the title character in what can only be called Matthew-McConaughey-turned-up-to-11 mode, pure Cheshire Cat smile, rascally wink and buttery, Southern gentlemanly charm. Suspenders and scruff on, cowboy boots snug, McConaughey is the one who makes everyone's life instantly better just by showing up.

Written by Andrew Patterson and James Montague and directed by Patterson, “The Rivals of Amziah King” follows McConaughey's honey-producing King as he negotiates his patch of rural Oklahoma until he inexplicably leaves the movie at the hour mark and hands it off to Angelina LookingGlass, making her film debut.

We meet King ordering chicken fried steak sandwiches and cherry Cokes as he plays the banjo in a quartet of musicians at a beloved food joint. That gets interrupted when authorities need his knowledge to find out who abandoned $250,000 worth of honey barrels on the road and King starts to investigate. Then someone gets a chunk of their skull — including ponytail — ripped off in an industrial accident and that takes over. Settle in, the whiplash is just beginning.

King soon connects with his former foster daughter — that's LookingGlass, fierce and preternaturally grounded — who he gets to mansplain in the local ways, like what to eat at the potluck (“There's a story in every dish”), life lessons (“Patience is better than being smart”) and beekeeping (“Every queen is a survivor”). Bees here, if you didn't already get from the clunky writing, represent community, sharing and caring.

Cinematographer M.I. Littin-Menz's camera techniques never settle down in this movie, like a puppy forever pulling on its leash. Early sequences employ frozen shots irritatingly dropped into the mix and later we have furious close-ups, quick cuts, quirky flashbacks, ethereal river sequences and lingering poetic images of close-up bees like from a documentary, a kinetic approach that seems not to have much faith in the actual story keeping viewers' interest alive. Music supervisor Winslow Bright swamps many scenes with loud choirs, loud banjo and loud strings.

Maybe that's because as soon as you've settled down for one genre, it gets hijacked by the next. Warm and extended moments of communal song — the great T Bone Burnett had a hand in some of the outstanding Americana tunes like “Quill” with McConaughey exuberant, and “Johnny Come Outside” — are undercut by seeing kids smash their heads on school bus roofs or a cool Western-like tracking of a honey-stealing local rascal that is marred by his horrific, boiling-to-death murder. There are so many montages of honey production that viewers may qualify for a beekeeping certificate.

Great turns are produced by Kurt Russell as a lethal local kingpin who schmoozes his way past the law, and Jake Horowitz, a former Marine who knows how to plan a theft with military precision, mostly shirtless. One brazen theft here is of “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and, however you liked that movie, you realize now how hard it was to actually pull off.

Patterson likes to remind viewers of his Oklahoma bona fides, but much of the overlong movie was shot in Alabama. And that hints at what's wrong with “The Rivals of Amziah King” — it just doesn't feel authentic, either in place or in story. Forget honey, it sort of leaves a vinegary taste behind.