Ken and Robin Consume Media: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Under Paris, and Cynical French Espionage
August 20th, 2024 | Robin
Recommended
Forgotten (Film, South Korea, Jang Hang-jun, 2017) Weird dreams alert a mentally fragile student (Kang Ha-Neul) that something is amiss in his family’s new home and with the older brother (Kim Mu-yeol) he idolizes. Reality-shifting twist on the wrong man thriller offers up a bleak puzzle box for those willing to forget how hypnosis works.—RDL
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (Film, US, Wes Ball, 2024) Son of a chimp chieftain (Owen Teague) must take on the mantle of leadership when the soldiers of an ambitious gorilla king (Kevin Durand) interrupt their search for a knowledgeable human (Freya Allan) to enslave his clan. Refreshingly solid story construction reigns in a CGI-dominated adventure that builds its set pieces from a clear but not belabored character throughline and never stops to wink at the audience.—RDL
Le Silencieux (Film, France/Italy/UK, Claude Pinoteau, 1973) MI5 kidnaps Soviet physicist Anton Haliakov (Lino Ventura), born Clement Tibere, to force him to identify Soviet spies in the British fusion program in exchange for repatriation to France—from whence the KGB had kidnapped him 18 years previously. This provides the cynical setup for an existential thriller, pitting one man against a KGB kill notice. Ventura husbands his tough interiority against every kind of stimulus; his performance combines paranoia and desperation with intelligence, the only human response possible. [Released as Escape to Nowhere in the US.]—KH
Spectre: Sanity, Madness and the Family (Film, France, Para One, 2021) After receiving audio recordings of sessions between his family members, several of them schizophrenia suffers, and the musician and spiritual leader who subjected them to years of damaging experiments in altered consciousness, the filmmaker, himself a composer, undertakes a musical journey to understand their mysteries. Mesmerizing first-person documentary set on the borderland between avant garde culture, visionary experience, and cult abuse.—RDL
Under Paris (Film, France, Xavier Gens, 2024) Traumatized marine biologist (Bérénice Bejo) and jut-jawed river cop (Nassim Lyes) team up to save a pre-Olympic swimming event from a giant shark and her parthenogenetic brood, who have taken up residence in a flooded section of the Paris catacombs. Seine-based Jaws homage plays its finny, victim-chomping thrills without a hint of irony.—RDL
Okay
OSS 117: Panic in Bangkok (Film, France/Italy, André Hunebelle, 1964) America sends its most French agent, Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath (Kerwin Matthews), to investigate chicanery with medical supplies in Bangkok orchestrated by fashionable psychiatrist Dr. Sinn (Robert Hossein). Lumbering second installment in the Bond-ripoff film series provides ample Bangkok location footage during the interminable interstitial scenes between anticlimactic faceoffs.—KH
Not Recommended
The Devil’s Bath (Film, Austria, Severin Fiala & Veronika Franz, 2024) Young peasant bride (Anja Plaschg) in 1750 rural Austria sinks into depression after failing to adjust to her new dreary life with her domineering mother-in-law (Maria Hofstätter) and ineffectual husband (David Scheid.) Historical realist folk horror takes much longer than needed to establish the conditions for its unforgettable final sequence.—RDL
