It’s always enjoyable, even when you end up going to see movies you wouldn’t normally watch at home. It’s like the thrill and excitement you had as a kid going to the cinema, doesn’t quite completely leave your system as you get older. There’s still a bit of a thrill there, that is until you hear the cashier tell you how much a ticket is.
“Seven quid? Whaddyamean? It’s used to be £1.50 in the UCI in EK?!”
The cinema cashier looks up at you, bored.
Now that I have a cineworld card I don’t have to worry about that so much. A monthly payment of £14 lets me see as many movies as I like. I could spend the day in the cinema if I wanted to. I could do crazy, mental things like go and see three movies in one day! (Sheesh, that’s just mind blowing… calm down Mike).
The fact that you’ve already paid for whatever you’re going to see makes it all the more enjoyable. The queuing as you decide what picture to see. The ticket collecting. The smuggling of reasonably priced food, sweets and beverages, (or if you’re Ka and myself on an afternoon viewing, a Greggs sanny from Sauchiehall Street). The smells of the highly over priced popcorn stacked up in the paper bags on the shiny counters. The not as pleasant aroma of the disgusting hotdogs that someone, somewhere still seems to buy. The picking of seats. The arguing over which seats to take and which arm of the chair you want your drink to go in. The elbow fighting. The phone silencing. The sitting, waiting on the lights going down.
In those moments as you wait, the other cinema goers pile in. As the theatre gets busy there’s always the risk that one of those lonely looking, smelly blokes sit down next to you after you’ve finally made yourself comfortable in your seat. It’s almost guaranteed he’ll have the unmistakable odour of urine about him.
Then there’s the folk that laugh out loud at only vaguely, mildly amusing adverts that are always on the telly at home. Gawd, if they thought the advert for Vodafone was good, wait till they see the movie!
There’s also the folk that come in late, and upon realising the cinema is near full, mill about the aisles, murmuring at one another, wandering what to do because they simply cannot sit apart. I usually sit smugly, wagging my finger at them with a shake of the head and tapping my watch safe in the knowledge I’m comfy in my chair, which I earned by successfully turning up for the movie on time. As long as there’s not a single, smelly bloke perched next to me, I’m happy.
Happy, until me and another four or five folk are asked to up sticks and move up one seat in order to accommodate the late coming couple who just can’t bear to be apart for the next two hours whilst watching ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’.
On Thursday we settled into our seats, Sainsburys sandwich in hand (we thought we’d have a change from Greggs), to see ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’, a sort of modern day prequel to the past movies.
Will Rodman, a scientist, played by James Franco, (the guy that played the disgruntled Green Goblin in the Spider-Man movies), has dedicated his life to finding a cure for Alzheimer’s disease and is using apes as test subjects. As always with these things, something goes wrong. During Rodman’s big meeting with the committee, just as he applies for permission to use human subjects, one of the best test apes goes mental (or in this case, apeshit). After the damage has been done, and the project is closed down, it turns out the ape had actually given birth to a wee baby in her containment unit/cell and was only trying to protect her offspring. As the order is being put through to put down all of the now ‘infected’ apes, Rodman takes the baby ape home and brings him up in the house where, it is discovered within the first few days, the young ape has symptoms of the tested drug running through his veins and is soon drinking from a baby bottle, opening cookie jars, wanting to ride the neighbours’ kids’ bikes and helping to get Rodman dates with attractive female vets via sign language. Obviously with the growing IQ the ape gets himself into trouble and before long is beginning the revolution of ape kind which will eventually lead to humanity’s supposed downfall.
I hadn’t expected much from this movie but left pleasantly surprised. It had probably been the first ‘Apes’ movie I’d actually enjoyed or watched all the way through. Back in 2001 I’d been one of the fools that went along to see Tim Burton’s reimagining of ‘Planet of the Apes’ and had been very disappointed and half bored. Not only was it disappointing but Mark Wahlberg was in it.
Growing up I tried, at various points, to sit and watch the original movies from the sixties and seventies but always tended to get bored and flick the channel. There was always too much talk, not enough action. Not enough explosions. Not enough Star Destroyers, X-Wings or lightsabers.
Even as a kid I remember being unconvinced by the old movies’ Ape make-up, and that was a kid who sat and watched Peter Davison in cricket gear, swinging about on a string, trying to look as if he was floating around in a vacuum or a Cyberman blow up in a shower of tinfoil.
I just couldn’t believe they were real apes. It was just Roddy McDowall in a rubber mask. The blonde one, which was supposed to be an orangutan, looked like on of my primary school teachers!
There was another Gollum like creature doing the rounds in the first movie Ka and myself went to see this week.
J.J Abrams latest effort, ‘Super 8’ is a homage to the early eighties Speilberg, an obvious fan letter to the supreme bearded one, and, as a result is a strange mix of ‘E.T.’, ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ and ‘The Goonies’ (Speilberg didn’t actually direct ‘The Goonies’, he only wrote it and passed it on to Richard Donner of ‘Superman’ and ‘Lethal Weapon’ fame).
It’s basically about a bunch of kids, entering their teenhood, desperately trying to finish a homemade zombie movie (on super 8 film) and while they’re out secretly filming on location one night an Air Force train crashes and something big and nasty escapes from the hidden depths of one of it’s secret carriages. The creature then begins picking of the townsfolk one by one, nicking all their televisions and scaring the dogs.
The real brilliance in this movie is the acting. The gang of kids are all brilliantly characterised with the two main players each coming to terms with the various problems going on in their family affairs (death of a parent, the leaving of a parent, first love, friends fighting over the girl, Dads acting like they know it all etc.). That makes it all sounds a bit slushy and soap like but together with the whole early eighties vibe (or 1979 vibe to be precise) and the mysterious presence lurking in the shadows, it’s all very reminiscent of those early Speilberg’s, obviously not as good though.
Unlike E.T., it didn’t have me embarrassingly blubbering at the end. There wasn’t a Jaws moment that made me jump out my skin such as Brody turning away from the water as he shovelled the bloody meat into the ocean from his bucket of slops only to have the Great White veer up from the waves behind him. Those blank, black eyes staring.
There were no melting Nazis. No giant footsteps causing ripples in the small glass of water sitting on the dashboard.
Both of the big summer movies of the year have some great moments though and as much as I enjoyed ‘Super 8’ and Abrams’ Speilbergian themes and influences, ‘Rise’ has to be the one with the edge, if only for the fantastic monkey effects. There wasn’t an old primary school teacher in sight.
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