Movie reviews

Planet of the Apes Director: Tim Burton Rating: PG-13 Cinemas: Farragut Towne Square 10, West Town Mall 9 Like America's Sweethearts, released the previous week, Planet of the Apes has all the tools at its disposal to make a scathing commentary about modern behavior and stereotypes, but loses its nerve, becoming little more than your basic summer fare. A "homage" to the 1968 classic original, Planet tells the story of Leo (Mark Wahlberg), who makes a laughingly unrealistic-looking crash landing on a planet ruled by apes. After being taken captive, he meets Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), an ape who is sympathetic to the humans' plight, Daena (Estella Warren), a blonde girl who appears through most of the film but says only about six lines, and several other people. The main ape characters are Gen. Thade (Tim Roth), a ruthless leader bent on killing all the humans and having Ari for his bride, Attar (Michael Clarke Duncan), the big, intelligent sidekick to Thade and Sen. Sandar (David Warner), Ari's father who is in charge of everything. The humans escape captivity and roam toward where Leo's signal tells them his comrades are waiting for him. During this trek, the audience learns that, while there seems to be a romance brewing between Leo and Ari, the humans are extremely uninteresting a nd have nothing really to say. The apes are much more compelling characters and seem much more thoughtful than the humans, though how they learned how to talk is a bit of a mystery. Also, without giving anything away, you wonder how an electromagnetic field does what it does to his ship, why Daena gives Leo a huge kiss near the end after saying no more than 10 words to him the entire movie and what exactly caused the ending. Yes, there's a much-publicized surprise twist ending for the stone-faced hero. He never shows much emotion through the movie, even when faced with a planet of big, talking monkeys, and neither will you. Rating: C Songcatcher Director: Maggie Greenwald Rating: PG-13 Cinemas: Downtown West Songcatcher is a beautiful movie to experience, not only for its great music, but for the characters that build and change in the film. While it at times tries a bit too hard to be a soap opera, Songcatcher can't help but entrance the audience with its eb b and flow and natural rhythms of the music. When musicologist Dr. Lily Penleric (Janet McTeer) flees to the Appalachian Mountains to be with her sister in 1907, the music of the mountain people catches her ear and inspires her to try and "lift up" their melodies to the stature it belongs at the bot tom of the mountain. The first song she hears is sung to her by Deladis Slocumb (Emmy Rossum), a young woman who was taught dozens of love songs by her grandmother. Deladis decides to help Lily in her quest to collect as many of these ballads as she can, so she can put them i n a song book and make recordings to sell when she gets back to the city. Viney Butler (Pat Carroll), an old woman with an upbeat personality, sings some songs she knows for Lily after some convincing. However, when Tom Bledsoe (Aidan Quinn) says Lily's "stealing" the songs and tells her she can't have them. For an independent film seemingly about the beauty of mountain music, romance and sex play a big part. Lily and Tom eventually get so mad at each other that they get together. There is adultery and a lesbian scene between Lily's sister, Elna (Jane Adams) and her lover Harriet Tolliver (E. Katherine Kerr). However, it's the music that steals the show. The banjo playing and singing make this film one very much worth seeing, as does seeing the transformation McTeer gives Lily, from uptight city girl to being a much more content woman after some time with the melodies of the mountains. Rating: B+