William H. Macy | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

The latest installment of the 10-movie Planet of the Apes movies, “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is another one in the series that seems more like a compilation of scenes with Apes and Humans, running for their lives, trying to kill each other with reminders of the first movie, “Planet of the Apes”, released in 1968. This new movie is supposed to be a prequel of the original movie and there are several references at the end of this movie, inside a cave that have many reminders of the original film.

There is nothing in these two hours that we all have not seen before, with a story that seemed to go nowhere and an ending that at best was illogical. From the original story, Apes are now the intelligent species with the implication that this was caused by a nuclear war. In this film, there is mention of a man-made virus that destroyed the intelligence and speaking skills of Humans and made Apes intelligent – not a nuclear war.

One of the main characters in this movie is named Nova, who can talk, but the Nova character in the original Planet of the Apes could not talk. So the woman in this film named Nova, is by coincidence not the woman named Nova in the original movie that is supposed to be the sequel to this movie? This is another example of this illogical screenplay.

This movie has mostly unknown actors, with the exception of William H. Macy who plays a human named Trevathan – who is part of a scene with Nova at the end of this story, that for me, made absolutely no sense.

This movie is also way too long at 2 hours and 25 minutes, and way too boring and slow in too many places.

As far as so many Planet of the Apes movies, there should be a documentary made about the life of any actor who has to endure hours of makeup application and removal, every day for 12+ hours a day, wearing an extremely hot costume for months. All of these movies have always been a bonanza for makeup artists for decades since the release of the original film. I would find a documentary about the making of these Ape movies more interesting than the majority of the movies themselves – including this one.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this movie are too high 80%, with my rating 70% and a marginal pass.

When “The Lincoln Lawyer” was released in March of 2011, I thought that this was one of the best movies about the real life of a lawyer I have ever seen. The main character Mick Heller is played by Matthew McConaughey in what arguably is the best acting role of his career. Heller is a great wheeler dealer, spends most of his days driving around in a vintage Lincoln Continental and is close friends with a large group of hells angels that frequently drive by his Lincoln. Heller has a dedicated full time car driver and his office for the most part is on the back seat of the Lincoln Continental.

The screenplay and story idea for The Lincoln Lawyer is outstanding with its winding complexity with Heller rationalizing having to defend his evil client Louis Roulet, played by Ryan Phillippe. This story is all about the responsibilities of lawyers who are legally and professionally bound to defend their clients at all costs and the obvious conflicts between doing the job and right and wrong. We have all seen this conflict that lawyers face within their professional lives, but this movie does this better than I have ever seen.

The protaganist Roulet is the embodiment of evil throughout this well told story, reminding us that there is no limit to what people will do to other people. Most impressive about this movie is the long list of named actors, including Marisa Tomei, William H. Macy, John Leguizamo, Michael Peña, Trace Adkins and Bryan Cranston, who was in this movie about a year before he hit it huge with “Breaking Bad”.

I thought the conclusion to this drama was extremely well done with a surprising and shocking ending. We go to the movies because we all want life to work out the way it should, with the good winning and the evil among us, getting what they deserve.

The ratings for The Lincoln Lawyer were a very high 83% on Rotten Tomatoes, with my rating more in the 90% range because of the acting and strong message. This movie was so well regarded it has spawned a new series on Netflix with the same name. I have seen season one and it is about as good as the movie, with a second season on the way.