Films featuring
Roddy McDowall

The Longest Day

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★★★★★[/types]]

Darryl Zanuck’s multi-national epic occasionally plays like an academic lecture on the events of June 5 and 6, 1944, albeit an interesting lecture with some really cool film. The Longest Day covers the first twenty-four hours of the invasion of France from American, British, French and German perspectives, employing separate directors for each nationality and shooting in the native languages of those involved. This gives the film a level of authenticity that was fairly atypical of war movies of the time.

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Battle for the Planet of the Apes

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★★★★★[/types]]

The Apes saga staggers to a limp and unsatisfying conclusion that asks us to believe that, in less than one generation, the largely inarticulate apes of the last film have not only acquired the power of speech, but also a level of philosophy. There I go, applying logic to fantasy again, but there’s only so much absurdity a man can take.

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Escape from the Planet of the Apes

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★★★★★[/types]]

The ending of Beneath the Planet of the Apes seemed to preclude any sequels and, despite the financial success of the first two films, the budget for a third movie had been slashed. The producers of this film series had to think creatively. The result, while far from the equal of the 1968 original, stands head and shoulders above any of the other sequels, re-introducing the concept of character development and semi-intelligent writing back into the series. Sure, the audience is asked to accept a premise that, when you follow the logic of the first two films, is staggeringly ridiculous, but once you get past that, the story moves along relatively well.

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Planet of the Apes

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★★★★★[/types]]

Back when I was in high school and college, a local TV station (KTLA channel 5, I think) would periodically run all five Planet of the Apes movies in one week. I developed a great deal of affection for this particular franchise, despite the obvious flaws in most of the sequels. In honor of the new box set available this past week, I am launching a special, semi-official theme week that I’m calling Simians in the Springtime.

Even before Star Wars, the Apes movies blazed the trail for shameless marketing and tie-ins. Every thing you could buy with a Star Wars logo on it, action figures, lunch boxes and games, you could buy a similar Apes-related item a decade earlier. I don’t believe that there ever any Planet of the Apes collectable glasses at Taco Bell, but for virtually everything else under the sun, the apes got there first.

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