Fox

It all started with a very short novel by French author Pierre Boulle. It wasn't even that much of a hit at first. But a small group of Hollywood moguls led by Arthur P. Jacobs believed in the property and worked hard to get a film made. It wasn't easy. They had to interest a big star and make a test reel in order to get anyone to bite. Fortunately for us all, Fox did bite. After five films, a television series, and a cartoon run, the franchise ran out of steam by the middle of the 1970's. Tim Burton almost killed the chance at rebirth with his terrible remake. But in science fiction, nothing really dies forever. The Apes have returned in one of the best remakes, if it could be called that, in the last 20 years.

Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes is not really a remake of the original 1968 film. It's more closely related to the fourth film in the franchise, Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes. In that film the infant son of Cornelius and Zira grows into an adult and eventually leads a revolt of the ape population. By that time apes had replaced cats and dogs as pets, which had been killed in a plague. The apes were forced into slavery and Caesar, played by Roddy McDowall, would lead them toward that ape civilization Charlton Heston's Taylor finds in the original movie. It all came rather nicely full circle, and that was eventually the end of it. This film, while honoring much of the traditions of the franchise, tells a much different origin story, but it's a good one.

"Within our lifetimes, we've marveled as biologists have managed to look at ever smaller and smaller things. And astronomers have looked further and further into the dark night sky, back in time and out in space. But maybe the most mysterious of all is neither the small nor the large: it's us, up close."

Another Earth has all the earmarks of a first feature film for director Mike Cahill. It's also quite obvious that the director is far more comfortable in the documentary style of filmmaking. This movie is shot with the same kind of cinema verite style, and while it does follow the story of these two broken people, it is always told from an intimate point of view of a close chronicler who has somehow gained access to the drama as it is unfolding. There isn't a sense that any of this is scripted. The dialog doesn't contain any of the practiced lines or delivery that you would find in most dramas out of Hollywood. In fact, there isn't anything "Hollywood" about the film. There lies its greatest strength and, perhaps its greatest weakness.