A strong finish to this year’s Ape-ril. So strong it could rip your jaw off, play with it for a bit, and then politely try to put it back on like nothing happened. I sat down to watch Johannes Roberts’s tight 89-minute ape-fueled gore-a-rama the other night with a gummy and half a pint of Chunky Monkey, and let me tell ya, it was hittin’. Almost as hard as Ben the chimp. Apes are strong, in case you haven’t picked up on that by now.
Did you know right now there’s a chimp civil war happening in Uganda? The once-strong Ngogo chimpanzee community in Kibale National Park, one of the largest ever studied, with around 200 apes at its peak, has splintered over the past several years in a bloody power struggle for ape supremacy. It’s wild, because it sounds like a story ripped straight from a Michael Crichton novel.
Like Brian De Palma, Aussie director Richard Franklin was very much a disciple of Alfred Hitchcock. In fact, Franklin was such a devotee that, while attending USC, he was determined to get Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) screened on campus. This effort led to Hitchcock personally calling the school, and Franklin inviting him to give a lecture, which he did. The two struck up a friendship, and years later, in 1983, Franklin would go on to direct Psycho II.
A glance at Franklin’s filmography paints the picture of a true genre filmmaker. The guy loved horror and suspense, high-concept ideas that practically pitch themselves. Movies that feel Hitchcockian, but updated for modern audiences. Like in 1979, when Franklin landed on the idea: “What if someone made Jaws… but with chimps?”
Not since the dawn of man (around 2014) have I dedicated an entire month to ape cinema, but I’m back, and this time it’s personal! After listening to every album by Gorillaz and finishing Donkey Kong Bananza a few months ago, my body is ready. *Starts beating chest. This month I’m gonna live like an Apeman. Hey, you gonna eat that nanner over there?
Last time, I reviewed the OG Planet of the Apes films, but this time I’m tackling KILLER ape movies. “Oh sweet, like Shakma and Monkey Shines?” NO! WRONG! Those are monkeys. I’m talking about apes, which turned out to be a lot harder than anticipated if the goal was to watch GOOD movies.
Well, it’s a new year and I’m not getting any younger. It’s always hard to know when exactly the right time is to start digging into new albums and trying to make sense of what’s worth listening to. Especially when I often find myself listening to new albums just for the sake of turning the page on the previous year and trying to embrace the new sounds of the future. During a lot of my year-end music coverage of 2025, I talked about how it was a little harder to get as much joy out of music as I had in years past, but so far I’m not feeling quite that way about 2026, even if the world’s just as much of a mess as ever. Either way, I’ve already found plenty of albums to keep me chugging along through the frigidly cold months of this East Coast Winter. Luckily, it’s officially Spring and now we can all actually turn a new leaf, since turning a new leaf on a year doesn’t mean much when you’re stuck inside clinging to your proverbial radiator.
This month, Gorillaz released their ninth album, The Mountain to glowing reviews, the band is already in midst of a world tour, and a few weeks ago made their first ever appearance on SNL. Not bad for a band that sort of doesn’t exist.
What you might not know is that today, yes TODAY marks the 25th Anniversary of the band’s debut self-titled album. Twenty-five years. Christ. It feels like yesterday I was watching the “Clint Eastwood” video on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block. But no, that was the Summer of 2001. Now I’m an old-ass man. The future is comin’ on.
56th Academy Awards (1984)
Nominations: 5
Wins: 2
We end our shortened week of Oscar reviews with the type of film that usually pops up here or there at the Oscars each year. I’m talking about the small film that serves as an actor’s showcase, and thus gets its star nominated for an acting Oscar, but rarely also gets nominated for Best Picture. Well, that wasn’t the case with Tender Mercies, which nabbed a Best Picture nom as well as a second Best Screenplay Oscar for Horton Foote. But when you get down to it, this is a film built around an Oscar-winning performance by Robert Duvall, an actor who was never entirely built to be a leading man, but in a low budget, unshowy film like this, gets to show all that he’s capable of. This was very satisfying to see in the wake of his recent passing, especially when I’m sure we’ll get to see this prolific actor mentioned in the “In Memoriam” section of the Oscars tonight.
