Two flavors of monkey business

The special effects in the recent trio of “Planet of the Apes” films can’t be praised enough. The trilogy-capper, “War for the Planet of the Apes,” seamlessly blends CGI characters and their real-world surroundings to the point where the humans in the movie have a genuine disadvantage in conveying emotion.

Basically, Caesar the Ape walks acting circles around Woody Harrelson, a pretty good actor in his own right.

Director Matt Reeves, who also helmed the middle installment, 2014’s “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” continues to focus his expensive, blockbuster tools on the internal struggle of Caesar, a genetically superior animal who shows more soul and compassion than the human characters who are constantly trying to kill him. Andy Serkis as Caesar, utilizing motion capture technology, gives another Oscar-caliber performance — this time playing the aging ape leader who finally begins to buckle under the trauma that’s plagued him since the first film.

“War for the Planet of the Apes” begins with a human vs. apes skirmish in the woods, but the “war” of the title is misleading — Caesar’s apes just want to be left alone. It’s the last pockets of humanity who continue to fight for their place in the world. Most humans have been killed off by a supervirus, and the few survivors are now showing signs of cognitive disability.

Harrelson plays The Colonel, the unhinged leader of a ruthless military unit, and his name and behavior aren’t the only nods to “Apocalypse Now,” itself a film that uses war as a jumping off point to a greater exploration of human frailty. “War for the Planet of the Apes” doesn’t come near the complexity of that movie, but credit to Reeves and his team for making a blockbuster about people, err, apes, wrestling with the contradictory nature of survival and morality.

“War for the Planet of the Apes” is a gorgeous film — the set design and cinematography match its technological wizardry, and the score by Michael Giacchino is hauntingly essential to the drama onscreen. The film is at its best in the scenes without humans — Caesar and his allies spend much of the first half in conversation about the future of their clan. They make tough decisions, then argue and worry about those decisions, often without the use of spoken dialogue.

The film, packed as it is with big ideas, doesn’t exactly land where it wants to emotionally by the end. Part of the problem stems from how a few acts of revenge derail the film into occasional stretches of conventionality. More familiar story beats tend to stand out when the surrounding material is so rich, and that’s unfortunately the case whenever Caesar decides to follow a vengeful path.

Harrelson’s villain also isn’t as well defined or essential as he needs to be to sell the conflict with Caesar. He basically gets two big speeches to be the voice of humanity’s madness, but his point-of-view matters little to where the film goes in the final act.

Reservations aside, it isn’t often that Hollywood makes a cohesive trilogy of expensive blockbusters this good. In the last two films especially, Reeves never let the spectacle and special effects upstage the story he wanted to tell. These are serious, emotive films about talking apes where the least interesting thing about them is the fact that the apes can talk. Hail, Caesar.

If making a successful war movie about talking CGI apes is the most difficult task in Hollywood, then making a modern-day romantic comedy without insulting its audience’s intelligence is probably the second hardest. It’s a genre too defined by the movies that do it perfectly, so much so that any new take can only reject or mimic those best qualities.

“The Big Sick” finds a way to be both its own unique thing as well as a film that’s representative of what makes a good romantic comedy so satisfying. The film, directed by Michael Showalter, starts in a familiar place story wise, but it never loses the charismatic singularity of its star, comedian Kumail Nanjiani, of “Silicon Valley” fame.

The autobiographical film focuses on the courtship between Nanjiani, a struggling Pakistani-American comedian, and grad student, Emily, played by Zoe Kazan. Nanjiani wrote the film with his real-life wife, Emily V. Gordon, and the specificity of the courtship, as well as the depiction of Nanjiani’s traditional parents, gives the film many opportunities for both humor and believable conflict.

Then “The Big Sick” takes a radical shift — the title should clue you into what happens — though the film never loses its sense of humor. In fact, it may get funnier when their relationship is disrupted.

When Emily is put into a medically-induced coma, Kumail tends to her out-of-town parents, played by Holly Hunter (always terrific) and Ray Romano (in a career-best performance). Kumail also hasn’t disclosed his relationship with Emily to his parents, who insist on him choosing a Pakistani woman to marry.

“The Big Sick” is consistently, even aggressively funny, but unlike more than a few other Judd Apatow-produced comedies, the film never pauses to simply tell jokes. Each scene has a narrative purpose, and the film builds in some incisive drama without leaning into easy tropes that too many disease-focused movies stumble over.

As delightful as Nanjiani is to watch in “The Big Sick,” Kazan’s Emily is a revelation — a female character in a romantic comedy that retains agency and independence even though she sits in a coma for more than half the film. On paper, it’s a near-impossible part to play — Emily must be memorable and complicated enough in the first half hour that her point-of-view is retained when she’s off-screen.

It isn’t a spoiler to say Emily returns (awake) for the final stretch of the film, and it’s her actions that drive the film into unique territory for the genre. Her physical recovery isn’t enough to solve the conflicts between Kumail and Emily — the characters have more choices to make once they’ve been reunited.

As familiar and easygoing as “The Big Sick” seems, its effortlessness shouldn’t be underestimated. Something as funny and character-rich as this just doesn’t come along very often. And unless Nanjiani and Gordon are already working on a follow-up screenplay, it’s probably a better bet to expect another good talking ape movie before another good talking romance one.

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Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com