What I've Caught Up With, April 2026 Part 2

I finished three shows in April. The first was just catching back up on The Lincoln Lawyer, one of those rare cases where the show is better than the movie (although, to be fair, both are based off a series of books). I also finished Luke Cage, after rewatching the first season. My minor physical issues have cleared up, so I managed to complete Evil (aka: Catholic X-Files) a couple of weeks after initially intended. The new workout show is The Sopranos, which I’m finally getting to a mere three decades or so late.

What I’ve Caught Up With, April 2026 Part 2
Film: Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

After Beneath the Planet of the Apes, it seemed like finding a way to continue the series would be difficult, but Escape from the Planet of the Apes showed up the next year. This is a reversal of the original film. Instead of humans going forward in time to find a planet where “apes evolved from men,” apes from the future end up in the past on Earth, circa 1973. While our chimpanzees (Kim Hunter, Roddy McDowell, and Sal Mineo for a few minutes) aren’t hunted by the humans, they are questioned to figure out exactly what happened. In a lot of ways, this film was replicated by Crocodile Dundee if you replace the Aussie with a couple of talking chimpanzees, at least until the chimps kill their guard and escape captivity. It’s not bad, and it some ways it’s better than the second film in the series, but it’s hard to call it necessary.

Film: The Wind and the Lion (1975)

There is a long history of ridiculous casting in Hollywood, like Sean Connery as a Russian sub commander or Sean Connery as an immortal Egyptian, but perhaps none is sillier than Sean Connery as a Moroccan pirate in The Wind and the Lion. The film is a loose interpretation of the event in 1904 when Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli (Connery) kidnapped an American. The film changes this to the victim being Eden Perdicaris (Candace Bergen) and her children. It soon spirals out of control into an international incident that becomes a campaign issue for Teddy Roosevelt’s (Brian Keith) re-election campaign. It’s not a bad epic, but seriously, a Berber brigand who sounds like he’s from Edinburgh is patently goofy.

Film: Cocoon (1985)

For whatever reason, Cocoon is a film that has eluded me until now. Reminiscent of the “Kick the Can” sequence in The Twilight Zone movie, this is a film that is surprisingly wistful for a movie that is in large part about an alien invasion. A group of aliens hire a boat to rescue a collection of cocoons from the bottom of the ocean, storing them in a swimming pool of a dilapidated house that happens to be next to a retirement community. A few old men like sneaking into the house to use the pool and discover that the cocoons have rejuvenated them, leading to both joy and problems. This is Ron Howard’s work, but it feels a lot like Spielberg. The story is a good one, but it’s the cast that sells it.

Film: Freaky Friday (1976)

The idea of body switching has a long history, and while there are a few films that predate the original Freaky Friday, none of them really popularized the concept like this film did. Mother Ellen Andrews (Barbara Harris) and daughter Annabel (Jodie Foster) are quarreling and simultaneously wish that the other could spend a single day in her life. One doodley-doodley-doop later, their wishes are granted and they realize that each other’s lives are a lot crazier and more difficult than they thought. While there are plenty of movies (including the remake and sequel) that explore this same idea, this one is arguably the template for what this odd little subgenre has become. Jodie Foster is good in this, but this is 100% Barbara Harris’s movie.

Film: Jurassic World (2015)

Some franchises should probably stop. Jurassic Park is still fantastic 30+ years later, but at some point, people need to figure out that making dinosaurs is a really bad idea. But here we are again. Jurassic World takes place 20 years after the original film, and the park is open again. To keep people coming in, new dinosaurs are being genetically engineered. Here’s the thing—you know the dinosaurs are going to get out because if they don’t, there’s no movie. Park official Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) is hosting her nephews Zach (Nick Robinson) and Gray (Ty Simpkins) when the dinos escape. Everyone is going to be saved by raptor wrangler Owen (Chris Pratt). You know exactly who is going to live and die in this. I’d have boosted this by at least half a star if Bryce Dallas Howard had been bitten in half, but this movie has no guts.

Film: In Country (1989)

My Bachelor’s degree is in English literature, so every now and then I come across a movie of a book I read for a class. In Country is one of those books, which I read a year or two before the movie came out. High school graduate Samantha (Emily Lloyd) lives with her Vietnam vet uncle Emmett (Bruce Willis) in a small town in western Kentucky. One day she discovers a box of letters her father—who died in the war before she was born—wrote to her mother. She stays around with Emmett so that she can learn more about her father. Most films that deal with war look at it during the conflict or immediately after. In Country looks at how being in combat affects the veterans decades later—it’s a perspective worth looking at. Bruce Willis is better in this than he has any right to be.

Film: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)

Watching Conquest of the Planet of the Apes puts me one away from seeing the entirety of the original Apes pentalogy. This takes place years after the last film, where the infant child of Cornelius and Zira has survived. In this future, a plague has killed off dogs and cats, and humans adapted apes to be their new companions, eventually raising them up enough to essentially become slaves. That talking ape has survived in the circus of Armando (Ricardo Montalbán), but must hide who he is, since the revelation of a talking ape in what has ultimately become a police state would be asking for his own destruction. Honestly, it’s not great, but it does get us closer to showing how the apes took over in the first film.