"So ... they take over, right? The apes?"

We pick up ten years after James Franco and the virus. Caesar has a mate and two sons. The eldest son, Blue Eyes, is a sensitive little chimp who wants to do right by his dad. Unfortunately, he starts to feel like his dad is not doing right by him.

Because enter the humans! Malcolm heads up his son and partner in a small expedition to go to the dam on the other side of the ape encampment and start up power for the Gary Oldman-led tribe of virus-resistant humans hanging out at the train station village in San Francisco. Caesar wants to help, even to the detriment and safety of his family and home. Koba, on the other hand, has other plans.

This movie is as ridiculous as that poster. The ape rides the horse, holding a gun as the Golden Gate Bridge burns in the background. They just tried so hard, guys. So very hard.

The difficult thing about writing spec fic or science fiction, is that you as a writer are writing an outlandish thing happening in the very real world. Crafted science fiction allows you to suspend belief and follow the story like it all happened and it's all as plausible as George Washington and World War II (although ... not George Washington in World War II, because that would be spec fic). However, there were so many times that I felt the world was shoved at us or stretched to look cool for posters (see above), and I was taken out of the movie in those moments.

There was also a challenge in starting the movie ten years after the end of the last movie. Info dumping was abound as the writers tried to fill in the holes. There were whole scenes dedicated to info dumping, where the humans sat in the car and did everything but stare right at the camera as they threw out world-building factoids, like how the woman worked for the CDC, or how the virus worked, or how long they had been without power.

One thing they did do well was Caesar's character arch. But I don't know how much of that was the writing, and how much of that was Andy Serkis being awesome.

Not much here, gals. It does not pass the Bechdel test. We have two mother characters, one ape and one human, but even they don't have much overlay. One spends her time being sick and the other one spends her time taking care of her adopted son and partner. It was an ape versus white man story, and it stuck to the franchise's tradition of not having much to do with anyone else.

As for POCs, we have one dominant black character in the whole ordeal. I just kept looking at Malcolm, who was white, and thinking how cool it would have been if he had not been white. Instead, we get one black man in the entire group of dam-seekers whose main line was, "You shut up before I kick your ass."

I don't think the rest of this series will change much in this regard.

If you like apes riding horses and shooting off never-empty guns at Gary Oldman, then this is the show for you! I would also recommend it to visual arts students, because holy lord those apes are cool looking.

THE MOVIE ITSELF: I appreciate its visual effects. If everything else failed in this story, the visual effects soared above anything you've ever seen. Caesar is gorgeously done and more human than most of the human actors. Koba moves so fluidly. Blue Eyes told a coming-of-age story through full computerized effects. It was just beautiful. Other than that, I give it one of Koba's raspberries. B-

ENJOYMENT FACTOR: I'm glad I saw it, but it was just too damn long with too little to it. We all know how this is going to end, and there are no surprises. The apes will come out victorious, the humans will slink into slavery, and Caesar will die as his teachings are corrupted by Tim Roth. We know. We get it. Apes. C

VERDICT: If you like the series, go for it. Otherwise, maybe go see it as a matinee when you're really bored on a "sick day." C+

(Clap clap clap!)
Person: Oh ... we're not clapping.

Three boys live in a Nevada neighborhood that is about to get torn apart for a freeway. These boys are Tuck, Alex, and Munch. Tuck is a budding filmmaker and Youtuber, Alex is a foster kid, and Munch shows signs of Asperger's. They're best friends who have looked out for one another, and now they want to spend one more night having boyish adventures.

Except their boyish adventures include following a signal (why is it always guys following a signal?) to a hunk of junk that suddenly bursts to life and introduces itself by whistling Alex's ringtone. He needs the kids' help to put his ship back together, and thus their adventure truly begins.

Echo was a good example of the up-and-coming multimedia storytelling. Tuck uses iTunes in order to score their conversations via Skype, and the whole thing is recorded on Youtube. Through these different mediums, we see a story arise.

However, this convention is broken as soon as Echo shoots to life. Echo brings with him a movie score, that immediately reminds us that we are not watching a kid's mismatched Youtube channel, but instead we are sitting in a theater with day-old popcorn.

There is also the question of protagonist. Who exactly is the protagonist in this story? We believe it's going to be Tuck, since he's the one with the camera and we're seeing it from his perspective. This made me excited, because Tuck is black. He isn't kind of black, in that way that white people will feel comfortable and can relate to him. He's just who he is, and so is his family. With Home coming soon to theaters with a black girl as the main character, I was excited to see this new trend of branching out to POC protagonists. You think this trend would have happened a long time ago and just become everyday use.

However, Tuck disappears behind the camera, leaving room for Alex to take the reins. Sometimes Tuck is neither behind the camera or in front of the camera, leaving Munch to get a story, Alex to get a story, and Tuck to return to react to his friends' stories. While Tuck has an arch, it is completely dependent on his friends' archs.

This disappointed me. However, one good thing the story did was focus on Alex's fear of abandonment and Munch's awkwardness. It was good to see a boy struggling with Asperger's not as the butt of a joke or as an outsider, but a hero.

Little boys can be heroes, too. That's their take-home message.

However, girls cannot.

I suppose they can, but they don't need names to do it. Or autonomy. Or respect.

Emma does have a name, but they barely use it. She's known as "Mannequin Girl" for the first half of the movie. She's beautiful, sweet, and poised. The first time we see her, she's approached by Tuck who is trying to prove that his new glasses are a chick magnet. Emma is enjoying lunch with her own friends when this random kid in weird glasses comes up to her and starts to try to talk. The expression she gives him isn't one of Regina George, but instead just confusion and a little annoyance that her meal and conversation has been interrupted by a strange unknown boy (she is literally in the middle of a sentence when he cuts her off). Because of this, he stumbles and feels stupid, and we're supposed to feel sorry for Tuck because Mannequin Girl didn't give a nerd like him the light of day.

Could it be that this is not Emma being a jerk, but Tuck feeling entitled to the trophy of prettiest girl's phone number, and because she gives him a weird look, he's emasculated in his adolescent growth? Come to think of it, Tuck doesn't even ask Emma for her number; he gets cold feet and mumbles that he needs a piece of paper.

The loving nickname Mannequin Girl comes from Munch saying she looks like a mannequin, and mannequins are beautiful.

Later on, these boys break into her room and mess with all of her stuff, and she's just supposed to be okay with it. She takes it better than me, and forces them to take her with them on their adventure. On this adventure, she falls in love with Alex. And thus she becomes the girlfriend.

Emma does not get a say in any of the storytelling. Tuck purposefully and violently cuts her footage out, fast forwarding and mocking her in a voiceover. What we do see is her saving Alex and her being "pretty," as Much and Tuck keep pointing out.

That was gross.

This is for young boys. My brother would love this movie. The kids play games on the computer together, they sneak behind their moms' backs, they are wonderfully awkward and trying to find some sort of voice in a world that gives no voice to children. This is for the Youtube generation. Unfortunately, I feel like the POCs and women in this film were not given a voice at all.

THE MOVIE ITSELF: The alien was cute. The effects were nice. The kids were good actors. It had a story and a message. Quaint and well put together. It's just unfortunate that E.T. did it better thirty years ago. B

ENJOYMENT FACTOR: It's a fun time at the movies, and Munch and the other two boys are adorable. But it's one of those movies where you think you like when it's done, and then it percolates and you realize you're never going to see it again. B-

VERDICT: A fun time with your little brother or child you nanny. If you are childless and know no boys around the age of twelve, then perhaps see it at the cheapees. B-

I was slated to review America today. I advertised that I would be doing as much. Last week when I went to see The Signal, there was a commercial for America, that showed the history of America rewinding and then disappearing as George Washington was shot and killed by a sniper during the Revolutionary War. Then the narrator asked, "What if America never existed?" And we see the monuments disappear one by one.

I wrote an entire book about American history, speculating what would happen if there was no more America, and how Americans would rebuild their country, etc. I also write historical fiction, and I am currently finishing up the first book in a trilogy about an alternative universe set in 1888 America (it's steampunk!). To say that I love alternative history America, and American history in general, is an understatement.

So to say I was excited to see America was an understatement. I was totally stoked. I talked with my writing partner about how this could finally push AU literature to the forefront, how I was so happy there was a big-budget movie focusing on history, and ... and ... and ...

I must have sounded like an idiot.

The promised movie was abandoned five minutes into the film. This was not a film about alternative history, speculative fiction, or anything really that was advertised on the poster or the trailer.

I debated how to go about reviewing America. And I decided to focus on the contract that a film makes with its audience.

We talked about this contract a little last week with The Signal, and this breach is just another clause of the complicated relationship between author and reader. We as writers do not write a book about giraffes' digestive systems and then slap robots on the cover to get more people to read our book about giraffes' digestive systems. That's not how marketing is supposed to work. You are supposed to advertise your work to gain attention from those who would be interested in reading your work, and then perhaps bring some interested general audience members to the table. People who like action movies go to action movies; they don't want the trailer to make Chocolat look like a James Bond film. They're not going to enjoy themselves, and they aren't going to rope more people into coming to see it. It's being honest; that's the contract.

So I did not receive the film that was advertised. And that saddened me.

So I decided to also not give you what I promised. I will not be reviewing America today, but instead Disney's The Pirate Fairy. Those who would have enjoyed the America review will get no such thing and probably have little interest in The Pirate Fairy. And those who would have really loved The Pirate Fairy will be confused and turned off by my original premise, because America is not a Disney movie, it's not rated PG, and it's not for children. Two films with two genres and two different objectives will now be mashed into one review, and no one will be happy.

The Pirate Fairy  is the latest installment of the Tinkerbell fairy movies that I have long avoided due to thinking that these films were trite and not in sync with the Neverland canon. However, it does follow the canon and has created its own canon.

Zarina is a pixie dust fairy who works to sack up the dust for the other fairies. Fairy Gary, a kind-hearted boss who loves Zarina but just absolutely cannot deal with her doing stupid stuff, like wanting to mess around with dangerous pixie dust to experiment. Obviously Zarina takes a leaf out of Tinkerbell's rebellious book and goes ahead and does the experiment anyway, causing the destruction of the pixie dust tree and a huge problem for her entire ... people? Tribe? Town? Pixie fairy girls and boys.

Zarina then leaves. The movie cuts to a year later, when a celebration of the seasons is taking place in the big arena. Zarina returns with a dastardly plan, and the fairies have to go after her to bring her home and save their community.

This movie was awesome. I'm a huge Disney nerd, and I love to learn how to structure my stories from watching Pixar and the full-length animated features. This isn't because I'm a crazy person, it's because that's how they teach you in playwriting school how to do it! Or maybe my professor was a crazy person ... Regardless. Pixar and Disney movies have to shove a fulfilling, sensible story into 90 minutes and simplify it to PG standards. The Pirate Fairy, while not holding any deep themes of betrayal or racial equality, it does in fact touch on those Disneyrific ideas of unconditional love, home, family, and friendship.

One thing I appreciated about this movie is that it draws from earlier movies, including Tinkerbell's sister and a character arch for all of the girls. SPOILER We also see the emergence of the one and only Captain Hook, as his character is actually very much fleshed out. He is ruthless, conniving, elitist, and terrified of crocodiles. However, we see a gentler side to him, where maybe, even for just a moment, he is envious and open to the magic that the other Neverlanders can share with him. I enjoyed his character and his interactions with the crew and Zarina.

ANOTHER SPOILER. One thing I did not understand, however, was the complete absolving of Zarina's crimes. Zarina messed up. Zarina needed to learn a lesson. And maybe she did? But Tink and the gang sort of gloss over the truth when it comes to telling the other fairies what Zarina did, and Zarina is welcomed back into the township under a false understanding. I didn't like that, and usually Disney is better at their denouements.

This movie was very girl power. I appreciated that. All the main characters were female, they were not weak ... not a one of them ... and not all of them were dressed in skimpy outfits. Tink has grown to mean more than the jealous little harpy flitting around Peter's head, and I appreciate that. She's an inventor, she's got ingenuity, and she's a leader. However, I do feel like there was a larger problem when it came to POC. One of the fairy gals is Asian, and I thought that was cool. However, one of the pirates is a walking stereotype with a Fu Man Chu moustache and a thick accent. One of the fairy gals is black, but not too black. A fair-skinned fairy is the closest we get to any black characters in the entire film, and that worries and bothers me. Why are fairies predominantly white? They're fairies. Especially when you're creating a film to work as a learning tool for empowerment for little girls, you want to be a little more inclusive.

Pirate Fairy should be watched by anyone who is a Disney fan or a Neverlander. It's got beautiful animation (better than Frozen, I dare to say), it sticks to canon, it has a couple inside jokes thrown in there, and the girl power is abound. I think anyone who is young at heart will be pleasantly surprised that this film isn't just a cash-grab, but a legitimate piece of animation and storytelling.

THE MOVIE ITSELF: Pirate Fairy was pleasant, and I had few complaints about its animation, storytelling, characterization, consistency, or themes. It was actually more than what it had advertised, and that is always a great surprise. However, it is aimed at younger audiences, so those who are not Disney nerds and looking for a good Saturday date film, this may not be for you.  A-

ENJOYMENT FACTOR: I enjoyed it thoroughly. Again, I got what I paid for, and then some.  A-.

VERDICT: I am in no way saying that viewers should only go see movies inside their comfort zones. If that were the case, I would have never seen Judd Apatow films, Mayazaki movies, or even Au Revoir, Mes Enfants. But I learned from a young age that you need to try things you don't like to see if you actually like them. So please, please go see movies that you don't think you'll like. Go read books you wouldn't usually pick up. But it is the writer's responsibility to properly represent their work. And it is the filmmaker's responsibility to inform you of what you're paying money to see. My verdict? Go explore. Go see movies. And go rent The Pirate Fairy on Netflix.