Tag: orangutan

Savages
(Sauvages)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 1 August 2025
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(Sauvages)
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Director – Claude Barras – 2024 – Switzerland – Cert. PG – 87m

French with English subtitles.

*****

An indigenous pre-teenage girl stands up to loggers destroyingthe local rainforest – stop-frame animated feature from the director of My Life as a Courgette is out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 1st

From its opening moments in darkness following unsettling creature noises suggesting a jungle forest, followed by jungle forest establishing shots – a frog jumping across a river via a series of stones, a snake slithering around a tree, a baby orangutan (non-verbal voice: soundtrack composer and co-sound editor Charles de Ville) swinging on a branch – it’s clear that this has high ambitions indeed. All the above would be one thing to execute in live action – a few location natural history shots… possibly library footage. In model – or stop-motion – animation, you need to physically build everything in terms of miniature model sets, so to achieve such images is a major undertaking.

Having already set the production bar high, this then pushes it up further with the rasping sound of a chainsaw, as the tree heights on which the baby orangutan and its mother (voice: de Ville again), who has just rescued the infant from the attentions of the deadly snake, are resting suddenly topples into a camp of workers who are going about their allotted task of destroying the creature’s natural habitat.… Read the rest

Tags 11-year-old, 3D animation, ancestors, animation, animator, Babette De Coster, baby, backing of the authorities, Benoît Poelvoorde, Borneo, bulldozer, capitalism, chainsaw, Charles de Ville, child-eating monster, children trying to cope, Claude Barras, compromise, contemporary life, cousin, darkness, digitally immersive environment, economics of deforestation, embarrassment, environment, environmental theme, fathers and children, film activities, financial gain, followed by jungle, forest, frog, grandfather, grandfathers and children, habitat destruction, hands-on physicality, harvest fruit, heritage, incoming call, indigenous, infant, jungle forest, learned survival skills, loggers, loss of a parent, loss of the mother, Martin Verset, maternal instincts, miniature, model, model animation, model sets, modern technology, monster in the forest, mother’s death, mothers and children, myth making, native, natural habitat, natural outdoors world, nuclear family, orangutan, orphan, ostracise, Oxbridge graduate, palm oil extraction, peer group, Penan, perceived societal norm, Pierre-Isaïe Duc, police, pre-teenage, puppets blink, rainforest, rampage, rasping, resistance, ringtone, rucksack, Sauvages, savage, Savages, school, single-parent families, smartphone battery died, smartphone obsession, smelly boy, snake, spoken language, stop-frame, stop-motion, struggling to cope, swinging on a branch, Switzerland, trauma, tree, tropic, true to his roots, venomous snake, viral video

Animation Features Movies

Ozi
Voice of the Forest

Director – Tim Harper – 2023 – US – Cert. PG – 87m

An orangutan girl becomes a social media influencer to stop corporate exploitation of palm oil after her forest habitat is burned in a forest fire – out in UK cinemas on Friday, August 16th

The fate of orangutans in countries such as Borneo is dire in the sense that, to facilitate the extraction of palm oil, rainforests are being cleared and burned (in some cases leading to forest fires removing further areas of rainforest). The problem is that the rainforest is the habitat of the orangutan, and they are being left with their natural home severely depleted. It’s a disaster for this species and needs addressing urgently.

Enter this film, which laudably seeks to place that idea in front of family audiences.

Don’t get too excited, though, because having set out to raise consciousness, it attempts to do so with a script that’s overly simplistic and laughable. It starts off well enough, with carefree, small orangutan girl Ozi (voice: Amandla Stenberg) leaping from branch to branch, pulling old orangutan’s tails to knock them off their branches and being rescued from falling into the expectantly gaping jaws of a hungry crocodile by her watchful dad (voice: Djimon Hounsou).… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Kingdom of the
Planet of the Apes

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 9 May 2024
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Planet of the Apes
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Director – Wes Ball – 2024 – US – Cert. 12a – 145m

*****

The fourth entry in the current franchise reboot takes place several generations after the previous three films when apes live in scattered communities and humans have lost the power of speech – out in UK cinemas on Thursday, May 9th

Noa (Owen Teague) has deep-seated feelings of failure. His father is the head of the Eagle Clan, a tribe of chimps who live in symbiosis with trained eagles, and Noa thinks nothing of scaling the highest local rock face to steal his own eagle egg for later bird rearing. He goes on such quests with his two loyal friends, the male Anaya (Travis Jeffery) and the female Soona (Lydia Peckham). He also values the wisdom of Raka (Peter Macon), an orangutan with considerable knowledge of the generations-old teachings of Ceasar.

Noa spots a human girl (Freya Allan) sneaking around the village and environs. A short while later, all hell breaks loose as a cavalry of masked apes attack and burn the village. Noa resolves to leave the safety of the local valley and venture into the land beyond on horseback, accompanied by Raka. They soon realise the non-speaking girl is following on foot, and no sooner have they coax her into joining their quest than they run into first a herd of humans at a small forest pool, then the mounted masked gorillas from whom they must rescue the silent girl.… Read the rest

Tags Amanda Silver, apes, attack, battleship, books, bridge, cavalry, Ceasar, chimp, Christianity, circular window-frame, cliff faces, complex, composer, cross-country, crucifix, desert, despot, eagle, eagle eggs, environment, experiments, failure, fast moving water, fiefdom, forest, franchise, Freya Allan, genetics, gorilla, herd, horseback, human, jazz, Jerry Goldsmith, journey, Kevin Durand, labyrinth, landscape, library, Lydia Peckham, mask, militarism, MoCap, monkey, motion capture, oppression, orangutan, Owen Teague, pendant, Peter Macon, piano, Planet of the Apes, pool, quest, reboot franchise, religion, religious, Rick Jaffa, rock face, Roman Empire, scarecrow, scientist, ships’ graveyard, soundtrack, speak, stronghold, tall trees, technology, towers, Travis Jeffery, trees, underground, US, village, virus, warmonger, watering hole, weaponry, Wes Ball, Western, Weta FX, William H. Macy, woodland