Dawn of the Planet of the Rise of the Conquest of the...

Despite having reviewed them all, I'm not a huge fan of the Ape series. And yet, it's become of those things that I had to check out the latest movie.

Apes be apes be chilling. Humans be all like "yo, we want in your space", and the Apes like "we keep an eye on you dawg." Then there's a bang and a smack down, and then Koba's all up in this business, but Caeser isn't taking shit son and... I have no idea where that's going... anyway, there are apes on horses dual wielding machine guns... ARE YOU NOT AMUSED?!

A lot of this movie is played out visually, so that's good storytelling right there. With some miming, so that's kind of talking, but we are talking economical talking here. It did take me a while, but I did finally get into the movie and stopped watching wryly and started getting caught up in the ongoing narrative. It does progress well, and although I already knew some of the basics (not having avoided reviews or spoilers at all), that didn't matter and I was happy to see the moments play out.

Andy Serkis, of course, gives good CGI, and so do others. On the human side, we have Gary Oldman going largely one-dimensional, but none of the humans are really amazingly fleshed out. Jason Clarke is the closest we get to someone who can emote without computer aid, and we also have Keri Russell and Kodi Smit-McPhee also on screen...

Decenter movie than I was expecting.

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