Summer Movie Review: Now with 100% more Monkeys

– Dawn of the Planet of the Apes 5/5

This movie is really good. Like really really good. I really really recommend it. The character dynamics between Gary Oldman, Jason Clarke, Andy Serkis Ape (Caesar) and Angry Ape (Koba) is terrific. It provides such a good balance and you are able to easily understand where each character is coming from.

Usually with extremist characters, you find yourself hating them because they’re cheap, but with Angry Ape and Gary Oldman you totally get it. They’re more anti-heroes than the antagonists. Like Magneto vs Professor X. More a clash of understandable ideologies than good guy vs bad guy.

Andy Serkis as Caesar is excellent. I don’t think he gets enough credit for how good he is because he ends up CGI’d, but he’s in a mo-cap suit and totally managed to become that character and do little things with the face and eyes that pure CGI animated characters haven’t done in pretty well any movie (You really can see this in some of the behind the scenes stuff). He was excellent as Gollum and he’s totally killing it as Caesar.

The conflict was really well thought out and paced excellently. I had not seen Rise of The Planet of the Apes before this one, but the way the story was designed they managed to cover anything you needed to know well and I didn’t have any real moments of “wait wut?”

Then I went back and Mexico Netflix’d “Rise” and I like “Dawn” even more.

My only “complaint” would be that the third act is your generic “everything is happening” action scene, but its still done in a very interesting way. I would have liked there to be maybe more of a memorable moment. Like the “that shot” moment because the movie really deserves that kind of thing and I’m not left with any one shot from the end really sticking out that way.

But its still very well done. The sense of scale makes sense and the camera work is excellently done. Go see.

Other reviews:

Transformers 4: Age of Extinction 2/5
A Million Ways to Die in the West 0/5
Godzilla 5/5
X-Men: Days of Future Past  4/5
The Amazing Spiderman 2 1/5
Trailer Park Boys: Don’t Legalize It 4/5
Captain America: The Winter Soldier 5/5
The Raid 3/5
Need for Speed 3/5
300: Rise of an Empire 3/5

To Come

– Son of Batman (DVD) May 6
– Hercules July 25
– Guardians of the Galaxy August 1
– Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles August 8
– Batman: Assault on Arkham (DVD) August 12
– The Expendables 3 August 15
– Sin City: A Dame to Kill For August 22