Video review: "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes"

Technically, I’m not sure if “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is the sequel to the prequel to the “Apes” movies from the 1960 and ‘70s, or what. But I do know it was the most entertaining movie I saw this summer.

The follow-up to “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is set 10 years down the road, when humans have mostly died off due to disease and intelligent apes are now the Earth’s prime species. Represented entirely through computer animation, the chimps, gorillas, baboons, orangutans, etc. squint and snarl, bicker and bond, and also speak English when the mood strikes them.

Caesar (Andy Serkis) is the leader who championed the uprising against the humans, and now suspects they’re extinct. But then Marcus (Jason Clarke) shows up on the doorstep to their forest village with a band of other people in tow. After some convincing, Caesar reluctantly agrees to help them turn the power back on at the nearby hydroelectric dam, but it soon becomes clear that the coming conflict is unavoidable – both between and within species.

The human characters are a bit blah, but the interactions between the apes are electric. Caesar has a deep bond of trust with his chief lieutenant, Koba (Toby Kebbell), but when the latter encounters humans, it triggers his memories of being medically experimented upon. Similarly, on the human side there are those who fear the apes and think it would be better if they were just wiped out.

With its mix of soulful reflection and engaging sci-fi, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” was the best big-budget spectacle this past summer had to offer.

Video extras are quite extensive. There are deleted scenes, a production gallery of photos, feature-length commentary track by director Matt Reeves, and eight making-of featurettes.

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Review: "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes"

Andy Serkis, the actor who has become famous for his motion-capture performances as Gollum in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and as Caesar the chimpanzee in "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," receives top billing for reprising is role in the sequel to the latter.

This is notable for a couple of reasons: I believe it's the first time a performer represented digitally through CGI has been credited as the lead actor in a movie also starring live-action performances. This had already been the case with all-CG movies like "Avatar," which essentially were animated films. But here the motion-capture acting stands right beside the live actors -- indeed, it stands taller.

This is appropriate, since the heart and soul of the story in "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" is about the simians, with the humans acting as the sidekicks. "Rise" featured some chimps and apes blended with puppetry and special effects, but here the apes are all CG.

How good is the digital representation of apes? They seemed as real to me as the humans sharing the frame. Their eyes crinkle with emotion, their brows lower with anger, their throats burble with both simian noises and human-made speech.

If there's a knock to be made against this movie, it's that the live actors don't make as much of an impact as Serkis & Co. Other than Gary Oldman, who has an all-too-brief role as an anxious ex-soldier, most of them are somewhat flat.

That's OK; "Dawn" is still the best summer movie of 2014, with a combination of terrific action scenes and a genuinely moving story about the conflict between apes and people in the aftermath of an apocalypse, and how inhumanity is a trait both tragically share.

Set 10 years down the road from the last movie, "Dawn" sees most of the human population decimated by a biological warfare agent known as the simian flu, and the wars that followed. As the story opens, Caesar has become the grizzled leader of an entire colony of intelligent apes. They hunt other animals for food, and have built a huge wooden village in the forests around San Francisco.

Though they can speak halting English, Caesar and his tribe prefer to communicate through the sign language they were initially taught by humans. They also carry over other of mankind's affectations, such as adorning their faces with war-paint while hunting and riding horses.

It's been two years since they last saw any men, so they doubt they still live. But then they stumble across a party of humans led by Marcus (Jason Clarke), who are on a mission to get the old electric dam power generator working again. Humans survivors have gathered in a large tower in San Fran, but their fuel is nearly run out.

Misunderstanding and fear initially rule the interactions between man and ape, and blood is shed. But Caesar, worried that a war will mean the death of many of his kind, bends to their requests for help.

This does not sit well with members of his tribe, including his teenage (in temperament, if not years) son, Blue Eyes, and Koba (Toby Kebbell), his right-hand ape. As we know from the last movie, Koba was left scarred and blind in one eye from human medical experiments, and he's not about to forgive and forget.

Some of the most powerful sections in the movie depict the growing conflict between Koba and Caesar. In one scene, Koba sneers at Caesar letting Marcus and his band perform their "human work," touching his wounds as example of that kind's deeds. But they always make up, which consists of the subservient ape bowing before his leader and offering his open hand for a grasp of friendship, indicating he's been forgiven.

But others are not so accommodating, and soon the fight escalates despite the efforts of Caesar and Marcus.

The action scenes are kinetic and hefty; we can almost feel the weight of the great gorillas and chimps as they swing from branch to branch -- or girder to girder when they cross the Golden Gate Bridge into the humans' domain. Caesar hates guns and refuses to use them, though later some of his kind make darker choices -- as do humans.

(These machine guns, like seemingly all movie iterations, never have to be reloaded.)

There's one terrific early scene where Caesar brings his entire army to the doorstep of the humans. They just sit there, astride horses or on their feet, staring with disdain at their once-betters. Then Caesar opens his mouth and bellows a warning, and all the humans gasp at what they've just heard. You can see etched on their faces the moment their entire worlds crashed down upon them.

Rounding out the cast on the human end are Keri Russell as Marcus' wife, a CDC scientist; Marcus' artistically bent son (Kodi Smit-McPhee); and Carver (Kirk Acevedo), who is Koba's human counterpart, barely able to conceal his hatred of apes. Also making an impression among the apes is Karin Konoval as Maurice, the gentle giant orangutan who is the intellectual leader of the tribe, teaching the younglings and acting as Caesar's conscious.

New director Matt Reeves ("Cloverfield") ably takes over from Rupert Wyatt, who departed to work on another project. Holdover screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver are joined by Mark Bomback, who reportedly did a script polish.

Smart and soulful, humanistic yet full of verve, "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" is a great piece of entertainment.

Video review: "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"

I'll admit, when I heard they were making a prequel to the "Planet of the Apes" series, and it was to be called "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," I LOL'd.

A cheesy, long-dormant franchise about talking simians rebooted? Starring James Franco, he of the seemingly stoned Oscar-hosting gig? And a title containing two clauses? (What's the sequel to this movie going to be called, I joked, "Return of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes"?)

Then I saw the movie, and the giggling stopped. Easily the best movie of this past summer, "RotPotA" is a thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking film -- goofy title and all.

Set in the near-future, the story entails a young scientist, Will (Franco), who develops a serum to cure Alzheimer's. He tests it on a chimpanzee, Caesar (Andy Serkis provides the voice and body-motion capture), whose intelligence soars.

As the ape grows smarter, he begins figuring out that taking orders from people isn't really his bag. After being imprisoned in a facility for apes run by some cruel humans, Caesar leads a revolt against their evil overseers.

With terrific CGI special effects, a lot of smarts and visceral appeal, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" doesn't monkey around.

Fortunately, "RotPotA" is getting a first-class video release, stocked with tons of extras -- though you'll have to buy the Blu-ray edition to get most of the goodies.

The DVD does come with some nice stuff, including about a dozen deleted scenes, and featurettes on the mythology of apes and another focusing on the work of Serkis, who's become king of virtual acting.

Upgrade to the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack and you'll get eight additional featurettes covering everything from ape facts to how the filmmakers turned human actors jumping around in front of green screens into hairy gorillas and orangutans. There are also two separate commentary tracks by director Rupert Wyatt, and screenwriters Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver.

Movie: 3.5 stars out of four
Extras: 3.5 stars

Review: "Rise of the Planet of the Apes"

What a jaw-dropper. We had to wait until the end of summer for the movie of the summer, and it came from a reboot of a moribund, cheesy film franchise that saw its heyday before the Bee Gees discovered bell bottoms.

I'll admit, I went into "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" with fairly low expectations. Oh, let's not kid around, I was quite sure this movie would suck a mighty wind. A prequel to "Planet of the Apes" set in modern times, with smartened-up chimps and gorillas depicted (mostly) through CGI?

And that title ... yuck! They might as well have called it "Precursor of the Planet of the Apes." (The movie poster tagline, which a colleague pointed out to me, is even worse: "It's our world, but their planet.")

The creative team's credentials aren't exactly promising, either: Director Rupert Wyatt's previous two features are unknown to me, or most everyone. And screenwriting team Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver last enjoyed a script credit in 1997 (and for "The Relic," which barely counts).

And yet Wyatt, Jaffa and Silver attack Pierre Boulle's novel with straightforward flair and storytelling acumen, taking the concept to its logical conclusion -- or, in this case, origin. It's a smart, contemplative movie that seems bound neither by the conventions of the science fiction genre or action/adventure tropes.

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" doesn't get too bogged down in the minutia of the science -- a brilliant young researcher, Will (James Franco), has developed a serum to cure Alzheimer's, especially that of his father (John Lithgow). While testing it on chimpanzees, he discovers that it dramatically increases their intelligence.

After an unpleasant incident at the lab, the program is shut down by the money-grubbing administrator (David Oyelowo) -- but not before Will sneaks out an infant chimp, whom he names Caesar. The years roll by, and soon Caesar has become a willful, juvenile ape who chafes at Will's benevolent but omnipresent yoke.

Caesar is a wondrous creation of live shots of chimpanzees, puppetry and computer-generated animation. He's a full-blooded creation, and by far the most relatable character in the film. It's the greatest marriage of performance and CGI since Gollum in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy -- which is no surprise seeing that Andy Serkis provided the motion-capture performance for both characters.

The movie really gets interesting when Caesar is separated from Will, Will's father and girlfriend (Freida Pinto) and placed in a facility with dozens of regular chimps, gorillas and orangutans. The honcho of this ape prison (Brian Cox) isn't really a sadist, but his son (Tom Felton) is, and seems to have the run of the place when the old man retires for the evening.

At first the ostracized outsider who gets pushed around by the local strongman ... er, ape, Caesar uses his cunning to take control of the situation and (literally) stand up to the man.

Yes, the movie dallies long enough for a few lay-ups miming dialogue and scenarios from the original movies -- e.g. Caesar's mother is called "Bright Eyes," the same moniker given to Charlton Heston (who pops up briefly himself) by his simian captors in the 1968 film. But these register as mini-homages rather than cheap in-jokes.

"Rise of the Planet of the Apes" emerges as the "District 9" of 2011 -- a seemingly silly flick that turns out to have more brains and pluck than anything around. No monkey business: this is the best movie of the summer.

3.5 stars out of four