2014 Reviews #24: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes So I saw this movie in 3D at 10pm last night, after I went to a concert, and I was a little worried that I wouldnt be able to stay awake the whole time… Yeah that fear went away pretty quickly… Dawn of the Planet of the Apes stars Jason Clark, Gary Oldman, Toby Kebbell, and of course, the one and only Andy Serkis. So this is a sequel and it takes place about eight years after the events of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I loved Rise, and I thought it was honestly one of the more underrated movies of that year. However, my only problem with it was the human characters, and that I was kind of bored until the second half, when it really started to become Caesars story. So naturally, I was really looking forward to Dawn, because it looked like it was going to focus a lot more on Caesar, and his crew. My only fear was that it would have the same problem as the first one. Having too much exposition, not enough action, and taking too long to get started. Yeah as my intro maybe suggested, this movie has none of those problems. I can safely say Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is one of the best movies Ive seen all year. Besides Edge of Tomorrow (not like you saw it anyway), there hasnt been a really great (American), action movie this year. I loved Edge of Tomorrow, but its emotional core doesnt compare to Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. The action sequences are all absolutely fantastic. This is backed up because of amazing stunt work, AMAZING motion-capture acting (more on that in a minute), and overall fantastic CGI. I wont say what it is, but the final shot of this movie blew me away with how real it looked. It looked amazing the entire time, but that last shot truly convinced me that I was watching real apes. Not CG ones. Even ignoring the CGI, its a gorgeous looking movie. The cinematography is great, and overall the look of the movie was pretty immaculate. The only thing I could see bothering some people is that its a pretty bleak-visual-setting. It didnt bother me at all, and the 3D really added to the atmosphere and tone that were created throughout. Ill get to the motion capture in a minute, but my problem with the first movie is significantly improved here, because the human performances are all very good, especially Gary Oldman. Hes always good, but here he has some really great moments, and turns out to not me the cookie-cutter villain you would expect in a movie like this. All the character feel extremely fleshed-out and end up feeling so real that youre not quite sure who to root for. You feel everyones pain and you dont want anybody to get hurt even though you know theres no way around it, this becomes one of the more emotionally challenging aspects of the movie. I mentioned the emotional core before, but I really need to stress just how strong it is. You really feel for the characters, and you become so invested in the plot, that it makes the action all the more intense and exciting. But also, sometimes hard to watch. There are certain characters who maybe dont end up in the best place by the end of the movie, and its really kind of heartbreaking. OKAY, Ive built up to it. The motion capture acting in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is unsurprisingly, some of (if not the) best motion capture acting ever put to screen. The only mo-cap characters I can even think of that would compare to this movie, are all played by Andy Serkis, and my God is his fantastic here. I cant quite say its his best performance because of Gollum, but this is some of his best work, and he truly is Academy Award worthy in this movie. However, he isnt the only one who deserves praise. In the last movie, Caesar was the primary focus of Rise, so the other apes didnt really get their time to shine, but here they all do. Especially, Toby Kebbell who plays Koba. I wont really get into what the role of his character is in this movie, but I will say that Toby Kebbell was also truly fantastic, and also Academy Award worthy, in my opinion. Unlike Transformers, here the CGI characters are all recognizable. You know which one is which, and you actually give a shit about them. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes runs for 130 minutes (a good forty minutes shorter than Transformers: Age of Extinction), but it honestly feels like 90 minutes. The pacing in this movie is so high-energy that you will be truly shocked when you realize an hour and a half has already gone by. Thats some of the best praise I can give a movie, because as soon as it ended: I wanted more. The next movie honestly cant come quickly enough. Thank God Matt Reeves will be directing the next one too, because the direction is amazing here. There are a lot of really long takes, and a lot of artsy shots that are super interesting, and really just add to this movies originality. My only problem is that I dont quite feel the bond between Caesar and his human companion in this movie as much as I did in the last one, but Im nit-picking because this really is one of the best movies of the year, and definitely the best American action movie Ive seen so far. Even if you didnt see the first movie, even if youve never seen a Planet of the Apes movie, I implore you to go see this movie (in IMAX 3D, if you can afford it), opening weekend so Hollywood will keep supporting directors like Matt Reeves, and amazing storytelling like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Like I said, you dont need to have seen any of the other movies to get into this one. If you can, watch Rise first just so you can get to know Caesar a little more, but if not just go and see this one and youll still find a LOT to enjoy. Im definitely going to be seeing Dawn of the Planet of the Apes a second time, and it will definitely be showing up again in my Top Whatever Movies of 2014 Countdown in January. OVERALL GRADE: A+
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 19:30:51 +0000