Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

In DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES we get a fairly normal apocalyptic premise where a disease has wiped out everyone only some people seem to be immune to it and their kids etc. So they are left to rebuild and try and fix all the chaos that occurred while their friends, family and loved ones all went freakin ballistic and turned into jerks that jack up every store, street light, abandon house in an attempt to “survive”. Perfect! Great set up and they are ready to go right? No, no, they are not. There is a family of talking apes over the bridge minding their own business and we have to go mess their lives up. That is the way of the survivor or at least some of the human leaders in this movie.

An older wiser Cesar (leader of the apes) is now faced with the dilemma of who to trust and I won’t give it away, but given what happened in the first one, you were kinda hoping this individual learned something. Wonderfully flirting with the real life questions of trust, misunderstanding and just flat out what happens when jerks decide to be jerks, this flick is nothing short of spectacular. On just about every level imaginable we have a treat here which tops the first film (I loved the first film which came in at #7 on my TOP 10 for 2011).

There is a part of the movie where a bunch of stuff is on fire and you would think the object jumping through the fire would catch on fire. It doesn’t. Normally excusable in a full blown action flick, a movie this serious and heartfelt probably shouldn’t have this scene and it definitely stands out. Strong points.

Holy cow, the acting. We hate the jerks in this, we love the character, we love the balance between both sides. Jason Clarke (ZERO DARK THIRTY) as Malcolm is superb and they wisely casted Keri Russell who helps in capturing the compassionate side of the humans this film needed to succeed with brilliance. We also get an outstanding performance from Gary Oldman, but one of the secondary characters was probably my favorite. Kodi Smit-McPhee (Alexander) is the parallel character to Cesar’s son and I am telling you now, this dude is and will remain a huge star either continuing he voice acting like in PARANORMAN or on screen like in LET ME IN. If you are a fan of the PLANET OF THE APES series in general you can’t help but love this EPIC reboot. I give this movie a 7 out of 7.

Rating Definition : SPECTACULAR GENIUS THAT MAKES OTHER GENIUS’s THINK THEY ARE UN-CREATIVE, this is a movie that if you skip it will actually lesson your life span and make your skin dry out. Yeah, I am serious. These films end up on the scale of epic-ness that even giving it a 7 out of 7 seems like a small number. It should be more like an 8 out of 7 sending it straight into the arena of mathematical impossibilities!!!!!!