Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Name one human in this movie. Take your time. Jason Clarke, Keri Russell and Gary Oldman all show up, and all three get steamrolled by a guy in a motion capture suit. Andy Serkis plays Caesar with so much quiet authority that one tired look from him says more than a full page of human dialogue. Toby Kebbell’s Koba is the scariest character in the whole series, and there’s a scene where he plays the goofy circus ape for two armed guards that made me sit straight up on the couch. Matt Reeves shoots the ape village in the rain like it’s a real place with real politics, and the movie is basically a war film about how one grudge can wreck a truce. The humans are the weak spot. Oldman gets a speech and not much else. An 8.2 because it took a franchise about talking apes and made it feel like Shakespeare in the redwoods. $411 says you start signing off texts with ’apes together’ and only half your group chat gets it.

What works: Andy Serkis and Toby Kebbell give the apes more depth than most human casts get, and the ape village feels lived in.

What doesn’t: The human characters are bland and forgettable, and Gary Oldman gets one big speech and almost nothing else to do.

Who it’s for: People who want a blockbuster that plays like a war drama, apes and all.