War for the Planet of the Apes

War breaks Dawn’s over-obsession with monkey action and rises to the Apex of virtual emotion. Delivers remarkably little war, drifting instead into the style of a Chimp Eastwood revenge western. Beautiful cinematography, confidently slow pacing and a majestic score make the Hateful Ape an incredibly powerful and deeply human experience.

Ant Man

Big time crook turns to petty crime in Marvel’s Irony Man.  Rudd fails to steer this clunky quasi-comedic heist through awkward pacing, ham-fisted emotional backstory, and remarkably low stakes.  Lilly’s Zeta-Jones costume makes Douglas seem even more villainous than trying to blow up his company to stop his protégé’s progress does.

Jurassic World

Sequels find a way.  World extracts Park’s DNA and uses it to engineer a bastard movie equipped with all the technical weaponry of the past decade.  Our heroes run around the island, narrowly dodging dino-bullets and effectively ticking off all the obligatory Jurassic beats, while completely failing to evolve themselves.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

If only the VFX team could have painted better story motivation or character development onto a script filled with dialog more on-the-nose than dots on Serkis.  Brilliant effects (excluding over-ambitious deer) hardly make up for a film so over-simplified that any ape could understand it (and declare war in response).

The Village

Underrated middle-act in Shyamalan’s predictably twisty career.  Well acted by an all-star cast and cleverly conceived.  Film is greatly hurt by clunkiness of the reveal and several forced lines of explanation thereafter.  Though his performance is great, Brody’s senseless (story-wise) character drags plausibility of film into pit spiked with silliness.

Adaptation.

Writing fifty words about Adaptation.  Could be difficult.  Would have to be introspective and witty.  Cleverly self-referential perhaps.  Can’t employ Kaufman’s witty plot-structure.  Must handle subjective abstract concept in concrete form.  But that would be a boring review indeed.  No.  Brilliant editing! Ingeniously crafted!  Streep, Cooper, Cage and especially Cage!