An involving 'Planet of the Apes' tale

   Kingdom of the Planet of Apes brings welcome freshness to a franchise that began in 1968. A mashup of big issues -- the tyrannical perversion of once-noble ideals, among them -- add thematic weight to the movie's vividly imagined surface.

  Employing ever-improving motion capture technology, director Wes Ball tells the story of young chimp Noa (Owen Teague), an ape who wants to please his father, the head of the Eagle Clan of apes, now the planet's dominant species. 

    Ball quickly informs us about the world we're in. A mysterious virus has caused humans to regress. They're no longer able to speak. The same virus has givenapes the ability to talk, although they retain many of their animal traits.

   A masterfully conceived cliff-climbing sequence introduces Noa, whose village soon will be ravaged by a band of masked-ape marauders. After the devastating raid, Noa embarks on a quest to rescue captured members of his clan, including his mother (Sara Wiseman).

  Noa isn't alone on the road. He's joined by a sagacious orangutan (Peter Macon's Raka) who introduces him to the now-forgotten philosophy of Caesar. A key figure in several previous movies, Caesar promoted pacifism and compassion among apes. 

  A young human (Freya Allan's Mae) rounds out the traveling trio. Although she looks like a feral creature, Mae harbors a secret. Once revealed, her intelligence shocks Raka and Noa, a familiar but still satisfying series ploy.

   Focusing almost entirely on apes, Kingdom doesn't want for a convincing villain. The ferocious Proximus Caesar (Kevin Durand) tries to entice Noa, who's eventually captured, into becoming an ally. Proximus wants to penetrate an abandoned human facility that houses technology he believes will enhance ape capabilities, and, more importantly, secure his dominance as king of all apes.

   Ball handles the movie's action -- a battle on a bridge and the ultimate confrontation between Noa and Proximus -- with skill and verve. 

    Will we see Noa again? The finale, set in Proximus' seaside city, exposes Mae's previously hidden motives, leaving the door open for additional movies.

     It's too early to complain about the length of summer movies (Ball's runs for two hours and 24 minutes) or to cavil about the endless perpetuation of big-screen series. Ball deserves credit for making room for genuine character development and for minimizing human presence.

    The eerie beauty of its landscapes, some dotted with the lonely remnants of human construction, add to the movie's power. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes proves a worth addition to a long-running series that still has life in it -- even if it takes a big CGI boost to create it.

   

'Venom': Noise and a lot more noise

 The second Venom movie has arrived. I guess that means someone, perhaps many someones, must have been waiting for it. If you're not a Marvel enthusiast, it probably helps to know that Venom began in the Spider-Man comics as an alien creature with a penchant for invading a human host and emerging as an unleashed helping of id and aggression. Personally, I've never much cared about the complex inter-related genealogy of the Marvel universe and that undoubtedly colors my approach to Venom: Let There Be Carnage, a comic-book movie directed by Andy Serkis and starring Tom Hardy. Hardy plays Eddie Brock, a San Francisco reporter whose body provides Venom with a host. Michelle Williams portrays the fiancee that kicked Eddie to the curb, and Woody Harrelson appears as Cletus Kasady, a criminal whose body becomes the host for a red "symbiotic'' beast called Carnage  -- or something like that. If you're a devotee, the movie may make more sense than it does to the uninitiated. Perhaps you won't even care whether it's coherent or not. There's mild amusement in watching Eddie argue with a creature that sprouts tentacles out of the poor man's back and occasionally emerges to stick its toothy alien face into Eddie's. Venom also does a pretty good job of wrecking Eddie's apartment, an act of colossal inconsideration in a city where rents tend to soar. Namoi Harris portrays Shriek, Kasady's love interest from a childhood in which they both were abused. Her weapon: the ability to scream so loud it can puncture eardrums. Serkis pours on the special effects and tries hard to live up tohe movie's subtitle, Let There Be Carnage. Effects dominate story: The real carnage, however, is inflicted on the screenplay. Yeah, there's noise, a few chuckles, dizzying action, and Hardy -- but one question: Where the hell is the movie to go with all that stuff?

She's beautiful; he's a schlub

Long Shot goes for laughs by teaming Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron. It probably will be a hit -- but not with me.

The Long Shot, an improbable romantic comedy starring Charlize Theron (beautiful) and Seth Rogen (schlubby) likely will score with audiences, more for its comedy than its romance. Directed by Jonathan Levine (50/50), the movie plays to the expectation that someone who looks like Theron -- and who does a better job of looking like Theron than Theron herself? -- possibly could fall for someone who looks like Rogen, who, as far as we know, never has been mistaken for Bradley Cooper.

To make the movie even more ludicrous, Theron portrays a Secretary of State with presidential ambitions and Rogen has been hired to play a rogue journalist who has little respect for anything that might be described as the "official" world. It's reasonable to wonder how Rogen's Fred Flarsky would even know someone such as Theron's Charlotte Field.

We quickly learn that the relationship traces back to Fred's teens. The slightly older Charlotte babysat for Fred, who expressed his fondness for her with an erection that caused his pants to bulge. Evidently, the moment was so important that Fred never forgot it.

When Fred and Charlotte meet as adults -- if that's what the character played by Rogen can be called -- they strike up a relationship. They meet, by the way, at a party at which Boyz II Men makes an appearance. Turns out they're both Boyz II Men fans. What are the odds?

Charlotte is impressed with Fred's candor as a supposedly fearless and funny journalist who works for a Brooklyn newspaper. As luck would have it, Fred is newly unemployed having quit his job when his paper was taken over by a right-wing tycoon.

Field hires Fred as a speechwriter and ... well ... I don't have to tell you that one thing leads to another and an unlikely romance blossoms between the Secretary of State and this slovenly Secretary of Sate. (I know, "sate" isn't a noun, but I couldn't resist.)

The movie plays a bad-taste card early. In his effort to infiltrate a meeting of neo-Nazis, Fred agrees to have a swastika tattooed on his arm. That way, the skinheads will believe he's one of their Jew-hating brethren. Sure.

I suppose all of this could have worked had the screenplay, credited to Dan Sterling and Liz Hannah, found a comic tone that could accommodate both meathead humor and something slightly more sophisticated.

If Long Shot scores with audiences, it may be because Levine's understands that all successful comedies require a couple of major moments that have been engineered to elicit the always desirable Big Laugh.

At one point, Field's advisors (June Diane Raphael), tries to embarrass Fred, who has been told that he should shed his neo-hippie attire and find a suit he can wear to one of Field's appearances at an international conference. They find him a suit that would look out-of-place at a Scandinavian folk festival, but the joke is undermined by a question: Would Fred really be stupid enough to wear this ridiculous outfit?

If you're going to hire Rogen, it's probably fitting to work masturbation into the story and if you can find a way to include a masturbation joke with ejaculate, you've struck gold. Levine does both. I'll say no more.

If you've seen any Rogen performance, you already know that he'll punctuate the proceedings with wisecracks, some of them clever. Theron gives a reasonably adept comic performance as her character is put in the position of having to defend Fred against those who believe that he's too much the irredeemable slob to qualify as a romantic partner for someone who aspires to the nation's highest office, currently held by a self-involved fool played by Bob Odenkirk.

The supporting cast includes Alexander Skarsgard as the Canadian Prime Minister, a suave, good-looking fellow who's supposed to make an ideal companion for Charlotte, aside from his creepy pretensions and a fingernails-on-blackboard laugh. O'Shea Jackson Jr. shows up as one of Fred's buddies, a guy who's successful in business. Andy Serkis, looking strange as ever, plays the media mogul who's trying to gobble up the entire media world.

I know from the reaction of a preview audience that enough folks will find Long Shot hilarious to make it into a small hit. To wit: There's even a scene in which the Secretary of State, uncharacteristically high on drugs, must deal with a national security crisis.

But I'm not casting my vote for a comedy that, like a long-winded political speech, goes on for two hours, and which too often seems more interested in packaging gags than in taking on political hypocrisy or, heaven forbid, something audiences truly hold sacred: the romantic comedy. Rather than challenging the form, the movie can't resist capitulating to it.

'Black Panther' elevates the comic-book genre

Chadwick Boseman stars in a fine Marvel Comics movie with a feel all its own.

Director Ryan Coogler begins Black Panther, his Marvel Comics adventure, in Oakland in 1992. Although we’re looking at the streets of a city where kids play basketball on decaying courts, the ensuing sequence adds a whole other dimension. It starts with a knock on the door of a small apartment adjoining the basketball courts. One of the men in the apartment checks the peephole and says that a couple of "Grace Jones-looking chicks" are knocking.

I won’t reveal more except to say that in this Oakland-based prologue, we meet a king, two of his female soldiers and the king’s treacherous brother -- all from the mythical African kingdom of Wakanda.

That’s a lot of information for a movie that hasn’t really even started. But it’s telling because Coogler (Fruitvale Station and Creed) wastes no time linking the lives of those kids on an Oakland playground to an ennobling mythos that draws on African tradition. The movie involves a fair measure of fantastic developments, but they feel solidly grounded.

Whatever meanings you read into Black Panther, you’ll find a movie that’s filled with the kind of commanding characters who do as much to create the movie’s world as the CGI razzle-dazzle Coogler also employs.

The story centers on T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman), prince and soon-to-be-king of Wakanda. Wakanda allows the world to believe that it's impoverished and irrelevant. The country appears bereft but hides its true face from the world. In Wakanda, tradition and advanced technology mingle without strain; tribal culture is maintained while amazing technical feats routinely are accomplished.

Coogler, who wrote the screenplay with Joe Robert Cole, deftly balances action, exposition and a large cast of characters that includes T’Challa’s love interest (Lupita Nyong’o), a woman with her own agenda. Nyong'o's Nakia feels duty bound to use Wakandan knowledge to help an ailing world, so much so that she puts civic obligation before love.

We also meet a variety of other characters, the most important of them a ruthless refugee from Oakland named Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan). Killmonger, a man with a giant chip on his shoulder and a plan to arm the world's non-white populations, eventually challenges T’Challa, a.k.a, the Black Panther, for his throne.

Perhaps because of the way Coogler creates the appealing landscapes and urban environments of Wakanda -- almost an African Shangrila -- and perhaps because the movie seldom feels less than mythic and elevated, Black Panther differentiates itself from every other movie ripped from the pages of Marvel Comics.

It's also encouraging to discover that the women in Black Panther boldly claim their turf. In addition to Nakia, there’s General Okoye (Danai Gurira), a warrior who wields a mean spear and who's ferociously loyal to Wakanda. T’Challa’s sister Shuri (Letitia Wright adds brashness as the young woman who invents and controls most of Wakanda’s miraculous high-tech inventions. Her obvious counterpart, Q in the James Bond movies — only with a devilish streak.

The women in the cast are in fine form, and so are the men, especially Jordan who's scary good as a man at war with the world. Unassuming and unburdened by an overload of machismo, Boseman’s Black Panther makes an appealing superhero. Better yet, he shares the movie with every other actor without ever getting lost in the action, plot mechanics, and comic-book jargon.

Black Panther probably will give Boseman his widest exposure yet, but he’s already proven that he’s a terrific actor in earlier work. (He should at least have been nominated for an Oscar for his stunning portrayal of James Brown in the underrated Get On Up.)
Black Panther more or less divides into two parts. In the first, Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis), an arms dealer, steals an African artifact from a British museum. We quickly learn that the artifact is made of Vibranium, the mysterious substance on which Wakandan civilization and the Panther's powers have been built. Klaue thinks he’s gotten hold of something that will make him rich, but his meanness is no match for those with bigger dreams.

At this point, we also meet Everett K. Ross (Martin Freeman), a CIA agent who gets swept up in Wakanda's affairs. I haven't even mentioned Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), who plays one of T'Challa's allies.

And, yes, there’s abundant action, most of it decently handled by Coogler — from car chases in the cramped streets of Seoul, South Korea, where the movie takes up early residence to a final battle in Wakanda involving clashing warriors and charging giant rhinos.

Coogler and his team deserve credit for creating a great-looking and distinctive entertainment. But this is one helping of popular culture in which effects don't dominate every scene and characters have room to breathe. That’s good news for Marvel and even better news for those in the audience who think they’ve already had enough comic-book movies to last a lifetime.

A welcome 'Star Wars' addition

Director Rian Johnson takes the reins for Last Jedi and the result mostly satisfies.

Now, where were we?

If you're among the zillions of Star Wars enthusiasts, you know that the last chapter (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) concluded with young Rey (Daisy Ridley) finding her way to a remote island where Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) had withdrawn from all things Jedi, including battling whatever evil currently had harnessed the dark side of the series' fabled Force. Luke, we learned, had hung up his Lightsaber.

Now comes Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the next installment of what's billed as a Star Wars sequel trilogy -- and the plea for Luke to shake off his funk continues.

This edition should please fans as it deftly barrels its way through two and half hours with only a few lags as the screenplay fulfills expositional obligations.

Director Rian Johnson (Brick and Looper) picks up the reins from J.J. Abrams and gives us a Star Wars with a bit of nuance, flashes of humor and plenty of well-crafted action.

What brings the whole enterprise to life -- aside from the generosity of its spectacle -- are the inner torments of characters who embody the great Star Wars theme: the tension between the light and dark sides of the force. This clash, of course, includes the knowing acknowledgment that even the most morally superior characters might be a hairsbreadth away from answering the dark call.

In a way, the plot of any Star Wars movie could be its least important attribute. You already know that Rey has found Luke Skywalker, so the only remaining question is whether she persuades him to leave his island retreat -- formally known as the planet Ahch-To -- and return to action as an inspiration for the Resistance, which is busy fighting the First Order.

The First Order, of course, is run by Supreme Leader Snoke, a cadaverous-looking creep played by Andy Serkis with the usual CGI boost. Snoke has great power, but looks so decayed, you half wonder how he lifts himself out of bed in the morning.

Disney, which has taken charge of the Star Wars franchise, has cautioned critics against revealing spoilers. I don't consider it a spoiler to tell you that unlike its 2015 predecessor, this edition includes more than a cameo appearance by Hamill. His Luke quickly establishes himself as a cranky, bearded figure who has shed every bit of the wide-eyed enthusiasm of his character's youth.

A bit of sadness tempers the fun. The Last Jedi marks Carrie Fisher's last performance. Fisher appears as General Leia Organa, head of the Resistance, and yes, Fischer's presence is more than ceremonial. (Fisher died a year ago this month.)

Johnson does a good job of weaving new characters into a mix that brings back Adam Driver, who digs as deep as he can as Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren tops Snoke's list of prospects to become the new Darth Vader. Ren, you'll recall, killed his father, Han Solo, in the last episode.

Look for Laura Dern, with purple hair, as Vice Admiral Holdo, evidently the second in command of Resistance forces after General Leia. Benicio del Toro plays DJ, a hacker who knows how to disable a device that figures heavily in the plot. Del Toro gives Last Jedi a sly, juicy boost. Finn (a returning John Boyega) and Rose Pico (newbie Kelly Marie Tran) are forced by circumstance to trust del Toro's genially larcenous character.

As you can tell, many characters populate this increasingly complex story. Oscar Isaac returns as the dashing pilot Poe Dameron. Also returning: Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux, another First Order purveyor of evil, and Lupita Nyong'o, the goggle-eyed pirate Maz.

Ridley already proved herself a worthy addition to the Star Wars fold and does nothing here to convince us that we weren't right to welcome her for what evidently will be a long run.

Johnson and his production team gives us plenty of visual diversion -- from Luke's monkish stone hut (it looks like something sculptor Andy Goldsworthy might have created) to the imperially sized vessels of the First order to the obligatory trip to a bustling casino planet -- it's called Canto Bight -- where rogues, aliens, and intergalactic swells meet and mingle.

New creatures pop up, notably cute little Porgs, a type of seabird that inhabits the planet Ahch-To. Thankfully, the Porgs are used sparingly enough not to create an overdose of cuteness, the dreaded Ewok effect.

Look, directing a Star Wars movie requires an ability to juggle a large cast of characters without creating too much confusion, as well as a commitment to preserving Star Wars mythology without miring the series in undue reverence for its past. Every new Star Wars movie must earn its own stripes.

Johnson gets the job done and, in the bargain, makes us the beneficiaries of his success.

He refused to be bed ridden

Robin Cavendish spent 36 years of his life paralyzed from polio, a disease he contracted while working in Kenya in the 1950s. Breathe, a new movie starring Andrew Garfield and marking the directorial debut of actor Andy Serkis, turns Cavendish's story into a life-affirming celebration. It may sound odd for a movie about a paralyzed man, but Serkis (The Lord of the Rings and the Planet of the Apes movies), has made a sometimes giddy, feel-good movie -- and, as a result, Breathe never feels entirely credible. Early on, the movie focuses on Cavendish's relationship with Diana (Claire Foy), the love of his life. The two meet, marry and head to Kenya. When the stricken Cavendish is brought back to England, he initially wishes for nothing more than to die. He has no desire to spend his life attached to a breathing machine. For an active adventurous man, life had lost its meaning. Diana, who by this time is pregnant, eventually brings her husband out of his funk and the rest of the movie charts the ways in which Cavendish struggles to lead a meaningful life. With the help of an inventor (Hugh Bonneville), Cavendish labors to escape his bedroom, an ambition that led to the invention of a mobile wheelchair with a built-in breathing machine. For those who are unable to breathe on their own, life becomes a new kind of adventure, one dependent on a continuous flow of electricity and, ultimately, on others. Displaying a preternatural helping of good humor, Garfield gives a spirited performance as Cavendish, no small feat considering he's limited to working with his face and voice. Serkis delivers moments of interest, but the movie eventually becomes mawkish with a conclusion that proves touching -- if not heartbreaking. If Breathe advances a view that's anything close to the truth, Cavendish probably wouldn't have wanted it any other way, but Breathe might have benefited from a little less burnish and a lot more soul searching.

An inter-species fight for survival

In War for the Planet of the Apes, noble Caesar must lead the ape population to the promised land.

Has it come to this? Do we humans have so little faith in ourselves that we must look to apes for inspirational leadership? We are talking, of course, about Caesar, the ape given life by actor Andy Serkis and state-of-the-art digital effects in two previous Planet of the Apes movies.

In its latest edition -- War for the Planet of the Apes -- Caesar becomes a figure as large as Moses, a primate who must lead his fellow creatures out of the hostile wilderness created by murderous humans.

In this edition, the vile humans are represented by an American colonel, Woody Harrelson mainlining a mega helping of the same madness that gripped Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. Harrelson's character holds the ape population hostage, turning them into forced laborers in what he views as a last-ditch effort to save mankind from the simian onslaught.

In case we don't get the similarities to Brando's Colonel Kurtz, the movie makes a wryly intended reference to "Ape-Pocalypse Now," but I think most audiences will have caught on without the visual prompting.

Harrelson pulls out as many stops as he can find to portray the evil Colonel who knows how to give his sadism a nearly convincing rationale, and the movie doesn't flinch when it comes to showing us the suffering inflicted on the apes that have been imprisoned in the Colonel's concentration camp.

Director Matt Reeves leaves little room for us to doubt where our rooting interests are meant to lie. The movie clearly sides with Caesar and his cohorts: an orangutan named Maurice (Karin Konoval) and an associate named Rocket (Terry Notary) among them.

Caesar faces the movie's greatest challenge: He must resist the call for personal vengeance against the Colonel, who's responsible for the death of Caesar's wife and his oldest son. Is Caesar a big enough personality to embrace such a noble cause?

Caesar is aided by a chimp called Bad Ape (voice by Steve Zahn), an escapee from a zoo who knows where to find the Colonel's hideous compound.

The special effects work obviously reaches superior levels, and the visual environment is convincing enough to carry a movie about the war between apes and humans. It's possible that performance capture -- the process by which an actor's motions are digitally translated into computer-generated apes -- never has been so effectively used, so much so that Reeves can include many close-ups of Caesar's saturnine countenance.

Perhaps to keep War from being entirely one-sided, we meet an orphan girl (Amiah Miller). She's taken in by the apes and cared for in a humane fashion.

Those left among the human population are devolving, losing their ability to speak. The apes, on the other hand, are progressing, beginning to master speech. For the moment, all but two of them communicate with sign language. But we know they'll soon be prattling away like the creatures already endowed with the capacity for speech.

The movie takes place 15 years after the lethal outbreak of simian flu, which has decimated humanity. No wonder Colonel is furious.

The settings -- from snow-covered landscapes to remote redoubts -- give the movie a chilled, desolate feeling. This "Ape-pocalypse" isn't exactly a ton of fun, obsessed as it is with its own seriousness. And if you don't like pounding drums, you'll hate Michael Giacchino's score.

The battle sequences are compelling enough, although Reeves's insistently grim approach tends to overwhelm the movie's small attempts at humor.

The point, of course, is that humans have disrupted the Edenic serenity of the planet. Screenwriter Mark Bomback elevates the idea of self-sacrifice in service of a worthy cause, something that human beings have trouble achieving in both the movie and in real life.

In the conclusion to this trilogy of most recent Planet of the Apes reboots, people become the last place to look for real expressions of humanity, which makes War for the Planet of the Apes either a powerful cautionary tale or one very expensive helping of misanthropy.

Yes, the Force really awakens

J.J. Abrams gives George Lucas' franchise new life.

A mixture of new and old faces help director J.J. Abrams relaunch the Star Wars series, now part of the Disney empire. Those who feared that Abrams' Star Wars: The Force Awakens wouldn't honor George Lucas' long-running achievement needn't fret: Abrams has created a transitional movie that contains a mostly winning mix of Star Wars nostalgia and new additions.

Truth be told, the series may be better off now that Lucas has handed the reins to someone else. Abrams, who also helped revive the Star Trek franchise, easily surpasses the last three films: The Phantom Menace (1999), Attack of the Clones (2002), and Revenge of the Sith (2005).

Abrams took no chances when it comes to filling the movie with actors who serve as reassurance that Disney plans to respect the Lucas legacy.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is not that Harrison Ford returns as Han Solo, but that he's actually in a substantial amount of the movie -- along with his old pal Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew).

Ford's appearance -- as well as that of Carie Fisher, C-3P0 and R2-D2 -- helps launch the cast that presumably will carry the series forward, namely Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, a feisty young woman who rises from the role of space scavenger to helping to save the galaxy from the First Order.

In case you haven't been reading the advance stories, The First Order is the evil organization that has taken over where the Empire left off.

Ridley's Rey, who lives on the planet Jakku, is joined in her efforts by Finn (John Boyega), a Stormtrooper who defects from the First Order.

Finn has no interest in being an enforcer for the Dark Side, represented here by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson) and Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie).

Driver's Ren gets the most screen time: He wears a mask and speaks in a Darth Vaderesque voice, although he's not quite as imposing as his predecessor.

Oscar Isaac turns up as another newbie; he plays Poe Dameron, a gung-ho pilot for the Resistance.

Without making too much of a fuss about it, Abrams introduces a variety of new creatures and a new droid, a rolly-polly creation known as BB-8 that struck me as something of a lovable high-tech beach ball.

The movie's meager plot involves a search for Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). Luke must be found because he's the last remaining Jedi, the only person capable of ensuring that the Force is passed to a new generation.

Did I care about the plot? Not really. And although the movie's screenwriting team (Lawrence Kasdan, Abrams and Michael Arndt) adds plenty of winking humor, it may be less about generating laughs than serving as a welcome reminder that the original movies weren't ordeals: They were fun.

There's even a scene that pays homage to Lucas' penchant for taking us to bars where aliens hang-out with Lupita Nyong'o giving voice to Maz Kanata, a space pirate whose eyes are covered with goggles and who dispenses a bit of wisdom -- or what passes for it in a Star Wars movie.

Of course, composer John Williams returns to score his seventh Star Wars film.

Despite the presence of the kind of father/son elements that informed the better Star Wars movies, we probably should consider it a positive development that a young woman has a major role here and likely will continue to have one as the series progresses.

Who knows? Given enough time, Rey may even give Katniss Everdeen a run for her money.

Man vs. ape: Can there be a winner?

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes makes for a smart, involving sequel.

The screenplay for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is smart enough to make you wonder whether the movie's intelligent apes didn't have a hand in writing it. This sequel maintains the overall arc of the revitalized series, pitting man (or at least some men) against ape (or at least some apes).

But if we take the apes as metaphors for the natural environment, the one which we tend to intrude upon and despoil, the movie becomes deeper, more resonant.

Director Matt Reeves not only peppers his screenplay with ideas, he tells a story that can be enjoyed on the most rudimentary of levels.

So where exactly are we in the evolutionary saga of the human and ape populations? We're in the near future just after a terrible Simian Virus has wiped out a substantial part of humanity.

A group of survivors -- perhaps numbering in the hundreds -- has assembled in a ruined quarter of a devastated San Francisco.

The apes, who have attained various levels of intelligence and some of whom have developed the ability to speak, live in the Muir Woods, where they've constructed an elaborate wooden village and are in the process of developing an ethos: Apes don't kill apes.

The apes do, however, kill deer: They hunt for food with spears and evidently are carnivorous. They also have family structures and a form of governance.

The apes are led by Caesar (Andy Serkis), a leader devoted the ape population. Caesar has strength, but also a reflective sense of sadness about where the world has been and where it seems to be headed.

The potential for additional trouble arises when the San Francisco humans launch an expedition into the Muir Woods. They hope to reactivate a power plant that's badly needed to maintain the city's supply of electricity and to keep matters from returning to total barbarity.

The mission includes a trio that has formed an impromptu family in the wake of the virus that has taken away husbands, wives and children. There's Malcolm (Jason Clarke), his girlfriend (Keri Russell) and Malcolm's son (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

The apes reluctantly agree to allow the mission to proceed, but Koba (Toby Kebbell) objects. It's understandable, maybe even justifiable: Koba -- a victim of cruel human experiments in the last movie -- has no reason to trust mankind.

Eventually, Koba sets himself up in opposition to Caesar, and we know that an eventual battle looms. The clash between Koba and Caesar allows Reeves & company to serve up some strong action while also examining the role of guns in building a civilization, as well as what happens when a society is fractured by two opposing narratives.

That conflict, of course, inevitably pits Koba and his marching minions against Dreyfus (Gary Oldman), a human who takes responsibility for wiping out the apes and protecting humanity.

Reeves (Cloverfield and Let Me In) handles the action, effects and story with great aplomb, developing a sense of mystery and awe from the outset -- with help from Michael Giacchino's powerful score.

The San Francisco-based battle sequences don't disappoint: They're even coherent.

To its credit, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which follows 2011's Rise of Planet of the Apes, doesn't entirely resolve the conflict between all its warring impulses. The movie does what few blockbusters would dare: It leaves us with a lingering, sorrowful feeling about the possibility of resolution.

'Tintin' made my head spin

Parts of The Adventures of Tintin are as creative as you'd expect from Steven Spielberg, but the movie left me feeling a bit woozy.

With just about everyone climbing on the 3-D bandwagon, it’s hardly surprising that Steven Spielberg – an acknowledged master of popular entertainment – has tried his hand at it.

In the animated The Adventures of Tintin -- from a comic-book series by the Belgian artist who went by the name of Herge -- Spielberg shows off a mixture of motion-capture animation and moving camera work that makes for a dizzying ride. The story is an amalgam of three Tintin stories, consistent, I suppose, with this milkshake of a movie.

The dazzling opening sequences are set in a flea market where the intrepid Tintin (voice by Jamie Bell) purchases a model ship called The Unicorn. Of course, this is no ordinary model, but a vessel that holds a key to the mystery at the movie's heart. That means the bad guy -- one Ivan Ivanovitch Sakharine (Daniel Craig) -- wants to get his hands of the ship. Sakharine tries politeness before resorting to stronger measures.

The story eventually unites Tintin and Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis), an unashamed drunkard, whose rundown ship has been hijacked by Sakharine.

The story sends this unlikely duo in search of lost treasure, and allows Spielberg to put his hero through a variety of action-oriented trials that are bound to remind audiences that Spielberg also directed the Indiana Jones movies.

The action is skillfully mounted, of course, but there’s too much of it, and it culminates in a clash of dueling cranes that's louder than it is exciting. Moreover, the combination of motion-capture (animation just short of photo-realism) and frenzied activity creates the unwelcome sensation of an amusement park ride run amok – at least it did for me.

I wouldn’t say that Tintin is fall-down funny, but there are welcome splashes of humor, the best involving a couple of bumbling police officers voiced by Nick Frost and Simon Pegg.

It’s hardly surprising that Spielberg, who long ago earned his action stripes, knows how to keep a movie moving. And those who grew up with the Tintin series may find the movie satisfying. Personally, I found the opening credits -- which boast an appealing hand-drawn look -- more winsome and winning than almost anything that followed.

For me, Tintin’s adventures felt about as convincing as the look of Tintin’s trusty dog Snowy – which is to say that these adventures felt carefully calibrated to maximize motion capture and 3-D as much as to create any feeling of spontaneously generated pleasure.

I don't know how Tintin might play without the 3-D, but it proved too much for my eyes, which longed for the respite of some quiet exposition, say Tintin tap-tapping on his trusty typewriter.

How our beleaguered planet went ape

Rise of the Planet of the Apes has plenty of B-movie kick. That's a good thing.

I don't know many pop-culture lovers who aren't fans of the original Planet of the Apes.

The success of the much-revered 1968 original prompted four sequels, none of which had the entertaining kick of the first installment. And as much as I admire director Tim Burton, I have to admit that his 2001 trip to the Planet of the Apes was a bit of a disappointment.

Now comes Rise of the Planet of the Apes, an origins movie that reflects a deep understanding of B-movie pleasures. This installment functions as a worthy prequel to the 1968 edition, which starred Charlton Heston and some very fine actors in ape makeup.

This time, a mixture of CGI and motion-capture photography allows the filmmakers to go ape, filling the screen with primates that are misused and abused by humans who don't respect their integrity as living creatures.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes connects to the original in ways that can be both smart and amusing, and Andy Serkis, who did such brilliant motion-capture work as Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, gives Caesar -- the movie's principal ape -- a sense of gravitas and well-earned indignation.

No question about it: This time, our sympathies lie with the apes.

As the story unfolds, Caesar -- who's raised in the home of research scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) -- makes the transition from rambunctious chimp to the leader of every primate in the San Francisco area: those used in cruel lab experiments and those housed in zoos.

Thematically, Rise of the Planet of the Apes can't be viewed as a groundbreaker. It cautions against the ways in which hubris undermines science, and peddles the familiar notion that some things are beyond our control -- and should remain that way.

I say forget the themes: The movie doesn't fuss over them anyway. Enjoy this skillful mixture of story and action for what it is, recognizing that everything that happens in the realm of the apes will be more compelling than whatever transpires in the human world.

When we meet Franco's Will, he's working on a serum called ALZ-112. The drug has great commercial potential because it's supposed to reverse the debilitating effects of Alzheimer's, a disease that has stricken Will's father (John Lithgow).

It doesn't take long for Will to go a little rogue: After a violent outbreak by Caesar's mother, Will's company orders the destruction of all of Will's research chimps. That's how baby Caesar winds up at Will's house: Will smuggles the tiny chimp out the lab.

The rest of the movie involves the ways in which Will continues his research, and Caesar continues to develop. The chimp learns to communicate using sign language and observes the world around him with more than animal-like curiosity. of course, Caesar has a leg up on every other chimp in the world: He was born with developmental potential his genetically altered mother passed on to him.

But like his mother, Caesar still has plenty of animal impulses. A violent episode triggered by a challenge to Caesar's protective instincts results in Caesar's confinement in an animal shelter. In this dank animal prison, Caesar emerges as the freedom-loving leader of the ape world.

All of this builds toward an action-packed finale on the Golden Gate Bridge during which director Rupert Wyatt finds the right mix of violence, dread and primate-administered retribution. Let's just say that prospects for humanity become bleak.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes can't be called an actors' movie, but Franco does a decent job as a scientist whose work forces him to confront serious moral questions. Frieda Pinto offers support in the mostly thankless role of a veterinarian who becomes Will's love interest. David Oyelowo appears as the drug company's profit-crazy boss.

Sometimes, the human action lags, but Wyatt delivers when it counts, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes turns out to be entertaining, ominous and amusingly over-amped. Credit Wyatt with playing the movie's signature moments for all they're worth.

Honesty compels me to tell you that the chimps sometimes look like they belong in a computer-generated zoo; i.e., they don't always look real. But I admired the fact that Wyatt has made one of the best kinds of genre movies, one that knows its place.

And just in case you have difficulty rooting for the apes, a word of advice: Think back to the recent Congressional debate about raising the debt ceiling. Keep Congress in mind, and the apes will start looking a whole lot better.