PLANETA DOS MACACOS, A GUERRA (WAR OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, USA, 2017) – The film’s real technological achievement isn’t the rendering of CGI forests (though these are pretty good) but the motion-capture apes themselves, huge liquid eyes (“My God! Almost human!” the Colonel shudders) and facial expressions as thrillingly elastic and legible as the human actors who play them. All science fiction is philosophy; here, Reeves asks what distinguishes humans from animals. The twist is that as the apes get “smarter” (and the humans become crueler), they also grow softer, in a reminder that humanity resides in both the head and the heart. Part of the film’s potency derives from the figure of Caesar, the ape leader whose presence is created in motion-capture by Andy Serkis. His face is in fact quite unlike Serkis’s, but this figure has real presence and personality: a grizzled old soldier, whose mouth is always turned into a severe scowl of authority. It’s an engrossing, forthright adventure.
