Movie #14 of 2024: Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) Prequels are tricky creatures, by design working towards an ending that the audience already knows. The ones that work best tend to focus not on lining up the logistics of the original piece, but rather a) telling compelling new stories that happen to occur earlier …
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Movie #13 of 2024: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) This remains the very best action movie I’ve ever seen, although one that’s remarkable for plenty of other reasons besides. It would be reductive to describe the film as one long car chase, since part of its strength rests in how the script elegantly factors in …
Movie #12 of 2024: Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) Another thrilling post-apocalyptic adventure, with some excellent worldbuilding for this new era of the setting: “many generations” beyond the lifetime of Caesar, the chimpanzee protagonist of the 2011-2017 trilogy who experienced the collapse of human civilization and the rise of his own people …
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Movie #11 of 2024: War for the Planet of the Apes (2017) [Edited version of my original review from 2017.] When I first came home from seeing this in theaters, I noted that it was “probably the best Planet of the Apes movie ever made.” Having had seven years to sit with that assessment, and …
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Movie #10 of 2024: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) [Edited version of my original review from 2017.] Still a very strong picture, but not quite as good as Rise in my personal opinion. This sequel is the first time that the modern Apes series goes fully post-apocalyptic, but we’ve jumped forwards ten …
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Movie #9 of 2024: Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011) [Edited version of my original review from 2017.] After decades languishing as a punchline in the wilderness of popular culture, Planet of the Apes got a long-overdue update in this 2011 feature, which is best understood as a quasi-canonical reboot for the franchise. …
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Movie #8 of 2024: Planet of the Apes (2001) The Planet of the Apes franchise went dormant in the 1970s after five films and two short-lived TV shows, but was brought back to the big screen for this Tim Burton production several decades later. It’s best understood as a reimagining of the first movie — …
Movie #7 of 2024: Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) A perfunctory conclusion to the original Planet of the Apes movie series, although the franchise would live on in television shows, comic books, an odd Tim Burton reimagining, and an eventual big-screen reboot in 2011 that’s still ongoing today. In this film, the …
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Movie #6 of 2024: Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) By this point in the initial Planet of the Apes series, viewers had seen a future world where our species had been overthrown, its apocalyptic destruction, and a tragedy wherein the only surviving refugees of that dystopia, having traveled back in time to …
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Movie #5 of 2024: Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971) A welcome bounce back for the series. Like its two predecessors, there’s a fatalistic darkness to this Apes film, but it’s carried off better here in balance with a certain comic playfulness. The producers wrote themselves into a corner by concluding the prior …
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