Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Matt Reeves' Dawn is a technically adroit but flavorless sequel to Rupert Wyatt's Rise of the Planet of the Apes reboot, and it trashes the surprising narrative structure of its predecessor in favor of a more factory-tested, post-apocalyptic gloom. Dawn opens 10 years after the end of Rise, and in the decade since, most of humanity has been wiped out by a deadly virus, with only a small band of survivors left. Meanwhile, the supersmart apes are starting to thrive, and Dawn covers the conflict between these two societies in flux. The motion-captured monkey effects are next-generation stuff, a leap forward from the leap forward of Rise, and the various CGI primates have a tactile presence that is legitimately jaw-dropping. Too bad the megapixels are the only things that matter here, and no matter how photo-realistic the monkey fur, a cardboard character is still a cardboard character.