WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES 4
STARRING: Andy Serkis
In the third and concluding Apes instalment, the simian society has evolved so realistically you wonder if the film’s astonishing effects team didn’t include a descendant of Charles Darwin. Caesar (Serkis), leader of the rebel apes, grows weary and desperate as he tries to withstand military assaults from the humans. His strategy is to migrate with his followers into the desert, but first he’ll have to defeat a war-crazy American colonel (Woody Harrelson). The movie pushes too hard for mythic stature: the colonel is indebted to Marlon Brando’s looming maniac in Apocalypse Now, while the allusions to Moses are a regrettable form of monkey business. But it all feels and looks genuinely grandly epic. Hobbits, make room for the apes. (Out now)