RAVE - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

This follows directly - thankfully, so we can at least have some idea where the heck we are time-wise in this series of films that started after the ape-versus-human wars had decimated the earth to a point where even Charlton Heston looked good - from the last movie where the apes escaped back over the Golden Gate Bridge to the redwood forests North of San Francisco. Phew.

The troupe of genetically enhanced and evolved apes that escaped the lab in Rise of the etc etc are living and developing their culture in Northern California - which is more than can be said for many of the area's human residents today. But the world's deterioration - largely unexplained in the film - means that some of SF's remaining residents venture into the ape's region looking to get a power-producing dam working again.

This causes the effluent to hit the fan, with the two groups quickly escalating from grunts and bananas to clumsy speech (well, they are apes) and assault rifles. As with the latest Godzilla flick, downtown San Francisco - or at least computer generated images thereof - features heavily in the mayhem.

It wasn't as ground-breaking as the last Planet movie, although the gradual humanization of the apes is spectacular. What this one lacks is some context to the situation - there's little explanation of what's going on in other parts of the State, or the country, let alone the World.