Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

This is a rebooted series miles above the original run of flicks that ruled cinemas 40 year back. A rare, dark, thinking person’s treat in the middle of summer, more interested in sparking hot debate and making audience squirm than serving up empty CGI fireworks. Seriously, put aside the Oscar-worthy 3-D motion capture effects –- all shot in forest and a city, not a sound stage –- and watch this story. “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” picks up 10 years after 2011’s “Rise,” dumping its human cast (James Franco, bye) as we follow the primate survivors (Andy Serkis, you are a god) post bloody revolt and mass pandemic. This is the last encounter of ape and struggling humans –- led by an uncorked panicking Gary Oldman -- as the latter delve into the apes’ forest, to restart an electric dam. Any chance of interspecies peace is crushed under lingering wounds of the “old” world, and we enter a dark, new dystopian future the previous films merely hinted at. Director Matt Reeves has created a razor sharp sequel that, yes, may be inevitable, but it can still shock, too -- check an onscreen murder of a youth. Serkis is flat out amazing. A-

The Adventures of Tin-Tin (2011)

When Steven Spielberg said he was making a Tin-Tin movie, I was stoked. I was born in England, and although I can’t recall my time there, I did inherit piles of “Tin-Tin” books. The boy reporter and his little white dog, Snowy, are huge there. In America? Not so much. Which is why “The Adventures of Tin-Tin” crumpled at U.S. cinemas. Despite the Spielberg name, some of the best motion-cap animation ever made and 3D effects that make the format a blast of wondrous pop-up fun. The plot is Tin-Tin simple, and very “Young Indiana Jones”: Our ginger hero buys a model ship on a lark and gets wrapped up in a worldwide conspiracy that nearly gets him (and his little dog, too!) killed. Spielberg works with physics-defying action as if he’s thrilled not to worry about reality. It’s all too much, but this is a boy’s adventure. How else to explain a 120-pound boy fighting men three times his size? Bummer news: The ending is a let-down, a promise of cinematic godliness left to a sequel. Jamie Bell is Tin-Tin, Andy Serkis is a drunken ship captain, and Daniel Craig (smartly nasty!) the villain. B+