Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Essential, and it is the right entry point for anybody who wants the modern trilogy and none of the 1968 material. It shares no continuity with the originals and assumes nothing.

It is a much smaller film than its sequels and that is its strength. An experimental Alzheimer's therapy is tested on chimpanzees, one infant survives the programme and is raised in a suburban house, and the first hour is a domestic drama about a family keeping something they are not licensed to keep. The film takes its time over an ordinary childhood that is going to end badly.

The turn happens at the sanctuary. Caesar is surrendered into a facility and spends the middle of the film learning, from the inside, what he actually is to the people who raised him, and the moment he first uses language is the best beat in the trilogy. Andy Serkis's performance-capture work here is where the technique stopped being a novelty and started being acting.

The human material is noticeably weaker. James Franco's scientist and the corporate pressure around him are thin, and the film is dutiful whenever Caesar is off screen. What it does beautifully is the pandemic, which never gets a scene of its own: a single infected man coughs, and the end credits show air routes lighting up across a map while the story you were watching carries on without noticing.