So we are nearly fully caught up and I still have the next few weekends where I have free time and I am actually off work from 19th December until the 5th Jan. Pretty sure that I am going to have a bit of free time to fit in 5 films. I'm touching wood right at this moment while I say this but I think I might actually get this one completed!!

So Channel 5 threw this at me, the end of a weekend where I had done manly man things like chopping lots of wood and smashing out a fire place. The moon and stars had aligned to make this film worth while

• I was knackered
• It had been a very long time since I had seen it
• The recent rerun of the series, thats different but still aims to do something similar

So it was perfect timing. The originals are very much from my youth so I don't have a clear memory of what exactly happened but I believe that this version was close to the original story. Things have been modernised to make it appear even more futuristic but still pretty much the same.

It really is a good film, not as complex as the latest reboot but that I was expecting as it is following the story from a very different era but still very interesting. Once again, from boy band member to actor, Mark Wahlberg once again proves that peoples faith in his transformation is worth it. The story did make him appear a little more wooden than he actually is when acting. The rest of the film is very interesting, certainly not as strange as one would normally associate with Tim Burton. Obviously, as its his film, we also get Helena Bonham Carter to boot as well.

A very interesting story on how apes might possibly develop over years, how their strength could overcome that of humans. There was a very interesting tie back into how the whole population of the planet came about, from the ship that Wahlberg had left in the pursuit of his lost chimp

A typical Tim Burton film in that there are lots of subtle things that can be missed (and some not so subtle) and the quality of his work, though this is not the best, shines through to make the film watchable. Its sad that he declined to carry on the series as I think the next film would have been very interesting and he would likely have done an awful lot more with that than he did with this one.

Still a film worth seeing, a good contrast to the current reboot. 3.5 stars