Kong is King
Mae and I went to see King Kong last night.
It is one of the, if not the, most amazing movie I have ever seen. Peter Jackson is a master storyteller. There was not one unessential element to the entire movie. It was over 3 hours, and could not have been a minute shorter. I needed to go to the bathroom about 1/2 way through, but had to wait until it was over because evertime I thought there would be a lull, something new happened.
There were moments in the movie where I was so engrossed, I forgot to breathe. I have never been slack jawed until I saw this movie. There were parts that were simply unreal! Naomi Watts was fantastic as Anne Darrow. And Andy Serkis made Kong a beast of beauty. The eyes of Kong said so much more that anything I have seen. There was real love between Darrow and Kong. Believiable. Heartbreaking.
I laughed outloud during this film, that does not happen ofter. I cried during this film.
I recomend everyone go see it, if they have not. If you have, let me know what you thought.
1 comment:
So, maybe this is just me being scroogey, or jaded, or something, but I was displeased. I think there is excellent potential in the film. I think that it could easily be a very gripping, powerful movie. I also think that it was approximately an hour too long. There were a number of sequences on Skull Island that were simply too much. It felt to me that Peter Jackson was indulging himself, creating special effects because he had WETA and a big budget. Also, after the third or fourth chase scene involving fantastical creatures, the schtick starts to get old. But more important than either of those reasons for cutting a large chunk of the Skull Island footage is the plot device that Jackson makes a big deal of in the film and then shoots himself in the foot with, the premise that there is still mystery in the world that we do not know. Carl Denham repeats this theory a number of times throughout the film– and Jackson proceeds to show us everything that possibly could have existed on the island. Contrast this approach to the original 1933 version which has a fabulous shot in which they encounter a dinosaur, but there's a backdrop of a wild expanse that leaves the viewer with the tantalizing prospect that there is so much more there than just the dinosaurs and Kong.
Now, to be fair, there were things that I enjoyed a great deal. The actors did a fantastic job filling out their roles, Andy Serkis once again masterfully performed his CGI role, and there were some absolutely brilliant moments of cinematography that compared and contrasted Kong and Denham, silently questioning which of them was the real monster.
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