King Kong

Typical Peter Jackson, however gonna watch the even longer extended 3 hours 20 minutes edition in 4k, not watched in years but the picture is epic apart from it being too warm for my liking. The sound is the unusual DTS-X high def sound and already is gorgeous!

However enough of the technical borefest hahaha... this film for me is stunningly shot... some of the shots of the city are incredible. It really is a grand film and for me better than his LOTR trilogy which I may well resist soon.

However its the cinematography and sets that set this film apart from most films... integrated so well with XGI which even in 4k is holding up well... stunning is all I can say, actually old school filming with modern techniques!

Classic tale and story that recreates the original for the modern era. Even Jack Black is watchable but the stunning Naomi Watts is very very watchable hahaha.

This film doesn't get the recognition it deserves!!! As an achievement in cinema alone its a 10/10. You want blockbusters that have a story and a smidge of empathy with the characters with possibly the greatest ending of all monster films ever... this is how you do it.

Marvel and DC and all the other nonsense need to take a step back!!! This is how you combine live action, real sets and CGI into an epic tale...

Maybe I'm blinded by nostalgia but I adore this movie.

It's one of the few movies for me that is truly and action movie and not just a movie with some gun fire and general badassdom. The action sequences are captivating, electrifying and operatic in their scale and execution.

On top of this, the sense of adventure as we travel from a vivid (and probably fake) evocation of 1930s New York to the eerie island forgotten by time is realized with an artisanal attention to detail and an artist's spark and passion (though of course all movies are art).

A lot of people felt it took a while to get going. But I like local color and characters that make this feel all the more vivid. They do it with verve when so many other monster movies spend too much time on humans when they only know how to write the monsters.

The love story angle part might have been a tad much but I like Ann, I like Jack, I love to look down my nose at Carl and Hayes and the boy are a sweet addition too.

You will fear and in time come to love this endling ape who reigns as king of the forgotten world but but rules it alone. When Naomi Watts described it as a love story I dare say it might have been the most inciteful thing an actor has ever said about one of their movies that they didn't write in an interview. It's no an erotic love but in the bleak world of giant sabre toothed leach eat giant sabre toothed leach, sometimes moments of tenderness between the most unlikely pairs becomes possible.

And then we get back to New York and words do not do it justice. They kind of slapped a Christmas/Winter aesthetic in the final act because this movie released in December and I am so happy to go along with it, maybe because of that score.

Overall, one of the few remakes of a good movie that is justified since it managed to recreate for modern audiences what the original would have been at its time.

I was rather sad to see they had cut so many scenes on the DVD that were actually in the movie. The scream on the shore that first caught Kong's attention. The writer stopping the actress in the passage way, and saying "I have something to show you", this was one of many scenes left out. Suddenly they were in his room? My wife had not seen the original movie, she thought the movie was sort of jumpy. You can't deny the special effects, wonderful. I know that they are planning on releasing a 2nd copy within the next 6 months and calling it extra scenes for the director. It's a shame to cut such a fine film for the sake of making more money.

Let me just say that with all of the remakes that have been coming out, King Kong may have been the most deserving and the most in need of being remade. I could not think of a better director for this type of film than Peter Jackson.

King Kong stays pretty true to the original. Naomi Watts plays Fay Wray's Ann Darrow perfectly. Right down to her emotional connection with Kong, which is helped by the fact that Kong is pretty darn lovable when he is not ripping apart dinosaurs.

Adrien Brody plays a great Jack Driscoll as well. Brody is truly a gifted actor and plays a good hero.

Even Jack Black did a good job as the rebellious director Carl Denham. Usually I am annoyed by Black's performances, even though they are mostly in comedies. Surprisingly, Black kept his character serious and the movie is better for it. I though for sure he would be the one to ruin this movie for me but, again, I stand corrected. The comedy seemed to be reserved for Kong, himself, and did a wonderful job.

I can not express how much more I enjoyed this movie without the "guy in the suit" special effects. Kong was very appealing visually, as well as the other dinosaurs. I do not say this too much in reviews. In fact, I doubt I have ever said it but King Kong has turned out to be a masterpiece which will raise the bar for many years to come. 10/10

1933 New York and two people find themselves in difficult circumstances, albeit for different reasons. Carl Denham is a movie producer who wants to make his big picture but finds the studio unwilling to support him. Ann Darrow is an actress who has hit hard times and is one meal away from having to become a performer in a seedier version of "acting". While frantically searching for an actress that he can quickly convince to come on a mystery voyage to shoot on a distant island, Carl meets Ann and convinces her to come along on the strength of the involvement of writer Jack Driscoll. After an eventful journey, they arrive at the island but to suggest that they face a "troublesome" shoot is a real understatement.

In my 12 hour wait for my "First Class" seat for a transatlantic flight to America I discovered that "First Class" to Continental means "you pay lost more cash but we extend you just the same (dis)courtesy as the economy passengers". With my laptop with me I was at least able to find some distraction with a DVD copy of King Kong. Although I'm sure it loses something by being seen on a comparatively small screen I still enjoyed the film as a big budget b-movie, which is pretty much what it was. Sure, Jackson may have had aspirations to deepen the story and bring real pathos out of his "characters" but he doesn't particularly pull it off and most of the viewers will have been there for the big effects rather than the chance to explore the emotions within a cinematic legend. So in this regard the film works by kicking out the action after a comparatively slow start where we spend a lot of time with lesser characters who don't matter that much in the wider context of the narrative.

However when the action comes it is slick, noisy and visually impressive. The only thing I did have a problem with was how hollow it all was. Jackson does attempt to develop a tender relationship between Kong and Ann, but the material struggles to deliver the goods and all that we are left with is lots of "meaningful" looks as the pair get some sort of unspoken (and unseen!) understanding. At this level the film didn't really engage me – I respected what he was trying to do with it, but I'm afraid I can't relate to those who claim to have cried and felt so much from this "beautiful" relationship.

Faced with such big effects, noise and spectacle, the cast cannot do much other than try and hold their own. Watts has the hardest role as she tries to react and bond with a creature that was never actually there with her in reality – only in a computer. When you remember this, her performance is pretty commendable but when I was watching the film I must admit that I thought she relied far too much on staring and looking sad or having a half-smile on her face; she still did as well as one could have hoped but again I don't get the claims that she was brilliant here when she clearly wasn't. Black and Brody are very much supporting performances that have little to do; Brody didn't suit his role and Black never convinced as a larger than life movie producer. Yet again Serkis does a good job to bring an effect to life although for obvious reasons he is nowhere near as good as he was in the Lord of the Rings films and he can only do so much with expressions.

Overall then a solidly enjoyable blockbuster that produces plenty of noise, action and impressive visual effects. The attempts at depth and meaning are laudable and do add something to the mix but I'm afraid that it doesn't really work as well as some viewers have claimed. Still worth seeing as a blockbuster experience though, despite some of the flaws inherent in the approach and the rather cumbersome running time.